The Truth About Alternative Medicine

Expert doctors Steven Novella, Harriet Hall, David Gorski, and Rachel Dunlop discuss so-called “alternative” medicine. What kinds of treatments does that term include? Are these treatments effective or even ethical? How can practitioners be held accountable for the services they provide? Plus, questions from the live audience at TAM 2012.

Alternative medicine is any practice claiming to heal “that does not fall within the realm of conventional medicine.” It may be based on historical or cultural traditions, rather than on scientific evidence.

Alternative medicine is frequently grouped with complementary medicine or integrative medicine, which, in general, refers to the same interventions when used in conjunction with mainstream techniques under the umbrella term complementary and alternative medicine, or CAM.

Critics maintain that the terms “complementary” and “alternative medicine” are deceptive euphemisms meant to give an impression of medical authority.

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Robster
I watched half of this then I turned it off and my humble comment is: This is utter crap! (at least the first 24min, as I pride my scientific side I wont say anything about the later half as I have no knowledge of it).
I see my selves as a true skeptic and truth seeker, but this just made me angry.
First of, why have you made a panel out of four people with EXACTLY the same viewpoint (though perhaps regional differences) that sit around bragging on who of them are able to point their finger and laugh hardest… If nothing else I found that extremely boring.
I was expecting actual science and so far I heard NONE. Instead of sitting around saying “I already know the truth, so why bother” You should say.
“I made this large study, we took 1000 patients with different stages of cancer (as the severity of cancer is very hard to judge the only way we feel confident gives us good data is to have a large dataset and let the statistics speak) and we monitored them though out the whole treatment and for a long time after.
500 of them was using only scientific medicine and the other 500 was fully participating in the standard medicine but these where people that by them selves also chose to compliment with *pick something, homeopathy for instance*. We kept track of the size of the tumor, in how many patients the cancer reoccurred, their physical and psychological wellbeing. Now after 10 years of following all these people we can determine that homeopathy has NO effect what so ever on the size of the tumor but some people seem to *insert what ever interesting you have found (a guess from me could be psychological wellbeing was reported higher in group x).”
This for me is science!
You guys are not skeptics, you are fundamentalist believers, the only difference between you and religious fanatics is, and I am sorry to say this, you are probably right in many instances, but that is not to say in everything!
I personally do not believe in many practices of cam (maybe not even one) but I am poorly educated in the subject so I refrain from telling other people what to do. If my mother got cancer and she wished to pray to god, use homeopathy and acupuncture I would not tell her to stop unless I believed it to have negative impacts on the things that I do understand. Like skipping regular treatment or if it had a financial impact that in any way was bothersome.
Do not ever question the power of the mind, i “know” homeopathy does not work on me as I do not believe in it, but that does not say that your experience will be the same!
I know some some more things, pharmaceutical companies are driven by profit (what else?!) and if there is some herb out there that cant be patented there wont be much study into the effects, why bother, you cant make any money out of it!
If you are a true skeptic keep your mind open! Be proud every time you change your opinion of something, that usually means you now know more then you did before and you have IMPROVED you knowledge, nothing is sacred.
Every thing is just believes, some have a good foundation and are unlikely to change ( I do firmly believe in gravity for instance, but we could live as a Matrix battery in a universe without gravity, so I am only 99.99999999999999999999% sure gravity is true) this does not mean I will jump out from a window and believe I can fly, but if you presented me with enough strong evidence that gravity is false I would change my belief!
Ps if you die in the Matrix…. means I would still not jump from a window….ds
To the people involved in this panel, please watch this
http://keentalks.com/what-doctors-dont-know-about-the-drugs-they-prescribe/
and you might learn something new instead of sitting around nodding and patting each others shoulders (might not get you as many free drinks, trips or other bribes at the next doctor convention though)
Simon Gramstrup
Such Angry comments. It’s always hard to hear someone arguing the opposite of your own viewpoint without getting angry, but it seems a little bit ‘over the top’??
http://profile.yahoo.com/MHT6CPANVJYSKXMZCM4KDVO54I Hector Cabrera
I have watched this video with special attention and my only conclusion is that this is a conversation between four MD interested in keeping their monopoly over knowledge and sicence….
http://profile.yahoo.com/NL3XVSXYLZRWC4ICKADRUXOZ6U Armen
My dear PIG headed panel – education is not a privilege of a few filthy rich anymore. The vast majority of people are educated,have access to information and capable of forming their own opinions. The objective of this panel is protect and promote the monstrous pharma industry.
I had a good laugh listening to the opening few minutes. Thank you. Laughter is very therapeutic (I wander if it’s scientifically proven, I must be a quack thinking that laughter is good for you).
Simon Gramstrup
As short as i can:
1. As Harriet Hall briefly mentioned, our brains have evolved to make a connection between events/bits of knowledge whichever way it can.
2. Our brains don’t like cognitive dissonance.
What that means, is that left on our own we will collectively develop an enormous amount of theories about everything, and they will seem true to the people with that theory and ridiculous to those of other or opposing theories.
These theories includes (but are not limited to) CAM, Parapsychology, religion, capitalism/socialism, etc.
The way we do it is by being attracted to people or datasets with the same viewpoint, and repelled by the opposite viewpoint. We can all watch/read the same dataset and only extract the parts we agree on, we can extract early that the dataset are wrong and ignore the rest or we can ignore the source of a dataset if it fits our viewpoint. None of this is normally registered by ourself.
We have a certain amount of ‘pillars’ surrounding any theory/belief/viewpoint. Examples are datasets, social grouping (same viewpoint), tradition and rituals. You cannot change your viewpoint before some or most of the pillars go down. Which is why it can be impossible to change the mind of someone. The person cannot be TOLD that something is wrong, as this will produce a backfire-effect usually as anger. You can only change your mind if the viewpoint told produces less cognitive dissonance than before (ie ‘feels’ more true).
This is one of the reasons we develop and use the self-correcting scientific methods. Conventional medicine arrives from these methods. This method is not totally error-free, and unfortunately big business AND biased scientists are ‘mudding’ the results, but it IS self-correcting over time – and is the only game in town.
If you react in anger to this video, or what i say here, then ask yourself if you are biased by your own cognitive brain. as laid out here. I personally hate it when the scientific methods proves me wrong, but it usually makes sense when given time to reflect.
http://www.facebook.com/denise.rachel.9 Denise Rachel
I start feeling sick just reading this intro! WHAT? Many of us who have taken the time and made the effort to educate ourselves on health choices have found serious ethical, scientific, and moral flaws in “conventional” medicine. The greed, arrogance, stupidity, and outright dishonesty often displayed by those indoctrinated in the religion of “conventional” medicine is responsible for the mass migration toward holistic, natural, intelligent remedies. There is a revolution under way, and we are bravely declaring independence from our would-be overlords. I am doing everything I can to help myself and the people I love to avoid the dangers of this wrongly named “conventional” medicine.
Sherri Johnson
Wow! So much tongue-in-cheek opinion. Who sponsored THIS panel? So many “loaded” word choices, over simplifications, and unsubstantiated claims suggest an unstated agenda. There is a recent tendency to deny science evidence in order to maintain the status of big business. How is this not more of the same?
Teddy Mcd
A good doc with a panel of practically minded experts. They knowingly admit that for the most part they are preaching to the choir and can not convince hardened believers of CAM (Complementary and Alternative Medicine) of the inefficacy of the whole spectrum of Cam. So, and good for them, they direct their efforts to educate the undecided or fence sitters.