I just wanted to take one example, and put it out there, on how effective and ethical some branches of alternative medicine can be. So I'm going to highlight an individual practitioner. There's a man called Matthias Rath. Matthias Rath believes in nutrionism. He is an avid campaigner for the treatment of AIDS in Africa and has had a huge influence on shaping the way that treatment in South Africa is applied. He is a large part of the reason why the South African government were recommending the potato, garlic and similar treatments for AIDS. They also refused to accept large donations of anti-retrovirals based largely upon his organisations campaigning. He has attempted to sue Medicins Sans Frontieres when they criticised his campaigning. One of the ex-members of his organisation attempted to get the head of the TAC tried under the international criminal court for genocide - for promoting anti-retrovirals as an effective treatment which would prevent hundreds of thousands of deaths per year. He also recommends nutritional solutions (alone, it should be pointed out, warning people off the evidence-based treatments we have) to cancer and heart failure. He has accused the pharmaceutical industry of engineering World War II, and Apartheid. In 2001 he was awarded the Bulwark of Liberty Award by the American Preventive Medical Association and National Foundation for Alternative Medicine. In 2004 the Swiss Study Group for Complementary and Alternative Methods in Cancer examined his vitamin supplements, and claims, and announced that there was "no proof that the vitamin preparations of Dr. Matthias Rath have any effect on human cancer" and advised against them, although they did recommend that everyone suffering from disease eat a healthy, balanced diet. In May 2005 study authors from Harvard released a statement condemning his use of their study as a method to promote his multivitamin treatments for AIDS. In 1998 the British Medical Journal examined 40 citations used to promote his products. They found that only 8 were of actual clinical trials, and were determined not to show support for the claims he was making in any case. The World Health Organisation, UNICEF and UNAIDS have issued statements to the effect that they have never endorsed his treatments, despite his claims to the contrary. The Foundation for Alternative and Integrative Medicine mentions his recommendations as 'controversial', but does not mention any criticisms of his multivitamin treatment recommendations. Cancertutor.com - a natural cancer treatments website - lauds his efforts and appears to promote his treatment. The Natural Health Freedom Movement, headed by Matthias Rath, is currently lobbying congress to gain legislative support for their views - http://www.prweb.com/releases/Natural_Alternatives/DSHEA_Health/prweb2579014.htm The EnCognitive site (another natural health site) also lauds his multivitamin cancer treatments and criticises chemotherapy as being actively harmful. More on Matthias Rath - http://www.badscience.net/2009/04/matthias-rath-steal-this-chapter/
Didn't jinkan already make this thread? :s My views on this are put together like clockwork by the words of Tim Minchin: "Alternative medicine has either been proved not to work, or not been proved to work. Alternative medicine that has been proved to work is called medicine." I suppose that in this case, it was just proved not to work. Shows how damaging it can be though, many lives could have been saved.
Nope - jinkan's thread was in support of alternative medicine - specifically Chinese. To be honest it's more to highlight why I (and others) are sometimes so vigorously anti-woo. A little bit of woo nonsense here has been responsible for an estimated 330 000 unnecessary deaths in just a few years, as well as an unbelievable number of HIV infections which could have been prevented had proper advice been followed at the beginning. When people recommend things like accupuncture, homeopathy, reiki, unproven herbal remedies, multivitamin treatments, fish oil, leeches, foot baths, magnetic bracelets, crystals, and other such they are not merely sucking money away from the desperate and gullible, they are actively trying to peddle the sort of nonsense above - although admittedly it's rare for it to get to that sort of scale. Incidentally, a few years ago Rath opened up operations in Russia which has a rising incidence of HIV to sell his multivitamins as a cure and (most likely) continue to spread propoganda about anti-retroviral treatments.
Yep, some people's lives are in the hands of others, and they waste them in the most stupid ways. I have to disagree with you on fish oil though, cod liver oil has been proven to be beneficial, if not least because of it's vitamin and omega 3 content: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/1817974.stm
I don't think that Bunny was saying fish oil has no nutritional value, but that it's value as a medical treatment/cure is on par with the other treatments/cures he listed.
No, it hasn't. From that very article: While this is useful research, and highlights an area to continue researching, it proves absolutely nothing about fish oil being beneficial to humans. What it does show is that if you isolate parts of a human (in this case knees removed from their host) a certain effect occurs, which is interesting in its own right. Of course, it's a single study so can't really be counted as constituting 'proof'. Now what would be really needed here would be a randomised, controlled, blinded study using a large range of people and evaluating progress over a long period of time. Then we could say whether there was any evidence for the benefits of fish oil supplements. Sticking some bone in a test tube and sloshing some chemicals on it proves nothing. If you put a piece of steak in coke overnight you'll find it gone in the morning, but coke doesn't eat away your stomach overnight. Also there's absolutely no reason to think that supplements would have the same effect as directly applying vast dosages of fish oil to the bone. So no, that's not proof.
I'm only just now reading about Matthias Rath, but he appears to be a total extremist. I know you've stated otherwise, but the argument you've been making seems to be using an extremist to condemn the larger alternative medicine community as a whole, and that could be considered academically dishonest. In America, holistic medical doctors have graduated medical school, use modern lab tests, prescribe pharmaceuticals, and use surgeries. They also graduated a holistic medical school, studied herbs and supplements to recommend in addition to conventional methods, and explore therapies outside the scope of traditional medicine based on any positive results in academic literature. In fact, many therapies holistic MDs use were the old conventional therapies before pharmaceuticals became fashionable, and are encouraged because they lack the side-effects of digested medicines. An extremist who advocates only vitamins for everything doesn't disqualify the positive results in studies that support certain vitamins as effective at treating certain diseases. He also doesn't disqualify the more reasonable practitioners of all "alternative" medicine. Just pointing this out for counter-balancing purposes. I'm not sure what exactly his nutritional methods are, but I just wanted to point out that Dr. Dean Ornish proved that diet, exercise, and reduction in stress alone could reverse heart disease and cancer in patients who were advised to use surgery and pharmaceuticals instead. His results were so productive that his lifestyle therapy was approved by Medicare in the US, the first time any lifestyle management has ever been approved by Medicare health insurance in the history of the program. His methods also lengthened the telomeres of the patients in the study, something no pharmaceuticals has ever done, and which science believes increases an organisms lifespan. Again, I'm not sure what vitamins he recommends for cancer treatment, but if it's megadosing vitamin C that is being discussed, that isn't a new idea and it certainly wasn't his. Megadosing vitamin C is being researched to treat a broad variety of diseases presently (cancer most popularly), and apparently the results are positive with some studies for some diseases, and negative in other studies, so there is some controversy over which group is correct. There are state-of-the-art cancer treatment centers in Mexico that infuse vitamin C solutions by IV in their cancer patients and claim positive results. Not saying it works, just saying it's a more complicated topic than one extremists work might indicate. He may be recommending something very different though, so I apologize if I guessed incorrectly. Er, not all of those things are equal in their lack of scientific validity. As I've pointed out before, acupuncture is supported in medical literature as effective in treating certain conditions. You can believe it's science fiction all you want, but until you dispute the academic literature supporting it using the scientific method, it's just conjecture to say all acupuncture is useless in treating all things. Multivitamin treatments do work to treat certain diseases. I'm not saying whatever this Rath guy is recommending isn't terrible advice, I'm just pointing out that his abuse of scientific information doesn't invalidate all of that information itself. http://www.foodconsumer.org/newsite/Nutrition/Vitamins/vitamin_c_e_supplements_0315120825.html http://www.foodconsumer.org/newsite/Nutrition/Vitamins/vitamin_c_helps_diabetes_0114120750.html http://www.prnewswire.com/news-rele...-of-mortality---study-confirms-132607998.html http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/09/100923125123.htm http://www.news-medical.net/news/20110818/Vitamin-C-shows-promise-against-Alzheimers-disease.aspx Also, fish oil IS supported in academic journals. I've personally used it to correct a medical problem (with another supplement) and found it to be more effective, verifiably, than the pharmaceuticals I was using to treat the same condition. It was significantly more effective, had no side-effects, and was cheaper. Not saying it works for everything, but it definitely worked for me and my medical records substantiate it. In fact, all my conventional MDs recommended I keep taking it because it was obviously working well enough for them to notice. Leeches ARE presently used in modern medicine. That's not alternative medicine, that's modern First World hospitals. Perhaps you were just joking about medieval leechings though. Comparing those things to homeopathy, magnetic bracelets, and crystals despite the literature in support of them is going too extreme in the opposite direction from this Rath character.
