Tuesday, December 20, 2011

Alternative Medicine

Not even the US is immune from this disease.

Medicine is science, not art that can have alternative forms. There is one mainstream medicine and that is allopathic. The cost of not acknowledging this is as much as death.

12 comments:

muthu said...

Would be keen to hear Rajeev Srinivasan's views on this? Is he fully debunking Ayurveda as a stream of medicine? All those 'vaidyars' in Kerala are quacks??

Gandaragolaka said...

I second with Muthu. I too am eager to listen to what Rajeev has to say on this...

non-carborundum said...

Muthu

No, "he" is saying nothing of that sort. This is bizarre - like a complaint to the headmaster.

If you produce statistically significant results in double blind trials, then your cure becomes part of the allopathic system as well. This article (click on the title for link, in case you have not read it) and many others repeatedly demonstrate that alternative therapies rarely produce statistically significant results.

Homeopathy scores a perfect zero in double blind trials. Ayurveda has some victories like the Liv 52 drug and many supplements, yet, many hoaxes like mud packs etc. Like other alternative medicine practitioners, there is a good amount of quackery in Ayurveda.

Many people have this mentality of avoiding necessary allopathic cures and resort to alternative therapies to attempt to keep manageable diseases/conditions like diabetes and blood pressure under check. Often, they suffer grave damage that could likely have been avoided.

muthu said...

Good.. Threat of complaint to headmaster has brought the errant child in line! :)

On a serious note, your sentence "If you produce statistically significant results in double blind trials, then your cure becomes part of the allopathic system as well" is OUTRAGEOUS to put it mildly! How on earth does Liv52 become part of the "allopathic system"??? (This is the classical Western way - absorb what is good from other systems and claim it to be their own, and then discredit the source! Read 'Being Different' by Rajiv Malhotra recently?)

Statistics is an a#&. Doing trials on 50 people and extrapolating it on 5 billion people is nothing but a farce! Indian systems have evolved through empirical observations (alas without any records to support) over several generations! One may have to evolve scientifically valid but more relevant testing for Indian medicines (alternative medicines usually act over long period of time than allopathy). I havent seen too many "Indian" studies that debunk alternative medicines.. You may want to go and check who funded the captioned study - my guess is directly or indirectly the medical industrial complex of Uncle Sam!

BTW, am still curious to hear RS' opinion on this!

CVSMurty said...

Homeopathy worked well for me; it solved my amoebiasis problem and kept my prostrate gland enlargement problem under check. When a eye specialist suggested surgery to remove sties on the inner part of an eye lid, a homeopath gave me some medicine, which made it just vanish in a week. I can't agree that homeopathy is a hoax. It is known to cure chronic problems. I wouldn't, however, take chances for life-threatening diseases like hypertension or diabetes and would doubtless go in for allopathy.

non-carborundum said...

@Muthu

Did you just call Rajeev a Catholic School headmaster who makes children inerrant? Anyway, everyone knows that Rajeev is scared of me!

For your information, it was the creator of Homeopathy, Hahnemann, who coined the term Allopathy, which is a pejorative term which is used to describe (the then) Modern Medicine. It has been in use since.

http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-allopathic-medicine.htm

Oh.. also, Modern Medicine does not necessarily mean Western Medicine. Christian Science is a type of Western Medicine and full of nonsense as well. It even denies biological evolution.

About statistical trials: Yes, they have to be designed properly. Sample size influences the level of confidence in the data. The sample size is not always of the order of 50. There are metastudies of trials as well which include thousands of people. In fact, once in a while Homeopathic cures seem to work in an odd trial or two, and likewise do Ayurvedic, but metastudies seem not to be able to reject the null hypothesis that the drug/treatment has no significant effect.

There is no need to get all worked up and jingoistic like this. We do a disservice to Hindutva by failing to inculcate scientific temper and modifying past held beliefs if the evidence points in such a direction. Ayurveda is an ancient empirical form of medicine. Some of it is bound to be proven wrong. Whatever is right in it is adopted in Modern Medicine. Physicians recommend the breathing and meditation exercises in Yoga for instance because these have positive health effects. However, they caution against some of the stretching Asanas which are known to damage ligaments and tendons in the long run. None of these conclusions are arrived at through belief or anecdotally, but through trials and research on a given sample size of individuals. Do you have a better method?

@CVSMurthy

Can you allow for the possibility that it is the healing ability of your own body?

The link below describes the theory behind Homeopathy:

"Homeopathic treatments use substances that are thought to make the targeted diseases worse or at least cause the same symptoms, as their active ingredient but only administer it in an amazingly small quantity by repeatedly diluting the active ingredient in water over and over. If fact, the solution is diluted so much that it is nearly impossible for even one single molecule of the active ingredient to be in the “remedy” in most cases. In other words, homeopathic treatments are just plain water."

http://www.beatinggout.com/2009/04/the-truth-about-homeopathy/

Vijay said...

Studies and that tooo taken selectively can be shown to prove anything.

Allopathic medicines are expensive, in many cases causes harm, and are in many cases are also useless and if useful, then it is only of temporary nature. The only area modern medicine is is worthwhile is in surgery.

I personally used the humble aloe vera once and it saved me from graft recommended by a doctor. So there you go! And many individuals can narrate personal experiences .. which are more believable than studies.

Alternative medicine will continue to march on. For the simple reason that it is affordable (and in many cases free) and also works well and the cure permanent in many cases.

People cannot be dumbed down all these research studies anymore. They are aware of the dangerous side effects, the collusion between doctors, pharmacies, hospitals. How money moves and corrupts the entire system.

nizhal yoddha said...

there are several reasons to believe allopathy is not the ultimate answer. but i will start with just one word: "thalidomide".

this was supposed to be a harmless allopathic drug that would help women combat morning sickness. well, it turned out that it caused them to deliver horribly deformed babies -- some with brain damage, some without heads, and so on. the issue of unexpected side effects is always there with allopathy (with ayurveda also, but there it is less likely because ayurveda is based on centuries of acute observation, unlike in the case of new allopathic drugs invented last week by pfizer or somebody).

so allopathy is quite a bit about trial and error, and what is allopathic dogma today may well become allopathic laughing-stock tomorrow. a more current issue is that of prostate tests (and similarly mammograms). it has been dogma for some years that all men must undergo expensive, intrusive and not-more-than-35-percent effective surgical and other means to combat prostate cancer -- with side-effects including loss of bladder control and impotence. and lo and behold, this year comes a medical advisory board's finding that you should leave prostate cancer alone -- almost always you will die of other reasons before you die of prostate cancer, which is particularly slow-moving, and the alleged cure is worse than the disease!

so i think of allopathic medicine as something akin to the work of a car mechanic -- you try something, hope it works; if it doesn't, try something else. you have hypotheses, but you don't necessarily have an infallible answer. it is hardly a science, but more trial and error than anything else.

and non carborundum makes a cardinal error in confusing 'correlation' with 'causation'. this is the first issue. most of the so-called 'science' in allopathy is about statistics. but the fact that something is statistically correlated does not necessarily mean there is a causal relationship. one example: those with high cholesterol and high blood sugars are statistically more likely to develop cancer, but nobody can explain why.

secondly, there is a tendency in allopathy -- as in western science in general -- to use a descartian approach of reduction to the smallest element. which means they keep on trying to find the mechanical 'root cause' of every illness -- which totally ignores the issue that a human is not a robot. the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. in other words, you can't build a human simply by assembling all the raw materials in your body and saying "ok, now be a human" (sort of like the frankenstein monster). that intangible life force is still mysterious -- allopathy cannot explain it.

thirdly, there is the strange phenomenon that your mind has such an impact on your health. if someone says "i always catch a cold in the winter", they are much more likely to catch cold, even though this person and another who doesn't believe this are exposed to the same virus. similarly, the placebo effect: most of the time, the body cures itself. it is your belief that the alleged drug is fixing you that gets your body to fix itself.

contd...

nizhal yoddha said...

this is a big argument i have had in general with friends, about science vs. religion. science in general has its own dogmas and axioms, and you have to believe too. for instance, for a long time scientists believed absolutely in newtonian physics, which now looks quaint and foolish compared to quantum mechanics. but scientists believed in newtonian physics with absolute faith -- almost exactly the same as the absolute blind faith religious people have in god. i have claimed that 'science' is yet another religion that believes in certain things it claims can be 'proven'. but remember that the church had 'proved' 'scientifically' through complex epicycles and such that the earth was indeed the center of the universe. what happened to all that 'proof'? they in fact could explain all the movements of the visible planets using their complex schemes, but nevertheless they were still wrong.

at the root of all this is that magnificent idea called 'the uncertainty principle'. there is a limit to what you know and what you could possibly know. allopathy bangs its head ahead this wall, and has the vanity that it will lead us to *know* everything. it couldn't possibly succeed. it never will. therefore, allopathy shall forever remain at best a flawed model of reality.

there is no reason to believe that the underlying model of ayurveda -- which is that there is a certain 'balance' between different forces (vata, pitta, kapha) that needs to be maintained in equilibrium -- is any less or more valid than the cartesian vanity of allopathy. to be honest, though, i find it hard to find a similarly acceptable and satisfying model of homeopathy. so, for chronic disease, i think there is as much -- or more -- reason to seek ayurvedic cures as allopathic. one brilliant example is the use by dean ornish of ayurvedic regimens to reverse heart disease (which allopathic dogma had held was impossible -- you could only arrest it, never reverse it, they said).

allopathy, on the other hand, is quite good at acute disease. if your appendix bursts, or you need a tumor cut off, hey, allopathy is good.

the sum total is -- ok, you allopathic doctors can go ahead and beat me up now -- allopathy is good tactically (the car mechanic analog) but not as good strategically (fix long-term issues) as many people believe. allopathic dogma -- and general scientific dogma -- does not have any more validity than religious dogma.

muthu said...

Thanks for your revert.. Now, most of what you say makes sense.. Dont debunk entire medicine systems.. Evolve appropriate scientific measures, probably even incorporate empirical evidences using large scale studies and may codify practices that are allowed and more importantly, NOT allowed.

About your theory homoeopathy being sugar water, you fall into the same trap - apply the limited knowledge of Modern medicine about our biological functions and use that to debunk this entire system of medicine.. I have a live proof in my mother - allopathy suggested ONLY way to cure knee pain is knee replacement surgery! But then, after suffering for 6 years, she took homoeopathy and in 3 months, she can race me in my morning walk! And no, I cannot ascribe that to healing ability of her own body.. if it is, why not in 6 years, and why in these 3 months?

Same about a cyst in my voice box.. Allopathy suggested surgical removal.. I almost lost my voice every time I speak for more than 30 minutes (am a regular trainer)... With 1 year of homoeopathy, I got 99% relief. Now I can go on for 6 hours or more of training without any problem.. Here again, it is NOT natural ability of my body as I had suffered for 4-5 years before homoeopathy.. So, I definitely get jingoistic and vocal (pun intended) if someone debunks homoeopathy as sugar water!
I am sure there are millions of such empirical evidences..

witan said...

To those that continue to believe in the efficacy of "alternative medicine":
“The most costly of all follies is to believe passionately in the palpably not true.” — Henry Louis Mencken, 1880–1956
For those that are bamboozled by homoeopathy, my recommended reading is Oliver Wendel Holmes's famous essay “Homoeopathy and its kindred delusions”
I am conscious of the fact that it is extremely difficult to cure "alternative madness", and I would be satisfied with a success rate of one in a thousand.

Vijay said...

Dear Witan

It is not a question of believing in the "efficacy of alternative medicine".

I have personally experienced it.

From aloe vera, to reiki to spirulina, to chinese medicine to oil pulling. I also know the drawbacks of alternative medicine.

When I compare allopathy to alternative medicine.. I find allopathy does offer temporary respite.. but not longer term solutions. As I mentioned earlier a simple aloe vera growing behind my house was a cure for my burns for which the doctor had recommended skin graft!!

We also need to realize that not everything works for everybody. And further people keep jumping from treatment to another. And nowadays level of alternative treatment knowledge very low. So there are indeed pitfalls. That does not automatically equate to their being ineffective.