Can parallels be drawn between Radovan Karadzic's alleged war crimes and his new career in alternative medicine? asks Donald Clarke
YOU KNOW how it is when, after foolishly agreeing to attend a party hosted by your most deluded friends, you find yourself hopelessly cornered by some New Age blockhead in dirty shoes.
"So, I found this wonderful fellow in Dalkey who specialises in floral medicine," he or she might say. "After only a few months of chanting and chrysanthemum suppositories, my weeping carbuncle has - I'm sure, yes, I'm sure - gone down a little."
As the minutes creep on and the encomiums to various preposterous nostrums mount up - aromatherapy, Reiki, bathing in the entrails of goats - you perhaps find your mind wandering. After all, if you pay too close attention to this stuff, there is a very real chance you might ram something into your companion's face.
Wouldn't it be wonderful, you think to yourself, if one of the most sinister, most murderous figures in contemporary affairs turned out to be an alternative practitioner? Imagine if, when they finally pull Osama bin Laden from his cave, he tries to interest his captors in the healing power of crystals or the peace that results from arranging your furniture according to the dicta of feng shui.
"Now hang on, you gibbering hippie," you might then say to the next party guest who tried to sell you magic beans. "Just consider the sort of maniac who believes this baloney. I'm not saying you lot are all genocidal maniacs, but it makes you think."
The news that Radovan Karadzic, the Bosnian poet and politician under indictment for war crimes, spent the last few years selling healing amulets and recommending the restorative powers of "human quantum energy" has sparked the interest of those sceptical about alternative medicine and quasi-spiritual gobbledygook.
I am, of course, not suggesting that discovering one nationalist hooligan with an interest in eccentric remedies necessarily invalidates all alternative medicines (or even those branches Radovan practises). That would be a totally illogical misuse of the available data. That would be akin to recommending homeopathic treatments on the basis of uncertain anecdotal evidence and a vague distrust of (sinister organ chord, please) western medicine.
It is, however, blackly amusing to note just how easily the former psychiatrist managed to establish his practice. Having divested himself of suit, tie and smart shirt - the accoutrements of (again please, organist) western medicine - Radovan merely shunned his razor and hairbrush for a few weeks and emerged looking sufficiently filthy and sufficiently crazy to take up a post in the dubious word of snake- oil distribution. Less respectable conmen do, at least, have to spend some time perfecting the art of the pickpocket or the techniques involved in fixing three-card monte.
This symbolic embarrassment for mystical quackery came shortly after a more significant assault was launched on one school of alternative medicine. In June, distinguished science writer Simon Singh and professor of complementary medicine at the University of Exeter Edzard Ernst announced they would present the sum of £10,000 (€12,680) to anyone offering verifiable evidence that homeopathy works.
Singh and Ernst believe that some forms of complementary medicine do have value, but that homeopathy, in which patients are offered absurdly dilute solutions of certain substances, is of no use whatsoever.
"Ernst is part of the sceptics movement in the UK," Dr Sebastian van Eynatten, a homeopath based in Cork, said in this newspaper. "In homeopathy, the answers lie on a more energetic level, which will probably be explained by quantum physics."
"Quantum physics"? "Energetic"? "Probably"? Oh, my aching sides.
The challenge from Singh and Ernst mirrors one launched 40 years ago by the American sceptic James Randi. The Great Randi, as he is quite justifiably known when working as a conjurer, is offering $1 million for any scientifically rigorous proof of paranormal activity. Over the decades, various hucksters, opportunists and lunatics have taken Randi's challenge, but he has never come close to losing his money.
There are, you see, no such things as ghosts. We made them up, just as we made up telepathy, telekinesis, pyramid schemes, Buzz Lightyear and God. You disagree? Well, prove me wrong and I will point you towards a fellow who'll give you $1 million.
At about this point in such discussions, it is customary to quote - or, more often, misquote - GK Chesterton: "When people stop believing in God, they don't believe in nothing - they believe in anything."
Old Gilbert Keith knew a thing or two, but he didn't quite manage to anticipate the annihilating vacuity of modern consumerism.
Freed from the old deceits of traditional religion, the contemporary spiritual shopper is not going to settle for just "anything" from his or her belief system. If you wish to believe candles cure migraine, then add a carton of aromatherapy to your basket. If you like angels, then why not imagine one sits invisibly on your shoulder? In such a fashion are bespoke belief structures manufactured.
As long as this nonsense is not taught to children - take note, creationists in Kansas and Kentucky - we should, of course, allow citizens to enjoy their designer fantasies in peace. After all, they might change their minds when Osama bin Laden is caught practising phrenology at the next mind, body and spirit conference. We can hope.