Alternative Medicine That Works Is Called Medicine
“By definition”, I begin
“Alternative Medicine”, I continue
“Has either not been proved to work,
Or been proved not to work.
You know what they call “alternative medicine”
That’s been proved to work?
Medicine.”- Tim Minchin, "Storm"
Ancient arts that hold the secret of a long, healthy life, and relief from all that ails you. Herbal remedies for everything from headaches to cancer. Magnetic bracelets that make you faster, stronger, smarter, and more energetic. Treatments that "big pharma" doesn't want you to know about, because they can't make money on them: order now for three easy payments of $29.95. Many of the purveyors of alternative medicine and alternative therapies may very well believe their own claims, but, good intentions or not, they're usually making a profit from the desperate and the gullible.
This in itself would be good reason be vocally skeptical of the claims made by alternative practitioners. But there's much more at stake than a few people being parted from their money: by preventing people with real health problems from seeking real medical attention, alternative medicine kills.
The root of the problem: The Placebo Effect
The placebo effect is a well known but little understood phenomenon wherein some patients treated with fake medicine - a sugar pill is the common example - and it has positive effects on their health outcome. It's reasonable to hypothesize that one's belief that the pill they're taking will cure them might cause biochemical reactions in the brain that help the body's systems to react and adapt; something as simple as a reduction in stress might help a person heal faster. But the placebo effect is even weirder than that: sometimes it seems to work even when the patient doesn't believe it will[1].
One of the criteria for measuring the viability of new treatments in medical trials is that they provide substantially better results than could be has through the use of a placebo. Alternative medicines have either not yet been investigated for such effectiveness or, more likely, have either succeeded and become actual medicine, or failed this test. The apparent successes of some alt therapies are almost always comparable to the predicted effects of placebos.
Further, the widespread awareness - and often misunderstanding - of the placebo effect and its implications for the effect of one's mental state on one's health has fed into pseudo-mystical "mind/body" mumbo-jumbo that goes well beyond any medically justified assertions.
It's also worth noting that the validity of the placebo effect itself has come under fire in recent years. A number of controversial studies beginning in the late 1990s have called into question some of the long-held assumptions about this phenomenon. They call into question measurement methods in previous placebo trials, criticizing the lack of adequate methods to separate the effects of the placebos themselves from other possible causes and effects, such as "Spontaneous improvement, fluctuation of symptoms, regression to the mean, additional treatment, conditional switching of placebo treatment, scaling bias, irrelevant response variables, answers of politeness, experimental subordination, conditioned answers, neurotic or psychotic misjudgment, psychosomatic phenomena, misquotation, etc."[2]
The Usual Suspects
Here are a few of the popular forms of questionable alternative medicine commonly practiced today.
Homeopathy
Water remembers.
That's the basic tenet that homeopaths would have you believe. When a drop of water comes in contact with even trace amounts of some substance that might have benefits for the body, it learns from that substance and takes on its beneficial properties (though apparently this doesn't happen for poisons or disease-carrying substances the same water comes into contact with). Once you've established your magical healing dewdrop, you can then proceed to make it stronger by diluting it with even more water. Then you can sell it in liquid form or soak it into a sugar pill and sell that, if you want to get fancy about it.
Let's put aside for a moment how ludicrous the very idea of selective "water memory" is, and how contrary to all our experience in the real world is the concept of making a medicine stronger by adding water to it. Let's pretend, just for a moment, that these claims are true.
All of the water that we drink is connected. Through our oceans, rivers, lakes, aquifers, and atmosphere, it's all been mixing and re-mixing for the billions of years since the earth cooled enough for two atoms of H to stay linked up with an atom of O. Every possible beneficial herb, vitamin, mineral, or medicine ever to exist on the planet has at one time been in contact with water which was later diluted with other water. So if there's any truth to the claims of homeopaths, it would be entirely reasonable to accept that a few sips of tap water a day would leave us in perfect health, all the time.
I haven't found that to be the case.
Skeptic James Randi frequently gives public talks that touch on alternative medicines. To demonstrate his point, he'll often bring along a full bottle of homeopathic sleeping pills and crunch on handfuls of them all through his talk. Randi is thin and in his 80s - and so far the massive homeopathic doses haven't slowed him down. (Though they might have elevated his blood sugar level.)
Acupuncture
Sure, it's been around for a long time. From AIDs to erectile dysfunction to stroke, acupuncture has been used to treat just about any affliction. It's even gone high-tech, with some practitioners replacing needles with low-intensity lasers. But is there any evidence that this ancient art, involving the jabbing of pins into the body to manipulate alleged invisible energy fields, actually works?
Well, the good old placebo effect gets in our way here again. There have been some apparent successes with acupuncture, that seem to suggest it works, to a limited degree, in some situations. (Lots of studies in the far east have "proved" its effectiveness, but try finding one that was done under properly controlled double-blind conditions.) But here's where the arguments for acupuncture truly fall apart: fake acupuncture works as well as "real" acupuncture. That means if you laid down on a table and I, with no mastery of any ancient Chinese Art of Anything, started poking you in the buttocks with pointy things, I would statistically have an equal chance of curing your headache as would the wizened guru who interrupted his mountaintop meditation to see to your needs. Maybe better, because I'd slip you an aspirin afterward.
Chiropractic Medicine
The chiropractic industry is a large, powerful, and wealthy one, owing much of its success to having the financial resources to lobby government regulators and sue its detractors (as the American Medical Association found out after its "Committee on Quackery" dismissed chiropractic in the 70s[3], and as journalist Simon Singh found out recently[4] in the UK).
Chiropractors claim that most ailments are caused by misalignment of the spine called "subluxations", and thus can be cured through proper spinal alignment. They'll site numerous studies they claim point to successful medical outcomes through their intervention, but opponents argue that none of these studies has shown any significant statistical advantage over other forms of treatment, including such radical steps as weight loss, exercise, resting, or doing nothing.
They're right, though, that the spine is kind of important. That's why manipulating it, especially with tools, can be dangerous. Chiropractic techniques have been blamed for stroke, paralysis, and fractures; there's even a support group for its victims[5].
Gray Areas
There are, in fact, herbal solutions that can improve your health. There are vitamin and mineral supplements that can help to address health problems. Their effectiveness varies widely, is sometimes poorly understood, overestimated, or, often, the evidence gathered so far is conflicting or inconclusive. But there are many items in this broad category that probably actually work, to one degree or another, and depending on what form and what concentration they're delivered in.
Unfortunately, there's a huge industry that wants to sell you this stuff whether it works or not, and which counts on the average consumer's difficulty in getting unbiased information about the various claims made for its products. Profit margins and propaganda are a dangerous combination. So how can you protect yourself from getting medical advice based more on economics than science?
One way to try to verify a product's health claims is to look for studies about the efficacy of whatever substance is being advertised as beneficial. Not studies conducted by the vendor, either - you're looking for research done by real universities or hospitals, and ideally both short and long term studies. Often there will be helpful (somewhat) plain-language summaries of these studies available at various places on the internet. Another step is to become familiar with internet resources like The Skeptic's Dictionary, Quackwatch, and others. There's an amazing herbal/supplement interactive infographic at InformationIsBeautiful, though it's not clear how often it gets updated. Be aware of some of the buzzwords that are often used to lend a scientific air to what would otherwise easily be written off as nonsense.
Above all, approach any medical claim with a healthy but open-minded skepticism. Look for evidence, not anecdote, and be aware that miracle cures seldom are, no matter how much you'd like them to be. Keep in mind that for all its shortcomings and all that it has yet to figure out, modern medicine has a far better track record than any other method when it comes to sending people home alive and well.
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Comments
Awesome article :) And that quote from TM wins :)
Good article.
Here's a book review of a book you might enjoy.
http://heanders.hubpages.com/hub/Charlatan-A-Book-Review
This is the article I was waiting for someone to write!
It's a great article. Although I have to disagree with some of the claims, particularly about chiropractic. Let me just say that what works for one does not work for another.
Good article. Some 'alternative therapies/medicine' I have no personal knowledge of, although I do know that acupuncture is sometimes used instead of general anaesthetic for open surgery in UK hospitals - it has as effective pain relief as the medical equivalent. If that is the placebo effect, then I wouldn't want to be the one to test it!! Based on this, I went to see an acupuncturist to see what effect it could have on my debilitating migraines (and by this I mean vomiting and losing my eyesight, not just a headache!) I have been going for a while and as yet I have not had another migraine - 18 months after my first treatment. There is a chance that it is the placebo effect, but even so, I don't care what it is as long as it works!
Sorry Bro but I beg to differ on all points here. I could write a rebuttal as long as this article, but won’t take the time. Let’s just say that I don’t think you have a clue as to what real alternative medicine is about, and you have left quite a few off the list. Alternative medicine contains numerous modalities and encompasses an alternative lifestyle that allows the body to heal itself from within, addresses the cause, if you will, not merely to treat symptoms. Yes, there are charlatans in all walks of life, selling snake oil and sugar pills, (and there are plenty in mainstream medicine ready to prescribe pills out the wazoo and take your money) but the science of homeopathy goes far beyond a water infused sugar pill as you described. Homeopathy is widely practiced in Europe as the medicine of choice. Although I have no experience with chiropractors, I have been treated with both homeopathy and acupuncture both, quite successfully, and if given a choice between that and traditional, Western, allopathic medicine, I will choose alternative medicine every time, hands down. The sources you site do are strictly regarding the placebo effect and chiropractic medicine, none regarding homeopathy or acupuncture. In what field of medicine are you licensed to practice, since you have unequivocally pronounced all alternative medicine to be snake oil?
>I could write a rebuttal as long as this article, but won’t take the time.
Please do! I'd genuinely like to see the evidence you present.
>Let’s just say that I don’t think you have a clue as to what real alternative medicine is about, and you have left quite a few off the list.
I'm sorry, did I forget crystal healing, ground rhino penis, and the Cure Serious Wounds clerical spell from Advanced Dungeons and Dragons? I could write encyclopedic volumes and still miss a few.
>[...] an alternative lifestyle that allows the body to heal itself from within, addresses the cause, if you will, not merely to treat symptoms [...]
You're putting a shiny mystical ribbon around a healthy diet and exercise. Preventative steps are kind of a big thing in western medicine, despite frequent accusations to the contrary.
>[...] the science of homeopathy goes far beyond a water infused sugar pill as you described. Homeopathy is widely practiced in Europe as the medicine of choice. [...]
Homeopathy is exactly what I described. It's the idea that water takes on healing properties from minute amounts of other substances, and that those healing powers get stronger with dilution. The people who sell you this stuff actually rate their products based on how little of anything potentially useful is actually in them.
As far as being the "medicine of choice" in Europe: popularity doesn't equal effectiveness. Millions of people used to think smoking was good for your lungs, too. I'd also like to see some real numbers about homeopathy vs. real medicine - I suspect the "medicine of choice" might not be.
>The sources you site do are strictly regarding the placebo effect and chiropractic medicine, none regarding homeopathy or acupuncture.
Uh, did you actually click any of the links? Like the alphabetized list on the Skeptic's Dictionary page? (Homeopathy, as you might imagine, is under "H".) The placebo effect is often mentioned on these sites under various headings because it's pretty much relevant to all of them.
>In what field of medicine are you licensed to practice
None, but for a couple of bucks I bet I could get a nice framed document saying I'm a certified advanced homeopath. I don't need an advanced degree to read the summaries of scientific evidence that at best are inconclusive... and where conclusive evidence has been found, it's stopped being "alternative" and become _medicine_. I haven't launched into advanced studies of the Norse Eddas, but I can still be pretty sure Odin doesn't exist.
>you have unequivocally pronounced all alternative medicine to be snake oil?
No I haven't. I only implied that _most_ of it is. :) I very specifically included a whole section called "Gray areas", and I and went out of my way to point out that the placebo effect isn't all that well understood.
It boils down to this: any new claim of medical efficacy, whether it's Astra-Zeneca's latest big-buck wonder drug or Diamond Bob's Magical Mystical Lactoprostatic Wonder Ointment, need to be held to the same high standards of evidence. And when the popular alt remedies are subjected to the scientific method, the outcome is rarely in their favor.
Bless you my friend. What an interesting point of view you have. I am not here at IB for a debate so you may have the final word here. Consider that towel thrown in. You stick to your medicine and I’ll stick to mine (and I do believe in Western medicine in addition to many alternatives). I apologize for not being a little less blunt in my comments, but after all, the commentary lines are open. It’s all too easy to just say, “great article”, or to say nothing at all. I could spend the rest of my life defending something I believe in, but I don’t have anything to prove.
But I don't want towels, I want debate! :)
I genuinely do like to see opposing viewpoints, so thanks for the replies.
You're welcome. Shall we shake hands then? as a lady and a gentleman?
Works for me!
This is EXACTLY the kind of thing I would have written (if I cared about other people and their health).
Good read, and good debunkig of New Age-y BS! Homeopaths will argue that tap water is NOT the same at their magic pee waters because it's been treated with other chemicals. My answer is always, "So, here's a glass -- go get a big gulp of ocean water or raw sewage. Neither of them have been treated!"
I'm giving you a big and completely useless homeopathic thumb (it's a thumb that's been sucked by someone else, but it "remembers" the experience!)
Also, it's the use of the word "medicine" that creates the controversy. It's misused in the phrase "alternative medicne". The practice of medicine is a clearly defined body of treatments, protocols and procedures agreed upon to provide reasonable standards of care for patients. I know voodoo doctors do NOT attend sympposiums and smenirs, reading leastrned disserttations about new methods.
"Alternative TREATMENTS" is what this other pseudo-science junk should be called -- it's both reasonable AND appropriate.
Gentlemen, gentlemen, GirliBird stands her ground. I am amused now at how little you both know about this topic. Why don’t the 2 of you go into cahoots and do some “real” research into this subject? How easy it is to sit back and guffaw about something strictly based on your extremely tunnel-visioned opinions, rather than by true investigation (Vic, I thought you were a private eye or something), which takes time and substantial effort. Instead of visiting quackquest for your little witch hunt, why don’t you do some actual interviews with people who “claim” to have success with various modalities of alternative and integrative medicine, including some of the great practitioners such as Dr. Andrew Weil? And for my sake, please don’t include the ridiculous ones like whatever it was you mentioned from Dungeons and Dragons. I, by the way, am available for interview by private e-mail, if either of you care to hear about my true to life experiences, and no, I do not claim to be an expert, nor practitioner. I am simply an observer along life’s journey who has had the guts to reach out to other modalities when conventional medicine failed me and failed my animals. I do, however, believe in self healing, and allowing the body to heal itself via various modalities that were around far before western medicine, and some that are much newer, such as energy healing, which was not on your list. I am not up for debate, (sorry, I won’t oblige either of you) only intelligent discussion. OR, we can take it to the forum if you prefer. If so, be sure you notify me if you begin a thread because I am not always tuned into forum discussions. Then we can go on and on and on about it. Hmmm??? And big kisses to you BOTH, especially you Vic, for stopping by! (sorry drl2, it’s a personal thing).
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