Slashdot Mirror
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.
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.
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
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
Not all "alternatives" are created equal. I think it is reasonable to surmise that manipulation of joints and stretch and massage of muscles can help alleviate muscular and joint pain. It is less reasonable to assume that massaging a particular spot on my foot will help kidney function.
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.
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.
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.
My doctor, Johnny Walker, MD, can do better than that. His assistant, Jack Daniels, does a pretty good job too of relaxing muscles. Dr. Jim Beam, on the other hand, I never got along with him. And when times are hard, like now, I get it on with the Blue Nun - yeah, I'm a perv. Now, I heard of this Russian guy, Smirnoff, I think, who can do a good job too. Some folks prefer to go with a laymen with some military training. They like Captain Morgan. I don't know about the Captain. Too each his own.
Now, I have to go to my Canadian Club to relax.
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)?
Not all "alternatives" are created equal. I think it is reasonable to surmise that manipulation of joints and stretch and massage of muscles can help alleviate muscular and joint pain. It is less reasonable to assume that massaging a particular spot on my foot will help kidney function.
I was hoping that the reviewer would go into more detail on what parts of Chiropractic treatments are "snake oil". I know "common sense" and "baseless anecdote" are close buddies, but if your vertebra is pinching a nerve, something somewhere is going to hurt! If rubbing it and popping it works, it's a heck of a lot better than addictive painkillers or dangerous surgery.
But yeah, claiming that a chiropractic adjustment will prevent asthma or allergies is just silly. My chiropractor has a standard chart on the wall that includes some of those claims -- but when I mentioned it in passing, he seemed very uncomfortable with the idea.
If doctors and chiropractors would mutually respect each other's actual accomplishments and abilities, patients would be much better off. But as long as you have chiros saying they can cure *everything*, and MDs saying *they* are the only valid practitioners of the healing arts, we're stuck in the middle.
Stressed? Me? Of course not. Stress is what a rubber band feels before it breaks, silly.
That's thing with Chiropractic... it's 85% bunk because it claims by "aligning your spine" it can heal all sorts of things.
Straight snag from Wikipedia: [ emphasis mine]
Chiropractic... emphasizes diagnosis, treatment and prevention of mechanical disorders of the musculoskeletal system, especially the spine, under the hypothesis that these disorders affect general health via the nervous system.[1]... Chiropractic treatment focuses on manual therapy including spinal manipulation and other joint and soft tissue manipulation, and includes exercises and health and lifestyle counseling.[4] Traditionally, it assumes that a vertebral subluxation or spinal joint dysfunction can interfere with the body's function and its innate ability to heal itself. [5]
The bold stuff is the bunk. Complete garbage. But if they just said.. "Chiropractic.. we fix back problems." I think it would be a solid medical practice. Even evidence based. There is no doubt that electro-therapy applied to muscles relaxes spasms and reduces inflammation, that manipulating a sacroiliac joint for instance, back into alignment, definitely works.
I have recurring problems with my sacroiliac joints. I walk into a chiropractor so crooked and bent I look like I have severe scoliosis, with one leg longer than the other, in severe pain. I walk out straight and tall, with soreness instead of debilitating pain. Every time.
So yeah, mostly Chiropractic is bunk. But it can fix your back, "kinks" and spasms in your neck, a "thrown out" lower back, etc.
My anecdote isn't evidence. But a physical therapist will do the same thing: http://www.sportsinjuryclinic.net/cybertherapist/back/buttocks/sacroiliac.htm
They just charge a lot more and don't call it Chiropractic.
Operator, give me the number for 911!
The key point you've glossed over is the measurement "200CK". How much is 200CK? It means that the substance has undergone 200 100-to-1 dilutions. That means that the concentration has been reduced from full strength by a factor of 100^200. Yes, that's right---10^400. According to this article in Wikipedia, the number of observable atoms in the observable universe is approximately 10^80. Clearly, you will be the luckiest person alive, 10^40 or so times over, if even one atom of the active ingredient is left in your sugar pill.
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
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.
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.
Ah, right, that's why skeptics are literally raking in billions of dollars selling their books and skeptic products, and their faces are familiar to all of us from their constant appearances on prime-time TV.
Oh, no, wait a minute, that's the alternative practitioners, while skepticism remains largely unprofitable.
That is completely true. My wife went to a chiropractor here in our home town for problems caused by repetitive movement. The owner of the clinic helped a little. While the owner was out of the country, he had another chiropractor fill in for him, and the the results were surprising. I later had back problems cause by of all things, a cheap pair of shoes. The problem kept getting worse and worse. One trip to this lady and I was walking upright again. A second trip and I was all better. She was a crazy hippie that believed in some bizarre things, but her chiropractic care was amazing. A couple of years later, we were living in Sacrament, and my wife needed to go to a chiropractor. One of her co-workers recommend one. I went with her, and while the guy was obviously making a big effort to look "professional", he was clearly a quack. He kept using the little clicky tool that chiropractors have for moving bones a small distance with great force, on the peoples temples. Clearly, banging a persons skull isn't going to make their backs feel better.
A big part of the problem is that there ARE quacks in the "alternative medicine" industry. So, when people want to deride them, they find a few quacks, point them out, and say, "See! It's all hogwash!" It is no better than pointing to a pill prescribing doctor who is no better than a drug dealer, and declaring all traditional medicine a grand drug dealing scheme.
Clearly the writer of this book is at best nieve, likely just dumb, and at worst dishonest. Making the statement that Herbal remedies don't work is simply stupid. Herbal remedies are simply taking drugs. That's right. The only difference between what a doctor would give you and an equivalent herbal remedy is the source and purity of the drug. Obviously, pharmaceutical companies have created drugs that don't occur naturally, and some claimed herbal remedies don't actually have any useful drugs in them. But, the claim that herbal reminds don't work is by definition saying that "if the drug occurs naturally, it doesn't work. I can only work if it is manufacture in a lab."
The authors claim that chiropractics doesn't work is equally stupid. Chiropractics is the manipulation of bones and joints. That means that if your arm gets yanked out of it's socket, and you go to the doctor and they pop it back in, THAT IS CHIROPRACTICS; An extreme example, sure, but chiropractics none the less. The authors claim the chiropractics doesn't work is by definition saying that "if your arm gets pulled out of it's socket, popping it back in place doesn't do any good".
While the number of quacks in homeopathy is immense, vaccines are basically homeopathy. The premise being that you get the body to fight a desires by introducing the same symptoms as the disease so that the body can heal itself. At best I would say that our medicine is too primitive to really get the benefits of homeopathy. With our advances in genetics, I have no doubt that we will eventually start making artificial vaccines. Once we make a vaccine that is not a watered down version of the real disease, we will be performing homeopathy by definitions. By claiming that a vaccine that is created in a lab won't work because it is created in a lab is just as dumb as saying that a drug that occurs naturally won't work because it is naturally occurring.
While I don't know much about the specific details of acupuncture, it is not a huge stretch to believe that manipulation of the nervous system can have profound effects on a persons health. "Traditional" medicine uses hormones regularly. We know that your nervous system can instruct your body to produce particular hormones. So, while, I have not looked heavily acupuncture, it is intellectually dishonest to claim that it is scientifically impossible.
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."
Seems like the placebo effect of acupuncture outweighed the placebo+drug effect of traditional painkillers. Seems the painkillers are the real scam here.
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.