Opiate receptor antagonists like naltrexone and naloxone (drugs that block other drugs or endorphins from attaching to the opiate receptors) seem to nullify the placebo effect fairly well. That seems like pretty good evidence that the placebo effect is a function of endorphins.
So ‘unproven’ is taken to mean ‘and will therefore never be proven’?
Thank heavens actual scientists don’t seem to think that ‘as yet unproven’ is a valid reason to not examine the treatments to determine their worth. And to find out that some of them work.
As for not knowing why psychopharmaceuticals work, they still don’t know why ASA works to prevent heart attacks. Certainly when it was first refined, prostaglandins had yet to be discovered, yet people didn’t bother disputing that ASA worked just because they didn’t (yet) know how. And of course, it originated from ‘alternative medicine’ when people in Greece boiled leaves and bark from a tree. Because, you know, long before the test tube, people did try things to see if they worked and some did. For thousands of years.
No. But treatments/substances that have been in use for a long time without being proven effective are less likely to become so than newer treatments/substances about which little is known.
I take issue with your definition of “real scientists” if that web site is an example. They have an ax to grind. And if any treatment was shown to be effective over multiple trials and with statistical certainty, it would cease to be alternative and not be appropriate for that web site, but be incorporated into traditional medicine.
Therefore, the only things on that kind of site are of doubtful worth or as yet unproven. There’s nothing wrong with running more tests, but the law of diminishing returns may set in and some things have more promise than others.
The trial you link to is only one trial. Many more are needed to prove that something “works”.
What irritates me isn’t the suggestion that some folk remedies can be effective of course they can) but all the pretentious, half-baked pseudo-theory as to why. People used to attribute the medicinal value of some plants to magic or spirits. I don’t see “qi” as being any different. It’s one thing to say that willow bark can stop a fever. It’s another thing to say that it works by killing the “fever demons” inside the skull.
For most rational observers, “unproven” means “without demonstrated merit” and in medical terms describes a treatment that should not be promoted as effective and safe without adequate supporting studies.
Not so. We are gaining a pretty good idea of the mechanism(s) involved.
“The arguments are based on the presystemic, exclusively pharmacokinetic inhibition of thromboxane synthesis in platelets by very low-dose aspirin and the importance of maintaining prostacyclin production by endothelial cells.”
The benefits of salicylic acid remained largely untapped until the late nineteenth century, when acetylsalicylic acid was formulated and permitted larger systemic doses to be administered without severe side effects. Other plant-derived meds (i.e. digitalis and colchicine) also gained wider and safer use via better formulation in manufacture. A number of other plant-derived meds (for instance St. John’s Wort and black cohosh) have had many years of anecdotal backing and promising results in initial studies, but just recently have been thrown back into the doubtful or useless category by better controlled and larger scale studies.
We should no longer tolerate the human guinea pig model, where “people did try things to see if they worked and some did.” Down that path lies toxic agents like aristolochic acid (a staple in some TCM formulas), which has been linked with severe kidney damage, in some cases requiring renal transplantation. Other Chinese herbal preparations are thought to be carcinogenic. “But the Chinese have used them for who knows how many years! They must be safe!” :rolleyes:
The only thing I have to say regarding the OP is: check every singly ingredient on the herbal remedies she has taken.
My wife went to an accupuncturist for her back pain, and was given a whole raft of herbal remedies with labels that looked like they had been printed up on the Apple][ in someone’s basement. I used the vast information resources of the internet and discovered that one of the ingredients in one of the bottles, Aristolochic acid, can, if taken in sufficient amounts, permanently dissolve the fine internal structures of the kidneys. She had been told to take this “herbal” pill many times per day.
One must be aware that the FDA has had what few teeth it ever possessed removed. All someone has to do is declare some substance or other a “traditional” or “alternative” medecine, and put a disclaimer on any commercially distributed bottles that you are buying nothing more than a “dietary supplement”, and they can make any claims they want to about anything, no proof required, no shelf life proffered. The rejection of scientific scutiny in the areas of alternative medicine have set back drug safety in this country by a century.
Of course not.
But the point is that alternative medicine is claimed by its practitioners to work now. Despite the fact there have not been any tests, or even when it has been tested (like homeopathy) and failed.
Incidentally, as long as people will pay money for unproven treatments, those practitioners are happy with the situation.
Some did? Which ones?
And decades after the invention of scientific method, alternative medicine still refuses to be tested. Why is that?
How about these ‘ancient treatments’:
Pliny’s Natural History is an extensive source of information on remedies derived from all sorts of plants and animals. They range from the mundane to the exotic. For cough, dysentery, liver and kidney disease, the cultivated cucumber was recommended whilst those inflicted by a headache were less fortunate. Consider:
The heads taken from the snails which are found without shells … attached to the patient.
The brains of a crow or owlet, are boiled and taken with food.
The ashes, too, of a weasel are applied in the form of a liniment.
Dog’s hairs are worn also, attached to the forehead in a cloth.
Do you believe in them?
If not scientific, what kind of explanation is it? Those words either refer to real things, or they don’t. If they are real, then it should be possible to define them. That’s why ideas such as mental illness being the result of being “possessed by spirits” were eventually rejected, because they were meaningless words that didn’t refer to any empirically observable phenomenon, and therefore weren’t helpful in the diagnoses and treatment of the illness.
I’ll have to disagree with that. If it’s not scientific, it’s extremely useful to be aware of that fact.
Not much of a point, though, since the “case” you are talking about is when one is participating in a controlled study, and that is not what we were discussing. Besides which, being in a study and being given medicine to try as part of the study does not constitute a recommendation of that medication. Your “point” just doesn’t relate to the discussion at hand.
Yeah, just a few. Of course, I wonder if most of them aren’t just trolling, perhaps just taking a more extreme viewpoint to get reactions from others.
Cite, please. You’ll note that that organization is an arm of the NIH and is sanctioned by same.
The point of that organization is precisely to test alternative treatments to see which might be proven and then incorporated into traditional medicine.
Unsurprising, since their mandate is to do the proving. :rolleyes: My point is that, rather than bleat endlessly about these ‘unproven’ treatments, the NIH set about finding out how many of them have merit. Surely it is not your claim that none of them will turn out to work?
I wasn’t, and am not, planning to link to every trial. You go argue with NIH if you like.
Nonetheless, it was promoted as a safe and effective treatment for years before we started to figure out how it works.
But may yet be rehabilitated by even better and larger studies.
Hm. So we must doubt all but traditional Western medicines because they are so reliable and safe, eh? Tell that to people who took Seldane , Fen-phen , and more recently, Baycol
And let’s not forget HRT.
I am not saying that people should put complete blind faith into alternative medicine, but to damn all of it out of hand is, I think, narrow-minded and short-sighted. You do realize that leeches are back in vogue as a treatment, don’t you? 
Cite, please. You might want to look into NCCAM yourself, where trials appear to be underway despite your claim that it ‘refuses to be tested’.
Fancy that.
Thank you for the link. Back before Christmas, I posted a couple of links to “real” scientists studying various sorts of alternative medicine. They were ignored.
Some “alternative” practitioners are wary of clinical trials–for selfish reasons or not. And “scientific” people scoff at the possibility that any traditional system can be useful–unless it’s Western Medical Tradition. (See: Evidence Based Medicine–the movement to use scientific method for critiquing all medical decisions–not just the ones involving recently tested treatments. )
So, let the clinical trials continue.
The title of that site says, “NCAM – National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine”. Sounds like they have an agenda already.
Perhaps. How many have been proven and incorporated so far? For that matter, can you supply a list of those: [ul][li]Tested, then incorporated into traditional medicine []Tested, found wanting or inconclusive[]Planned for testing[*]Not tested[/ul]?[/li]
According to their Research Results page, most of their “research” seems to be collecting data on what people do, posting “promising” cures and listing some that didn’t work at all. Samples from the headlines:[ul][li]St. John’s Wort and Depression[/li]Clinical Trial Results
NIH-funded study shows that an extract of the herb St. John’s wort was no more effective for treating major depression of moderate severity than placebo.[li]Echinacea for the Prevention and Treatment of Colds in Adults:[/li]In this study, the researchers found that none of the three preparations of E. angustifolia at the 900 mg per day dose had significant effects on whether volunteers became infected with the cold virus or on the severity or duration of symptoms among those who developed colds.[li]New Findings on Sleep Disorders and CAM[/li]Based on a national survey, NCCAM scientists found that over 1.6 million American adults use some form of CAM to treat insomnia or trouble sleeping.[li]Polyunsaturated Fatty Acids for Depression[/li]Omega-6 and omega-3 fatty acids (also called PUFAs, short for polyunsaturated fatty acids) are among the CAM therapies used with the intent to help symptoms of depression.[li]Glucosamine/Chondroitin Arthritis Intervention Trial (GAIT) Study Results[/li] In a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine, the popular dietary supplement combination of glucosamine plus chondroitin sulfate did not provide significant relief from osteoarthritis pain among all participants. [/ul]Doesn’t sound like they are making much progress.
This stuff is regularly prescribed in germany, for enlargement of the prostate gland. does it have any measureable effect? or is it mostly a placebo as well?
Bridget Burke
I agree that clinical trials should be run on anything claiming to be “medicine.” OTOH, how many trials are needed before something should be simply deemed to be crap and permanently dropped or banned?
I used to give these people the benefit of the doubt, thinking that at least they were probably convinced their treatments worked. I’m no longer willing to grant them this. There have been numerous (double-blind) studies on traditional medicine. I’ve read them and I suspect the traditional crowd has as well. Most of the studies have shown little or no efficacy but the traditional medicine crowd keeps right on peddling this stuff.
Regards
Testy
This is the classic tu quoque comeback from alties when one of their nostrums is questioned. And it heavily misses the point. First of all, noting a problem with a pharmaceutical agent does not let a dangerous alternative medication off the hook. And the comparison falls down elsewhere - mainstream meds which are tested for effectiveness are much more likely to be potent than alternative meds, which also means they are more prone to have side effects. If there are major questions about whether the alternative med actually does anything to alleviate the problem for which it’s touted, it’s especially important that it have no significant side effects whatsoever.
Sure, some prescription meds initially thought to be relatively safe prove to have more serious side effects upon general use. It is thanks to mandatory reporting of these effects and continued study that medical opinion evolves and changes. There is no such system for alt med remedies, which generally are accepted without question based on either tradition or the mindset that they are “natural” and therefore automatically safe.
Nowhere have I damned all of alt med out of hand. I think a very small percentage of it will prove to have some value. I haven’t entirely given up on St. John’s Wort or black cohosh either, but based on what we know at this point there’s little reason to recommend SJW for moderate or major depression, or to expect that black cohosh will alleviate menopausal symptoms for most women. To cling to a remedy based on the idea that somehow, someday it might prove effective is illogical, unless you have valid criticisms of how studies debunking it were conducted.
This is a good point. There are only so many researchers and research dollars available to test potentially valuable drugs. It’s simply not feasible to run large clinical trials on every remedy - so naturally the most promising ones get attention.
Now if the supplement industry with its multibillion dollar annual income would kick in a small percentage of profits to research, we’d get answers to some of our questions about alt med drugs. But as long as they’re raking in the dough and the customers are unquestioning, what’s the incentive to perform studies that might invalidate their top-selling products?
With my earlier posting on placebo effect, I had a point rolling around in my mind, just out of grasp, but now I have figured out what it is:
Nearly all “folk medicine” traditions are set up to maximize placebo effect. I’m not saying that this is by design, but that they have evolved to be so, as that is where most if not all of the efficacy comes from.
This is something that is missing from “real” medicine as it is most widely practiced today. Insurance/administrative processes that are designed to stress patients and providers as much as possible; harried doctors that spend at most a few minutes with a patient, only allowing for a “just the facts ma’am” description of the complaint; drugs that work in ways that the doctor is unable, or unwilling to explain in lay terms. “Real” doctors tend to minimize the amount of physical contact with the patient, while chiropractors, folk healers, etc. tend to maximize this. With insurance paying most of the tab, even the monetary value of seeing the doctor is largely concealed from the patient.
If real medicine were practiced to take advantage of placebo effect, there would be a smaller market for alternatives.
An extremely good point, Kevbo.
I don’t see where the alt crowd gets the idea that their techniques are arbitrarily dismissed out of hand. This is a constant whine and is completely unfair. They claim that their quackery-of-choice hasn’t been tested because “big-pharma”, whoever that is, isn’t interested due to it being unprofitable or are even actively squashing research from a fear of competition.
A favorite of mine is Artemesia, a herbal drug that can cure some forms of malaria. The Chinese government tried approx 200(!) different TCM remedies and found that Artemesia actually worked. Western doctors and scientists tried the same thing. Now people are extracting the stuff, trying to synthesize it, and modifying it for increased effectiveness. A modern doctor can now prescribe various Artemisia-based drugs and reasonably expect them to do the patient some good. No one is ignoring this new drug and some researchers are actively trying it out on other conditions such as cancer. All it took was a reproducible demonstration.
Likewise for the rest of it. Prayer, healing crystals, acupuncture, homeopathy, and the rest of that junk could easily become mainstream. All it takes is for the proponents to show a little proof. Unfortunately, they can’t do so and their medicine rightfully continues to be considered quackery.
Testy
Nothing like judging a book by its cover, eh? Did you have a look at any information about the organization? It was set up by, and works under the auspices of, the NIH to investigate whether popular alt medicines might be imported into current practice.
[QUOTE]
Perhaps. How many have been proven and incorporated so far? For that matter, can you supply a list of those: [ul][li]Tested, then incorporated into traditional medicine []Tested, found wanting or inconclusive[]Planned for testing[*]Not tested[/ul]?[/li][/QUOTE]
You can do it yourself. If you’d look at more than the name of the org, you’d see where the current and past clinical trials and research, including results, are published.
So? They’re doing what you’ve been complaining about - testing alt medicines. And they are proving some things work and others don’t. Echinacea - no. Acupuncture - yes. What’s your beef?
I should think you’d be delighted with the ‘progress’ given that it’s putting to rest a couple myths like that echinacea works.
Point being, a reputable organization is testing these alt medicines.