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Trick or Treatment
brothke writes "The recent collapse of financial companies occurred in part because their operations were
run like a black box. For
many years, alternative medicine has similarly operated in the shadows with
its own set of black boxes. In Trick or Treatment: The
Undeniable Facts about Alternative Medicine, Simon Singh and
Edzard Ernst, MD, break open that box, and show with devastating clarity and
accuracy, that the box is for the most part empty." Keep reading for the rest of Ben's review.
Trick or Treatment: The Undeniable Facts about Alternative Medicine
author
Simon Singh and Edzard Ernst
pages
352
publisher
W. W. Norton
rating
9
reviewer
Ben Rothke
ISBN
978-0393066616
summary
Peels away the fallacies of acupuncture, homeopathy, chiropractic and herbal medicine
I first encountered co-author Simon Singh at the
2005 RSA
Conference. In his
presentation, he included a demonstration of the human brains unique
capability for pattern matching when specific patterns are expected, and used
Led Zeppelins Stairway to Heaven as an
example. Stairway has long been rumored to have
subliminal satanic messages. When played backwards,
it is impossible to decipher any message. But when
the message is known in advance, one can then hear
the message imploring the listener to go to Satans tool shed.
Once Singh put the subliminal lyrics on the overhead, the
subliminal message was now clear, not due to a subliminal message, rather via
pattern matching.
While no reasonable person can believe in Stairways subliminal lyrics, far too many people do believe in equally implausible things in the realm of alternative medicine. In the book, the authors tackle four main areas: acupuncture, homeopathy, chiropractic and herbal medicine. The books conclusion is that acupuncture, homeopathy, chiropractic are essentially worthless, while herbal medicine has limited value.
Chapter 1 starts with an overview of evidence-based medicine (EBM), of which the authors are staunch believers. EBM applies evidence gained via the scientific method and assesses the quality of the evidence relevant to the risks and benefits of the treatments. The foundation of EBM is the systematic review of evidence for particular treatments via mainly randomized controlled trials. In the chapter, the authors reiterate the concept that the plural of anecdote is not data. Acupuncture, homeopathy, chiropractic have plenty of first-person anecdotes, but a lack of controlled studies with real data to back up their spurious claims.
EBM shows that homeopathy and other bogus cures are of no value, yet the public is oblivious to those facts. In a piece I wrote on this topic, New York News Radio" The voice of bad science, its shows that cheap radio advertising (with its mishmash of pseudo-scientific claims) combined with a public that is ignorant of basic scientific facts, creates a perfect storm for the continuation of homeopathy and other bogus cures.
A recurring theme the book stresses is that acupuncture, homeopathy, chiropractic and other alternative therapies are scientifically impossible, and often will violate fundamental scientific principles. A perfect example of this implausibility is with homeopathy. Contrary to what common sense and basic science, in homeopathy, a solution that is more diluted is considered stronger and as having a higher potency. The issue is that the end result is a product that is so diluted, that its contents when in solid form is pure sugar, and when in liquid form; 100% H20. When a homeopathic liquid is in its most diluted state, there is not a single molecule of the active ingredient. Therein lays the scientific implausibility of homeopathy.
Chapter 1 also asks one of the books fundamental questions: how do you determine the truth? The authors answer that it is via the scientific method. This is determined only after strict and careful analysis of a clinical study, of which the most effective is double-blind and randomized.
In chapter 3, the book jokingly notes that since homeopathic liquid remedies are so diluted that they contain only water; their only use would be for dehydration. And since homeopathy is based on the fact that the strength of a remedy is based on its dilution, one could conceivably overdose on a homeopathic remedy by forgetting to take a dose.
The chapter concludes with perhaps the strongest indictment against homeopathy; namely its content. If one looks at the content of oscillococcinum, a homeopathic alternative marketed to relieve influenza-like symptoms, the packaging states that each gram of medication contains 0.85 grams of sucrose and 0.15 grams of lactose. Sucrose and lactose are simply forms of sugar, of which oscillococcinum is nothing more than am expensive sugar pill.
In chapter 4, the authors write that while homeopathy is nothing more than a placebo, the added danger with it is that patients will often forgo real medications to take a homeopathic one. It reports of a study in Britain, which demonstrated that the most benign alternative medicine can become dangerous if the therapist who administers it advises a patient not to follow an effective conventional medical treatment. The study demonstrated that alternative medical practitioners often recommend homeopathic remedies for malaria, and ignore proven conventional medicines. Such an approach can often mean a death sentence for the person taking the homeopathic remedy.
Chapter 5 deals with herbal medicine. The chapter is somewhat different in that the previous chapters about acupuncture, homeopathy and chiropractic showed them to be useless, herbal medicine does have value. The book notes that herbal medicine has been embraced by science to a far greater extent than acupuncture, homeopathy and chiropractics. The chapter lists over 30 herbal medicines and their levels of efficacy. An irony of herbal medicine is that some exotic ones, such as those with tiger bone or rhino horn are pushing the species to the brink of extinction, due to their level of popularity in certain parts of the world.
Chapter 5 concludes with on why smart people believe such odd things? Alternative medicine has failed to deliver the health benefits that it claims, so why are millions of patients wasting their money and risking their lives by turning towards a snake-oil industry? The authors provide numerous reasons for this, from the concepts such as natural, traditional and holistic, to attacks on the scientific method by the alternative medical community and more.
The appendix is a rapid guide to alternative therapies and lists over 30 new treatments with their benefits and potential dangers. The appendix gives single page summaries of the plethora other alternative therapies, from ear candles, colonic irrigation, reiki, to leech therapy and more. The authors write that most of these are bogus, many violate fundamental laws of sciences, and but a few have real, but limited value.
Alternative medicine operates in the shadows, blithely touting that their products have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration, and that they are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease. While these products are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease; consumers nonetheless spends billions of dollars per year on unproven supplements. Consumers can be quite fickle. On one side they are furious at the SEC for their lack of oversight around Madoff Investments Securities. Yet when the FDA requires products use their disclaimer of how ineffective the item is, consumers will throw billions of dollars on ineffective products.
Trick or Treatment: The Undeniable Facts about Alternative Medicine is an incredibly important and eye-opening book. While Singh is a physicist and Ernst a medical doctor, the book is written in a clear and compelling style, avoids technical jargon, and sticks to the facts. In the spirit of the scientific method, the authors scrutinize alternative and complementary cures and the results show that the snake oil is still selling.
Ben Rothke is the author of Computer Security: 20 Things Every Employee Should Know.
You can purchase Trick or Treatment: The Undeniable Facts about Alternative Medicine from amazon.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews — to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
While no reasonable person can believe in Stairways subliminal lyrics, far too many people do believe in equally implausible things in the realm of alternative medicine. In the book, the authors tackle four main areas: acupuncture, homeopathy, chiropractic and herbal medicine. The books conclusion is that acupuncture, homeopathy, chiropractic are essentially worthless, while herbal medicine has limited value.
Chapter 1 starts with an overview of evidence-based medicine (EBM), of which the authors are staunch believers. EBM applies evidence gained via the scientific method and assesses the quality of the evidence relevant to the risks and benefits of the treatments. The foundation of EBM is the systematic review of evidence for particular treatments via mainly randomized controlled trials. In the chapter, the authors reiterate the concept that the plural of anecdote is not data. Acupuncture, homeopathy, chiropractic have plenty of first-person anecdotes, but a lack of controlled studies with real data to back up their spurious claims.
EBM shows that homeopathy and other bogus cures are of no value, yet the public is oblivious to those facts. In a piece I wrote on this topic, New York News Radio" The voice of bad science, its shows that cheap radio advertising (with its mishmash of pseudo-scientific claims) combined with a public that is ignorant of basic scientific facts, creates a perfect storm for the continuation of homeopathy and other bogus cures.
A recurring theme the book stresses is that acupuncture, homeopathy, chiropractic and other alternative therapies are scientifically impossible, and often will violate fundamental scientific principles. A perfect example of this implausibility is with homeopathy. Contrary to what common sense and basic science, in homeopathy, a solution that is more diluted is considered stronger and as having a higher potency. The issue is that the end result is a product that is so diluted, that its contents when in solid form is pure sugar, and when in liquid form; 100% H20. When a homeopathic liquid is in its most diluted state, there is not a single molecule of the active ingredient. Therein lays the scientific implausibility of homeopathy.
Chapter 1 also asks one of the books fundamental questions: how do you determine the truth? The authors answer that it is via the scientific method. This is determined only after strict and careful analysis of a clinical study, of which the most effective is double-blind and randomized.
In chapter 3, the book jokingly notes that since homeopathic liquid remedies are so diluted that they contain only water; their only use would be for dehydration. And since homeopathy is based on the fact that the strength of a remedy is based on its dilution, one could conceivably overdose on a homeopathic remedy by forgetting to take a dose.
The chapter concludes with perhaps the strongest indictment against homeopathy; namely its content. If one looks at the content of oscillococcinum, a homeopathic alternative marketed to relieve influenza-like symptoms, the packaging states that each gram of medication contains 0.85 grams of sucrose and 0.15 grams of lactose. Sucrose and lactose are simply forms of sugar, of which oscillococcinum is nothing more than am expensive sugar pill.
In chapter 4, the authors write that while homeopathy is nothing more than a placebo, the added danger with it is that patients will often forgo real medications to take a homeopathic one. It reports of a study in Britain, which demonstrated that the most benign alternative medicine can become dangerous if the therapist who administers it advises a patient not to follow an effective conventional medical treatment. The study demonstrated that alternative medical practitioners often recommend homeopathic remedies for malaria, and ignore proven conventional medicines. Such an approach can often mean a death sentence for the person taking the homeopathic remedy.
Chapter 5 deals with herbal medicine. The chapter is somewhat different in that the previous chapters about acupuncture, homeopathy and chiropractic showed them to be useless, herbal medicine does have value. The book notes that herbal medicine has been embraced by science to a far greater extent than acupuncture, homeopathy and chiropractics. The chapter lists over 30 herbal medicines and their levels of efficacy. An irony of herbal medicine is that some exotic ones, such as those with tiger bone or rhino horn are pushing the species to the brink of extinction, due to their level of popularity in certain parts of the world.
Chapter 5 concludes with on why smart people believe such odd things? Alternative medicine has failed to deliver the health benefits that it claims, so why are millions of patients wasting their money and risking their lives by turning towards a snake-oil industry? The authors provide numerous reasons for this, from the concepts such as natural, traditional and holistic, to attacks on the scientific method by the alternative medical community and more.
The appendix is a rapid guide to alternative therapies and lists over 30 new treatments with their benefits and potential dangers. The appendix gives single page summaries of the plethora other alternative therapies, from ear candles, colonic irrigation, reiki, to leech therapy and more. The authors write that most of these are bogus, many violate fundamental laws of sciences, and but a few have real, but limited value.
Alternative medicine operates in the shadows, blithely touting that their products have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration, and that they are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease. While these products are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease; consumers nonetheless spends billions of dollars per year on unproven supplements. Consumers can be quite fickle. On one side they are furious at the SEC for their lack of oversight around Madoff Investments Securities. Yet when the FDA requires products use their disclaimer of how ineffective the item is, consumers will throw billions of dollars on ineffective products.
Trick or Treatment: The Undeniable Facts about Alternative Medicine is an incredibly important and eye-opening book. While Singh is a physicist and Ernst a medical doctor, the book is written in a clear and compelling style, avoids technical jargon, and sticks to the facts. In the spirit of the scientific method, the authors scrutinize alternative and complementary cures and the results show that the snake oil is still selling.
Ben Rothke is the author of Computer Security: 20 Things Every Employee Should Know.
You can purchase Trick or Treatment: The Undeniable Facts about Alternative Medicine from amazon.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews — to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
...My psychic told me so!
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Yup it's obvious to any reasonable scientific person that it's the corporate logo stamped on the pill that confers the magic powers.
Essentially taking money from people who want to believe.
I find it ironic that this book seeks to take money from people who _don't_ want to believe.
"the plural of data is not anecdote"
should be
"the plural of anecdote is not data"
it was our good ol' boy Hatch who called in chits to get a law passed that puts the not-medicine hawkers beyond the reach of scientific proof and tests for safety and efficacy of their nostrums.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
So what? Anybody with half a brain already knew that alternative medicine is a scam. I'd be much more interested in some of the evidence-based medicine exposes of mainstream medicine. Menopause replacement hormones? Oops, turns out they give women breast cancer. Low-fat diets? Gary Taubes says they may be making us fat. 3rd-generation anti-depressants? They may work for a week but also seem to cause dependence, long-term depression, and make people more suicidal than before.
Doctors aren't scientists (not very good ones anyway), even if they do plan them on TV.
And likely many of his other claims as well. Here's what PubMed says:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17568299?ordinalpos=1&itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_DefaultReportPanel.Pubmed_RVDocSum
"Accupuncture may be an efficacious and acceptable nonexposure treatment option for PTSD. Larger trials with additional controls and methods are warranted to replicate and extend these findings."
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/6289567?ordinalpos=3&itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_DefaultReportPanel.Pubmed_RVDocSum
"A brief characterisation is maccccde of the working principles underlying neural therapy under local anaesthesia or accupuncture. Common approaches to therapy are offered by disorders of autonomous regulation, including inflammatory processes, and by purely functional disorders.--There are many applications in gynaecology and obstetrics. A brief statistical information on lumbosacral pain is quoted as an example. Optimum performance can be expected from them, when used in combination with proven therapeutic methods. They provide a low-cost approach to reducing both the consumption of antibiotics and other pharmaceuticals as well as time of morbidity."
There are many others outside of PubMed. And that is but one of the author's claims that actual published studies in the medical literature refute. This side-swipe skepticism is not science, it is marketing in order to sell a bullshit book. Ignore idiots like him and read peer reviewed journals and abstracts before basing your own judgment.
I had a serious fall when skiing in february. A muscle in my back was so sore that I could not tie my own shoelaces or sit down without severe pain.
After having consulted three different medical doctors who all told me to just go home and lie down and just wait for the pain to go away I consulted a chiropractic. He was able to make some of the pain disappear immediately.
So I have to say that for me at least it worked. YMMV.
In general, if you are sick or injured you get better or die. If you die you can't say anything about the failure of your medical care. If you have received care, more than likely likely you will improve. The question is whether the care altered the healing. Since humans like to find patterns, which help us predict future events, we tend to associate an action with an outcome. So, if we tend to get better, and we receive care, unless we are careful we will assume the care was positively associated with getting better. I really wish we were better able to teach that correlation does not imply causation.
Remember, your chiropractor is little more than a highly paid masseur/se.
From someone who's a published author, I expect better grammar in a book review.
The aphorism is mis-stated (it's "the plural of anecdote is not data"), and directly contradicts the next sentence. I actually read it over several times because I thought it might be deliberately reversed to make a point. Nope, it's just wrong.
Either the third word, "what", shouldn't be there, or there's some missing word(s) after "basic science", such as "assert" or "claim" or "would say".
Either "on" is not supposed to be there, or should be something like "the question of".
Overall, it reads like a high school student's book review. Get a proofreader.
Anyone who loves or hates any language, platform, or manufacturer, doesn't know what they're talking about.
For the love of God, please: learn to use punctuation and better sentence structure. I tried making it through your review -- I really did. But this review, as well as your "New York News Radio: The voice of bad science" are so rife with incorrect usage that the message becomes blurred and incoherent. Just one example of many:
"Contrary to what common sense and basic science, in homeopathy, a solution that is more diluted is considered stronger and as having a higher potency."
What? Oh! I just realized: if I remove "what", the sentence suddenly makes sense. (No, I'm not being sarcastic or ironic.) Perhaps a careful proofreading is what you require, though your utter lack of possessive apostrophes implies that is probably not the case.
Bottom line: you've got good stuff to say. Please learn how to better say it.
Thanks.
A lot of standard medicine doesn't really pass the test of evidence-based medicine either, in the sense that specific advocated treatments have been validated experimentally when applied to specific, observable conditions. That's one reason EBM is still relatively controversial: many standard surgical and medical practices are based on rational inferences from facts we're pretty sure of, but have never themselves been validated.
To take a really simple example, look at how dermatologists treat moles. There isn't very good experimental data on mole prognosis. An EBM approach would say something like: given specific observed features of this mole, data tells us it has an x% chance of turning into a melanoma within Y years. You would probably need computer models to aggregate the various features that could contribute to or against it being at risk. Dermatologists don't generally have this information at hand (if it exists at all), but instead make more subjective judgment calls, based on some high-level knowledge of risk factors (which may or may not have ever been validated experimentally themselves).
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Um, it does contain both .85 grams of sucrose and .15 grams of lactose, but those are only the "inactive" ingredients. The supposedly active ingredients are "200CK Anas barbariae hepatis," or heart and liver of the Muscovy duck. Whatever that is. I'm not saying I think it works (though they do have clinical data showing some benefit over placebo), but that the reviewer is wrong that it's ONLY a sugar pill.
From the example of my family (all have at least a master in education, albeit I am the only one with a natural science [physic] PhD), the main problem is that people do not know how long an usual illness can take to naturally cure (without intervention) and also suffer for confirmation bias. This is enough to explain fully why people even intelligent one buy into it. I keep telling them the old doctor joke : "with medicine you will cure your average banal cold in 14 days. Without it will take 2 weeks". I keep telling them to try blinding as an experiment, to try reading scientific result, I indicated them why it could only be placebo, but after a while, I decided to simply stay silent. Their usual answer was only "it works for me". From that position of belief, sympathic magic, nothing can be done. you can as well try to convince a christian with logic that Jesus was an oridnary man and not the son of god or something similar. The worst is that when they get "complication" they ascribe it to having forgotten or not properly taken their "homeopatic" globule... But when they are cured after the average "14 days" they ascribe it to their beloved oscillocoxnium. The usual confirmation bias, the same which works with other scam like dead talking and what not : forget the negative remember the positive.
In the mean time, I simply have utterly given up, I think we would need 3 or 4 generation of basic scientific education from the 1st grade onward to change the trend. The way it is now, people as a whole will never be able to recognize homeopathy for the pathetic scam it is. Even if you rub their nose in it.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
Those who cannot remember history are doomed to repeat it.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
The authors provide numerous reasons for this, from the concepts such as natural, traditional and holistic, to attacks on the scientific method by the alternative medical community and more.
This _really_ makes me angry. When I talk to someone about homeopathy, they always tell me about how "alopathy" doesn't work on prevention and how all those "chemicals" do bad things for your health.
I think they don't relate the studies saying "don't eat too much fat, it's bad for your heart" and "don't smoke, you bastard, or your lungs will collapse" with prevention. I don't know why.
I don't have a problem with people getting cured by placebos. But I do want them to notice that, if they have TB, it's the "oh-my-god-they're-so-bad" antibiotics that will probably save them.
Any life is made up of a single moment, the moment in which a man finds out, once and for all, who he is.
I mean, drug companies don't tend to release actively harmful substances with no medicinal value. They also tend to document how to use them safely and control of side effects, and avoiding harmful interactions.
Stuff that comes from plants has no such restrictions.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
"You mean all those alkaloids that are the basis of most of the precription drug industry."
Of course yes: they are of limited value in an herbal treatment and acquire full value once doses are understood and stablished in detail and those alkaloids are purified and dosified on their best absorbable way.
But then, once you take an herbal treatment and study, purify and dosify properly it is an herbal treatment no more but what the authors call an Evidence Based Treatment.
Especially in areas where there's some specific push to use evidence-based medicine, its adoption is increasing and leading slowly to changes in clinical practice, as long-established assumptions have turned out not to be supportable by evidence.
One of the more notable examples is the significant decrease in use of antibiotics for many bacterial maladies, which has been driven by an initiative to experimentally validate allegedly positive uses of antibiotics, and stop prescribing them if evidence of positive effect can't be found.
It used to be assumed that, because broad-spectrum antibiotics kill bacteria, they are therefore useful to prescribe for maladies caused by bacteria. However in many cases they turn out to have little effect at all; for example, controlled studies of antibiotic prescription for ear infections have generally shown no improvement in recovery speed or likelihood with antibiotics as compared to without. Therefore the previous, non-evidence-based standard medical practice ("you should prescribe antibiotics for ear infections") has turned out not to be experimentally supportable.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
While some Chiropractors are trying to sell people on "Blue Light Therapy" and other stuff, others do help patients who are in great pain. Ask anyone who has been helped with Sciatica that occurred after a lumbar disc problem whether they would prefer to go back and have surgery, rather than the solution they got from the chiropractor. Or maybe the person who had a pinched nerve in their neck causing total numbness to shoot down their arm and pain in their shoulder. When the Chiropractor fixes this issue, do we disregard the results because we believe Chiropractic to be quackery?
Meanwhile, we'll have all the kooks out here proclaiming that Vitamin C or Zinc don't help with colds, and whatever you do, don't drink cranberry juice to help you with a UTI.
I've seen plenty of quackery. Many people in the Alternative medicine field are insane. But that doesn't mean that every treatment that is not released by a pharmaceutical or approved by a certified M.D. is useless.
The brains of a chicken, coupled with the claws of two eagles, may well hatch the eggs of our destruction.
Are there any good examples you know of that couldn't be explained by the placebo effect? If you go purely with statistics (which most of the research I've seen does) then you WILL see a positive result from acupuncture compared to "no treatment", but that doesn't mean it's actually doing anything.
My book about LSD and Self-Discovery
Also on facebook as: DroppingAcidDaleBewan
The military also invested millions in remote viewing.
Ascii artist &
I looked into these things at various points when I was feeling bored. My recollection is that
- The placebo effect is a real effect, and can make you feel better, especially if you are more invested in the outcome (either financially (spend $$$$) or socially (there are doubters but you *know* it works); simply wanting to be better for health reasons is less useful).
- Homeopathy is useless except as a placebo (but one could argue that generating belief in homeopathy is the best way to deliver the placebo effect because you don't have to give the person anything but water).
- Chiropractors on average do not generate an improved outcome for their patients (possibly beyond a short initial time when the patient feels worked on) on *average*, but there exist some chiropractors who perform at well above chance on helping people with certain types of problem. It was unclear to me at the time whether this was due to the mechanical manipulations or to the placebo effect.
- Acupuncture has mixed success, but can have reliable if small-on-average effects on certain types of problem. I am pretty sure that there was a control group here, so this is above and beyond what one gets from the placebo effect.
- Herbal medicine runs the entire spectrum from harmful through better than established commercial drugs for some things. Knowing which is which is difficult if you listen to the people who like herbal medicine.
- Commercial drugs usually (but not always) work well on average, but insufficient attention is paid to whether they give small benefits to everyone or large benefits to only a small subgroup, and they very often have long-term side effects that are insufficiently characterized. Using older products it therefore more safe than using new exciting ones.
But I'm afraid I don't have references for any of these vague recollections. Perhaps someone knows of studies to the contrary (or which support these tentative beliefs)?
Yup it's obvious to any reasonable scientific person that it's the corporate logo stamped on the pill that confers the magic powers.
Well what that assures you is that the pill will dissolve correctly and the dosage and freshness will not vary beyond certain bounds. Delivery of medicine at high does means those factors are non-trivial.
Now I think most alternative medicine is bunk. But the concept that if something is toxic in large doses that a small dose might have medicinal effects is not crazy at all. It is crazy to assume that is a good rule of thumb, but anything that has a strong influence on your body probably is worth considering as a drug. The idea of infinite dilution seems to carry the concept too far.
One form of alternative medicine that gets too much abuse is Vedic medicine which hold that natural based drugs are best delivered not in pure isolated forms but delivered in the context in which they are natually found. The more we learn about proteins and their interaction with small molecules the more that actually makes scientific sense. Although the vedic medicine scheme was not developed with that understanding, in hindsight it may lead to new ways to increase a drugs effectiveness at smaller dosages.
the problem with ostracizing branches of boogie-wooggie medicine is that this allows them to start mixing good and bad practices since no matter what they do they will be osctracized. A good example of this is chiropracty. those doctors know a lot more about muscle skeletle injury diagnosis that the orthopedic surgeons I have been to. But they also then reccomend all kinds of crazy cures like aroma therapy and magnets. SO the quality of their patient asseement skills gets tossed out with the bathwater of their bullshit cures. Orthopedists could learn a lot from the accumulated science of chiropracty but it wont since its too hard to sift through the dross.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Given that they actually explained why they use it, and given that their explanation shows that they don't have actual data (they saw demonstration showing that it worked), I would be so quick to lump it in with the sugar pills and diluted solutions.
Recommended reading on the topic of "alternative medicine": http://kingmaker.net/DeadDoctorstxt.html
Now you're arguing that an ancient Chinese model for how acupuncture works is flawed because it doesn't conform to modern medical terminology, nor does it conform to the scientific method of making predictions based on prior results.
I fully agree.
But that doesn't discount findings, it only calls into question an understanding of the underlying mechanisms behind the technique. Which ultimately means, let's do more research and find out that answer. But having a broken model is not confirmation that one's findings are wrong. That's ridiculous. In fact, such a position is as much the exact opposite of the scientific method as are those ancient claims about chi.
IOW: Skepticism as a business has far outstripped anti-science nuttiness from new-age and other so-called 'alternative' medical and science quacks.
I think it's important not to throw the baby out with the bath water. I come from a vegan family (health reasons) and I have to say, chiropractors, and alternative medicine does work. Sure some of it is just a crock, but not all of it.
Two examples: my mother was told by the doctors that her thyroid deficiency was untreatable and that she would need supplements for the rest of her life. A local alternative medicine doctor claimed otherwise, he explained that back in the 60's chickens were fed with chemicals that were not safe for humans. Humans ate these chickens and that was what had caused her thyroid to start malfunctioning. He treated her, and she hasn't needed the supplements for several years now.
More recently, I have had serious eye/head pain. The eye doctors didn't know what it was. Out of a whim I visited a chiropractor, and a day later I was totally fine. And that was after living off of pain killers for an entire week.
So yes, this stuff works. Nothing is a cure all, and there's just as much snake oil as there ever was. But I have been cured more times by alternative medicine than I ever have been by doctors.
Man is the lowest-cost, 150-pound, nonlinear, all-purpose computer system which can be mass-produced by unskilled labor.
Don't forget the new "social anxiety disorder"
That's right: if you are an introvert and/or feel shy in new situations, you have a treatable (profitable) "disorder." Hell, I can treat that for $5.00. Go drink a beer or a glass of wine. I'll only charge $15.00 for the consultation. Don't worry, the bill will be coming in the mail.
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
Yes, but does it have to do with instigating endorphine release, or does it have to do with "energy" or "chi" mumbo jumbo? If it's the former, which would be more scientific, just go to a body piercer. Not only will you get a natural high, you'll have some nice jewelry when you're done. :)
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
I know, it's not like people more likely to take depression medication are inherently more likely to commit suicide.
The studies in question use several different control groups, including 'sham accupuncture' (i.e. sticking needles randomly), massage, laying in the prone possition, and sugar pills. Usually, the sham accupuncture is shown to have nearly the same effects as 'true accupuncture', which would seem to indicate that being stuck with needles to the problem muscles is the important part. More recently, studies using fMRIs have shown that 'dry needling thearapy' (the research euphamism for accupuncture) temporarily changes the way the brain interpets pain.
Just becasue accupuncture has been around for a long time and has words like 'chi', 'life energy', and 'chakra' associated with the traditional practice doesn't mean that the practice doesn't have merit. The evidence is sufficient that the National Institute of Health has issued a statement that there "is sufficient evidence of acupuncture's value to expand its use into conventional medicine and to encourage further studies of its physiology and clinical value."
It's important to remember that chemistry had its infancy in alchemy; Astronomy grew out of Astrology; Medicine began as a hodge podge of home remedies.
"I mean, drug companies don't tend to release actively harmful substances with no medicinal value."
OMG, thanks you, I nearly pissed myself from laughter at that.
Don't forget the 'call your doctor immediately if you have an erection that lasts more than 4 hours'.
I hope the doctor is hawt.
Coming in the mail is one of the few offenses that will get you fired from the Post Office.
The thing that bothers me somewhat is the 'herbal = good' message that herbal medicine promotes.
It's not just the herbal = good, it's the level of BS so prevalent in much of it. What cracked me up recently was a label on a Burt's Bees product.
"Chemical free" the label touts. Errrrrrrrrrrrrruh???
Stop me if I'm going too fast, but if it really is "chemical free" what's in it?
Best antivirus software
We need a way to exploit lethal gullibility prior to the propagation of those genes into the gene pool.
I know, we'll market a homeopathic contraceptive! ... oh wait
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
As someone who suffers from a related problem called Avoidant Personality Disorder, I can tell you that self medicating with drugs and alcohol doesn't solve the problem at all. Oh, sure, you might become a little more sociable, for a while. Eventually, you get to the point where you need the alcohol to function at all, even in non-social situations. Pretty soon, you find yourself stuck in a cycle at the bottom of a bottle and the drugs and alcohol take control, making it even harder to meet other people because by that point, most people actually won't want to be around you and that reinforces the initial problem. I have a lot of family members who buried their problems with drugs and alcohol and they went from being functional addicts to not caring about themselves or pretty much anyone else anymore - all they want is to stay drunk and high. Anything which threatens that state can force them to become aggressive and violent in ways they never were before. Growing up around that, I avoid alcohol and drugs completely.
Cognitive behavior therapy and gradual exposure to social situations actually helps much more. Finding an environment you can trust, especially a group environment, goes a long way.
I think a lot of psychological "disorders" are BS... but as someone who is 31, stays at home all the time (including blowing off what few friends I do have), refuses to go to stores and whatnot during hours typical people do, still gets so anxious that I shake when talking to an interesting woman, and can't even call up a utility company to make changes to my account because I'm afraid of the rejection that I'm "certain" to face, yeah... all encompassing anxiety is a real issue and I can trace it's development and growing prevalence in my life going back to when I was 7. I spent almost two years in a constant state of suicidal depression and if you think alcohol is going to make that better, you're very mistaken. I refuse to take pills for it because they just seem to delay dealing with the problems rather than actually solve them.
Anyways, I realize you were trying to be glib... but for people with real underlying problems, alcohol isn't the answer. For someone fairly normal with just a bit of stage fright, sure, but not for the person that can't deal with life as it is.
As someone who has dealt with depression and anxiety: 9-10 of meditation, exercise and healthy eating have helped far more than my doctors singular advice to take 3 different medications for over a year.
I've dealt with more than a few doctors who seem more interested in, to borrow a phrase, treating the illness and not the patient. I really do think that our drugs are over prescribed. In emergencies, no doubt would I want the latest and greatest; but for every day living your average person probably doesn't need a medicine cabinet full of prescriptions.
I'm as skeptical as the next guy when it comes to "alternative" medicine and down right dismissive of religious quackery from which of it stems. Conversely I can't help but feel there is a disconnect between modern medicine and patient care. There is more to being a doctor than telling people "Take two of these and call me in the morning.". A school of thought I immediately align authors of books like this to.
I haven't started it yet, but I am looking forward to cracking open this book as well as digging deeper into Zen & the Brain. Both also written by MD's.
No sig for you!!
Try this link: http://www.badscience.net/?p=540
Because german health insurers made a very big double blind test (314,000 probants) with three settings: 1. acupuncture, 2. something that looked like acupuncture but was in fact lots of handwaving and poking people with needles, and 3. traditional painkillers.
Acupuncture helped about 82 percent of all people where it was applied and relieved chronic pain. Traditional painkillers only helped about 25 percent. So acupuncture looks like the sure winner, right?
And now comes the big surprise: Handwaving and poking people with needles proved to be about as efficient as acupuncture: 81 percent of all people to whom it was applied reported it relieved their pain.
So it looks as if acupuncture is an effective painkiller, but not for the reasons stated. It seems that we need to know more about the actual mechanisms and effects of acupuncture.
For reference here the (german) report about the study.
1) You will lose weight when you excrete shit.
2) If the stuff you take that makes you shit also changes your intestinal flora, it could affect your "efficiency" of converting food into body fat.
http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-wellbeing/health-news/could-friendly-bacteria-hold-the-key-to-weight-control-457625.html
Last summer a team headed by Professor Jeffrey Gordon at Washington University's Centre for Genome Sciences managed to narrow the strains responsible for the fat storage down to two key players: Bacteroides thetaiotaomicron (B. theta) and Methanobrevibacter smithii ( M. smithii). Rats with both strains had 13 per cent more body fat than those with only one. The possibility, some years away yet, is that researchers may discover how to manipulate your gut bacteria population so less fat gets stored.
It's that the entire premise this book's authors are coming from---that standard medicine is about evidence-based medicine---is not really universally accepted in standard medicine. Its acceptance is growing, but EBM as an explicit aim was only introduced in the early 1990s, and was initially seen as basically a crusade by a bunch of ivory-tower lab scientists who didn't understand the subjective complexity of real-world clinical practice. It's only from the late 1990s or so seen increasing acceptance in affecting clinical practice.
So to some extent, saying "homeopathy is wrong because it doesn't follow EBM principles" is a bit off target, because it's not the primary thing that distinguishes standard from alternative medicine.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
So it looks as if acupuncture is an effective painkiller, but not for the reasons stated.
Because once you've had someone stab you with dozens of needles, whatever pain you were experiencing doesn't seem so bad by comparison.
I often do the same thing. When someone complains about a headache, I kick em in the junk, and the headache no longer bothers them. I can't get anyone to pay me for that, though. Maybe if I use some crystals or invoke eastern mysticism somehow I can start getting paid for administering treatment.
The enemies of Democracy are
Goddamn it, why isn't anyone giving you any 'Insightful' or 'Interesting' mod points?
This whole thread is pretty much being embraced by every reply I read except for the far and few in between (such as the parent) as "wholesome pure scientific proof that anything but medicines from drug companies and approved by FDA are effective".
It seems that the vast majority of the community is easily scared of the "unknown medical methods" and you would rather side with "what you know method" without actually doing any research of your own.
I thought that this is what lobbyists try to take advantage of in Washington to influence the mind of politicians. Scare tactics and bullshit research to side one way or another. I don't see this book as anything different from that.
Oh, do any of you recall the "Eggs are good for you" research? I thought a recent research said that now "Eggs are bad for you" but I guess a NEW research changed it to "Eggs are good for you!"
Those were also scientific research studies!
Oh, and the coffee research, yeah. That had the same kind of sea-saw kind of research and publicity.
Anyone can do a research and make it sound like they did real actual scientific work, but even "research" can be misleading and many companies rely on misleading information to prove a point. They may not be necessarily lie to you, but I doubt that they always tell you the WHOLE STORY.
As always, don't be so damned quick to judge. Read peer-reviewed journals, do your own work, don't just allow outside information to persuade you passively. Ask the hard questions!!
For example, why did the review spend (at least) 3 fuckin' chapters on homeopathy and only half of a chapter (chapter 5) on Herbal Medicine? Where is the review against Chiropractic therapy? Where is the review against Acupuncture?
Why does every paragraph of the review slams homeopathy and then quickly follows with "homeopathy and other bogus cures" ? Could it be that they're just trying to feed you their strongest opinion and make you believe it applies to ALL alternative medicine?
Whatever.
Apologies to the parent, for my reply morphed into a different argument.
A black cat crossing your path signifies that the animal is going somewhere. -- Groucho Marx
Without adding that key word "Western" in there, you're missing an important point -- the whole concept of Chi is based on a complete medical theory independent of Western medical thought. So basically yes, describing Chi flows to someone trained only in Western medicine would be about as productive as talking in Chinese to someone who only understands English. Both languages deal with information, but in radically different ways. Both may be perfectly valid, but analyzing the one from the perspective of the other is going to be an arduous affair.
The main problem I see with the book, based just on the review here, is that it lumps many different things together. What exactly do they mean by "herbal medicine"? (And what the heck is "herbal" about tiger bone or rhino horn? Those are animal products, not herbs.) "Herbal medicine" is an exceedingly broad category, and could potentially include Native American shamanistic practices, experimental hippie salad recipes, strictly controlled German and Swiss herbal pharmacopoeia, doobie brownies, and Chinese apothecary traditions all in one big indiscriminate mess.
Likewise, what is "alternative medicine" as the authors intend? It sounds from the review like they mean everything that doesn't normally happen in a Western hospital, which again is an obscenely broad over-generalization. Some things are probably completely la-la -- "oh sure, my neighbor ate nothing but oranges while standing on his head for two days and it cured his sinus cold!" -- while other things are backed by many centuries of refinement (Chi theory, yoga, etc.).
The reviewer also notes, ...alternative therapies are scientifically impossible, and often will violate fundamental scientific principles. "Scientifically impossible" suggests a misunderstanding of science -- science is about looking into things as objectively and quantifiably as possible, and deriving theories that best fit the observed phenomena. "Theoretically impossible" would certainly make sense -- but it would also imply the need for more study, and if XYZ "alternative" treatment were shown to be effective, then perhaps existing theories need modification. But that is a matter for further research, and thus lies outside the scope of this book.
Frankly, although the reviewer mentions a disdain for garbage science, such indiscriminate verbiage in the book sounds to me like a big factor in producing garbage science. Clearly defined terminology is a must for any productive hypotheses or research.
Just my two bits as a professional translator. Sloppy terminology just bugs the bejeezus out of me.
Cheers,
"What in the name of Fats Waller is that?"
"A four-foot prune."
This is actually a well-documented phenomenon.
I believe the theory that seeks to explain it is that, especially during the early stages of treatment, and especially for younger patients, when they start taking the medication they literally become more motivated to do something about their situation and kill themselves.
Asking people to think is like asking them to buy you a new car
Being stupid about interactions between medicine that you take is largely self-correcting behavior, much like riding a motorcycle without a helmet. I would feel no need to intervene.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Seems like the placebo effect of acupuncture outweighed the placebo+drug effect of traditional painkillers. Seems the painkillers are the real scam here.
Repeat after me: The plural of anecdote is NOT data.
This will be fun. I love quackery!
If proof == "medicine" and no proof == "alternative treatment", then why is massage [miami.edu] or acupressure [google.com] or dietary changes [webmd.com] considered alternative treatment?
How about 2+2 = chocolate milk? That's a redefinition which makes about as much sense as yours. Alternative mean an option. You might have several alternatives that are effective treatments though one might be preferred. Alternative has nothing to do with proof or the lack thereof. You can try treatments that are not proven to work. Happens all the time and that is how medicine advances. The first time we tried penicillin there was no certainty that it would work. But the doctors did have a credible theory as to why it might work. Most drugs we try are abject failures.
Now you are using "alternative treatment" in a different sense meaning something different than the standard of care. Massage has its uses but it doesn't cure brain cancer. Dietary changes are helpful for many things but won't set a broken bone. Suggesting that they will is quackery and anyone who promotes them as cures for problems they clearly cannot help is a criminal who should be in jail.
I do shiatsu acupressure, and I can cite studies on its effectiveness
How about citing some double blind studies from actually reputable journals ("Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine"? You HAVE to be kidding me) or even some studies that I can't shoot holes in by reading the abstracts?
And why is surgery considered "medicine"?
Because it works and actually cures people of serious problems would be my guess. Call me crazy but I'm pretty sure some smart folks might have looked into this.
Every placebo controlled study of a surgical technique has found it no better than a placebo operation.
That might just be the most ludicrous thing I've ever read on Slashdot. And that is really saying something. Apparently you'll believe anything you read no matter the source unless that source has a hint of being credible.
But then, once you take an herbal treatment and study, purify and dosify properly it is an herbal treatment no more but what the authors call an Evidence Based Treatment.
In my opinion one of the best outcomes of all the attention 'alternative medicine' has gotten in recent years/decades is that medical science has actually started to look closer at it and evaluate which of it is actually based on something real. For a long time (I'd wager the date was in the 50s when modern manufactured pharmaceuticals looked like they'd solve all the world's problems) doctor's dismissed all of this stuff out of hand. A lot of it deserves to be, but some of it doesn't. After all, in the first ever modern clinical trial where it was established that limes cured scurvy, the original source of the idea was folk wisdom. Of course a lot of other folk wisdom was proven false, but that's the whole point of doing a clinical trial.
The enemies of Democracy are
Have either of you Avoidant Personality Disorder sufferers looked into or tried "Constructive Living"? It is based on Morita and Naikan Japanese therapies and seems to really help some people. I've found just listening to the tapes insightful and useful although I don't (that I know of) suffer from any serious disorders (although I been told that my excessive use of parens (a bad habit from writing too much scheme) is really annoying (perhaps someone can coin a creative name for that)).
90% of the wealth is in 2% of the pockets. Bummer to be in the majority.
But the concept that if something is toxic in large doses that a small dose might have medicinal effects is not crazy at all.
The author of TFR (in addition to apparently having run out of apostrophes) forgot to mention the other lynchpin that marks homeopathy as a fraud.
It's not just the dilution aspect. It's that the substances are chosen based on their ability to cause similar symptoms to what they're supposed to treat. Because the less you use of the substance, the less it causes those symptoms. Therefore, the "reasoning" goes, the less of it you use, the more it will remove those symptoms when they already exist due to a different cause.
"...always new atoms but always doing the same dance, remembering what the dance was yesterday." -Richard Feynman
I agree that there are a lot of quacks that are in it for the money, but when I was in China my friend with a slipped disk was having some serious back pains and went to a doctor of Chinese medicine. After a fire-cupping and drinking herbal teas for a week he helt much better.
Not again...
"I know about the placebo effect, but it worked for me!"
"Censorship is a dangerous tool for the powerful to have, but we need to filter the Internet so we can catch those spammers and traders of music and child porn!"
"Those Mormons and Scientologists are crazy, but MY religion deserves respect!"
Hypocrites. You're just as bad as those you decry.
"Yeah, all those OTHER forms of woo are bunk, but MY pet woo is for real!"
http://outcampaign.org/
"After all, in the first ever modern clinical trial where it was established that limes cured scurvy, the original source of the idea was folk wisdom."
No. It wasn't folk wisdom. It was the observation that sailors on ships who ate citrus fruit didn't get scurvy, and those who didn't eat citrus fruit did get scurvy.
I am scientifically inaccurate.
The active ingredient in willow bark is salicylic acid. The active ingredient in Aspirin is, and always has been acetylsalicylic acid.
Yes, yes. Details. Aspirin was discovered through deliberate experiments on salicilin to create a more easily usable drug and rediscovered years later in an attempt to find something useful to do with plant dye wastes. Though it's not exactly the same chemical found naturally in willow bark, it's clearly the safe end result of an attempt to use willow bark's properties in medicine.
+1, Pedantry.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
Except that observation was only made in hindsight, and long before then it was conventional wisdom that scurvy was caused by a lack of acid in the diet, where -any- acid including vinegar and sulphuric acid would do. That's why Lind included all of these things in his trial.
The enemies of Democracy are
Of course they would. They'd be "the company that cured everything". That recognition alone would net them trillions for decades to come. And do you honestly think they'd spend the millions of dollars on research, development, and testing if they had no intention of selling it? The mere suggestion is ludicrous.
I am scientifically inaccurate.
Overall I have a lot of faith in science but when there are multi billion-dollar markets involved like the one pharmaceutical companies are in, there tend to be some less than scrupulous people around and as a result it wouldn't surprise me if results are skewed for the sole purpose of maintaining their hold on the market.
This was exactly the case with Synthroid. In the 1990s the patent had run out on levothyroxine (the generic name for Synthroid.) Knoll Pharmaceuticals, the maker of Synthroid, suppressed a study that proved the generic forms were equally as effective as the brand name, and convinced many doctors to tell their patients to only purchase Synthroid-brand drugs. Knoll finally settled in 2000 for about $100 million dollars, which was a bargain considering the business they get from people who are still afraid of the generics, driven by doctors who still don't know the difference.
The difference between this case and the alternative medicine believers is that the case revolved around legitimate science on both sides of the issue, and it was humans tampering with the data that made the difference (just as you speculated above.) The alternative medicine purveyors, on the other hand, have no such data but tries to claim the same types of protections. Without actual studies, though, they deserve nothing. It's just a shame that some people believe that because they're mocked it gives them some kind of moral high ground, when they truly deserve nothing but mockery.
John
There's a well known model in modern Medicine called "Gate Control", which could be employed to explain why at least Acupuncture might work in some specific circumstances.
In short, the perception of pain is an information which results from the processing of 2 different and competing information :
- actual noci-ceptors (pain detection pathways)
- and other receptors (other body senses)
The whole system has evolved in a way where pain is useful for giving a general alert, but non-pain perception may over-ride it, because a precise information about the environment is much more useful to evade the source of pain.
In every day situation that's why we tend to rub body parts when hurt : the sensory information (rub) over-rides the pain information through the gate-control mechanism.
TENS (transcutaneous electric nerve stimulation) is also well documented and recognized to be able to shut down pain and help some patients with chronic pains (whereas the usage about burning calories as advertised sometimes on TV is contested)
The possible scientific explanation for Acupuncture is that this is simply more of the same, but with a fancy name, weird tools and a whole mysticism wrapped around it.
(To draw a parallel to humoral medicine : picking up "blood" humor for someone who is easily aroused isn't completely wrong - being angry release a couple of hormones [like adrenaline] some of which alter and increase blood flow [adrenaline make the heart pump more]. So indeed blood and angry are associated, except that medieval humoral medicine got the whole model completely wrong)
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]