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No, people are very bad at keeping people healthy. Modern medicine has almost eliminated acute disease as a leading cause of death in the developed world and mo

No, people are very bad at keeping people healthy. Modern medicine has almost eliminated acute disease as a leading cause of death in the developed world and most of our health problems are now self inflicted. Evidence based medicine has extended the average lifespan by decades despite our best efforts. Alternative medicine may not all be hippie voodoo but it all has one thing in common: all the data all of its salesmen have gathered before profiting hand over fist has amounted to nothing. All of the data gathered since then has amounted to nothing except the rare fortunate placebo effect, early deaths, and needless suffering. Once every few decades we stumble on a gem like meditation because medicine works by testing and gathering data on everything, including folk remedies. Our most common treatment for metastaticized cancers is to inject radioactive material into our bodies in the hope that it kills cancer cells faster than healthy tissue! We will clearly do anything so all any "alternative" medicine has to do is prove its effectiveness. There is lots of value to a variety of traditional remedies that utilize the antimicrobial properties of tea and honey or blood thinners in many herbs but that isn't going to make anyone any money except your neighborhood grocery store or ethnic market. The rest of alternative medicine is just a bunch of snake oil salesmen whose livelyhoods depends on rejecting the foundations of evidence based medicine.

sametmax 10y ago
> all the data all of its salesmen There is no way you can judge "all the data" because "alternate medicine" is as big as saying "languages in the world". It's all that is not sanctioned. It includes a lot of things good and bad, crazy and sane. E.G: calibrated fasting is alternate medicine. Data for fasting has amounted to many things including improving the immunity system response and lowering side effects of heavy drugs. There is nothing magical or mysterious about it. It is "alternate medicine" because you won't see most doctors recommend fasting to your typical patient. There is no moral judgment in that. I'm not saying it's good or bad, it's just a fact. You have one vision of "alternate medicine", and it's limited to a stereotype. I understand why. The louder champions of many alternate medicine are using pseudo science, repeated by stay-at-home mothers on facebook. It does make the credibility of many interesting informations crash. However, dismissing what can be valuable information because of that is missing opportunities. Especially, a lot of chronic diseases have treatments outside of traditional medicine that make living with it much more bearable. Again, it's not exclusive. You don't have to reject one to get the other. But trying a few things outside of ones own bubble can get some wonderful unexpected results. I make a point of trying many such things. I'd say 9 times out of 10 it's a waste of my time and money. Sometime it's even unhealthy. But when you do find out something that brings strong benefits, it's usually really worth it. It's a shame one's have to do it that way. I'd much rather have professionals advice me on those. And it's why it's so important no to close the door.
- tomhoward 10y ago
  The all alternative medicine is bunk crowd would do well to consider the story of The 2015 Nobel Prize for Medicine 2015 winner Youyou Tu [1], who demonstrated (yes, using modern medical research techniques), the efficacy of a traditional Chinese medicine remedy for treating malaria. Given stories like this, I fully expect that whatever turns out to be the next widely-adopted antibiotic treatment, will be something that has long been used in traditional or alternative medicine. One promising candidate is Pulsed Electromagnetic Fields [2]. [1] https://qz.com/517202/how-traditional-chinese-medicine-finally-won-its-nobel-prize/ https://qz.com/517202/how-traditional-chinese-medicine-final... [2] https://epjnonlinearbiomedphys.springeropen.com/articles/10.1140/epjnbp12 https://epjnonlinearbiomedphys.springeropen.com/articles/10....
  - abalone 10y ago
    That is a bit of a mischaracterization. There will always be anecdotal evidence of unscientific or proto-scientific approaches working some of the time. The problem is that overwhelmingly most of the time they don't. That malarial treatment for example was not "long been used in traditional medicine." It was discovered in an ancient text and not part of contemporary traditional Chinese medicine, which had "forgotten" it and replaced it with ineffective treatments, due to its fundamentally unscientific nature. It was only through science that they separated what actually works from the vast bulk of placebos.
    - tomhoward 10y ago
      Wormwood-based remedies for parasitic infections have been consistently used in folk medicine in Europe and Asia for many centuries. Is it really such a simple truth that it had been "forgotten" and "replaced ... with ineffective treatments"? Or could it be something more nuanced, like that malaria ceased to be a problem in areas where this particular wormwood-based treatment had previously been in use? Regardless, wormwood-based remedies have remained widespread in various forms. Yes, of course it took modern medical research practices to convert into a potent form, demonstrate its efficacy and combine it with other agents for maximum benefit against malaria. But it also took someone - one person - to be willing to go against the tide of vicious contempt towards traditional medicine like that which has been on full display upthread here, and painstakingly study the ancient literature and see where it might lead. That's one person who I'm quite sure would not ever have said anything like "I wouldn't mind if they weren't so insistent on preaching their bullshit everywhere they go and trying to pass it off as having any basis". It's all very well to casually dismiss all non-mainstream remedies with "the problem is that overwhelmingly most of the time they don't", just as it's all very well to dismiss every new startup or technological innovation as being highly likely to fail. At least 95% of the time you might be right, but the time you're wrong is when it matters most, when you're talking about a new remedy for malaria, or, perhaps one day, a remedy for antibiotic-resistant bacterial infections. Please just keep it in mind. Millions of lives saved already, because one person was able to suppress the temptation to sneer and let their curiosity win out.

sametmax 10y ago

> all the data all of its salesmen There is no way you can judge "all the data" because "alternate medicine" is as big as saying "languages in the world". It's all that is not sanctioned. It includes a lot of things good and bad, crazy and sane. E.G: calibrated fasting is alternate medicine. Data for fasting has amounted to many things including improving the immunity system response and lowering side effects of heavy drugs. There is nothing magical or mysterious about it. It is "alternate medicine" because you won't see most doctors recommend fasting to your typical patient. There is no moral judgment in that. I'm not saying it's good or bad, it's just a fact. You have one vision of "alternate medicine", and it's limited to a stereotype. I understand why. The louder champions of many alternate medicine are using pseudo science, repeated by stay-at-home mothers on facebook. It does make the credibility of many interesting informations crash. However, dismissing what can be valuable information because of that is missing opportunities. Especially, a lot of chronic diseases have treatments outside of traditional medicine that make living with it much more bearable. Again, it's not exclusive. You don't have to reject one to get the other. But trying a few things outside of ones own bubble can get some wonderful unexpected results. I make a point of trying many such things. I'd say 9 times out of 10 it's a waste of my time and money. Sometime it's even unhealthy. But when you do find out something that brings strong benefits, it's usually really worth it. It's a shame one's have to do it that way. I'd much rather have professionals advice me on those. And it's why it's so important no to close the door.

tomhoward 10y ago
The all alternative medicine is bunk crowd would do well to consider the story of The 2015 Nobel Prize for Medicine 2015 winner Youyou Tu [1], who demonstrated (yes, using modern medical research techniques), the efficacy of a traditional Chinese medicine remedy for treating malaria. Given stories like this, I fully expect that whatever turns out to be the next widely-adopted antibiotic treatment, will be something that has long been used in traditional or alternative medicine. One promising candidate is Pulsed Electromagnetic Fields [2]. [1] https://qz.com/517202/how-traditional-chinese-medicine-finally-won-its-nobel-prize/ https://qz.com/517202/how-traditional-chinese-medicine-final... [2] https://epjnonlinearbiomedphys.springeropen.com/articles/10.1140/epjnbp12 https://epjnonlinearbiomedphys.springeropen.com/articles/10....
- abalone 10y ago
  That is a bit of a mischaracterization. There will always be anecdotal evidence of unscientific or proto-scientific approaches working some of the time. The problem is that overwhelmingly most of the time they don't. That malarial treatment for example was not "long been used in traditional medicine." It was discovered in an ancient text and not part of contemporary traditional Chinese medicine, which had "forgotten" it and replaced it with ineffective treatments, due to its fundamentally unscientific nature. It was only through science that they separated what actually works from the vast bulk of placebos.
  - tomhoward 10y ago
    Wormwood-based remedies for parasitic infections have been consistently used in folk medicine in Europe and Asia for many centuries. Is it really such a simple truth that it had been "forgotten" and "replaced ... with ineffective treatments"? Or could it be something more nuanced, like that malaria ceased to be a problem in areas where this particular wormwood-based treatment had previously been in use? Regardless, wormwood-based remedies have remained widespread in various forms. Yes, of course it took modern medical research practices to convert into a potent form, demonstrate its efficacy and combine it with other agents for maximum benefit against malaria. But it also took someone - one person - to be willing to go against the tide of vicious contempt towards traditional medicine like that which has been on full display upthread here, and painstakingly study the ancient literature and see where it might lead. That's one person who I'm quite sure would not ever have said anything like "I wouldn't mind if they weren't so insistent on preaching their bullshit everywhere they go and trying to pass it off as having any basis". It's all very well to casually dismiss all non-mainstream remedies with "the problem is that overwhelmingly most of the time they don't", just as it's all very well to dismiss every new startup or technological innovation as being highly likely to fail. At least 95% of the time you might be right, but the time you're wrong is when it matters most, when you're talking about a new remedy for malaria, or, perhaps one day, a remedy for antibiotic-resistant bacterial infections. Please just keep it in mind. Millions of lives saved already, because one person was able to suppress the temptation to sneer and let their curiosity win out.