h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

If I have understood the document linked below, the DoH wants to protect the titles of AltMed and doesn't want to acknowledge that by protecting the titles it will allow the misconception that the functional efficacy of the practices are also recognised.

Please read:
http://www.senseaboutscience.org.uk/PDF/OldWivesMed.pdf


Does anyone have further information on the DoH proposals?

Would anyone argue that this a progressive step? Or serves the public interest?

I think it serves the public interest. If people die because they prefer a snake-oil salesman to a doctor, it's weeding out the idiot genes.

Yes, it forces the scientific community to get off their backsides and test these methods properly.

Just because they're currently unable to explain the success of this medicine through their existing models doesn't qualify them to declare open season on it.

Yes, Icy, let's hope it does stir 'em up a bit.

Yes, but also, just like any other medical treatment, drug treatment etc, it can't just be used without having first gone through the same testing and criteria to ensure both its effectiveness and safety, as for all treatments on the NHS, which sadly seems to be the way it works at the moment, where its one rule for 'mainstream', or 'traditional' drugs and treatments, and another for ''alternative' treatments and 'drugs'. Unless that is carried out first*, as it has to be for all other treatments and drugs, I'd have thought anyone within the NHS recommending its use is just lining themselves up for legal action, especially if (and I hope this neer has happened or will happen), it is a parent requesting such treatment for their child... Which oughta just about be sufficient to amount to child abuse by the denial of proper treatment using tested and proven treatments/drugs..

So if I go to my GP and she suggests that instead of drugs, as a form of stress management I do things like exercise more, get outside more, have more fun, I should then ask for the meta-analysis of double blind randomised controlled trials studying the treatment Oh, and I think I'd like some longitudinal studies too thanks.

To suggest that all alternative healing methods and treatments are snake-oil is the worst kind of prejudice - it's elitist and based on ignorance and superstition (now there's an irony).

If you think that all pharmaceuticals etc that are used by the NHS are safe because they've been properly tested then you are ill informed and naive. Go look up the adverse reaction statistics, and find out what iatrogenesis is.

Sorry to be so grumpy, but I'm sick of the relative ignorance about these matters round here, and the use of science to support such prejudice and belief systems.

Jack, I can't make sense of the link. What is the actual issue you are raising?

So you'd be happy for a child dieing of cancer to be treated with homopathic remadys? because I wouldn't.

I never said and never have, that pharmacuticals have a 100% effecacy or success, that just isn't how pharmacutical drugs work, and your entirely missing the point if your saying you believe that anyone is naive enough to believe that.

The differnce is with, as you give an example of , exercise is something with a lot of research backing up its effecacy in helping with cettain medical problems, all I'm saying is, unless other treatments are analysed first, we can't use them and supply htem on the NHS; its not a level playing field, as any new pharmacuticle drug has to have such evidence before it can enter on the market, why should it be any differnt from the so-called alternative treatemtns.

And don't suppose I'm somone who's dead set against htem on principle or any such dogma, as I'm not.

> and the use of science to support such prejudice and belief systems.<

You may call it prejudice and belief systems. But how's this for a bit of reality. Last month a close friend topped himself. He was a very talented person IMO, and I had been in a performance group with him in the past. He was diagnosed with mild paranoid schizophrenia. He was forever wanting to come off his meds, and I could always tell when he had, because his totally irrational paranoia would take over. He'd accuse me of laughing at him and talking about him, when I was just chatting with others in his vicinity about something else entirely.

Science kept him alive and reasonably non paranoid. Last month he had been off his meds for a few weeks and got involved with some Budhist group; they got him meditating and doing yoga.

I understand where you are coming from kea, and I sometimes feel quite conflicted about these things as well.

Both my present excellent GP and psychiatrist always emphasise that any drug has side effects. They make no bones. They say its up to me to decide if I can live with the side effects, given the benefits. But any doctor will tell you that drugs have side effects. So it's cost benefits really and providing the patient is given *all the facts* and *statistics* so they can make an informed choice.

And yes where it involves a child I think science should be used because the clear evidence is, that that is the best way to judge the efficacy of something. When adults they can decide whether or not to use the scientific model as the main way of deciding, or to use it in a more limited way, providing *full facts are given about risk*.

Once alternative medicine is correctly tested just like 'conventional' medicine for it's efficacy then it becomes medicine...that's why it's called alternative medicine because it has no real efficacy past placebo. I'll not include all herbal medicine in that statement.

Scientific testing and methodology, double-blind testing, especially when it comes to medicines etc can be used, effectively to test alternative medicine, the fact that alternative medicine hasn't been proved to work isn't the fault of the methods but hte fact that it doesn't work.

Effers:



That's not alternative medicine though is it?

Protecting the titles gives an impression that they are credible practices.

Most alt-med is evidenceless nonsense, that is an elaborate hoax based on the placebo effect, at worse they are frauds, and at best they are honest but ill-informed do-gooders wasting their own time and people's money.

With most of these methods there are several schools, and I expect each one would claim to be the one true school. Should we accredit them all, or should we just accredit the one that is the most popular. Given that there is no evidence that any of them work, then how should we pick which one to accredit? If there are no facts to base good treatment on how can we set the standards.

Alt-med has been testing again and again, and again and again it has been shown not to work. In the US the National Center for Complementary and Alt Med has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars testing Alt med, and has not yet found one safe and effective treatment. Homeopathy has been tested repeatedly and not been found to be effective. Yet when alt-med proponents see these tests they say that 'well it didn't give the answer that we want, the tests are wrong'.

The scientific community has spent a great deal of time testing these medicines. And they have not been shown to work. If they want to spent more time testing them, then that's great. We will do. But we'll need some money to do it with. And that's money that could be spent on research that is more likely to lead to safe and effective treatments.

If the proponents of alt-med want better proof that it works then they should carry out tests themselves and learn to do it properly so it can be believed. But they won't, and the reason why the won't is because that they will not engage with the possibility that they are not-effective. If they were short of money they could do what cancer researchers do and form a charity that would raise money of the public. If their techniques were so good why don't people donate money?

Yes I would expect a doctor to give me advice based on science and evidence. I would expect the advice given to me to change based on the latest evidence. If instead they gave me advice based on their own experience then I would expect them to be honest and say that it was based on their experience, not on evidence.

Pharmaceutical drugs have side effects, that doesn't mean that alternative medicine works. I won't even deny that drug companies sometimes cover up the side effects, and are sometimes dishonest. I have been known to make drug reps cry when I pointed out the errors in their sales pitches. But the difference is that when Science Based Medicine is proved to be wrong then it changes it's practice. Sometimes it takes a long time to change it's practice, but it does actually change. Has homeopathy ever changed it's practice based on evidence?

Zed, do you have more info on the specific proposal that is being protested?

is retro phrenology an 'old wives tale' traditional medicine, i intend to become a practitioner when i retire!!!!

Oh, I should never join this discussion, but I am off my medication at the moment...

First things first: I do not know about the situation in Great Britain. I do not know how so-called alternative medicine is used - to what extend and by whom. So all my remarks here might miss some of the points that might be specific to the islands...

When in ancient Greece (or in Celtic regions, or wherever those old Germans hung around) somebody was suffering from pain, the snake-oil healer would sometimes make tea out of the bark of willow trees. The patient might be better soon. If I asked you to drink that kind of tea (freshly brewed, not fermented over the years from way back in ancient Greece), would you think me a snake-oil healer? Please don't. What is found in that bark is just the compound that is used in Aspirin today. "Modern medicine" uses "old medicine" here, for sure.

If I asked you to take a little concoction made of some anal secretion of a certain type of beaver - that would sure be beaver-faeces medicine? It would be, yes, but the active agent is - again - the same that is used in Aspirin.

If I I run through a field in early summer and my eyes go red and watery - I can take some anti-allergic stuff (I get better soon). But the same result (I get better soon) sets in if I take a specific homeopathic little sugar pill. What helps? In that field out there, with red and watery eyes, *I don't care* what does the trick. Is it the C21H25ClN2O3 from the pharmacy? Or something that critics don't trre to point out can no longer even be measured in the sugar pill? Or is it only due to the placebo effect? Whatever it is - my eyes no longer run and I feel fine and I can enjoy the sun and the nice field. There, isn't that lovely. (With the C21H25ClN2O3 from the pharmacy, there is, of course, the chance that it makes me too tired to enjoy the sun and the field, if I am the one out of a hundred who react that way.)

Would I suggest a cancer patient ought to drink herbal tea instead of doing chemo? No way, I would not. Would I suggest someone suffering from depressions should go off his antidepressants? No way, I would not. Should a doctor prescribe antibiotics if you have the flu? No way, he should not!

And why not? Because the flu caused by viruses (or viri, for grammar people like me), antibiotics only fight bacteria. So why is it that several doctors I know did prescribe antibiotics? But incompetence is a different matter, of course.

What bugs me is that over-happy use of antibiotics. There are so many multiresistant pathogens, and their number is increasing. By giving antibiotics so freely, doctors actually increase the likelihood of even more multiresistant strains. Which means that at a time you might actually really do need an antibiotic, it might no longer help...

Dismissing "Alternative Medicine" because it "can't help because it is not real medicine" (this is a quote, really it is) is stupid. There *are* active ingredients in (some, not all, I guess) alternative medication. Dismissing homeopathy because "it only works because of the placebo effect" is also stupid - if it does work. And there are more than five people on this planet who are sure that it does. And as long as a person feels better, it does not matter why he does.

As to the imaginary victim of depressions mentioned earlier... His greatest chance of overcoming his disease is not in forever taking his pills, but in actually changing the things in his life that made him develop depressions. Our imaginary cancer patient might also want to consider another look at his life - are there things that could do with a change?

Ah... and now I am all worked up and don't remember what I really wanted to write. Time to take my meds, I guess.

Y.

When Ben Elton, Rik Mayall, etc started out, they labelled them 'Alternative Comedy'.

It's kind of mainstream now.

They were of course still comedians. Alternative medicine is an alternative to medicine.

>>but the active agent is - again - the same that is used in Aspirin.

Note though that willow bark tea would contain and actual active ingredient.

Anyone claiming that it harnessed the power of good spirits, or altered flow of energies or interacted with the spine would be talking nonsense.


Note also that Aspirin would struggle to get past the hurdles of safety for science based medicine if it were only being discovered today.
It is no longer acceptable to use it on children because of the risks to health.

But it does have it origins in traditional remedies. Which only serves to highlight the flaws in trusting to traditional remedies.

>>Anyone claiming that it harnessed the power of good spirits, or altered flow of energies or interacted with the spine would be talking nonsense.<<

As I said, I do not know what specific things are making the rounds in your place. And if anything like that was offered to me in a visit at my physician's, I would not be favorably impressed.

At the same time... whatever the "power of good spirits" is supposed to be, how can the existence of such powers be ruled out? Does not being able to measure anything mean that there *is* nothing? (Mind you, this is more of a methodological question.) In, say, 2024 BC (whatever *do* you say in English to point to a point "BC" without using that Christ reference?), if you did not have any iron fillings on you, how would you detect a magnetic field? And if you were unable to detect it, does that mean that there was no magnetic field? But anyway, I am not trying to defend "good spirits". I guess this is about that Hamlet thingy... more things in heaven and earth and whatnot.

Does the above make me sound like some New Agey tree-hugging Wiccan?

Y - only partly tongue-in-cheek. And don't ask whose cheek.

Previously to the point at which drugs had to be fully tested before being given to people then anything would be called medicine...once double-blind testing came in with rigorous testing regimes anything that was shown to have a definite provable efficacy was labelled medicine...anything that couldn't show this was called...something that did not work...unless of course certain people could sell it to other people and persuade them it could work in which case those people called it 'alternative medicine'...

Hence, the aspirin comment etc really doesn't back up the alternative medicine argument.

>>As I said, I do not know what specific things are making the rounds in your place.

You could read the file linked to in the original post, which is the subject of the conversation.

>>whatever *do* you say in English to point to a point "BC" without using that Christ reference?

BCE - Before the Common Era


>>At the same time... whatever the "power of good spirits" is supposed to be, how can the existence of such powers be ruled out? Does not being able to measure anything mean that there *is* nothing?

Sticking to willow bark, acetylsalicylic acid has been identified as the active ingredient, the part that has pain relieving effects, and the mechanism of how it works is understood and described.
Whilst "good spirits" by definition cannot be ruled out in absolute terms, they also by definition are highly implausible.

There is no mechanism for Magic Water to work.
There is no mechanism Spine Wizardry to work.
And Feng Pin-Cushion can't even agree on what mechanism they're claiming to use.

With TCM some of the things that use could have useful ingredients, but they have unforeseen side-effects, or interaction with any real medication.
The way to deal with that is to test for and isolate anything useful and then synthesise without invading ecosystems.