‘Culture Shock’

I read with interest your article “Culture Shock Hits Health Care” (Aug. 19, Part I). I applaud acknowledging the need for medical personnel on all levels to recognize and comply with cultural differences and beliefs in dispensing Western medicine effectively. However, I believe an important issue was given short shrift.

The article cites a foreign patient’s concern that antibiotics are “too strong.” Doctors are said to view some foreign birth control methods as “unwise.” Also, from the article, “A doctor who chastises someone for using a folk remedy is . . . wasting a chance to gently educate him.”

To seek only to find more effective ways of smoothly imposing Western medicine would be, in my view, not only patronizing but wasteful.

Our belief systems are not necessarily the be-all and end-all, even for ourselves. That which one of us Westerners may regard as an illogical quirk to be dealt with as diplomatically as possible may represent rich wisdom. We could do well to seek to understand and use it ourselves.

BILL FREESE, Los Angeles