Those who were fair and open-minded were largely relegated to an occasional letter to the editor of the Times. OAM announced to the world that the examination of such methods in a fair and dispassionate way was high on the agenda of one of the U.S.'s premiere health research organization. While OAM has been slow to fulfill that early promise, there is no denying that it changed the terrain of the debate forever. Not surprisingly, the public and then the media enthusiastically embraced that vision. Yet here, too, we should not imagine a monolith, much less a conspiracy.
People have a right to be skeptical.
Sometimes, however, those skeptics seem to have hidden agendas of their own. Some of them work directly or indirectly for forces that are threatened by the rise of prevention-based medicine. It does require a sincere open-mindedness towards the wild possibilities of the universe. Increasingly, we are treated to lectures implying that an acceptance of the possibility of such alternative approaches as mind-body healing is the prelude to a new Dark Ages. Following that, they were assailed by a handful readers who detected a religious subtext in the story.