THE news this week that Radovan Karadzic, one of the world's most-wanted war criminals, had been found disguised practising as a doctor of "alternative medicine" provoked in me a number of reactions.
My first thought was that someone needs to check the "hopi ear candle" stall at the next Natural Healing Expo for Osama bin Laden.
My second: that Karadzic's choice of new career confirms what I already suspected about alternative medicine.
If ever there was a profession in which a mass-murderer could pass themselves off undetected, it's "natural healing".
No occupation other than perhaps journalism has such a high tolerance of what, in most normal spheres of life, would be called psychosis. (Fairness compels me to say Karadzic is also a fully qualified psychiatrist; which kind of tells you everything you need to know about them, too.)
A while ago, as research for a story, I submitted myself to various "alternative therapies". After allowing an earnest lesbian in a velvet waistcoat to place crystals on my abdomen, I was led into a room where I lay on a bed and watched a hippie in a karate outfit extract knitting needle-sized acupuncture pins from packets.
At this point certain objections began to voice themselves, like: "Why am I allowing a man who wears a karate outfit to work to stick pins in me?" and "Is that smell coming from the joss stick shrine or his dreadlocks?"
The first few pins, I have to admit, weren't so bad.
Plus if I turned to one side I got great reception on SBS. While lancing my right foot, however, he hit something that I'm fairly sure was pretty angry about the whole thing.
"Agh! Take it out!" I screamed.
"It's OK," said the hippie, removing the needle. "You just had a really big flow of chi go through your body."
Possibly. Then again, what might have happened - and this is just a theory - is that a hippie with a "degree" granted him by some guy in Hong Kong who thinks ground-up panda testicles will cure liver cancer just stuck an enormous pin in my foot that responded by sending "pain" messages to my brain which were then expressed by me in the form of screaming agony. As I said: Just a theory.
Alternative medicine is well named; it is used by people whose alternative to illness is hypochondria.
As a confirmed hypochondriac, this doesn't worry me - if witch doctors want to listen to my complaints, so be it.
But the question remains: Who are these people? Who qualifies them? What was my acupuncturist on the run from?
On your next visit to an "alternative practitioner" why not ask yourself: Are the symptoms preferable to the alternative.
