I often like to post music at the end of my posts because I like spreading good music (or what I consider good music) as much as I like spreading good ideas (or what I consider good ideas). I’m going to start posting the music at the beginning of the post so it’s easier to listen to it while reading. Enjoy!

 
Bizness–tUnE-yArDs

 

Holy smokes! I wrote a rebuttal last week about the pro-alternative medicine article David Freeman wrote recently in the Atlantic. I should have been paying closer attention because a whole string of rebuttals, prebuttals and everything in between has been published by the Atlantic here. I don’t have time to go through the whole thing but here are couple comments I’ve chanced upon.

Firstly, Freeman openly admits that what we’re talking about here is the placebo effect:

I contend, as do many highly credentialed mainstream physicians and researchers, that the core physical treatments of alternative medicine may do little more than deliver a placebo effect, but that this placebo effect can have a large positive impact on health.

That is exactly my point. Why is this debate about why we have to choose between placebo effects and modern medicine (which also includes the placebo effect)? Shouldn’t it be about how we can incorporate this placebo effect into modern medicine more effectively. And, no, I don’t think the best way to do that is by increasing participation in alternative medicine. As Dr. Steven Salzberg rightly points out:

He [Freemand] accurately describes how conventional medicine often fails its patients by focusing too much on drugs and surgery, and how doctors don’t always spend enough time listening to their patients. It’s true that modern medicine has many failings, but alternative medicine is not the answer. We do need to find ways to fix what’s wrong with the practice of medicine, but not by turning to fairy tales.

In my post last week I also mentioned that alternative medicine is heavy on anecdotes, short on actual evidence–that they use studies to discredit modern medicine, ignore studies that discredit alternative medicine, the use anecdotes to promote alternative medicine and ignore anecdotes that support modern medicine. Talk about cherry picking evidence. While an anecdote remains anecdote (and, as is often said, the plural of anecdote is not data), Salzberg dishes out some unflattering anecdotes about alternative medicine including:

Kristi Bedenbaugh was a healthy 24-year-old medical office administrator and former beauty queen in South Carolina when, in 1993, she visited a chiropractor for her sinus headaches. During her second visit, she suffered a stroke immediately after the chiropractor manipulated her neck. She died three days later. An autopsy showed that the chiropracter’s manipulation had split the inside walls of both of her vertebral arteries. The chiropractor later agreed to pay a $1000 fine and take 12 extra hours of continuing education credits.

Anecdotes can cut both ways–although we shouldn’t be making medical decisions based on anecdotes anyway unless there is absolutely no other evidence to go on.

That’s all I have time for right now but the debate rages on at the Atlantic.