While I couldn't agree more with the observation that medicine is in fact led by egotistical, arrogant males who believe they know better than anyone else what's right for patients, I strongly disagree with the idea that the solution is to get rid of females from the medical profession. Professor Carol Black says they need more males in the profession, and fewer females, otherwise the profession risks losing its influence. She wants to make sure more men become doctors, and perhaps minimize the number of women holding these influential, professional roles.
I happen to think that women are very good for medicine. In fact, I think that men are part of the problem with medicine. Men tend to be power-hungry, egoistic, narrow-minded, and highly protective of their own philosophies and belief systems. These traits have in fact contributed to the environment of dogma that now pervades western medicine, where new ideas on alternative medicine and complementary medicine are laughed at or strongly discredited simply because they don't agree with the established belief systems held by the domineering authoritative males who currently hold power in the industry.
And this is part of what's wrong with medicine -- there are many therapies that have been proven to both prevent and even reverse disease that don't involve the use of prescription drugs, surgical procedures or barbaric therapies such as chemotherapy. Some of these proven alternative therapies include massage therapy, nutritional therapy, oxygen therapy, acupuncture, chiropractic care, homeopathy, vibrational medicine, herbal medicine, and many, many more. Yet these are shut out by the defenders of western medicine, who are almost universally egotistical male physicians.
The arrogance of western medicine is legendary. Not only do doctors think they know more than you or anyone else about what should be done for the patient, they're willing to draw such conclusions after a mere 20 or 30 seconds of conversation and diagnosis with the patient. Even beyond that, these doctors believe they know more than the human body knows about healing or overcoming disease. Their favorite therapies such as chemotherapy, surgery, or prescription drugs actually attempt to override the body and take control of the body's biochemistry rather than supporting the body's own innate healing potential. This is the arrogance of western medicine, and it is a distortion of reality that is commonly held by males in organized medicine.
As much as I remain outraged at the approach to healing practiced by male physicians, the female physicians that I have run across have almost always been more open-minded to alternative therapies. In fact, the best western doctors I know are all women. Female physicians tend to be willing to spend more time talking to patients. They are more caring -- and even intuitive -- in working to understand what's going on with patients and what therapies might be beneficial to them. Female doctors also tend to be more open to alternative or complementary therapies such as acupuncture, nutritional therapy or homeopathy.
Thus, it is female doctors who hold the greatest promise for revolutionizing modern medicine and bringing in a wider variety of healing modalities that can offer true benefits to patients. Male doctors, on the other hand, tend to resist these kinds of outside influences. Once again, I don't mean to characterize all male doctors or all physicians in this way -- in fact, many of the authors that I most highly recommend to readers are male physicians who have branched outside the belief systems of modern medicine and sought out alternative healing modalities. I have great respect for those people, or any person who branches outside of the beliefs of western medicine, whether they're male or female or M.D. or N.D. But my point here is that by and large, it is the male physician, the male western medical professionals, who are the most dogmatic, the most close-minded, and in a very true sense, the most dangerous to the health of their patients.
This is why I have continued to recommend readers visit naturopathic physicians wherever possible. You can find naturopathic physicians by looking for an N.D. after their name, rather than an M.D., which of course stands for medical doctor, or doctor of medicine. The N.D. stands for doctor of naturopathy, and that's the kind of healing professional that I strongly recommend you visit if you're wanting integrative health advice that ventures beyond the considerable limitations of western medicine.
The bottom line to all this is the fact that more females are taking up positions as doctors around the world, and that's actually good news for medicine. We need more women in this profession because we need more open-mindedness, more open communication between physicians and patients, and a more caring attitude about patients at a fundamental level. Male doctors tend to be more interested in power and control, but female doctors tend to be more interested in understanding their patients and providing a wide variety of solutions that might help that patient cope with their medical condition or improve it.
Of course, virtually all naturopathic physicians (NDs), regardless of their sex, are open-minded and caring, otherwise they wouldn't have entered the field of naturopathy in the first place. So, between NDs vs. MDs, and male vs. female doctors, here's my own personal advice:
Male ND: Highly recommended
Female ND: Highly recommended
Male conventional MD: Avoid
Female conventional MD: Neutral