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Twilight of the Idiopathic Era and the Dawn of New Possibilities in Health and Healthcare
 
Dr Alex Vasquez

This article was originally published in Naturopathy Digest in 2006; minor edits were made in 2010 and 2014
The original article is archived: naturopathydigest.com/archives/2006/mar/idiopathic.php

Among the perplexing paradoxes that exist in healthcare is coexistence of our adoration of allopathy for its “scientific method” along with the description of most chronic diseases as “idiopathic.” If the allopathic use of the scientific method were so adroit, then why are so many conditions described as having “no known cause”? Is the scientific method inadequate, or is the allopathic lens incapable of bringing disease causation into focus? Perhaps a third option exists: that some groups—namely the medical profession generally and the pharmaceutical companies specifically—benefit by convincing us that most diseases have “no known cause” and that therefore the best that doctors and patients can hope for is additive and endless pharmaceuticalization of all health problems. When the cause of our hea