What do ducks and alternative medicine have in common? They both have a propensity to produce quacks! Chuckles For as long as there has been medicine, there have been people attempting to sell fakes. Everyone has heard of the snake oil salesman; the man who tries to sell you cat’s gallbladder or tiger liver or rhino penis and claims that these have magical medicinal properties. These fallacious claims have always been there, but thanks to the advent of the internet, bullshit can be spread more easily and farther than before.
Homeopathy is one of the biggest subsections of alternative medicine. The logic behind homeopathy is that to treat a disease, one must ingest very little parts of what causes the disease to trigger the correct response. The root of the word comes from the Greek word for “same”, homios, and the word for “suffering”, pathios. This sounds fine at first glance, but a little more critical thinking renders that argument completely invalid. Giving someone little tiny doses of arsenic when he is already suffering from arsenic poisoning does not work for the same reason that giving someone dying of a gunshot wound body armor does not work.
One big proponent of alternative medicine is Dr. Oz. Once a nationally acclaimed surgeon, Dr. Mehmet Oz decided to forego a illustrious career in surgery to host a talk show watched primarily by middle-aged moms. On his show, Dr. Oz promotes various treatments and cures, some of which are actually useful, and some of which are useless. A study published in the British Medical Journal concluded that at least 51% of his claims have no scientific backing. Those odds are about as good as flipping a coin. The medical community has not been silent about him. Recently, a group of practicing physicians signed a petition directed towards Columbia University calling for Dr. Oz to be fired. This is just one example of a quack making use of mass media to perpetuate psuedo-science and exploiting people for personal gain.
Another form of alternative medicine is naturopathy. Naturopathy is the process of treating disease using supposed “natural” means. This tends to mean using raw materials such as herbs or animals products as treatments. Naturopathy is a big component of traditional medicine such as traditional Chinese medicine. Many conventional treatments are in fact derived from herbal remedies, but naturopathy has no such thing as proper dosage.
Naturopathic and homeopathic treatments have not been shown to be effective by any clinical studies. Of course this could be due to the immense pressure from the mainstream medical community to suppress such treatments. Or the more credible argument could be that they are simply ineffective. Many, many mainstream treatments today were once shunned by the medical community at the time. But they persisted because they were effective. Vaccines garnered intense resistance when they were first introduced, however they started preventing disease. The medical community could not deny that Edward Jenner was saving lives and so they were forced to accept that vaccines were effective. Naturopathic treatments have not been shown to be effective in the one hundred or so years since their introduction. In fact, if alternative medicine were actually effective, pharmaceutical companies would not be scrambling to suppress information about it, they would be scrambling to be the first one to market it. If corporations, whose first objective is profit are not jumping on the alternative medicine bandwagon, then it is safe to conclude there is no wagon to jump on.
Luckily for the American public, the Food and Drug Administration exists. For any edible product to be sold, it must first be proven to not be harmful to humans. This prevents any dangerous chemicals being marketed as cures, so alternative medicine will not kill anyone anymore than it cures them. The problem arises when people use alternative cures but refuse conventional medicine. Some cancer patients refuse chemotherapy and radiation treatment and instead opt to only be treated by alternative medicine. Of course, each person has the right to receive what treatment they so desire. It becomes really troublesome when parents choose treatments for their children and they refuse conventional medicine. Legally there is no way to force the parent to accept conventional treatment and in the worst cases the child dies. This price is what we pay for giving credibility to quacks and airtime to con artists.
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