From Wiki:
Sorry, but I’ve seen “allopathic” used as a term of derision by alt med proponents for many years. Here’s an example from whale.to, one of the most popular alt med websites.
“Allopathic Medicine is mostly based around patentable drugs (pharmaceutical medicine), with radiation and surgery. Administered by the ‘Medical Profession’ who are all medical doctors. These medical doctors that will only use the drug company products are called Allopaths, as opposed to the ones who use alternative medicine (non-Allopathic), such as nutrients. It is run by the Medical Mafia. One of the best kept secrets is the Allopathic medical monopoly. The merger of State with Corporate power is called Fascism, so this is medical Fascism.”
The National Council Against Health Fraud has noted the reasons behind use of the “allopathic” label:
“Although medicine never accepted the label of allopathy, nonmedical practitioners such as chiropractors, homeopaths, and naturopaths regularly misrepresent physicians as “allopaths.” This is usually done in order to make differences between their practice guilds appear based upon conflicting philosophies rather than ideology versus science. Opponents of medicine claim that they treat the underlying causes of disease, while MDs treat only the symptoms. Further, they claim that medicine suppresses the symptoms, thus interfering with the body’s inherent healing processes. A close examination reveals that this line of reasoning is only clever rhetoric. When they say the are treating the underlying causes, these vitalistic ideologists refer to a metaphysical life force rather than actual causes of disease such as viruses, bacteria, protozoa, genetic defects, radiation, chemical insult, and so forth.”
This is mostly nonsense, but it appeals to those who claim they have invented cures through remedying Underlying Causes. The reality is far different. For example, mainstream medicine will work to save you if you have a myocardial infarction or provide drugs or surgery to relieve the pain of angina. It will also promote proper diet and cholesterol-lowering drugs to help prevent these problems from arising in the first place.
Do you realize you’ve just contradicted the claim earlier in your post that “allopathy” is a term commonly used in the medical community? Either we routinely employ the term or we don’t; please make up your mind.
Incidentally I have not said that all alt med is quackery. Large segments of it do qualify as quackery, and scamsters have a field day - largely because of the unwillingness of alt med to follow evidence-based guidelines, and a response to criticism that depends heavily on tu quoque bashing of mainstream medicine.
Yes, but there are different flavors of alt-med proponents. There are those who are antagonistic to ‘allopathic’ medicine, and those who are not. The latter category happens to be the vast majority. There are serious problems with our medical establishment, but that doesn’t mean that those of us who see other methods are opposed to the mainstream point of view. My training in an ‘alt-med’ modality was HIGHLY sympathetic to the mainstream view. Sure, it had some woo elements but they were kept separate and distinct and they were also overshadowed by the scientific approach.
shrugs You’re a Democrat right? So you must believe that Bush was behind 9/11. (Or if you’re a Republican you must think Obama was born in Kenya.)
Fair enough, but there are a lot of people who use the term, ‘allopathy’, as a form of differentiation. To most of them it means, ‘Mainstream Medicine’. I’ll definitely refrain from using it in the future. That’s why I’ve been trying to use the term, “Scientific Medicine.”
Of course large segments are, because it is a catch-all term for everything that is not in the mainstream, and that is true for every category that is all-encompassing everything that is not accepted by the mainstream, as it always and ever will be. Well, if people who were defending mainstream medicine tried to be more granular in their approach and separate the non-quackery from the quackery then it wouldn’t be so contentious. Personally I hate that Chiropractic and Massage Therapy are labelled as alt-med because it’s misleading. Both in their empirical form (IE not being considered a panacea for all ills) are incredibly helpful. One of the biggest problems people have with mainstream medicine is it’s lack of a wellness continuum. Mainstream medicine treats people who are sick, but it doesn’t have much in the way of wellness care. Most wellness care falls under the rubric of alt-med, which is semantically unfortunate for our society. If wellness care like chiro, massage, and yoga were embraced by the medical community we’d have a less contentious political environment. To be fair lots of MDs are perfectly copacetic with these wellness programs and even prescribe them to their patients, it’s just that the overall semantic space is still dominated by this dichotomy of alt-med and mainstream med. A lot of alt-med is total bullshit, but unfortunately the stuff that isn’t gets lumped in with it.
People might take you more seriously if you didn’t use terms like “overall semantic space is still dominated by this dichotomy”, but that aside, I have my main stream doctor talks with me all the time about excercise, diet, sleeping well, and even recommended using a neti pot. My friends have had their mainstream doctors talk with them about the benefits of yoga for flexibility. My doctor always looks for a simple fix before prescribing a drug, and when he does prescribe drugs he looks for the cheaper alternatives. I don’t know why there is such an utter contempt for mainstream medicine, but I suspect it is so that people will be willing to pay for highly questionable treatments like Chiropracty that somehow need to go on forever. I have also never had a doctor prescribe a drug to me and then sell it to me himself, but this sort of thing goes on all the time in the fringe arts of medicine. I think it’s shameful, and it is enabled by the strange bedfellows of the right (e.g., Orinn Hatch) and the woo-woo anti-science left.
I’ll speak to this a bit: The American Herbalist Guild has been trying to establish education guidelines and certification procedure. I see that they have dropped their official certification process for now, and don’t know the particulars of that decision. I see them as being a very reputable organization, trying to get some cohesion and reputable herbal standards.
The current president, Aviva Romm, is an experienced midwife and herbalist, who just completed her MD at Yale this year. I expect that she will help to bridge the gap in knowledge that certainly needs it.
One of the oldest Western herbalist associations is the UK’s National Institute of Medical Herbalists. The first wave of clinically trained herbalists from the UK programs in the 80’s have been practicing and teaching in the US for a good decade.
US schools that offer, to my mind, a good education in medical herbalism are: Bastyr University, Tai Sophia Institute, and Southwest School of Naturopathic Medicine, which has a good curriculum in botanical medicine.
If decent campus alternative med programs aren’t to taste, here in NC, Duke University, as well as many other reputable schools, is delving into what’s well-termed as integrative medicine. Glad to see it.
MSWAS my last post was inexcusably snarky and I apologize.
My sister is caught up in some really fringe medical stuff that makes me very sensitive on this subject, but that is no excuse for my tone.
I’m not particularly concerned about people taking me seriously. Least of all you with your obsession with weird semantic nitpicks. You picked your name well.
I said pretty much this in the post you responded to directly.
Who considers chiropractic questionable? I think you’re making shit up here dude. Mostly the people who think chiropractic is questionable are the counterparts of the people they are making fun of. I doubt you could find a single Doctor that would dispute that spinal misalignments aren’t a serious issue and that they cannot be treated in some cases with manual adjustments. Not all chiropractors claim to cure asthma.
But I guess you have the same problem with Dentists seeing as their treatments go on forever too.
Maybe people would take you more seriously if you actually knew something at all about the modalities your dismissing. Or the proper semantic usage of the words you use to make fun of people while bringing nothing to the table yourself.
Ok, I didn’t see this before posting, then I apologize for my snark in response to your snark. 
I can understand that concern.
I saw that, too, and the statement you underlined is directly contradicted by the links I posted of reputable medical organizations and related medical school publications, as well as the U.S. government using the term in a non-pejorative manner. In fact, as I pointed out, the term is used to differentiate between two different types of medical doctor: the allopath (or M.D.) and the osteopath (D.O.).
If the term is being used pejoratively, it’s not because the term itself is pejorative (it’s merely descriptive), but the intent behind it is to ridicule the technique, in the same manner that alternative medicine is sometimes referred to in a pejorative sense, when in fact, there are quite a few mainstream medical organizations take at least some alternative therapies seriously. The example elelle gave illustrates this.
I don’t know where you get the idea that the “vast majority” of alt med advocates are congenial towards mainstream medicine. Beyond the highly popular alt med websites like whale.to and curezone.com, check out the publications and websites of individual practitioners (i.e. naturopaths, herbalists, chiropractors et al). There is a great deal of hostility and mischaracterization of “allopathic” medicine.
More classic woo-speak. Alties have tried to appropriate this segment of care for their own, but their claims don’t withstand scrutiny. “Wellness” care, from diet and exercise to vaccinations and interventions for high blood pressure and elevated blood lipids (designed to reduce them before they result in heart attacks and strokes) are fundamental to mainstream care.
Oh dear god.
You would in reality be hard pressed to find physicians who believe in the chiropractor theory of spinal “subluxations” that supposedly can be relieved by adjustments. Even some chiropractors (a small minority, unfortunately) concede that these mystery subluxations (which can’t be demonstrated on imaging studies or by other (sorry) modalities are a figment of the imagination of Daniel Palmer and the chiros who still believe in his pronouncements. What you will find is a number of physicians who think chiropractic has a credible role in alleviating certain musculoskeletal complaints (once they’ve been properly diagnosed), though not superior to other hands-on care like physical therapy and massage.
The bottom line is that alt med (and make no mistake, a high percentage of believers view it as “alternative” and not “complementary” to mainstream medicine) has serious problems when it tries to view itself as not only superior to mainstream care but exempt from the rules that define efficacy and safety. The responses seen in this thread (including tu quoque attacks against the “establishment” and reliance on testimonials) illustrate the mindsets that keep alternative medicine from gaining respect.
How is basic knowledge of anatomy and homeostasis going to keep someone from overdosing on the herb Foxglove?
Well, that’s good too. Thinning the herd a bit should warn the others.
There has to be information first. How much of what’s sold on shelves as ‘herbs’ has actually been properly studied?
Not all regulation is paternalistic, and not all paternalistic regulation is bad.
True. But keep in mind that the study you have cited is over a decade old and uses extract. The study I’ve cited has purified extract to get the pharmacologically active compound, Ginsenoside, which the authors contend (and show) has biological activity in the rat.
I do agree with you that American journals are far superior to Chinese ones, but the lack of American research mirrors the prorities of the NIH - which, oddly, enough, is getting quite horny about longevity research rather than nutraceuticals.
- Honesty
Well if they understood that it’s not medicine it’s the dosage, then maybe they wouldn’t get the idea that more is better.
Heh.
Yes, but still, I don’t agree with protecting people from themselves.
Not all regulation is paternalistic, but if suddenly you can’t get St. John’s Wort without a prescription it suddenly makes it a lot more expensive to acquire.
I mean people who take herbal remedies. Not the people who are trying to make a buck.
Not woo at all. I know you guys love your smug and dismissive buzzwords. I guess the problem is you’re not actually reading what I write. So I’ll try again. I was talking about all of the cares that get called, ‘alt-med’, which even you have said have legitimacy. IE Massage. That’s the incredible frustration of the vulgar and stupid term, ‘alt-med’, becuase it causes the sort of confusion you are laboring under at the moment. It’s as much the mainstream problem for this wellness continuum thing. There is nothing ‘woo’ about wellness care at all. That is why I am saying that it would be helpful if people would take the wellness care that we know works out from the alt-med umbrella and bring it under the mainstream umbrella so that people like you will stop uncritically using the term, ‘woo’, when it’s out of place.
The idea that everything is in competition with everything else is a problem. Chiropractic and massage together are very powerful. There is no competition between chiro, physical therapy and massage therapy, they are complementary.
A high percentage? What percentage would you like to make up on the spot for this? I bet I have more experience dealing with these types of people than you do. And anecdotally I know that for the most part people are more about complementary techniques than they are about alternative ones. You’re trying to assert the radical fringe as the mainstream and it simply isn’t. I can find impassioned websites of radical extremists in any grouping. The same percentage of people who have an antipathy to mainstream med are the same percentage of Democrats who believe Bush was behind 9/11. It’s that magical 27% of fringe nutters that every overly broad grouping has. 
My step-Mother saw a Rolfer regularly when I was growing up, but my parents spent over half a million on mainstream medical bills. Most people are interested in complementary.
You can of course come up with tautological definitions all day if that’s what you’re into.
Just to throw in…
My dad lowered his cholesterol by taking flax seed. He did not change his diet at all he just put it on almost everthing he ate.
Marijuana is quickly showing itself to be helpful for alot of different medical conditions.
I spoke to a doctor who said that years ago people were told that they could not find any problem with their back using CT scans, now using MRI they can see the problem. The point was that just because we don’t have the technology to see the problem does not necessarily mean the problem does not exist.
I think the distrust mentioned earlier also comes from drugs being pulled from the market after being labled as safe. Here in Canada recently people were warned to stop taking ACE inhibitors in conjunction with ARB’s because it was killing people, even though they had recomended this combination earlier…kinda late when a loved one is dead.
When the list of side effects is worse than the disease, some of us scratch our heads.
That’s all…
I agree, at least about the Asia part. Anecdotally, the average person living in Beijing knows far less about modern medicine and skepticism and trusts alternative medicine more than the average person living in Vancouver, BC. Specifically those two places because I live in those two cities.
The popular websites I’ve listed and many I’ve interacted with (including online and in this thread) contradict your claim.
Hmm, like “allopathic”?
Nice try at shifting gears, but what I said was not that wellness care is woo, but that it’s an integral part of mainstream medicine, contrary to your assertion that it’s the province of alt med.
Maybe then you could demonstrate some major alt med sites (including those with message boards) that are devoted to complementary medicine, as opposed to attacking and denying the benefits of mainstream care (here’s yet another example). And it is true that most alt med practitioners see themselves as competing with physicians, otherwise we wouldn’t see so many virulent and nonsensical attacks on the medical profession. Those attitudes inevitably filter down to patients.
It would be nice if naturopaths, chiropractors and other alt med practitioners could accept a complementary (and by necessity, limited) role in the care of patients whose primary providers are physicians. But that apparently doesn’t bring in enough money for them, so you see naturopaths claiming to offer full-spectrum care and chiros treating infant colic, asthma and other internal medical conditions.
So, flax seed helps lower chloresterol. Yep, I heard from my main-stream, (allopathic :)) doctor that high-fiber diets help with that. He also recommended flax-seed oil to help with eye problems. I never heard my doctor say that plant-based substances can’t be helpful.
Here is the irony though. We have fringy, science-phobic types point to the good effects a plant has on chloresterol. Now how does this work? Is it “cleansing your aura”, or “opening pathways to your chakra”? Nope, it’s just following the principles discovered and documented through scientific methodology over the years.
The fact that modern medicine-rejecting types point to studies about chloresterol is ironic. Why do we know about chloresterol and it’s effects? It wasn’t discovered by someone studying the energy meridians in your body, or checking your aura, it was someone using anatomy, and biology, and chemistry and using tools developed by electricians and engineers following the principles of physics.
But somehow, despite the everyday evidence of how effective science is, we have someone using an electronic medium based on science, point to evidence measured by science, and say “wait a minute, maybe this is something outside the scientfic paradigm”.
Please do me a favor and spead this crap through smoke signals and stop pissing on the graves of people who decided it was actually worth the effort to take the hard classes at school.
What about the people who don’t actually need it, for whom any dose is an overdose? How are people supposed to even measure the dosage? One of the reasons herbs can be bad vs normal medicine is that actual dosage is difficult to determine, and can vary wildly whether the herb is dried or fresh or infused or whatever. There’s a reason kids are taught not to eat things they don’t know anything about, but for some reason adults don’t seem to remember this lesson.
Why? It’s been quite useful in the past. Just ask all the people who had their lives saved by seat belts. I agree that ideally it shouldn’t be necessary, but this isn’t an ideal world.
But there would have to be a reason for it. Given the fact that people have been taking these herbs for a long time now and they’re not dropping dead in big piles, I don’t think this is a big risk. I think the opposite is more likely, it will be found that most of these herbs don’t really have much of an effect.
Except that a lot of the wellness care that even you have accepted as being valid is considered to be alt-med, re: Massage Therapy, Forms of Exercise, etc…
I’m talking about the wo/man on the street who has an interest. You’re cherry-picking the ones that pick a hostile platform. If you searched for complementary medicine instead of alternative medicine the websites would skew my direction.
Most of the alt-med practitioners that I know DO accept a complementary approach. One of my best friends is a chiropractor and he would NEVER disparage an MD. As I have said many times in threads about Massage Therapy that an LMT shouldn’t be saying anything that could be construed as a diagnosis, and shouldn’t be treating real conditions without the express permission of an MD. Same with my Jujitsu Sensei who is an acupuncturist/LMT.
There is a whole world of complementary medicine that straddles the line between the mainstream and alt-med, and in my experience it’s a bigger industry than the alt-med industry.