It’s good to see today’s Daily Mail publishing an article which criticises many aspects of alternative medicine. The piece is by Simon Singh and Professor Edzard Ernst whose book, ‘Trick or Treatment: Alternative Medicine on Trial’, is due to be published later this month:
http://www.play.com/Books/Books/4-/3703713/-/Product.html?searchstring=trick+or+treatment&searc hsource=0
From the Daily Mail:
No doubt we’ll see some lively activity in the comments section shortly.Are we being hoodwinked by alternative medicine?
Two leading scientists examine the evidence
...evidence-based medicine, has revolutionised medical practice, transforming it from an industry of charlatans and incompetents into a system of healthcare that can deliver such miracles as transplanting kidneys, removing cataracts, combating childhood diseases, eradicating smallpox and saving millions of lives each year.
Evidence-based medicine is about using the current best evidence - gathered through clinical trials and other scientific investigations - to make medical decisions. Alternative medicine claims to be able to treat the same illnesses and diseases that conventional medicine tries to tackle.
We set out to establish the truth of these claims by using the principles of evidence-based medicine.
Some people will be suspicious of this, perceiving evidence-based medicine as a strategy for allowing the medical establishment to defend its own members and treatment, while excluding outsiders who offer alternative treatments.
In fact, the opposite is often true - evidence-based medicine actually allows outsiders to be heard; it endorses any treatment that turns out to be effective, however strange it may seem.
In the 18th century, for instance, lemon juice as a treatment for scurvy was regarded as implausible but the establishment had to accept it because it was backed up by evidence from trials.
We had no axe to grind - indeed Professor Ernst even practised as a homeopath for many years (as well as receiving treatment as a patient) - and we came to our conclusions based on a fair, thorough and scientific assessment of the evidence.
So what did we find? While some therapies do provide some health benefits (e.g. osteopathy), most have nothing to offer.
Many popular therapies are "effective" only because they are good at eliciting a placebo response; making the patient feel better simply because they believe the treatment will help.
You might feel that as placebos help patients, this alone justifies the use of the therapy. But any treatment that relies on the placebo effect is essentially a bogus treatment. And it's far from cheap. Alexander Technique, for example, can require between 30 and 100 sessions with a therapist.
If alternative practitioners are making unproven, disproven or vastly exaggerated claims, and if their treatments carry risks, then we are being swindled at the expense of our own good health.
And what about the cost to the NHS? The £500million it spends annually on unproven or disproven therapies could instead, for example, pay for 20,000 more nurses.
Too many alternative therapists remain uninterested in determining the safety and efficacy of their interventions. These practitioners also fail to see the importance of rigorous clinical trials in establishing proper evidence for or against their treatments - where evidence already exists that treatments are ineffective or unsafe, alternative therapists carry on regardless.
Despite this disturbing situation, the market for alternative treatments is booming, and the public is being misled over and over again, often by misguided therapists; sometimes by exploitative charlatans.
It is time for the tricks to stop, and for the real treatments to take priority. The same scientific standards, evaluation and regulation should be applied to all types of medicine.
If this doesn't happen, then homeopaths, acupuncturists, chiropractors, herbalists and many other alternative therapists will continue to prey on the most vulnerable - raiding their wallets, offering false hope and even endangering their health.
More…
http://www.dailymail.co.uk:80/pages/live/articles/health/healthmain.html?in_article_id=557946&in_page_id=17 74&ICO=HEALTH&ICL=TOPART
"Release the anecdotes!"
Good to see some sense but will they now start properly reporting on global warming. Last Sat they had a particularly egregious piece from Nigel Lawson.
A very hard hitting article. Just read it and surprised the woo aren't screaming in the comments section, sure to come though.
Particularly pleasing is the lack of spurious balance, ie some quack spinning lies for their particular treament.
Gosh. Where are all the readers comments? This must be a first in the history of woo-related articles in the Mail.
One small point about the second article - it’s odd that it says that homeopathy “is one of the fastest-growing forms of alternative medicine”, when this message of desperation (from a homeopath) was sent out to the homeopathic community at the end of last year:
But perhaps the reported rate of growth is due to increased over-the-counter sales and/or its increasing popularity in non-Western countries.Is Homeopathy Bleeding To Death??
I think yes! And the demise has started in UK…
Do you know that Homeopathy is facing such a huge and systematic campaign in UK and most parts of the western world that even its existence is now threatened?
snip
Those who are organizing this anti-homeopathy campaign have been SO SUCCESSFUL that most homeopaths in UK have seen a 50% drop in their practice in the last 2 years. In fact most of them get to see only 3-4 patients a week. Most of them are looking to add other things with their practice like massage, acupuncture etc. They can’t earn their bread with their homeopathic practice.
. . .
Yours in Homeopathy,
Dr. Manish Bhatia
Chief-Editor, Homeopathy 4 Everyone
Director, Hpathy.com
http://dcscience.net/?p=197
Postscript -
I see they’ve got a poll on the go asking “Does alternative medicine do more harm than good?”...
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/dmp...in_page_id=770
When I voted it was 33 yes, 67 no.
Just voted and its now 32/68. Perhaps the Mail might feature a few stories about a child dying in agony because her parents were homeopaths.
OK well when I just voted it was 1 yes (me) and 2 no. Peculiar.
Hooray! That should help the ‘yes’ percentage.Originally Posted by Matt
(Note to self: shift key + 5 is a meaningful symbol.)
On the subject of sCAM, it’s interesting to note that the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has just upheld a complaint about an ad placed in a magazine by the School of Natural Health Sciences.
http://www.asa.org.uk/asa/adjudications/Public/TF_ADJ_44261.htm
Rather than start a new thread about it, here are the details:
A section of the ad’s text headed "Accreditation and Practitioner Insurance" stated "Our Accreditation is with The National College of Holistic Medicine ... This accreditation appears on all our Diplomas, entitling all 'our graduates' to work as therapists in their chosen fields ...".
However the ASA said that there was no legal requirement for a holistic therapist to have accreditation in order to practise.
But, of course, this development doesn't seem to have stopped the School of Natural Health Sciences’ determination to celebrate its “11th year of excellence”:
http://www.naturalhealthcourses.com/home.htm
“Excellence” which, apparently, includes a fair chunk of misinformation that continues to be promoted on its website. For example, there’s this from its ‘Hopi ear candling’ section…
…as well as this about the origins of the therapy:When you graduate we can introduce you to a UK insurance company.
With your School of Natural Health Sciences (SNHS) qualification
and insurance cover you will be entitled to practise your therapy.
http://www.naturalhealthcourses.com/Hopi_Ear_Candling.htm
And here’s why it’s wrong with that reference to the ‘Hopi’ people: http://www.quackometer.net/blog/labels/hopi%20ear%20candling.html…it is from the Native American Hopi people that it has come to the Western world and into modern Complementary/Holistic Therapies.
And look at those fancy certificates that the ‘school’ gives out to help convince unwitting members of the public that they’re being treated by well-qualified health professionals:
http://www.naturalhealthcourses.com/sample-dip.htm
Of course, there is one outfit who may be able to help its ‘graduating’ therapists with any ensuing credibility problems they might encounter…
http://www.fih.org.uk/media_centre/natural_healthcare.html
…although it’s likely that a good percentage (%) of them will not be aware that Ofquack’s activities are being monitored by a growing band of critics/activists:
http://dcscience.net/?p=215
Last edited by Blue Wode; 16th April 2008 at 10:37 AM. Reason: Typo
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