Why Write About Alternative Medicine? Part Three: Risks
Another reason to write about alternative medicine: risk. Alternative therapies have associated risks that practitioners may not inform patients about. In part one of this series (here), I linked to research that found media coverage of alternative medicine to be positive (in some cases overwhelmingly so) and to lack discussion of the risks, benefits, and costs.
Given the reluctance of practitioners and journalists to tell people about the risks of CAM, I think it is worth taking some time to blog about them.
Risks of CAM Part One: Nocebo
Risk of adverse effects from (mis)information
As well as relying on the placebo effect when making claims of the efficacy of their therapies, those providing alternative treatments may also be aided by something akin to the nocebo effect. If you tell healthy people they are sick (or sick people that they are sicker than they thought), it may be possible to induce the perception of symptoms that you can later claim to have resolved. Read the rest of this entry »
In Defence Of Bloodletting
Bloodletting is sometimes used as an example of a medical treatment that we once thought plausible, but now view as ridiculous. It is compared with chiropractic, homeopathy, and other “Alternative Medicine” disciplines in order to ridicule them. However, we might have been unfair. It appears that bloodletting may actually be more valuable than the Alt Med treatments it is compared to. Read the rest of this entry »
Conventional And Alternative Journals
While there are conventional journals that will publish research on alternative medicine, some researchers into alternative medicine seem to prefer to publish their research in alternative journals. Some time ago, I spotted something rather interesting when reading up on food supplement research. It involved two reviews – one published in a conventional journal, and one in an alternative journal. Here are the PDFs: Annals Internal Med EPO review and AltMed EPO review. Read the rest of this entry »
Woo on Woo – layers of nonsense
I’ve written before about woos trying out different ‘healing modalities’ seemingly as the mood takes them. I think that the last time I wrote on this topic, it was a homeopath disseminating dietary advice that had caught my attention: Dr O. I received an email yesterday that included a link to this page: Sulis. The advice is Holford’s, but why an NLP practitioner would feel the need to reproduce woo-ish dietary advice on their website is beyond me. I can understand someone believing in the value of NLP, but why assume other woo is true? Seems to be quite common to me. Instead of speculating wildly about the thinking of people who are into multiple forms of woo (which is what I’d normally do at this point), I’m going to have a quick laugh at the advice.*
Eat three pieces of fruit such as apples, pears, bananas, berries, melon or citrus fruit […] Avoid any form of sugar, also white, refined or processed food with chemical additives, and minimise your intake of alcohol, coffee and tea.
It works best with these two pieces of advice if you show them together in the same quote. According to the Sulis site, Patrick Holford is advising you to avoid all forms of sugar while, at the same time, advising you to eat fruit such as banana. Hmmm… I wonder if bananas contain sugar in any form? Why, yes – yes they do. According to the USDA database, bananas are about 12% sugar and this comes in the form of glucose, sucrose and fructose.
Supplement your diet with a high strength multivitamin and mineral preparation and 1000mg of vitaminC a day.
Well, the rest of his advice seems to fit in with the ideal of eating a balanced and varied diet – including advice to eat plenty of fruit and veg – so why would anyone following this advice need a high strength multivitamin and a 1,000mg vitamin C tablet? They almost certainly wouldn’t. Which is what makes Patrick’s advice so laughable – he advises people to eat plenty of foods rich in vitamin C and then tells them to add a supplement. Why? To make expensive piss? I can’t think of any other reason.
Drink six glasses of water, diluted juices, herb or fruit teas.
Ah, water woo. http://tinyurl.com/draust will give you more info on that topic.
Eat whole, organic, raw food as often as you can.
Why? Is there any evidence that organic, raw food is better for you? Should we eat all foods raw or is it better to cook, say eggs to prevent Biotin deficiency [the avidin in raw eggs is a bastard for binding to Biotin, apparently] – or tomatoes to increase the bioavailability of Lycopene? Is organic food healthier than non-organically grown produce?
*I will say this: it’s bad enough that experts believe themselves to be more expert than they actually are [*cough* experts-versus-equations], but surely it’s worse when amateurs believe themselves to be competent in various domains when they haven’t, actually, demonstrated their competence in any or all of these domains?
Heal All Illness – By Thinking. Why do people assume AltMed is safe?
Here’s the story, via Ben Goldacre’s miniblog, and it’s about a new therapy that professes to heal all disease, including AIDS and advanced forms of cancer. By thinking. Dr Claude Sabbah teaches that cancer and other diseases are formed in the brain first, and must be deprogrammed. He also claims that up to 90 per cent of all illnesses are caused by messages from the medical community. The mind-body link is fascinating, particularly in terms of how the placebo effect can aid recovery, but this is going way too far. Read the rest of this entry »
How Smart Are Politicians?
Not very smart at all if David Tredinnick is anything go go by. I wrote about him speaking on homeopathy back in February and today I noticed a link on the Improbable Science miniblog to an old speech he gave [see first link for full debate]. His opening remarks included this gem: “Regrettably, the availability of complementary therapies on the health service has declined since primary care groups and primary care trusts came into being.” Read the rest of this entry »
What’s Woo Worth?
A common excuse for the lack of proper research in CAM is that “only Big Pharma can afford to do research”. Alt-Med apologists like to assert that there’s no money in it (homeopathy, herbal remedies etc) and so they can’t afford to do the research. I think that’s rubbish. Here’s why: Read the rest of this entry »
Associated Content ‘Pimp’ Astragalus
Is Astragalus a Miracle Cure?
No. It isn’t. But these articles seem to say different: http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/427353/is_astragalus_a_miracle_remedy_for.html and http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/426555/is_astragalus_a_miracle_remedy_for.html.
Note: See the link at the bottom of the post for more on ‘headlines in the form of questions’ from Dr T of ‘Thinking Is Dangerous’.
Stuff And Nonsense 