Mention alternative medicine and spirituality, and images of crystals, dancing shamans, and faith healers come creeping into some people's minds. The Park Ridge Center for the Study of Health, Faith, and Ethics sometimes receives calls that might more appropriately go to a holistic health center. No, we do not know a whole lot about herbal remedies, nor do we have the name of a good psychic. But oftentimes the calls are quite serious: for example, a clinician already using complementary and alternative medicine once called wanting to "know about the spirituality" of these techniques.

First, the inquirer should know that it's not the "techniques" that are spiritual, it's the people. And by the millions they are using alternative therapies with a heavy component of spirituality. In an interview in this issue (Centerline, pg. 12), William J. Arnold, M.D., a long-time supporter of the Center, was asked, Where did your interest in alternative medicine come from? He replied simply, "My patients."

It is, therefore, no accident that the main story in this issue of the Bulletin ("All You Really Need is Chi," pg. 6) focuses on some individual stories — a Tai-chi instructor, a young nurse in a pediatric intensive care unit, a retired medical school professor. But it also asks some larger questions about alternative therapies and spirituality: How do people heal? What is the relationship between health and spirituality? Do alternative therapies represent the medicalization of spirituality or the spiritualization of medicine?

At this stage, with no clear answers on any front, it's far more important to ask the right questions. Unfortunately, the American Medical Association (AMA) recently backed away from a plan to publish a book on alternative medicine after its top scientific committee expressed strong concerns that the book might not meet the highest scientific standards.

The AMA's ardent defense of traditional medicine and its opposition to non-mainstream medical practices — everything from chiropractic to the use of herbal or relaxation remedies — signals its deep skepticism about the movement and places it on a collision course with alternative therapy populism.

But science seems to be asking some of the right questions. For example, the National Institutes of Health's Office of Alternative Medicine recently noted that much in alternative medicine looks strikingly religious. The medicalization of spirituality? Or is it the opposite?

More questions linger: What constitutes a spirituality? Do all spiritualities produce health benefits? How can these be demonstrated? Which spirituality, if any, ought to be promoted by healthcare systems, especially those with religious affiliations?

So, the Center takes up these intertwined areas of spirituality and alternative therapies in the hope of reducing the balkanization of those who want scientific proof and those who believe that spirituality brings health and healing. The public conversation will not advance with claims that spirituality and alternative therapies are quackery, bad science, or charlatanry. After all, when the last claims in the debate are finally made, it may become clear that spirituality, conventional medicine and alternative therapies — taken separately or improperly understood — can do harm as well as good.

But, taken together and understood for what each can offer, they offer the potential for doing enormous good.

Philip J. Boyle is editor-in-chief of the Park Ridge Center's publications.