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"Do you know what they call 'alternative medicine' that's been proved to work? Medicine." (from http://www.altairiv.net/Storm.html http://www.altairiv.net/Stor

by aaronem 13y ago

"Do you know what they call 'alternative medicine' that's been proved to work? Medicine." (from http://www.altairiv.net/Storm.html http://www.altairiv.net/Storm.html)

glomph 13y ago
This quip really annoys me. It only seems true because of a confusion or blurring of two very distinct concepts. There is tested treatment, which has been tested and come out effective. This can be put in dichotomy with untested or failed treatment. That is logical. Some treatments have been tested and passed some haven't. This is an entirely different dichotomy to that of mainstream and alternative or complementary medicine. Many forms of medicine have been thoroughly tested and come out effective and are not offered by pharmacies and national health services. Unless you want to claim that absolutely all proven effective treatment is offered by mainstream medical providers then this has to be acknowledged. Then on the other side there is a large array of medicine that is provided by mainstream medical providers that has not been proven effective. Many antidepressants consistently score the same or worse than a placebo in blind tests. The distinction between alternative medicine and mainstream medicine is not proof, but the provider. So while Minchin may be eloquent he is confusing terms to make his point.
- reverius42 13y ago
  The difference is not in the provider, but in what is being provided. Alternative providers provide alternative medicine. What you call "mainstream" providers provide tested, evidence-based medicine. Certainly there are some who provide both, but they should probably know better.
  - carbocation 13y ago
    > What you call "mainstream" providers provide tested, evidence-based medicine. I think there is more nuance than that. Modern medicine is a mix of things that people have been doing for a long time and things that newer that are proven to work in randomized, controlled trials (for certain values of "work"). The things we've been doing for a long time might not work. An important difference between the field of modern medicine and the field of alternative medicine, in my biased view, is that modern medicine actively attempts to figure out what works based on evidence, and evidence hugely changes practice and standards of care. In contrast, I do not believe that the same is equally true in general in alternative medicine, at least not with well designed studies.
    - Alex3917 13y ago
      Exactly. Of the 11,714 drugs approved for marketing by the FDA, ~7,624 (65%) of them were approved with absolutely zero evidence of either safety or efficacy because they were grandfathered in by the 1962 amendments of the pure food and drug act. But of course the folks that big pharma pays to astroturf on Internet forums will never tell you that.
- dllthomas 13y ago
  Eh, I think the quip is entirely an appropriate expression of how things should work. It is also not horrifically inaccurate as a description of how things do work, 1) as far as it goes, and 2) in the medium to long term. Both of these caveats are important. It does not say that all mainstream medicine is proved - we should hopefully be moving in that direction, particularly with the EBM push, but while granting there is a lot of baggage the comment does not say "everything we call medicine is alternative medicine since proved", it says "when we prove alternative medicine, it just becomes medicine" - which it does, eventually, as demonstrably effective treatments are adopted by mainstream practitioners - which, over time, they do tend to be.
Alex3917 13y ago
The problems with this are that: 1) You're implying that the vast majority of effective treatments are alternative medicine, and saying that 100% of effective treatments were at one point alternative medicine. 2) Most of what you refer to as medicine has not, in fact, been proven to work. In the U.S. (and all other countries) there is no legal requirement to prove that a drug is safe or effective before selling it, you only need to provide weak evidence that the drug is plausibly safe and effective. Oh, and you're also allowed to purposely bias the trials as much in order to produce this modicum of required evidence. I think it's funny that the people who believe the most in medicine (and science in general) are the ones who don't read many books. Although to be fair that's exactly the same as with every other field. But still, I feel like statements like the above basically just glorify our culture of ignorance.
- tensor 13y ago
  > I think it's funny that the people who believe the most in medicine (and science in general) are the ones who don't read many books. This is an odd statement. It's certainly true that as people learn more about a subject, they tend to realize how much they don't know and become more humble. But that doesn't mean that they start preferring non-science methods, which it seems like you are implying.
Diederich 13y ago
The implication in this quip is that anything that is proven to have positive medical value will end up being accepted into the mainstream. Counter-example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medical_cannabis http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medical_cannabis How many decades has it taken?
- aaronem 13y ago
  Eight, more or less, and at the start of that period, scientific medicine was barely out of infancy. I don't believe anyone has suggested that either perfect wisdom, or immunity to political considerations, are among the traits of that field of science.

by aaronem 13y ago

"Do you know what they call 'alternative medicine' that's been proved to work? Medicine." (from http://www.altairiv.net/Storm.html http://www.altairiv.net/Storm.html)

glomph 13y ago

This quip really annoys me. It only seems true because of a confusion or blurring of two very distinct concepts. There is tested treatment, which has been tested and come out effective. This can be put in dichotomy with untested or failed treatment. That is logical. Some treatments have been tested and passed some haven't. This is an entirely different dichotomy to that of mainstream and alternative or complementary medicine. Many forms of medicine have been thoroughly tested and come out effective and are not offered by pharmacies and national health services. Unless you want to claim that absolutely all proven effective treatment is offered by mainstream medical providers then this has to be acknowledged. Then on the other side there is a large array of medicine that is provided by mainstream medical providers that has not been proven effective. Many antidepressants consistently score the same or worse than a placebo in blind tests. The distinction between alternative medicine and mainstream medicine is not proof, but the provider. So while Minchin may be eloquent he is confusing terms to make his point.

reverius42 13y ago
The difference is not in the provider, but in what is being provided. Alternative providers provide alternative medicine. What you call "mainstream" providers provide tested, evidence-based medicine. Certainly there are some who provide both, but they should probably know better.
- carbocation 13y ago
  > What you call "mainstream" providers provide tested, evidence-based medicine. I think there is more nuance than that. Modern medicine is a mix of things that people have been doing for a long time and things that newer that are proven to work in randomized, controlled trials (for certain values of "work"). The things we've been doing for a long time might not work. An important difference between the field of modern medicine and the field of alternative medicine, in my biased view, is that modern medicine actively attempts to figure out what works based on evidence, and evidence hugely changes practice and standards of care. In contrast, I do not believe that the same is equally true in general in alternative medicine, at least not with well designed studies.
  - Alex3917 13y ago
    Exactly. Of the 11,714 drugs approved for marketing by the FDA, ~7,624 (65%) of them were approved with absolutely zero evidence of either safety or efficacy because they were grandfathered in by the 1962 amendments of the pure food and drug act. But of course the folks that big pharma pays to astroturf on Internet forums will never tell you that.
dllthomas 13y ago
Eh, I think the quip is entirely an appropriate expression of how things should work. It is also not horrifically inaccurate as a description of how things do work, 1) as far as it goes, and 2) in the medium to long term. Both of these caveats are important. It does not say that all mainstream medicine is proved - we should hopefully be moving in that direction, particularly with the EBM push, but while granting there is a lot of baggage the comment does not say "everything we call medicine is alternative medicine since proved", it says "when we prove alternative medicine, it just becomes medicine" - which it does, eventually, as demonstrably effective treatments are adopted by mainstream practitioners - which, over time, they do tend to be.

Alex3917 13y ago

The problems with this are that: 1) You're implying that the vast majority of effective treatments are alternative medicine, and saying that 100% of effective treatments were at one point alternative medicine. 2) Most of what you refer to as medicine has not, in fact, been proven to work. In the U.S. (and all other countries) there is no legal requirement to prove that a drug is safe or effective before selling it, you only need to provide weak evidence that the drug is plausibly safe and effective. Oh, and you're also allowed to purposely bias the trials as much in order to produce this modicum of required evidence. I think it's funny that the people who believe the most in medicine (and science in general) are the ones who don't read many books. Although to be fair that's exactly the same as with every other field. But still, I feel like statements like the above basically just glorify our culture of ignorance.

tensor 13y ago
> I think it's funny that the people who believe the most in medicine (and science in general) are the ones who don't read many books. This is an odd statement. It's certainly true that as people learn more about a subject, they tend to realize how much they don't know and become more humble. But that doesn't mean that they start preferring non-science methods, which it seems like you are implying.

Diederich 13y ago

The implication in this quip is that anything that is proven to have positive medical value will end up being accepted into the mainstream. Counter-example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medical_cannabis http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medical_cannabis How many decades has it taken?

aaronem 13y ago
Eight, more or less, and at the start of that period, scientific medicine was barely out of infancy. I don't believe anyone has suggested that either perfect wisdom, or immunity to political considerations, are among the traits of that field of science.