On Demand
Trick or Treatment
Wednesday, August 13, 2008
Distinguishing between effective alternative medicine and pure quackery can be tough. Authors Simon Singh and Edzard Ernst of Trick or Treatment explain how the road to wellness is paved with science.
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Sounds like more subjugation to unreliable science to me - the whole point of alternative is exactly that - sound science is killing us so butt out of alternative medicine - the arrogance! You are going to decide that Chinese meds are viable - pharma-dominated 200 year old reductionist thinking vs thousands of years of sustained overpopulation - you tell me - or ayurvedic, same idea - these systems do not operate out of the same paradigm. Shut up! Don't encroach on choice! If it doesn't work, people won't go back, or if they do they are foolish. But science thinks poisoning us is just fine, as are GMOs... Science thinks vaccinations are fine (thimerosol, etc.) - it is frightful!!! Butt out!
feeling a little market pressure, are we? I know from people close to me who are MDs and practice alternatives alongside have made note of the billions being spent on alternatives. One tells me that what she so often hears from her patients is, "Please, Doctor, NO DRUGS!!!!" Allopathic medicine has its place but it is only one option and one opinion. Dig a little deeper and keep your mitts off my choices!
what you are calling "alternative medicine" is actually medicine that has been practiced for hundreds maybe even thousands of years! i say that modern medicine is actually the alternative and according to the increase in diabetes, heart disease, etc. in the last hundred years, i'll stick with the medicine that has been keeping people healthy for thousands of years.
acupuncture is harmful??
I thought acupuncture was just manipulating or straight out blocking of nerv endings. To stop hay fever with acupuncture sounds like trying to use toothpaste as a substitute for foot pain... How far does people take these things?
it is one thing to say "there is no evidence that acupuncture is effective." it is another to say "there is evidence that acupuncture is ineffective" or dangerous. which is it?
That's scary about a chiropractor can put you in a wheelchair, I used to go to one 3x a week. Thank God I don't anymore.
I can't listen to this! Clinical trials are the last word? I really think not!! My liver is mine to mess with!!! I have to turn this off. Death and bleeding - how about all the neds we watch ads for on TV?
I quit smoking with acupuncture in 1987 after 25 years as a smoker. I have not had a cigarette since, nor have I desired one. But I suppose I will have to run right out and buy a pack (that is if I can afford it) since acupunture is not supposed to work for addiction.
another question: which has killed more people: vioxx or acupuncture?
Americans love junk science....no surprise once you see how undereductaed our kids are.
Thank you Mark
What about Spinal Decompression Treatment?
Such as what is used with Antalgic-Trak Spinal Decompression System.
Let's all support good science.
An online researcher recently estimated that 70% of the current mainstream prescriptions, surgeries etc have no basis in science.
These authors seem to support the current climate: the powers that be want to pound the final nail into the coffin of herbal medicine. Shouldn't our protecting agencies be trying to approve the most efficacious, safe and affordable treatments? Instead they continue to favor Big Pharma as their client and help it eliminate competition before it's properly studied.
I have had amazing results treating bladder infections with echinacea capsules, by the way.
Since when do antidepressants not have side effects? I've never taken St. Johns Wort but I was taking a prescription antidepressant that made me so drowsy, it depressed me to have so little energy to pursue the hobbies after work that make me happy! Sounds like your guests are overemphasizing the negatives and using scare tactics.
Can only report on personal experience. Tried acupuncture seeking relief from injury related pain. Never achieved much in the way of that pain relief, but remarkable, significant improvement in Crohn's disease symptoms (diarhea, cramping, etc)nearly overnight. After 30 years of standard medical treatment with merely fair results, the acupuncturist is now my first call if/when I feel flare up coming on. It still seems like black magic to me, but I can't argue with results.
Trick or Treatment: Why not apply or include allopathic medicine in this title?
My ederly mom almost bled to death internally after being prescribed aspirin, which burned a hole in her stomach--trick or treatment?
Many of the attributes these guests are attributing to herbal or traditional treatments could apply to western medicine. There dangerous interactions with St. Johns Wart, they're dangerous interactions that are possible with Tylenol. SSRIs famously make some people more depressed and are totally ineffective in up to 1/3 of those they treat.
"Acupuncture" is not like "vitamin c" and you don''t know that - each practitioner is different - it is an interpretive practice to some extent - this is really simplistic
For an entire year, I suffered from sciatic pain. I couldn't sit, lie down or sometimes even stand, and it was effecting my ability to work and make a living. I was taking Percocets regularly and downing ibuprophen like M&Ms. An MRI showed I had 2 herniated disks. My doctor was encouraging me to have surgery.
Then a friend encouraged me to try his chiropractor. On the day of my 3rd visit/adjustment, I realized I hadn't needed any pain killers. I still go regularly and it is now as if the herniated disks never happened. After 8 months of consistent chiropractic treatment, I feel terrific and I haven't had any medicine whatsoever.
Correct me if I'm wrong- but isn't the idea of homeopathy similar to vaccines? Giving a little bit of the disorder/disease in order to build immunity?
I can understand that some things (like St John's Wort cancelling certain effects of other meds) really do need to be told to patients, but what ever happened to mind over matter? If I feel better after taking some "alternative" medicine, why should you care that I spend my money on what you think is quack medicine? I don't believe in taking these meds, but that's not making me stop others from doing what they want.
My mother used to work for a chiropracter who practiced acupunture as well. She benefitted from both practices. Can't argue with that.
I wonder about the scientific studies of meditation. Have they not been proven to be effective against some neurological disorders?
Green tea? No benefit?
What about spinal decompression treatment?
Chiropractic cured my chronic migrane headaches. I suffered for 12 years, and I'm migrane-free for the last 17!
I'm assuming tomorrow's guest will be someone shining a light on the often unnecessary, unproven and dangerous procedures, drugs and treatments routinely used (and tested...) on the public using conventional medicine.
Research your doctors, no matter what their specialty - that goes without saying. There are just as many 'bad' conventional doctors as there are 'bad' alternative medicine practitioners.
i have heard doctors suggesting cranberry juice for UT infections
and yes the money - that's really the heart of this fight - who gets the money.
I really like taht suggestion that allopathic be included under the heading trick or treatment
Your guests assume that the scientific method answers all questions. In the case of acupuncture, which is based on balancing chi, they dismiss this out of hand because they cannot measure chi. This does not mean that acupuncture doesn't help balance chi. It's simply that science has not advanced enough to measure it.
Also, keep in mind that approximately 100,000 people die each year from traditional prescription medicines. And sometimes after years on the market, the public is told that the medicines they have been taking either do not work or may, in fact, do harm. Hormone replacement therapy is an example of this and another failure of the scientific method.
I am a student of Acupuncture and TCM and have seen first hand how TCM can treat many problems, from the common cold to complicated cases that biomedicine can't touch. I think it is a terrible shame when MDs, who know nothing about Chinese Medicine, make claims about what TCM can and can't treat. Furthermore, studies have been done, such as one with Acupuncture and IBS, where the results indicated no benefit was made by Acupuncture. When looking at how the study was conducted, with MD intervention, the methods absolutely violated TCM principles. As health practioners we should remember to be on the patient's side and provide as many treatment options as possible.
I had a bike accident last week in which I flew over the handlebars and banged up much of my body. After cleaning up the cuts, I applied arnica gel -- a homeopathic treatment -- to all the areas of impact except one, which I inadvertently missed. The next day, I had a very dark bruise in that one spot, but little or no bruising in the other areas of my chest, shoulders, or arms. Can I get that $20,000 check please?
Unlike western medicine, where a given technique will work independent of the practitioner, accupancture will work only if the practitioner knows what he is doing.
When I was younger, I was a recipient of accupancture therapy to treat my nearsightedness. It worked, but only for a time. I could see 3 lines (in the eye test) better after the therapy than before. I had to repeat 10 day sessions every year to maintain my improved vision.
Then I moved to a different city and my new, highly recomended occupuncturist, did nothing for me.
i would be better inclined to listen if there were better comparisons of effectiveness. Scaring people about "dangers" is unconvincing when the rates of serious medical misadventure are themselves so high: one of the most significant causes of deaths today are misuse of prescription drugs and mistakes in prescriptions, and another is infection rates caused by improper santitation and misuses and abuse of anti-biotics, and the whole effect of the whole commercial medical system in the USA on health. The USA has the highest maternal deaths, the highest rates of low birth weight, the highest rates of infant deaths.
Child abuse, alcohol and drug abuse, malnutrition, depression, PTSD and a for black Americans the 8th highest rates of HIV infection in the world.
When you compare the worst of one against the best of the other you cannot claim equity. Europeans are far healthier and European health systems treat alopathy and alternative medicine equally and scare screed do not do anything to make it clear why they are so far more successful spending far less money than we are.
This program did not serve any purpose other than to hold alopathy even in less repute.
The reason you won't find 'scientific studies' supporting 'alternative medicine' is because scientific studies are based on the scientific method, a type of measure used for reductive science. But alternative therapies are largely system-based modalities, a completely different paradigm. System-based modalities, such as Traditional Chinese Medicine have been healing people for thousands of years. Our 'western medicine' - as amazing as it is (grateful we have it) has been healing people for only hundreds of years - and yes, saving many lives. This is reductive science at it's best: in which you boil down the problem to the smallest mechanical part and treat the crisis at that part. This is amazing for trauma.
But when we apply this to chronic issues, we often end up playing whack-a-mole, because we isolate the issue, conclude a diagnosis, and treat it with a correspondent drug, which, after a certain threshold of usage, invariably causes a problem elsewhere in the body. We never identified the underlying systemic PROBLEM - only the symptom. This is where system-based 'alternative therapies' often become very effective. And harder to measure with scientific trials. Yet there are thousands of people out there who will attest to their problems being fixed once and for all via alternative therapies.
Also, though we have many obvious similarities, every body is a system of its own and therefore one treatment might work for one person that does not work for another. I think making sweeping generalizations and ultimate jugements by looking at scientific data alone is deeply flawed. It's a shame the phone lines couldn't work for this segment because I fear it left more people misinformed.
Acupuncture has been used successfully for thousands of years. It works within a completely different paradigm than western medicine, which makes it difficult to test using western methods. In no way does this invalidate its effectiveness, and many people are helped by acupuncture.
And in fact, though the authors say no trials have shown efficacy, there have been large scale western studies that DO show effectiveness of acupuncture in the terms these authors are using.
For example (to name a few):
--“Pragmatic Randomized Trial Evaluating the Clinical and Economic Effectiveness of Acupuncture for chronic Low Back Pain,” American Journal of Epidemiology 164.5 (2006): 491.
--“Effectiveness of Acupuncture as Adjunctive Therapy in Osteoarthritis of the Knee: a Randomized, Controlled Trial,” Annals of Internal Medicine, December 21, 2004; 141(12):901-10
-- “Acupuncture of Chronic Headache Disorders in Primary Care: Randomised Controlled Trial and Economic Analysis,” Executive Summary, Health Technology Assess 2004; 8(48).
And if we're discussing safety, let's start talking about the safety of pharmaceuticals. There is more than one way to live a healthy life, and for many people this does not involve taking a bunch of pills.
It is interesting that the two gentlemen state that they are coming from a 'Scientific Perspective'. But, there is still so much that we don't know about the human body! I am afraid that they come from the falacious point of view that 'they' know everything about the human body. Science is a constant state of exploration and asking questions. The data is overwhelming - acupuncture works. Ask the likes of the World Health Organization.
Thanks
These guests are clearly biased. The Brian Lehrer show normally broadcasts more balanced reporting.
Who is funding the studies quoted? While double-blind medical studies are very costly, pharmaceutical companies can fund studies to promote their bias (ie: vitamins are bad) while there are no companies with huge profits to fund studies that could prove that alternatives are efficacious (ie: juice fasts can be very beneficial). Statistics can be presenting to satisfy different points of view. This audience expects and deserves more rigorous reporting.
A very bad segment of a very good show. Regrettable for giving no quality information and only bad advice. How about NOT lumping all the typical "alternative" medicines together. Is dentistry alternative medicine because it is not included in the AMA?
Doctors treat diseases (pathologies) based on the narrow scope verifiable experiments in body functioning. These experiments, by the very nature of the scientific method, leave out as many contributing forces as possible (diet, constitution, psychology, for example). Doctors tend to treat illness, not people.
Therapies such as acupuncture attempt to include as many contributing forces as possible when treating the patient. This is why the effectiveness of acupuncture and chinese herbal medicine is so difficult to measure. If someone can only be confident of the results from a petri dish, they certainly are going to be confused and frustrated when measuring a lake of information.
Explaining these differences would have been much more informative to your listeners.
Answer to #13 & #25.Spinal Decompression Treatment.
After the car accident I had 5 herniated discs, two of them in my lower back. I couldn't walk or stand for longer then 10 minutes and tried steroid injections, painkillers and accupuncture. Nothing helped except that accupuncture gave me more energy. Then I saw a segment on the news about the Spinal Decompression Treatment and contacted the chiropractor who had the machine (it could be also manual, but machine personalize it based on your height,weight and angle of injury). At FIRST session I fell asleep! After second session I could walk and move with very little pain. I did 23 more sessions and slept through them all. We combined these with classic chiropractic manipulations. My insurance refused to pay for more treatments(of course they would pay for painkillers). After 6 years my lower spine hurts just a little. I do basic yoga stretching and (sorry show guests) I discovered another alternative miracle: Nikken Magnetic Belt. I put it on my lower back every night and wake up with no pain. I tried other magnets, but this one is the best because it is a one BIG whole magnet, so you don't have to carefully position it. Of course it may not work for everyone, but Spinal Decompression works for sure for lower back pain (and unfortunatelly ONLY that).
These gentlemen have it right.
Show us the science.
Run fair tests and trials, check results and make sure they can be repeated.
There is little or no evidence that acupuncturists or chiropractors etc. can do anything at all but take your money.
Do you really believe against all science that there is some energy called "chee" in our bodies that we can't observe or demonstrate?
Do you really believe disease can be treated by manipulating the alignment of the spine---against all scientific evidence?
Humans have a remarkable capacity to embrace new, unproven theories and claims.
The old placebo effect kicks in and they swear by it.
Show us the science.
Without any demonstrable, repeatable science it's is all expensive nonsense.
Let's stick with what's real.
I am shocked that WNYC is so naive as to allow these people air time. I have been treated with chiropractic, homeopathy, acupuncture and chinese herbal medicine with tremendous success and use them to prevent myself from becoming ill. Can western medicine do the same besides an annual physical where my dr. does not even touch me and some blood tests? To say what they said on the air outrages me and I almost turned the station off and I will not be contributing to WNYC in the future. The numbers speak for themselves and if these modalities were not effective why would people spend billions of their own hard earned money on them? Come on NPR, get with it!
@Carolina from Maplewood (#21) The 'ideas' behind homeopathy are absurd and only superficially like vaccination:
http://www.csicop.org/si/9709/park.html
More to the point: vaccination works, homeopathy does not.
All medicines can be tested using scientific methods such as the DBRCT. They either work or they do not and talk of 'difficulties in measurement' and 'different paradigms' etc. is just evasive nonsense. A claim of efficacy is a claim of measurability and having made such a claim, there is no escape from scientific investigation. Unsurprisingly, most “alternative” medicines and therapies do not work any better than placebo.
With little understanding of science and logic we are all remarkably easily fooled by anecdote and by the post hoc and other fallacies but I think we should feel pleased and empowered rather than shocked and outraged when science reveals the truth. One would hope that would be especially true of those who have a duty to the vulnerable and the sick and of “allopaths”, it usually is true.
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