



Why “Alternative” Medicine…

Is not medicine Is not “misunderstood” Is not cheap and Is not harmless

I know this is a polarized subject that makes most people uncomfortable. Apart from those who oppose “alternative” medicine, people either accept the validity of one or another practice, or feel that it is “bad manners” to “tell people how to live their lives”. It’s their money, their health, their choice; what moral and tolerant person would go about telling people they’re making bad choices? My answer is, the kind of person that actually cares about what’s good for people, both individually and collectively.

1. “Alternative” medicine is not medicine.

There is no “alternative” medicine. There is what has been proven to work and everything else. That “everything else” can be broken down to “has been proven NOT to work” and “has NOT been proven to work”. And what “has not been proven to work” belongs to a spectrum of probability, ranging from “entirely improbable” to “highly probable”, based on the established scientific knowledge, and should be researched with the appropriate priority. However, anything that hasn’t been positively proven to work should not be served as a solution, even if it entirely plausible and/or probable. This is what constitutes “Evidence-based Medicine”, and that is the only legitimate medicine there is.

2. “Alternative” medicine is not misunderstood.

It is often claimed that “Big Pharma” suppresses evidence to keep back “poor alt med”. But medical reality, just as every other scientific reality, can be at most stalled; sooner or later it sees the light of day, no matter how much someone pays to “hide it”. Science happens everywhere in the world, in small and big laboratories, hospitals, universities; different countries, different companies, different people, different interests. Even though there can be -and sometimes is- foul play, it can only take place for so long. And, after all, since companies care about profit, a new and more effective treatment is actually something they really want. “Alternative” medicine has been, keeps being, and will keep being researched.

This is an interesting article about The Myth of “Big Pharma” and “Little Alt Med”.

3. “Alternative” medicine is not cheap.

It’s not cheap. It just isn’t.

4. “Alternative” medicine is not harmless.

The last, weak, dangerously naïve but at least well-meaning point of defence is “Even if it’s placebo, it’s still helping some people. What’s the harm?”. This is offensively ridiculous. “Alternative” medicine, in fact, causes financial, emotional, medical, and social harm.

The crux of the matter is, people spend money on a non-existent product. It’s like buying a detergent that’s only crystals of salt; or buying a computer made of wood, and being told it will be functional. The King is simply Naked. What you’re buying isn’t there, which makes it -at the very least- a consumer advocacy concern. It’s conning people out of their money, and very few of them will actually get better because of the placebo effect. Most will simply lose their money and be exactly where they already were.

That adds false hope to the mix. Hope can be helpful, but also dangerous for a person’s well-being. Promising things you can’t deliver is like paying with a check that will bounce. Sure, it will make the person feel better when you give it to them, only to crush them later when they try to cash it.

Then, “alternative” medicine actually often causes medical harm, either directly (e.g. injury or stroke following chiropractic manipulation, damage from unregulated medical herbs etc) or indirectly, through rejecting scientifically proven treatments. “What’s the harm?” is a sobering list of all that is going wrong because of “alternative” medicine.

Finally, its simple existence is feeding the anti-science movement we’ve been seeing. A person who thinks their vague, general symptom, such as a stomach ache, got cured by homeopathy, often encourages other people to skip the real doctor; or they themselves might skip the doctor when they have an actual life-threatening condition. Because, if it’s just a stomach ache no big deal, you might say; but what if it’s a sneaky pancreatitis that’s hiding behind that stomach ache and you’re trying to cure by magic water? By giving it a free pass, we are putting society in danger.

So, there you have it. “Alternative” medicine is not medicine, is not “misunderstood”, is not cheap and is only harmless if you ignore the financial, emotional, medical, and social harm it is causing, leaving no middle ground; evidence-based medicine is our best chance and our goal should be to make it better, not stick a knife in its back.

And, actually, I am convinced deep down almost everyone knows it, even the most fervent supporter.

How do I know it? Because I’ve never seen or heard of a person who is having a heart attack request a herb, a homeopathic solution, or acupuncture for the angina. I’ve never seen a parent after a car accident request a chiropractor to put the mangled body of their kid back together. It seems that, when death is really looming over us, the adrenaline clears the scene up and shows whom we really trust; i.e. who we really think will give us the best chances of survival.

If things are clear in an emergency, why are they fuzzy in anything less than that? That is the question the medical community has to take very, very seriously. As a medical student, I have some insight about this and I will share my thoughts with you some time in the future.

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