As a skeptic, I’ve never been a fan of alternative medicine or even herbal remedies. I prefer that any medical treatments that I take be experimentally controlled, peer reviewed and statistically compared for efficacy against competing treatments. It feels however that I’m in the minority on this and even people who have a reasonably sound education in the sciences often just state that alternative medicine, while not necessarily being more effective than a placebo, is at least harmless and could provide some psychological reassurance to patients.
Frankly, I feel that this is conceding too much. Even if alternative medical treatments are physiologically harmless, admitting them into the mainstream dangerously blurs the line between truth and falseness. It means conceding authority to snake oil salesmen who claim to not only know better than trained doctors but that doctors aren’t to be trusted because they are in collusion with drug companies who poison patients. More importantly in the long run, it feeds the general perception that scientific truth is not objective and that you don’t actually need any academic qualifications in order to be a respected authority on scientific matters.
Currently the best example of how much damage the anti-intellectual crowd can do is the ridiculous argument against vaccinations. This profile of Paul Offit, a prominent scientist in the development and study of vaccines, in Wired should be required reading for anyone who isn’t convinced that the rise of alternative medicine is actively harmful. It is truly frightening how quickly the fad of parents refusing to have their children vaccinated has grown and how much damage it is already doing. Furthermore, it’s one thing if the parents are harming their own children by not getting them vaccinated, but it’s another thing when you consider that they’re endangering everyone else around them because a good vaccination program depends on everyone being vaccinated to work.
As the article explains, the fears about the risks posed by vaccines are completely groundless and even now diseases that were previously thought to have been vanquished are making a comeback because vaccination rates are dropping. The saddest part is that all this has happened before. In England and Wales in the late 19th century, an anti-smallpox vaccine movement got started causing the disease to flare up even though the vaccine had been invented in 1793. I guess this is what you get when people look to celebrities like Jenny McCarthy, Jim Carey and Oprah Winfrey for scientific advice instead of actual scientists.
In my case, I prefer to be taking medicine minimally. I handle pain very well XD
You make the assumption that alternative medicine proponents are snake oil salesmen. Thousands of respectable medical doctors are strong proponents of alternative medicine. Thier experience has shown them that invasive surgery and pharmaceuticals do not produce results as advertised and that more natural approaches are often more successful and at least do no harm.
All of these claims are experimentally testable. Are natural approaches really more successful? Then let’s conduct double blind trials to test their efficacy. Note that “experience” is not a valid substitute as it is anecdotal. In most countries, conventional medical treatments cannot even be marketed without satisfying a government regulator that it is efficacious enough to make a difference and its side-effects, if any, are within acceptable limits. Why does the same standard not apply to alternative medicine? In most countries, vendors of alternative medicine do not need regulatory approval at all to market their products as being effective for various purposes.
I think the basis for the differences in our views is based in our general philosophies of life. I am totally convinced that the body-mind-spirit connection cannot be ignored, especially in issues of health and healing. The natural condition of the human body is wellness. Diseases and afflictions are messages. You will recognize this as being ancient and oriental thinking…but it makes sense to me. Every cell of my being has an ethereal enrgy that to me is spiritual in nature. I m not a nutjob. There are millions of us out here, college educated and intelligent, who know that reality is more than merely physical, that all people and all things are interconnected and that we actively participate in our own evolution. Name calling of people you disagree with is hardly an indication of credibility. One more thing; if modern medicine and pharmaceuticals are so wonderful why are we the unhealthiest country of all developed nations?
I’m sorry but unless your claims are falsifiable, there’s little point in debating them. If you truly believe in some theory that posits the existence of an “ethereal energy”, then propose an experiment whereby it can be empirically proven.
I presume that your final line is in reference to the healthcare situation in the United States. That statement is wrong on several counts. First, healthcare in the US is not altogether terrible. It is notable mainly for being extremely expensive and inefficient, but by a number of metrics, for example, outcomes of cancer cases, it is one of the best in the world. Secondly, even citizens who enjoy the best medical care and most modern medicines in the world can be unhealthy due to lifestyle choices and obesity is a lifestyle choice.
Finally, even if the US were the unhealthiest country of all developed nations, other countries are not healthier because they use alternative medicine more and conventional medicine less. Instead, they are better because they are able to offer access to conventional medicine to a wider segment of their population through publicly funded hospitals and such. I don’t see how that helps your case at all.
The problem with believing in the “body-mind-spirit connection” is that out of the mind, the body and the spirit, only two of those things are definitely proven to exist; and one of them is merely an emergent property of part of the other 😐