Dr. Lewis Mehl-Madrona once witnessed an American Indian spirit called White Buffalo Calf Woman heal a prostate cancer patient by rearranging "electrical patterns" in the man's brain.
A fire heats up the rocks for a sweat lodge used by Dr. Lewis Mehl-Madrona. Bill Wade, Post-Gazette)
The miraculous cure came during a sweat lodge ceremony, a prayer and purification ritual that Mehl-Madrona has performed dozens of times in a career that has stretched from California to New England to a post at the Center for Complementary Medicine at UPMC Shadyside.
But now, the story of White Buffalo Calf Woman and others he has published could cost the 46-year-old Stanford-trained physician his position in the University of Pittsburgh Health System.
With a national quack-watch publication questioning his competence, Mehl-Madrona has stepped down as medical director of the center, and, though he continues to see patients there, he is the subject of a UPMC investigation.
The probe is the latest bump on a medical path that, like alternative medicine itself, has created controversy and discomfort as it intersects the mainstream.
The clearest part of the unorthodox story surrounding Mehl-Madrona's time in Pittsburgh is the fashion that brought him here: Doctors and hospitals across the country are competing fiercely to offer complementary medicine services under their auspices.
In 1997, four of every 10 Americans used alternative medicine therapies ranging from acupuncture and biofeedback to relaxation techniques. And they spent at least $27 billion for professional services, herbal products, vitamins, diet products and books and classes, according to a study published last year in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
Hospitals have tried to tap into this market, with 8.6 percent of all community hospitals in the country in 1998 offeringsome kinds of alternative treatments.
One of the more significant developments came in 1992, when Congress created the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine, a branch of the National Institutes of Health, to study what works and what doesn't.
UPMC Shadyside officials brought Mehl-Madrona aboard because of the combination of his credentials in the alternative medicine world and his western medical training.
The terms "alternative" and "complementary" refer to a variety of services that for years have been practiced outside mainstream American medicine.
At the Center for Complementary Medicine at UPMC Shadyside, practitioners treat patients with acupuncture, hypnosis, relaxation therapies, talk therapy and a technique called EMDR, in which patients use eye movement and other exercises to reprocess information stored in the nervous system.
Mehl-Madrona uses all these practices.
Critics say many alternative treatments lack scientific support, a claim that rankles Mehl-Madrona.
"I think the danger in alternative medicine is that we confuse the effectiveness of a treatment with the effectiveness of mind-body healing," he said. "Some of the things we do clearly work, have biological efficacy. Some of the things we do we have no idea if they have any biological efficacy ... but people believe in them and they get better."
But what really draws attention to Mehl-Madrona, both from supporters and critics, are the sweat lodge ceremonies. They aren't part of the center's services, but he discusses them at length in his memoir, "Coyote Medicine," which was published by Scribner in 1997. He's conducted about a dozen of them in Pittsburgh during his time here.
The remainder of the article, which is quite good, may be found here:
http://www.post-gazette.com/regionstate/20000206mehlmadrona1.asp
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