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Many mainstream physicians reject even this middle-of-the-road position, condemning Weil's books as the worst kind of medical malarkey, filled with sloppy science and tent-show miracles. What Weil sees as medicine, says Dr. Graham Woolf, a gastroenterologist at ucla-Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, "would never pass as a research protocol." Others are less troubled by Weil's science than by Weil himself, particularly the controversial positions he took earlier in his career, such as his perceived tolerance of marijuana and other recreational drugs.
Still others in the medical community are troubled by none of this, concerned not with what doctors think of Weil but with what patients think. "People respond to Andy," says Shirley Fahey, associate dean of the University of Arizona medical school, where Weil lectures on alternative medicine, "because Andy responds to them. As long as he does that, they'll keep coming to him for answers."
For all his newfound fame, Andrew Weil finds it easy to drop completely from sight. One of the most recognizable doctors in the country lives in one of its most private corners, at the foot of the remote Rincon Mountains in southern Arizona. To get there you have to travel about 35 miles outside downtown Tucson, along progressively rutted, flood-prone roads, until an incongruously suburban sign points you to the WEIL RESIDENCE. If Weil didn't show the way, it is unlikely you'd ever stumble across the place.
But if few people ever visit Weil in his desert hideaway, untold numbers somehow manage to reach him nonetheless. Every week a flood of more than 500 pieces of paper mail--passed on, bucket-brigade style, from publishers, post-office boxes and agents--washes up at Weil's door. Thousands more pour in electronically, transmitted to Weil not at his unpublicized mailing address but at his widely known Web address (www. drweil.com) If the tone of the letters is not exactly rapturous, it comes pretty close.
One correspondent writes to thank Weil for saving her mother's life. Suffering from a rapidly advancing case of cancer, the mother had been given three months to live--until, in desperation, she began listening to Weil's tapes and following his advice. That was two years ago, and her disease is in complete remission. Another woman reports that she was once told by her doctor that she had just months to live. She began experimenting with alternative treatments, and she reports with perhaps a dollop too much satisfaction, "It's four years later, that doctor is dead, and I'm still going strong."
Others write not to praise Weil but to probe him. Is there any alternative to pharmaceutical drugs to treat allergies? someone wants to know. There sure is, Weil answers on the Web. Try a few leaves from the stinging-nettle plant, generally sold freeze-dried and packed in capsules. Are there any natural sex enhancers available? someone else asks. Absolutely, Weil answers. Men can try the Indian herb ashwagandha, which literally translates as "smells like a horse" but may pay back in sexual vigor whatever price it exacts in aroma. Women might consider damiana, the dried leaf of a Mexican plant that has a reputation as an aphrodisiac.