The misconceptions are all in your unexpectedly poor reading comprehension.
For starters, you should have kept on reading till you got to my next sentence:
In other words, I’m not claiming in any way whatsoever that the principles and achievements of modern medical research should be “disregarded”. I’m just pointing out that modern medical research is one thing, and actual patient care as it’s experienced by many people whose ailments aren’t straightforward to diagnose and cure is another.
No, of course it doesn’t. It simply means that the patient is experiencing the standard of care of modern science-based medicine as ineffective and futile.
You know and I know that that doesn’t mean that science-based medicine is objectively no better or more effective than folk remedies. But for patients who don’t know anything more about medicine than their own experience of it, that is not a surprising or irrational conclusion for them to arrive at.
Of course I’m not, and I never claimed that such factors don’t play a part in science-based medicine. What I said was that if a patient happens to find such a combination of factors in some “alternative medicine” and ends up feeling better, then they’re likely to regard the “alternative medicine” favorably.
Nothing that I said was any more controversial than the simple observation “sometimes patients fortuitously happen to have a more positive subjective experience with alternative treatments than with science-based medicine, so it stands to reason that alternative treatments will have some adherents”.
I have no idea why that unexceptionable if not very original remark should strike you as heretical enough to make you howl in anguish as though somebody had punched you in the dick. (Unless of course somebody actually did punch you in the dick, in which case I recommend that you see a doctor.)
I have read a number of articles (in places like Scientific American, not The Journal of Crystal Healing Powers and Unicorns) indicating that a dismaying number of accepted medical treatments haven’t really been properly tested and may not be worth a damn.
That certainly doesn’t mean we should embrace “alternative” medicine. To the contrary, it means we need more science in our medicine, not less.
You may well have read valid criticisms of non-evidence based mainstream medical treatments in Scientific American. I see them in the New England Journal of Medicine and other mainstream journals. They’re debated among researchers and physicians (including the ones at medical conferences and meetings I attend on a routine basis), and as a result, ineffective therapies are tossed out and effective new ones are implemented. Medicine is constantly changing for the better as a result.
Contrast that picture with the world of woo, where pride is taken in the fact that practices have remained unchanged for hundreds or thousands of years, and homeopathy, ear candling, acupuncture and a host of quack treatments are virtually never challenged by the woo community, much less discarded.
I have gotten pretty tired of seeing quackery defenders respond to criticism with overblown references to medical mistakes, cries of “Vioxx!” or similar tu quoque nonsense. People who’ve convinced themselves that mainstream medicine should be avoided as ineffective/corrupt/evil should be demanding that alt med be held to equal or higher standards, since that’s what they’ve stuck themselves with.
By the way, “proper testing” is a bit difficult to undertake for some accepted medical treatments. For instance, I doubt many people with acute abdominal pain and findings consistent with acute appendicitis would agree to be randomized to a “watchful waiting” study arm while others get surgery in order to determine the best approach through a “proper trial”. :dubious:
I prefer ancient New Jerseyan remedies - I hear there are few things that can’t be cured by tubing the Delaware River followed by a hard night of bowling.
This article at Slate makes an important point on the subject. To the extent that there was such a thing as traditional Chinese medicine, it was a whole lot of disparate practices. It was codified and systematized on the orders of Chairman Mao not based on any particular evidence, but just for the sake of having it. The article argues that we should consider so-called Traditional Chinese Medicine a communist propaganda campaign that many westerners ate up hook, line and sinker.
Of course, there are all sorts of practical and ethical reasons why it can be very difficult to properly test things when dealing with actual human beings and their health. And some things are pretty fucking obvious (though science is also littered with the corpses of things that seemed pretty fucking obvious and “common sense”). My point is, we need more science in medicine, not less (granted that that can be difficult to do in practice).
I would also say, there isn’t any such thing as “alternative” medicine. If something actually works, then hey, bring it on–actual science will show that it works (and maybe even how), and it will just become part of “medicine”. But of course the quacks and purveyors of woo usually don’t really want their bullshit to be actually tested or anything like that. And of course when [del]“mainstream”[/del] real medicine does mess up, the only way to discover that is with real science.
I vaguely remember reading somewhere that the Chinese actually did a systemic scientific analysis of TCM at some point under Mao (so as not to have to rely on importing medicine from other countries). Does anyone know anything about that?
ETA: Somehow, I overlooked Johnny Angel’s post. So, I guess it wasn’t actually a scientific analysis, then.
In 1967, they launched an investigation testing ancient malaria treatments, testing thousands of substances. Sweet wormwood, a 2,000 year old treatment, proved effective. This is artemisinin, the current magic bullet against malaria.
Mao held on to it right, and it made its way to the west with economic reform. It was initially met with massive skepticism, and it wasn’t marketed until the late 90s, finally catching on in the early 2000s.
The use of leeches for long-term highly localized pain relief is proven science.
Maggots are used in the hospital setting to remove all necrotic flesh while leaving healthy flesh completely untouched. They do it much more efficiently than human hands can. This is also proven science.
It took some time for artemisinin to “catch on”, but it wasn’t because researchers dismissed TCM or herbal remedies.
“…even though the Chinese scientists had demonstrated that qinghaosu could clear the blood of malarial parasites more quickly than any other drug, it was a decade before artemisinin would make its appearance on the global stage. The cold war dragged on, and communist China remained suspicious of the West. International organisations, such as the World Health Organisation (WHO), which had the resources to develop new antimalarials, were denied access to both the drug and the herb. Furthermore, some Western scientists were sceptical about the 1,2,4-trioxane ring embedded in the structure of artemisinin. They doubted whether such a functional group could be stable and questioned whether artemisinin could ever really be useful as a drug.”
And artemisinin is not a “magic bullet”. It is a very useful antimalarial, when used in combination therapies with other drugs. When given by itself, malarial parasite resistance develops rapidly. And there has been a serious problem in China and developing countries with the marketing of counterfeit artemisinin.
Yes, artemisinin combination therapies are a magic bullet, at least until resistance develops- which is unfortunately happening quickly in Asia where counterfeit manufacturers will include just enough of the drug to test positive in quality tests but not enough to be therapeutic. God forbid artemisinin make it’s way to Africa, where more deadly strains are common.
I’m dubious about Thai massage. Just about anyone who has a mind to in tourist areas will put out a sign advertising Thai massage. They may or may not be trained. If you go to Cambodia, the signs will advertise “ancient Khmer massage.” Or “ancient Indonesian massage” in Indonesia. Etc. Reports are legion of actual harm being done. I’ve tried Thai massage from masseurs who really were trained, and I just wasn’t impressed.