Snake Oil Science: The Truth About Complementary & Alternative Medicine

[FLAprogressive]

I could condense this review into three words: “read this book!”

The term “complementary and alternative medicine” (CAM) is relatively new, but the treatments it encompasses are not. Before we had science, all we had to rely on was testimonials and beliefs. And even today, for most people who believe CAM works, belief is enough. But at some level, the public has now recognized that science matters and people are looking for evidence to support those beliefs. Advocates claim that recent research validates CAM therapies. Does it really? Does the evidence show that any CAM therapy actually works better than placebos? R. Barker Bausell asks that question, does a compellingly thorough investigation, and comes up with a resounding “NO” for an answer.

*snip*

...Bausell points out that penicillin cures pneumonia even if you’re in a coma, but alternative medicine only seems to work when you are awake. You have to know (or think) you’re being treated. And penicillin works by well-understood scientific principles, while much of alternative medicine is based on “entire physiologic systems or physical forces that the average high school science teacher already knew didn’t exist.” If any alternative treatment clearly worked as well as penicillin, prior plausibility wouldn’t matter: science would adopt it and worry about how it worked later. Under the circumstances, prior plausibility is an important consideration.

http://www.skeptic.com/eskeptic/08-03-19/

[greymattermom]

1. not true

Some treatments, such as using vitamin D supplementation for chronic muscle pain, are considered CAAM, but there is a mechanism that is being characterized. The problem is getting funding for mechanistic studies and clinical trials when the treatment is cheap and not controlled by PHARMA.

[FLAprogressive]

2. Why spend more time/money to study further into things which have been deemed inconclusive at best?

[BeFree]

6. You are joking, right?

Man can't go to the moon. So why even spend time and money to do so?

Can you believe those f'n idiots that in the early 60's were not joking?

[FLAprogressive]

7. Um....what does going to the moon have to do with Scam "Treatments"?

[SidDithers]

10. Oh, I hope the answer somehow ties in bombing the moon and menstrual cycles...

:rofl:

Sid

[mopinko]

32. vitamin d is not cam. it is well known science

that is being expanded using, gasp, science. if it was cam, i wouldn't be having my levels monitored by university doctors.

[xchrom]

3. recommend

[BridgeTheGap]

4. When sugar pills are more effective than, say, anti-depressant meds, it tells us something

revealing about the mind. If you feel better taking sugar pills rather than snake oil, then go for it!

[SidDithers]

9. But if you know they're sugar pills, then they don't work...

and if you don't know they're sugar pills, then you're not an informed participant in your own medical treatment, and the "doctor" selling you the sugar pills as medicine is defrauding you (or at least lying to you, and being lied to by your doctor is usually a bad thing).

Placebos are for a control group in experimentation, not part of a treatment plan for an actual illness.

Sid

[BridgeTheGap]

12. "not part of a treatment plan for an actual illness." For your edification:

"But as evidence of the placebo effect’s power mounts, members of the medical community are increasingly asking an intriguing question: if the placebo effect can help patients, shouldn’t we start putting it to work?"

http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2010/05/09/the_magic_cure/

[SidDithers]

13. Simple question...

Do you want your doctor lying to you?

Sid

[Teaser]

14. no but...

if we can isolate the mechanism by which the placebo effect works, and target it with the appropriate vectors, that would be cool.

[BridgeTheGap]

15. I've asked her not to. ;-) n/t

[HuckleB]

22. It would be cool, but...

Placebo Effects Revisited
http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/?p=4304

"...

Let’s break this down a bit. First, they found that when you look at any objective or clinically important outcome – the kinds of things that would indicate a real biological effect – there is no discernible placebo effect. There is no mind-over-matter self healing that can be attributed to the placebo effect.

What the authors found is also most compatible with the hypothesis that placebo effects, as measured in clinical trials, are mostly due to bias. Specifically, significant placebo effects were found only for subjectively reported symptoms. Further, the size of this effect varied widely among trials.

This latter feature is very important. If there were a significant physiological placebo effect we would expect to see a consistent or baseline effect among trials. The tremendous variability suggests that it was the rigor of trial design that allowed for lesser or greater bias resulting in a measured placebo effect.

..."

[Confusious]

29. Indeed, the effect is famously difficult to identify,

measure, and even coherently define.

[trotsky]

5. Great quote:

"If any alternative treatment clearly worked as well as penicillin, prior plausibility wouldn’t matter"

In order to believe in the power of SCAM, you have to simultaneously believe that the millions of individuals in research, industry, and government are all aware that "alternative" "medicine" works and they all are conspiring to force us to buy big pharma's useless products. Because... well, just because. And over all these decades, not one noble whistleblower has emerged with the mountains of evidence showing us that SCAM works, pharmaceuticals don't.

But anyway I know it works because I heard my aunt's neighbor's cousin's dog had cancer and they gave him herbs and he's healthy now.

[FLAprogressive]

8. As the old saying goes: "You know what they call alternative medicine that works? Medicine."

[CanSocDem]

16. Huh...???

"And over all these decades, not one noble whistleblower has emerged with the mountains of evidence showing us that SCAM works, pharmaceuticals don't."

Ever hear of Dr. Sidney Wolfe?? Ever hear of Public Citizen??

I'll help you with your research:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Sidney-M.-Wolfe/e/B001IGSMYQ/ref=ntt_dp_epwbk_0

http://www.nader.org/history/bollier_chapter_7.html

"Americans are 10-times more likely to be hospitalized from an adverse drug reaction than from a car crash. Drug reactions are the fourth-leading cause of death in the country. One of the worst cases in recent history -- the Vioxx disaster. The FDA pulled the arthritis drug off the market after linking it to heart attacks and thousands of deaths."

http://www.ivanhoe.com/channels/p_channelstory.cfm?storyid=21328

Google is your friend.

.

[FLAprogressive]

17. And how does this prove that sCAM works?

[Name removed]

20. Deleted message

Sub-thread removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[HuckleB]

18. .

http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/red-herring.html

[trotsky]

30. Yes, because you can only get true and accurate information from TEH GOOGLE.

But apart from that - I ask the same question as the poster above: where is SCAM proven in your links? You have offered up a nice red herring but I'm not interested in that.

[Name removed]

11. Deleted message

Sub-thread removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[SheilaT]

19. The placebo effect is powerful, no

matter what form it takes. Even in the western medicine, just the science and double-blind verifiable results form, the placebo effect will account for about thirty percent of improvement, cures, whatever. So any new medicine as to do a bunch better than that to be considered effective.

Even if all alternative medicine produced no better results than the placebo effect, that's strong enough to keep it going.

Not to mention, all of the studies that have been revisited in recent years, such as hormone replacement in menopausal women which is worse than doing nothing at all.

[HuckleB]

21. I don't think it's that simple.

http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2010/02/ben_goldacre_on_the_placebo_ef.php

Goldacre spells out things very clearly here, and spells the ethical issues (concisely) later in the video.


Further...

Placebo Effects Revisited
http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/?p=4304

"...

Let’s break this down a bit. First, they found that when you look at any objective or clinically important outcome – the kinds of things that would indicate a real biological effect – there is no discernible placebo effect. There is no mind-over-matter self healing that can be attributed to the placebo effect.

What the authors found is also most compatible with the hypothesis that placebo effects, as measured in clinical trials, are mostly due to bias. Specifically, significant placebo effects were found only for subjectively reported symptoms. Further, the size of this effect varied widely among trials.

This latter feature is very important. If there were a significant physiological placebo effect we would expect to see a consistent or baseline effect among trials. The tremendous variability suggests that it was the rigor of trial design that allowed for lesser or greater bias resulting in a measured placebo effect.

..."

[mzteris]

23. yeah yeah - that's why several health care providers

here in WI - including the UNIVERSITY OF WI Healthcare system - offers alternative and complementary medicine.

[Confusious]

24. Are there any alternative and complementary medicine surgeons? nt

[mzteris]

25. Ever heard of a D.O.? n/t

[Confusious]

28. No. Please explain.

Found it. Really doesn't qualify, since they have the same training as an MD.

Where are the homeopathic surgeons to help those in car accidents? Where is acupuncture to help those in car accidents? Where are those alternatives to heal those with real physical rips and breaks?

They don't exist, because if it's real, real science based medicine is the only that helps.

[mzteris]

31. So their "alternative & complementary" medicine is OK?

You don't know much about the training that acupuncturists and other alternative med providers receive, do you?

You might want to look up the requirements at a few schools. Four years or more of strenuous training & education. Same as an "MD".

[laconicsax]

33. So do lawyers.

Lawyers undergo years of strenuous training and education. Does that make them MDs?

Professional athletes undergo years and years of strenuous training and education. Does that make them MDs?

I've undergone years of strenuous training and education in music. Does that make me an MD?

[mzteris]

34. do they undergo years of training

that includes anatomy and physiology, immunology, serumology, etc.

lawyers study years but they're not mechanics. What a specious argument trying to compare apples to oranges and one that doesn't hold one drop of water.

[laconicsax]

35. No, and neither do acupuncturists.

I'm glad to hear that you agree that YOUR argument that years of study makes one equivalent to an MD is ridiculous.

[HuckleB]

27. And that means something because...?

:shrug:

[HysteryDiagnosis]

26. Such piffle. Truly it is.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20433812

Chem Biol Interact. 2010 Jul 30;186(2):219-27. Epub 2010 Apr 28.
Protective effects of Pycnogenol on hyperglycemia-induced oxidative damage in the liver of type 2 diabetic rats.

Parveen K, Khan MR, Mujeeb M, Siddiqui WA.

Department of Biochemistry, Lipid Metabolism Laboratory, Jamia Hamdard (Hamdard University), New Delhi 110062, India. [e-mail]
Abstract

Abnormal regulation of glucose and impaired carbohydrate utilization that result from a defective or deficient insulin are the key pathogenic events in type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM). Experimental and clinical studies have shown the antidiabetic effects of Pycnogenol (PYC). However, the protective effects of PYC on the liver, a major metabolic organ which primarily involves in glucose metabolism and maintains the normal blood glucose level in T2DM model have not been studied.

The present study evaluated the beneficial effect of PYC, French maritime pine bark extract, on hyperglycemia and oxidative damage in normal and diabetic rats. Diabetes was induced by feeding rats with a high-fat diet (HFD; 40%) for 2 weeks followed by an intraperitoneal (IP) injection of streptozotocin (STZ; 40 mg/kg; body weight). An IP dose of 10mg/kg PYC was given continually for 4 weeks after diabetes induction. At the end of the 4-week period, blood was drawn and the rats were then sacrificed, and their livers dissected for biochemical and histopathological assays.

In the HFD/STZ group, levels of glycosylated hemoglobin (HbA1c), significantly increased, while hepatic glycogen level decreased. PYC supplementation significantly reversed these parameters. Moreover, supplementation with PYC significantly ameliorated thiobarbituric reactive substances, malonaldehyde, protein carbonyl, glutathione and antioxidant enzymes in the liver of HFD/STZ rats. These results were supported with histopathological examinations.

Although detailed studies are required for the evaluation of the exact protective mechanism of PYC against diabetic complications, these preliminary experimental findings demonstrate that PYC exhibits antidiabetic effects in a rat model of type 2 DM by potentiating the antioxidant defense system. These finding supports the efficacy of PYC for diabetes management.

On edit to add:

Eur Child Adolesc Psychiatry. 2006 Sep;15(6):329-35. Epub 2006 May 13.
Treatment of ADHD with French maritime pine bark extract, Pycnogenol.

Trebatická J, Kopasová S, Hradecná Z, Cinovský K, Skodácek I, Suba J, Muchová J, Zitnanová I, Waczulíková I, Rohdewald P, Duracková Z.

Dept. of Child Psychiatry, Child University Hospital, Faculty of Medicine, Comenius University, Limbová 1, 833 40 Bratislava, Slovakia.
Abstract

Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) is the most common psychiatric disorder in children. Pycnogenol, an extract from the bark of the French maritime pine, consisting of phenolic acids, catechin, taxifolin and procyanidins, has shown improvement of ADHD in case reports and in an open study. Aim of the present study was to evaluate the effect of Pycnogenol on ADHD symptoms.

Sixty-one children were supplemented with 1 mg/kg/day Pycnogenol or placebo over a period of 4 weeks in a randomised, placebo-controlled, doubleblind study. Patients were examined at start of trial, 1 month after treatment and 1 month after end of treatment period by standard questionnaires: CAP (Child Attention Problems) teacher rating scale, Conner's Teacher Rating Scale (CTRS), the Conner's Parent Rating Scale (CPRS) and a modified Wechsler Intelligence Scale for children.

Results show that 1-month Pycnogenol administration caused a significant reduction of hyperactivity, improves attention and visual-motoric coordination and concentration of children with ADHD. In the placebo group no positive effects were found. One month after termination of Pycnogenol administration a relapse of symptoms was noted. Our results point to an option to use Pycnogenol as a natural supplement to relieve ADHD symptoms of children.

PMID: 16699814