Complementary and Alternative Medicine March 23, 2008
Posted by keepbreathing in health and wellness, humor, links.trackback
Ah, Complementary and Alternative Medicine! Such a controversial topic, full of intrigue and shady evidence and passionate arguments from many different people. Speaking personally, I don’t have an issue with CAM; indeed, I know and am related to many people who swear by things like acupuncture and herbal remedies. When I was but a wee lad, my mother pumped me chock full of herbal remedies in a loving but possibly misguided* effort to avoid putting “chemicals” into my body.
The problem that I have with CAM is when people use it exclusively, claiming that real medicine is misguided or somehow deficient in ways that CAM is not. I have family members who, when they experience physiological malfunctions, will eschew a trained physician in favor of an herbalist.
Now, in some cases I can see their argument for deficiency in modern medicine. In theory, medicine is “evidence based” but in practice many physicians and practitioners are really “litigation based” or “I learned it that way 20 years ago based.” This does lead to deficiencies in care. However! The fact is that most medicine is based on some body of solid research, where most CAM is based on flowery prose with a minimum of solid research. I’d make the argument that CAM is marketed by people who have an economic incentive, but so is real medicine, so that argument is not a good one to use.
So given the fact that modern medicine is backed by evidence and CAM is not, why do so many people continue to prefer using CAM only? To find the answer, I have turned to that ancient illuminator of the truth: comedy! The humorous and surprisingly accurate website Stuff White People Like gives us an excellent answer to the problem of CAM:
Because of a rather shady history, white people do not trust the pharmaceutical industry. Using pretty sound logic, they believe that the drug companies have no motivation to find real cures for things like AIDS since the real profit are in drugs like Viagra and Xanax.
Using their powers of deduction, white people have determined that herbal remedies are unilaterally better than anything produced by a drug company.
Since white people can’t really blame any race for their problems, they need to blame corporations. In this case, the reason that they are sick or fat or without energy is because the drug companies are in a conspiracy to keep them addicted to placebos. This helps them shed accountability, and it lets them feel like they are helping the environment by rejecting the polluting, greedy, awful drug companies and taking natural, organic medicine from the earth.
But perhaps it goes deeper. Hundreds of years ago, another group of people believed firmly in natural medicine and it’s ability to cure disease. Then white people gave them blankets with small pox and they all died. So perhaps turning to natural medicine also helps white people feel better about killing natives.
Once again, comedy helps us see the truth.
*Pretty much everything we do boils down to chemicals in action. Trying to avoid putting “chemicals” into your body is like trying to avoid putting “air” into your lungs.
Do you think there’s any truth in that there’s more of a risk putting what lay people refer to as “chemicals” in your body over natural stuff? Especially with some studies about increasing cancer rates…it’s no illogical to consider that some of those chemicals cause long-term effects (we just now figured out sodium phosphate cause such renal problems).
One thing about CAM is that a lot of it has been around for a really long time and though lacks scientific research devoted to it, it’s been put through real life trials (though that doesn’t guarantee anything).
I think there is a place for both these days. Part of the reason there isn’t as much ‘evidence’ backing naturalpathic remedies is the big money makers, the pharmaceutical companies aren’t going to fund research on something they won’t make a profit off of. Research isn’t free by the way. So when a new drug is invented, researched and found beneficial, it is the big companies that foot the bill up to that point. Then it is up to us to get sick and use their drugs to pay back their investment. Like I said, I think there is room for both in treating modern illnesses. It seems that there are some from both sides of the arguments that like to wear blinders as to the beneficial aspects of the others. We had a family doc once who told us he would refuse to treat us if he found that we were using anything homeopathic.
The argument about the lack of testing for CAM remedies has been ongoing for many years now. True, many of these remedies may not have undergone clinical trials for efficacy (just like prescriptions) but a track record of use for many centuries deserves some form of credit to its name. I believe that people continue to use CAM because they have experienced its therapeutic benefits (not merely a placebo effect) in one way or another. And instead of ensuing contention between contemporary and alternative medicine, people should be made to understand that the methods of mainstream medicine (symptomatic, life threatening) and alternative medicine (systemic toning, healing) operate divergently in the context of treatment where an integration of both healthcare systems is deemed as a more constructive outlook.
Before commenters start talking about big pharma not doing testing on CAM remedies you should take a look at how much money the CAM industry is making. From quick newspaper and journal checks (not in depth) I feel confident in setting a floor at 30 Billion. With this amount of money you would assume they would be able to find a few treatments that were better then placebo. In terms of long usage counting towards a drugs (and these are either drugs or placebos) do a bit of research into Chinese Herbal Nephropathy. A syndrome discovered not by hundreds of years of use in china , but after back tracing to a cluster of patients centered in belgum. Historical use should say one thing and one thing only, that people used said treatment in the past. It does not indicate efficacy, safety or means of action.