Alternative Medicine ---

[Ray Moscow]

isn't actually medicine. Or at least, very little of it seems to work.

$2.5 billion spent, no alternative cures found (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/31190909/)

Ten years ago the government set out to test herbal and other alternative health remedies to find the ones that work. After spending $2.5 billion, the disappointing answer seems to be that almost none of them do.

Echinacea for colds. Ginkgo biloba for memory. Glucosamine and chondroitin for arthritis. Black cohosh for menopausal hot flashes. Saw palmetto for prostate problems. Shark cartilage for cancer. All proved no better than dummy pills in big studies funded by the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine. The lone exception: ginger capsules may help chemotherapy nausea.

This shows the importance, driven home time and time again by those boring scientists, of actually testing possible remedies to see whether they work. Possibly some of them work really well, but we don't know until we do the proper testing.

Many scientists say that unconventional treatments hold promise and deserve serious study, but that the federal center needs to be more skeptical and selective.

In other words, there's little reason to test things that just make no sense, like distance healing or prayer. Concentrate first on those remedies that have some reasonable chance of working.

[Faerie]

Hmmm, like garlic and spinach to cure HIV.... that little public experiment backfired beautifully....

[Valheru]

The history of medicinal chemistry is one of fortuity. Some ancient dude would eat moldy bread and cure an infection or something.

Modern biochemistry is to that, the same way the Large Hadron Collider is to the leaning tower of Pisa.

Modern biochemistry is increasingly predictive and analytical, where chemical bonding sites and cytoactivity is predicted, and medicines are engineered from basic building blocks. There's no reliance on guesswork.

Alternative cures are just that - guesswork. That's not to say it's all horseshit, but eating horseshit and actually managing to cure some ailment is purely coincidental.

[frankferguson]

How much money has been invested into traditional medicine without curing cancer or alzhiemer’s or plenty of other diseases? I bet a lot more than 2.5 billion dollars.

I always thought that “media at large” was always very anti-alternative-medicine, so such an article does not surprise me. The major drug companies are huge advertisers for main stream media, and therefore reporting studies that bash the competition seems like a logical approach.

[David B]

How much money has been invested into traditional medicine without curing cancer or alzhiemer’s or plenty of other diseases? I bet a lot more than 2.5 billion dollars.

I always thought that “media at large” was always very anti-alternative-medicine, so such an article does not surprise me. The major drug companies are huge advertisers for main stream media, and therefore reporting studies that bash the competition seems like a logical approach.

Hi, Frank, welcome to the boards.

I'm rather more concerned, myself, about the articles in the mainstream media that reports uncritically on quack medicine.

But perhaps this is the subject for another thread.

Please look for your PM box - I'm going to send you one now, should be there for you to find in a few minutes.

David

[lpetrich]

How much money has been invested into traditional medicine without curing cancer or alzhiemer’s or plenty of other diseases? I bet a lot more than 2.5 billion dollars.
frankferguson, has "alternative medicine" had any greater success? Not just anecdotes here and there, but something repeatable and statistically significant.

Please don't decry controlled experiments and statistical testing -- these are valuable for distinguishing what works from what does not work. If you wish to avoid the necessity of such experiments and testing, then try to get results so glaringly obvious as to make them unnecessary.

[Monad]

Alternative medicine means it's an alternative to medicine

[Ray Moscow]

Alternative medicine means it's an alternative to medicine

Once alternative medicine is established by scientific evidence as effective, it usually very quickly just becomes normal "medicine".

[MrFungus420]

How much money has been invested into traditional medicine without curing cancer or alzhiemer’s or plenty of other diseases? I bet a lot more than 2.5 billion dollars.

You're right.

On the other hand, medicine has been successful in several instances.

Which makes it almost infinitely more effective than the magic alternative cures.

The success with smallpox alone puts modern medicine light-years ahead of anything accomplished by alternative "medicine".

I always thought that “media at large” was always very anti-alternative-medicine,

Not quite.

That would be "reality-at-large" being anti-magic-cures.

so such an article does not surprise me.

It doesn't surprise me either. Study after study shows the only efficacy of alternative "medicines" seems to be nothing more than a placebo effect.

The major drug companies are huge advertisers for main stream media, and therefore reporting studies that bash the competition seems like a logical approach.

Hmmmm..."major drug companies"...let's see....

"...studies funded by the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine".

I have a question for you:

Why do you think that "alternative medicines" are always packaged and classified in such a manner that their claims are not subject to verification?

[Free in Freeport]

The terms traditional and alternative are meaningless. Treatments are either scientifically proven, or they are not.

[BioBeing]

How much money has been invested into traditional medicine without curing cancer or alzhiemer’s or plenty of other diseases? I bet a lot more than 2.5 billion dollars.

Well, there are a lot of diseases. Cancer isn't even just one disease, and it doesn't have just one cause or one treatment. Some cancers, like pediatric acute lymphoblastic leukemia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acute_lymphoblastic_leukemia) (ALL), which is the most common form of cancer in children, have cures rate of over 85% now using current treatment regiments. Life expectancy for these children without treatment is 3 months. If you were diagnosed with ALL as a child in the 1960's, you would have died. Now, with modern medicine, you have a good chance of living a normal life. Cure rates for adult ALL are lower, at around 50%.

Can you show me any success stories like that for "alternative" medicine?

I always thought that “media at large” was always very anti-alternative-medicine, so such an article does not surprise me. The major drug companies are huge advertisers for main stream media, and therefore reporting studies that bash the competition seems like a logical approach.

Conspiracy theories ftw?

But I must say, if it were up to me, big Pharma would not be allowed to advertise prescription medicine direct to consumers anyway.

However, alternative medicine spend plenty of dollars on advertising too. Let us not kid ourselves that every single alternative medicine supplier is just a little mom-and-pop venture, trying to better the world. Total spending on alternative medicine was $34 billion in the US alone (http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE56T6MN20090730) in 2007. For products not shown to work in anyway, that is a lot of money! And don't get me started on pyramid schemes...