There’s a large amount of conventional medicine that hasn’t been proven effective. A while back Dr. Hadler was a guest on On Point. His book “The Last Well Person” discusses how more and more people are considered “sick” and about how the treatments can cause iatrogenic sickness.

It’s possible that some of the alternative practices are a response to that. And heck, maybe some of those treatments even work.

The bottom line is that science offers the strongest epistemology ever developed. The only way to determine what works and what doesn’t is with good science. And when we’re talking about humans, where the placebo factor and expectations and anecdotal reports and marketing effects can all distort results, it’s important to do good, rigorous science, with double-blind methodology, control groups, large sample sizes, and repeatability.

The distinction between “conventional” medicine and “alternative” medicine is really one cooked up by the media and people trying to sell books. There is only medicine which meets good scientific criteria and that which doesn’t. Period. Whether we’re considering acupuncture or nitrofuran, aromatherapy or cortisone shots the only consideration should be how good the science is.

Consider Artemisinen, used to treat malaria. Is that “alternative” medicine because it comes from traditional Chinese folk-medicine, or mainstream because it’s produced now by major pharmeceutical firms? What about aspirin which originally came from willow bark which was used for centuries?

Part of the problem is that Americans are poorly educated in science (as in so many other things), so they can’t evaluate claims and evidence and are easily swayed by testimonials, and they don’t know how or where look up scientific studies.

What if religion is used to shelter junk medicine? I wonder if the Scientologists can be successfully sued in the US as I hope they will be in the UK.

I think that alternative treatments can be used in conjunction with conventional treatments. I am an RN and worked 22 years in hospitals and clinics. I worked with ICU and cardiac patients. If medical doctors would learn about alternatives and explore the integrative approaches, all would be served. I now practice therapeutic massage and see it as useful as an adjunct treatment.

Scientist are finding some of these therapies, such as acupuncture helpful and calling it new. In the 14th century medical doctors relied on astrology and blood letting to treat patients and were rejected for autopsy research.

Why does it always have to be one or the other? The medical industrial complex, like the military, has a big investment in keeping things the way they are.

Richard Dawkins made a great documentary on this, if anyone is interested, called “The Enemies of Reason” for Channel 4 in England. Check out his website (richarddawkins.net) for more info. You can probably find the documentary on google video or youtube for free.

I had acupuncture for Bell’s Palsy a couple of years ago. I had lost the blink in my left eye. After only one session of acupuncture, my blink came back.

Acupuncture can be very helpful for nerve conduction problems. There are many practitioners of alternative treatments who do not feel that acupuncture should be the only treatment. They do not believe that acupuncture is a cure all.

I recommend THERE BE DRAGONS HERE by Carl Sagan

JURY STILL OUT ON RENAISSANCE.

Americans are undereducated not only in science, but across the board. History. Philosophy. Arts. &tc.

Proponents of non-scientific Rx either are not grasping the scientific method or are charlatans. We are still the same organisms that we were c.a. 10k years ago. Superstitious and credulous. The population of the planet are not all on the same page with regards to the reality of the material world.

As a hospital employed acupuncturist with a decade of experience, I find the discussion interesting but skewed. As with any position, you can easily take a side and find the evidence or claim a lack there-of to defend your point of view. I think there is considerable backlash from certain conservative voices in the medical system against alternatives which are getting more media coverage and more patients via self-referral.

Anyone can search online and find plenty of scientific studies supporting the use and effectiveness of acupuncture. More research is being done all the time. People unable to find these studies must have their head in the sand or are unaware of Pub Med.

Can we explain the use of acupuncture by Olympic athletes as simply placebo effect? Acupuncture was covered widely during the Olympics because so many athletes make use of it. These athletes and their trainers know their bodies better than most anyone. Do you think they make use of a modality that was not helpful to them?

If you wanted to foster a discussion about the effectiveness of alternatives you could easily find so very many people willing to contribute and plenty of scientific studies to back them up. A lot depends on where you start the discussion from.

Thanks for raising the issue.

Mike Arsenault, Lic. Ac
Winchester Hospital-Woburn MA
and Internal Arts Acupuncture–Ipswich, MA]
http://www.internalartsacu.com

People make choices every day and choose surgery, medication, and other treatments from conventional medicine, that cause incredible side effects and near death, especially from chemotherapy. We as a society promote these, because of science that may or may not be good. Look at all the medications that have been taken off the market with a fight, after they were found to damage or kill people. We need to combine the best of all available treatment choices.

If science would get behind these integrative approaches, patients would benefit. The money behind these conventional treatments keeps them as much afloat as the alternatives.

I suffer from a rare genetic disorder Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome, and the best help that I found was through diet change. Removing gluten, cow dairy, yeast, refined sugar, red meat, and several other difficult to digest foods.

I also began taking several supplements for things I was found deficient in, such as potassium, and folate.

My life has improved immensely. The EDS causes severe sensitivities to many things, and the gluten in particular causes me insomnia, night sweats, nightmares, anxiety, and dizziness so profound that I can’t stand up if I get even a trace of it now.

I lived like this for 37 years with no help or diagnosis from doctors. I was lucky enough to read about Celiac and stopped the gluten, eventually I found my way to the fact that I had EDS after pushing with my GP to get me to the doctor that made the diagnosis. Although he didn’t put the diet issues together for me, I had to do that completely on my own.

In due respect, Singh and Ernst consistently provide mis-information on homeopathic medicine. They cite a very controversial review of research that compared 110 homeopathic trials with 110 conventional medical trials. Ironically, they found that 21 homeopathic studies were of a “high quality” in scientific standards, but only 9 (!) conventional medical trials were of a similar high quality. However, rather than compared THESE high quality studies, they only evaluated those high quality studies that have LARGE numbers of subjects. This criteria whittled down the comparison to 8 homeopathic trials with 6 conventional medical trials. The problem here was that the homeopathic trials included one crazy study of a strange homeopathic medicine in the treatment of weight-loss (!) and THREE (!) trials on the homeopathic PREVENTION (not treatment) of influenza (note: they also included TWO studies on the TREATMENT of influenza, both of which showed efficacy, while the 3 prevention trials did not show efficacy). For unknown reasons, these researchers did not include the FOUR high quality studies at the University of Glasgow on the treatment of respiratory allergies (2 of which were published in the BMJ and 1 of which was published in the LANCET), nor the 3 trials on the treatment of childhood diarrhea (including one published in PEDIATRICS).

Ironically, Ernst has rarely conducted research himself, and yet, he did conduct one trials on the homeopathic treatment of varicose veins…and he found efficacy of treatment (he usually forgets to refer to this study and its result).

Ultimately, there are good reasons that 11 (!) U.S. Presidents and dozens of other world leaders, 7 (!) popes and hundreds of other clergy and spiritual leaders, and cultural heroes as diverse as Charles Darwin, J.D. Rockefeller, Beethoven, David Beckham, C. Everett Koop, and so many others have used and/or have advocaced for homeopathy. Homeopathy works! However, one also has to learn something about homeopathy in order to understand this different system of medicine that does not simply treat “disease” but treats the “syndrome” of which the disease is but one part.

Sadly, too many skeptics of homeopathy have inadequate information or simply mis-information about homeopathy. This unscientific attitude is more than a tad ironic.

Anyone can search online and find plenty of scientific studies supporting the use and effectiveness of acupuncture. More research is being done all the time.

And that would be the key, because as I said above, the distinction between “alternative” and “mainstream” medicine is an artifial one cooked up by people who have a vested interest in some aspect of the dichotomy (e.g., to sell books).

The only meaningful distinction is whether something has been scientifically tested. If a physician or patient is making a treatment decision the central question is whether it has clinical benefit. The only reliable way to answer that question is through well-designed studies.

I’ve never studied acupuncture, so I have no opinion about it, per se, but if there are well-deigned, repeatable, controlled studies supporting its efficacy then it should certainly be considered a valid treatment. Otherwise, not.

It seems to me that many of the comments in support of alternative medicine miss the point. Evidence based science is the single method for determining the veracity treatments. Medicine is the systematic application of these treatments. Alternative medicine dispute the authority of science and provide its own self-referential criteria for success. This means that as a system, alternative medicines always run into problems. Particular alternative treatments might be successful, but if they are, it is for scientific reasons and can therefore be incorporated into medicine.

I always feel conflicted over these “scientific studies on alternative medicine” discussions (most particularly homeopathy), because, while I am very enthusiastic about science in general, it’s being so weirdly misapplied now in the health care field. Maybe it’s like that problem that bumblebees used to have–when mathematics “proved” they couldn’t fly, yet the danged things kept doing it anyway.
I and my family have used homeopathy for the past 20 years, and the fact that “it works” is no more debatable to me than is the fact that night turns into day. Placebo? Heck, if placebo can (a) stop my toddler’s (frequent and dreadful) night terrors; (b) cure her brother’s multiple food allergies; and (c) her father’s decades-old severe hay fever; and (d) our calf’s relapsing pneumonia and structural birth defects; (e) our cat’s (pardon the anthropomorphising) PTSD… well, I could go on and on! These are a few of the ones that have been cured for years now, no sign of return. Other situations were acute (illnesses and injuries, stopping pain of injuries and surgery), or are still ongoing, of the “life happens” variety. Whaddaya mean, placebo? Sorry, but that’s an “explanation” even weirder than the one it’s attempting to replace. But, if placebo can do all that, I guess I’m all for it.
BTW, homeopathy has not only worked *better* for us than anything “conventional” medicine has to offer, it’s also done them faster, cheaper, and (in many cases) permanently. No *wonder* the pharmaceutical companies don’t like it!

As a person who has had a personal experience with a bad back episode and used both conventional and acupuncture I can say for me acupuncture worked.

The pain killers and muscle relaxants I was given made me ill. I was in a lot of pain and could hardly walk.

A friend recommended a good acupuncturist.

I crawled in into his office with a lot of pain and walked out with hardly any.

While it did not cure my back problem, it did help deal with the pain and relaxed the spasms I was having enough for me to do stretching exercises and to function.

I and my family have used homeopathy for the past 20 years, and the fact that “it works” is no more debatable to me than is the fact that night turns into day.

But other people might say the same thing about prayer, say, or witch doctors.

The placebo effect is very powerful.

Earlier this year there was a major survey study of antidepressant research (I believe On Point might have covered this) where it was found that SSRI antidepressants and placebos had about the same effect. The press reported this as “antidepressants no better than placebos”. But if you look at the data that’s not quite accurate. Both placebos and antidepressants way outperformed patients who got nothing in the research. So it would be more accurate to report this as “Placebos work as well as antidepressants”.

This is precisely WHY you need good scientific studies, so you can separate out all the other factors that might influence results.

Dana, Dana, Dana. I clicked on your link. You have a horse in this race.

You say, “controversial review of research…”

You misrepresent or misunderstand the statistics and standard practices involved in a review.

You are engaging in bandwagoning. That tactic relies on eliciting an emotional response, not an intellectual one.

Dana you say, “controversial review of research…” I think that the act of looking for possible flaws in research is not controversial, as you say, but rather it is threatening to your livelihood.

A relative of mine told me about this broadcast. I found it online and am in the process of listening. Before I listen I would like to contribute to the blog. My story is about the alternative medical technique chiropractic which was administered to my 73 year old father when he complained about annoying back pain. He could not get rid of the pain and decided to seek chiropractic help when a business customer of his told him how effectively it worked. After his first session after weeks of very back pain he walked into the house like a new man. He said to me he felt great. That lasted about a day and then the pain returned. He went through more sessions and each time it seemed better only to have it return again. Finally, he was relegated to bed. After weeks of delay he was hospitalized when the good old modern medical mode of diagnosis got it right. After x-rays his back pain they showed was due to hair line fractures in his spine which he found out shortly thereafter was, to our dismay, caused by Multiple Myeloma, the rare cancer of the bone marrow which if left untreated will, of course, kill you. He lasted five years after somewhat successful chemo treatment.

I will NEVER forget that and since then that experience made me cast a VERY VERY skeptical eye towards any alternative medical techniques. There is NOTHING, in my opinion, like the traditional western medical diagnosis and treatment using scientific protocols to get it right!

Peter, Thank you for your thoughtful reply to mine, about how very effective placebo treatment can be. I realize that, and it’s an effect that can often be valuable. But if you examine actual cases, you will find many that would be difficult to explain away as “placebo”. I realize that my personal examples aren’t proof of anything, since they are anecdotal, undocumented, and most importantly, not presented in sufficient detail. But if YOU want to see “for real” whether “placebo” is adequate explanation, then YOU will have to find some real cases, and read with an open mind. Better, listen to some real experiences, and evaluate with an open mind. If we had had one or two such success stories, I could dismiss it as a fluke or placebo; but we have them regularly. And when you take a correctly chosen remedy for certain situations, you can feel it begin to work, just as surely as when you take aspirin for a headache; there is no question. But again I ask, if placebo can do all that, then who needs medicine anyway? (Hah, I’m kidding; I do not consider homeopathy placebo, and I freely acknowledge the fine and often important work being done by medical researchers and doctors.) Best wishes to you.

I find it regrettable that this show, which was called “Debating Alternative Medicine,” seemed to present so much more of the views of Singh and Ernst than those of Dr. Gordon. Singh and Ernst have an obvious bias against most forms of alternative medicine. Their views are colored by their opinions, and yet they present their them as being informed by facts. Why not lead with and feature more champions of alternative medicine?
If one scratches the surface of conventional medicine one will find corporate (big pharma) greed, misrepresentation of research, suppression of negative research findings, research funded by drug companies, research articles authored by pharmaceutical company employees. The list goes on and on. Is this the “evidence” we should believe in? There is plenty of research to support the use of complementary/alternative/integrative medicine (see, for example, my contributions to Integrative Medicine for Children, edited by Loo, published by Elsevier, 2008). In many cases an non-conventional for of therapy can be safer, as or more effective, and more economical than the standard treatment.
I fear that after listening to this biased show, many people unfamiliar with alternatives will be frightened to try something that might be very good for them.
Janet Levatin, MD
http://www.janetlevatin.com

Oops, sorry for the typos in the previous post.

This second time in a year I am having trouble with Pneumonia, I listen this morning and evening , a gentle man from New Hampshire was talking about double pneumonia and his alternative therapy. I did not really catch him well and want to know more. Thanks

Peter – Science is an awesome tool and I do give mainstream western medicine more weight than alternative medicine. However, science deserves the same scrutiny that you just gave to alternative medicine. Deserves to be analyzed critically and questioned skeptically and its findings to be adopted cautiously. Just because science (sometimes) uses double-blind methodology does not elevate its findings to absolute knowledge status. The truth about science is that there are few truths in science, few proven absolutes, few certainties to be certain of. Science is not the Holy Grail. The latest scientific findings are not etched forever in stone.

You say that science is the only way to determine what works. Not true. Some things are not quantifiable. Science either turns away from studying those aspects of life or when it does the conclusions reached are woefully inadequate and limiting. Literature and psychoanalysis richly informs my understanding of life. Behaviorism, while scientific and quantifiable, is not a deep well to draw water from.

Another truth to remember is that there are more unknowns then knows in medicine. Treatments are used even though they do not yet have the scientific understanding as to why they work; why for example, a certain drug helps with a certain condition. In those many instances it puts western medicine on a footing similar to alternative medicine. Also, your example of aspirin being derived from willow bark only underlines the importance of alternative medicine. There is still much modern medicine can learn from other cultures and their treatments.

Your advise that the average american should read and learn from scientific journal studies is actually something scientists warn against. One such scientist was in the media recently saying that most scientific studies are eventually shown to be wrong and an untrained layman reading them might easily be convinced of premature conclusions and not understand the limited scope of most studies or how unreliable and tentative the findings.

In short, blindly following science is as dangerous as blindly following alternative medicine. Science does not deserve to be elevated too high and alternative medicine does not deserve to be debased. Proceeding with eyes-wide-open is the best preventative medicine.

The truth about science is that there are few truths in science, few proven absolutes, few certainties to be certain of. Science is not the Holy Grail. The latest scientific findings are not etched forever in stone.

So what? Science doesn’t claim to be. Only religion claims absolute truth. So you’re using a straw man argument.

You say that science is the only way to determine what works. Not true. Some things are not quantifiable.

We’re talking about medicine here, not poetry. Infections, cancer, orthopedic injuries, etc, ARE quantifiable, so the effects of different treatments can be measured.

And even the response to subjective medical conditions such as pain or depression can be measured with double-blind methodology, i.e., where neither the patient nor the person administering the treatment knows what is being administered.

Treatments are used even though they do not yet have the scientific understanding as to why they work; why for example, a certain drug helps with a certain condition. In those many instances it puts western medicine on a footing similar to alternative medicine.

Nonsense – you don’t need to know WHY a drug works to establish WHETHER it works. The purpose of a well-designed study is to establish WHETHER something works to separate it out from aneccdotal reports.

Isn’t science conducted by humans? So how is it possible to ensure that it is 100% infallible? What if the person conducting the experiments makes some mistake which is not caught, or cuts some corners?

Second question is that many of these medical studies take many years to set up and conduct. Is the same study done by a different team to corroborate the results?

Third question is that if a medicine is proven to work for a certain condition, why doesn’t it work on certain patients and the doctor has to change the medicine to a different one? If it is proven to work, then it should work on everyone for the same condition.

I think this debate boils down to the Cartesian view of knowledge and treating mind and body as separate entities – on which the Western system of medicine is based on, and the non-Cartesian framework of alternative medicines, and never the twain shall meet.

I personally believe that certain alternative techniques can and do complement Western medicine, and I have no problem using them. I go by what works for me and my own personal experience, while science can continue the debate. One thing to keep in mind is that the Western medicine is highly intertwined with the pharma industry, and they are _more_ interested in their bottom-line and increasing profits, and treating patients comes second. With its focus on treating the symptoms rather than taking a holistic view of the body means that I won’t accord Western medicine as the final word on health. Given that so many Western medicines get their components from plants and herbs, it seems somewhat of a hubris to believe that people and earlier civilizations had no observational powers, no system of trial-and-error and no system of medicine that worked, before Western system of medicine came along with its double-blind studies. Sure, one has to be careful of quacks when going for alternative medicine, but to dismiss it entirely seems to me to throw the baby out with the bathwater.

My two cents, and YMMV.

I am a strong proponent of homepathy and have used it as my primary healing protocol since the early 1980’s. That is a long history of success stories. Despite the lack of understanding of the ‘how’ of this protocol, the facts on the ground indicate major successes, most dramatically in epidemics and so-called uncurable cases.

As for so-called science of allopathic medicine, the cold facts are not so pretty. Oodles of money is spent to promote drugs that are pushed on the public despite lack of evidence of safety or even positive effect. It is now acknowledged in public that allopathic medication is the 3rd biggest cause of death in this country and this statistic is only from hospital records. Doctors are NOT required to report adverse drug reactions: this ia a voluntary suggestion only. And the mds do not report. Further, they deny adverse effects even when patients report them. That being said, it has been noted that only about 10% of adverse effects of drugs are reported which would make the medical profession the NO.1 killer in this country.

The pharmaceutical companies are totally complicit in this as the drug pushers of the world. There research is not independent and we are daily presented with a new drug scandal as bogus research or buried negative research becomes revealed.

The Lancet lost much of their reputation a few short years ago when it was revealed that many of their articles are not peer reviewed and the research presented was done with drug corporation money. Not unbiased reporting.

Then we have the so-called mega-analysis that reviewed a bunch of ’studies’ and came to the conclusion that homeopathy did not work. However, that meta-analysis was itself shown to be biased and faulty from beginning to end. It self-selected the studies for negative results and ignored the poor study protocols. It also ignored the numerous studies that demonstrate the effectiveness of homeopathy.

So, just like this speaker who appears to have a lot of gray matter working to speak science, he does not look at all the facts and certainly does not look at his own biases and prejudices. Science has a long history of being controlled by big money and big corporate interests. The vaccine story begins with this conflict and that hasn’t changed even today. Smallpox vaccine was lethal when it was developed and it is lethal today. Public health, sanitation works. The polio vaccine is a hoax. This is a disease that comes and goes in societies in waves. The CDC calls an epidemic when 105 of the population is affected. Polio never hit more than the 5% mark. The Salk vaccine was pushed onto the public when the so-call epidemic was on the wane. The incidence of polio at that time has been reflected on bell curves, following a time line which demonstrates this fact. New cases of diagnosed polio in the USA are all related to the vaccine. In other cases they have just changed the name of the diagnosis. Public health has done more to curb disease than medicine, but it just doesn’t make as much money and it is hard to patent it, thus it does not get the fanfare of mass marketing campaigns with minor exceptions.

and now we get to the real reason for the increased hype against holistic protocols these days. The Codex Alimentarius is being pushed on us by Big Pharma, Big Chemo, Big Agribus, etc. No one in the mass media will talk about this anachronistic and draconian legislation that wants to declare all holistic protocols illegal. The Codex even makes it illegal to make health claims for food and nutrition. It supports GMO agribusiness.
Read about the Codex on the web–but not the FDA versions. There are many independent researchers and health care professionals who have been tracking this effort for over 6 yrs. This program speaker is part of that campaign to discredit holistic healing. It is called softening the public, raising doubts in its mind about natural forms of health care, and preparing it to accept the loss of freedom of health choice. this is the core of the assault against homeopathy in Britain. Most Americans do not know that the British Royal family has had a homeopath on staff since the 1918 flu epidemic when homepathy performed with such a high rate of success–the exact opposite of allopathic treatment which lost the vast number of its patients. Under the NIH, homepathy cost less than 7% of the health care budget in that country. There are 4 major homeopathic hospitals in England and Prince Charles is a major proponent of this form of healing. However, a new rennovation of one the major homepathic hospitals is coveted by the allopathic medical sphere and they are trying to take control over the facility. Hegemony is not limited to the USA coveting the world’s oil!

Let’s remember the history of modern science which saw the jailing of Semmelweiss for promoting sanitation; ie, washing the hands when delivering babies to reduce the number of childbirth fever deaths. Independent scientists were tarred and feathered for saying the earth was not flat, but round. And Pasteur who argued for the disease model, changed his position before he died saying it is the terrain, not the germs that is responsible for disease. Today, Andrew Wakefield is being pilloried for even suggesting that the MMR vaccine needs further investigation due to his finding measles virus in the guts of autistic children who had received this vaccine. His treatment for measles has brought healing to many an affected family. And BTW, homeopathy has a growing history of curing autism!!!

So, in finishing this response, let me just note that this speaker might open his mind to things he does not understand. And we might want to know more about his financial and political connections.

Why is it as a society that we have to masquerade love, compassion, and understanding behind the homeopathy industry?

If the community of caring people disabuse themselves of the illusion of the efficacy of homeopathy, they could help pave the way to a better world. And, if it catches on abroad, and is emulated like so much of American culture, countless millions of children may be spared death and disability caused by “traditional treatments.” It may be a sugar pill, but if you serve it with lead the lead is still a potent neurotoxin.

There are many reasons why people are turning to alternative medications. Firstly, I am not sure that this applies to everyone, but I have a general distrust of doctors and the pharmaceutical industry. I don’t think that the majority of them are out to do harm, but they are overwhelmed, and pharmaceuticals have made it so doctors have to pay less attention to the patient, and make less of an effort to help patients change bad lifestyle choices that may cause many conditions. Availability of primary care physicians in Massachusetts is also really low.

Also, the pharmceutical industry pays for many doctor’s continuing medical education, and they have only recently had to release all clinical trials as opposed to ones that are positive. I have seen prescriptions fail family members of mine in awful ways and for the most part patients and their families have no one capturing these experiences and using that experience to guide regulation of the drug.

Secondly, with the Internet, there is just so much information out there. Mind you, not all information is equally valid or has tests to prove efficacy, but its there, and people are using it. When a doctor cannot provide a patient with enough information in the 15 minutes they may get in the office, people will go home and google their condition. There, they are likely to find more information on things that doctors have not yet or will never recommended.

Thirdly, with that kind of access to information also comes an understanding about how one’s body works, and I think that people are more willing to expiriment with nutritional supplements and aromatherapy because they take the information and piece together what may be right for them personally. On top of that, these same people MAY be more able to see connections between something working for them than a doctor can. For instance, the reason why fish oil worked for me for fading memory and did not work for someone else may have less to do with its efficacy, but more to do with a lifestyle choice that person 2 has, like a heavy drinking problem. I may know that about someone that has tried it and failed, but I may be successful. A doctor may not know this. I may also be able to assume things about my success rate based on gender, heritage, genetics, which an expiriment will never cover.

I agree with all of the callers in that not all alternative treatments are going to be safe, but my feeling is that they are far safer than an industry that sometimes regulates itself, and for the most part, many of the therapies are lifestyle changes that the patient should have been participating in to begin with.

I have been using alternative treatments for myself and pointing out advantages of using treatments for others for more than 10 years. I am also a chemist and have worked with highly trained practitioners in herbology and Chinese medicine for many years. My take home message from Singh and Ernst was fear, fear, fear. While this message is incredibly popular with the media and politicians, it is also incredibly self-serving for people who are called experts in society and who stand to increase their power by serving up a message of fear. Alternative medical techniques have helped myself and others, where I have watched their success, where allopathic medicine either fails or gives limited results. Furthermore, anyone taking Tylenol (Acetominophen) should consider themselves in danger of liver problems and consider the lack of safety of such a ubiquitous scientificly developed and tested medicine. There are so many (hundreds if not thousands of times) more probabilities of serious toxicity and adverse effects from allopathic medicine than from the alternative therapies. The man who called in about using Pleurisy Root to clear up his life threatening pulmonary illness where antibiotics clearly failed was met with more fear mongering by the experts. Instead, these people should be pushing for more herbal and Chinese medicine schools with authentically trained clinicians and experts, herbalists and so on, so that people can take advantage of the wealth and breadth of therapies that exist and have existed. Not more fear, but more education. Not more entrenched self-serving medical industrialism, but more scholarship and competence. And this means more input from naturopaths trained at the three colleges in the US and so on. And, by the way, “evidence” based medicine is only as good as the questions being asked and the experimental design and the logic of the conclusions, and from what I have seen in the literature the science is poor.

[...] WBUR and NPR’s On Point with Tom Ashbrook Millions of Americans are turning to acupuncture, homeopathy and herbal remedies to treat [...]

I did not hear the program but will. I did start reading the book but found its arrogant tone off-putting. Singh and Ernst claim to have written the last word on the subject, and portray themselves as the possessors of truth. This disappointed me, given how much I’ve enjoyed Singh’s hyper-enjoyable books.

A less opinionated book on the subject that happens to reach the same conclusions -that the benefits of CAM (complementary and alternative medicine), if any, are short-lived and possibly attributable to the placebo effect- is R Barker Bausell’s recently published “Snake Oil Science”. (Full disclosure: he is a biostatistician and so am I.)

PRODUCT
Maxidus Herbal Supplement Capsules, 380 mg, 10 pills per blister pack, Recall # D-348-2008
CODE
Bth lib07015, MFG 16/11/2007, EXP 16/11/2010
RECALLING FIRM/MANUFACTURER
Recalling Firm: KG Enterprises LLC, Rancho Cordova, CA, by press release on April 23, 2008.
Manufacturer: Ginseng King, Selangor, Malaysia. Firm initiated recall is ongoing.
REASON
Unapproved New Drug; product contains active pharmaceutical ingredients Sildenafil and Tadalafil.
VOLUME OF PRODUCT IN COMMERCE
Approximately 6,000 packs
DISTRIBUTION
Nationwide, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Finland, the UK

[...] WBUR and NPR’s On Point with Tom Ashbrook Millions of Americans are turning to acupuncture, homeopathy and herbal remedies to treat [...]

If anything can be called ‘crippling’ it is the conventional medicine model (which by the way is now the third leading cause of death in US) It ruined my childhood and many lives I know. Alternative medicine works and I know people who have suffered for years using drugs and conventional medicine only to find that the solution to their problems was natural and inexpensive. It is funny too that the rest of the world knows this and MDs in Europe and the East always use natural methods, but the US remains ignorant and does not want to give up the big bucks and keeping people sick for their revenue. Books like these are just proof that the boom in alternative medicine is harming the conventional medicine money making policies.

I’m an industrial scientist,
also a Christain (relevant as prayer is form of alternative medicine) so I live these contradictions.

The debate becomes divisive or politicized because we naturally need an ideology from which to understand our world. I long ago embraced a break from ideology, tolerating several, because otherwise I end up seeing less.

Not all things are subject to proof, and lost in this “debate” is that science does have limitations.
“Science” knows that. As a scientist I can get very frustrated by these “debates. This debate should have been about the data and we could all have benefited from that practical insight. Instead, this show reduced itself to another food fight about the limitations of science and modern medicine: a waste of time. I think we all come into this knowing science’s reach isn’t complete. Today it is the strongest tool for improving our lives. I would like to have heard mush less about this tension, since I expect it to remain unresolved until I die. To use a biblical phrase, “we all see through the glass dimly.”

What I think the sceintists wanted to say we got some light to shine on this topic. I wanted to hear it, and I think they had a lot of it. I accept that its incomplete. I am a person of faith. Life may bring me a crisis that science can’t solve, but I feel compelled to respect, and seek out, the data. If the conclusion is testable, I go for tha data. My faith rest on conclusions that I think are untestible, but my experience declares as rational, so I rest on those unscientific conclusions right along side of my deep respect for the work of millions of scientists.

Scientists are not free of politics, incentives, experience, or bias, but they try to reach out of the morass of subjective experience with the tools of theory, evidence, statisitics, and mechanisms. It’s pretty wonderful, and very powerful, in it informs and improves our daily lives, it even has a sense of art and beauty in it.

I think we let skepticism get in in our way. Skepticism exist an all sides of these issues. Skepticism has no value if its closes us off the the valid experience of others.