I read with profound interest the letter entitled Medical errors need to be checked, monitored .

There is definitely an increasing concern with regards to some major pitfalls in medicine and drug therapy, which is popularly known as allopathy. Its setback lies in its submission to the mechanistic worldview of Cartesian Newtonian Science which has dominated the Western scientific thought.

The limitation of the mechanistic view is that it is trapped in the molecular theory of disease causation, which has become the investigative instrument for biomedicine to explore the cause of diseases leading to the reductionist view of the pathophysiology of disease states.

Trapped in this limited physical perception of disease, all forms of therapy, especially chemical drug therapy, were developed with the view to alter the pathophysiology that seemingly caused the disease. Since the beginning of the development of drugs in the late 19th and early 20th century, drug therapy has become the all purpose treatment for various forms of diseases including infection and physiological disorders such diabetes mellitu, hypertension etc.

While one should acknowledge the great contribution of western biomedical medicine in the field of surgery and trauma care, it has not proven effective without untoward or damaging side effects but as far as metabolic and physiological diseases are concerned. But the chemical drug industry is growing in leaps and bounds, creating new drugs, using the drug receptor technology of pharmacology.

The dangers and the long-term damage of drugs has to be addressed more seriously, But with the trillion dollar drug industry reaping astronomical profits, the biomedical scientific community has become the indirect proponent of this industry, confined and trapped in the mechanistic view of the human life form and caught in the fast-moving chemical drug industry track.

Prescribing the drugs produced by the pharmaceutical companies has been the game of the biomedical doctors whose vision has been obscured by the molecular theory of disease causation. In many ways they are beyond help, subtly controlled by the business strategy of these medical drug barons. They chemically medicate the people who seek treatment, and create a huge medicated population instead of a healthy population.

A medicated population is at a great risk to develop side effects which will weaken the body and make them more vulnerable to diseases. If the biomedical medicine fraternity do not want to think out of the box, become more open to new treatment modalities, or do not venture into research into natural and integrated medicine, they will continue to do significant harm, especially when the global population greys and relies heavily on chemical drugs to maintain the quality of health.

New areas must be explored, their investigating instruments and methods must be revised, a more quantum or cosmic approach to human existence must be studied and new safer modality utilised for human wellness. One area that must be vigorously explored is natural medicine. Since man is essentially a product of nature, nature must be the best teacher and guide for human health.

Integrated therapeutics, which bridges the gap of allopathy with natural and alternative medicine must be another new ground to be explored for when effectively combined with natural therapy, through integrated formulae, the content of chemical drugs can be significantly downsized and reduced up to 80 percent, thereby reducing side effects drastically without compromising on the clinical outcome. This then save the body from the damaging effects of drugs which are naturally not harmonious with the human body.

Integrated therapeutics will be the modality of the near future, the best of both worlds must be synergised to derive the maximum yet safest benefit to humanity. Today, allopathists and regulatory agencies will view this integrated medicine as illegal. But from the view of scientific progress, it will bring good benefit to patients who are tormented with the debilitating side effects of high dosage of medical drugs. More efforts should be put into the preservation of health, rather than disease and injury management, an industry which is over-developed compared to the health preservation industry.

Ironically, while 90 percent of the population are still not in the disease or injury state, only about 5 percent of the health budget goes for health preservation whereas the remaining goes for disease and injury management.

Unless healthcare leaders and decision makers move aggressively into health empowerment through intensive provision of knowledge on healthy living, we will not see a mega-leap in the improvement of the quality of human health. Taking care of one's own health is the birthright of every living soul. Appropriate knowledge on human health is the vital panacea for disease prevention. Health is the rule, disease is the exception.