"the message needs to be broadcast that alternative medicine is a colossal waste of money" [View All]

[FLAprogressive]

IT IS, you might suppose, always good to have an alternative. In medicine, though, that is a controversial proposition. Alternative and complementary medicine are mostly quackery. Yet they are very popular. Clearly, they have something that mainstream medicine does not. The question is, what?

A few treatments (mostly herbs containing active drug molecules) do have proven benefits. A few others look worthy of further investigation. But from acupuncture, via homeopathy, to “quantum healing”, the vast majority, some 95%, offer nothing more than the placebo effect—the strange and inadequately explained tendency of certain medical conditions to respond to anything the patient thinks is directed at treating them, even when the treatment in question could not possibly have a direct effect on the disease.

It is thus a great pity that Edzard Ernst, the first professor of alternative medicine (that is, real scientific professor) and the man who demonstrated that 95% of the industry was hokum, is about to retire early (see article). It is an even greater pity that funding to his department at Britain’s Exeter University looks likely to be cut. For the message needs to be broadcast that alternative medicine is a colossal waste of money. Globally, the industry is estimated to be worth some $60 billion a year. That is a lot to pay for placebos.

http://www.economist.com/node/18712290?story_id=18712290&fsrc=rss