"There cannot be two kinds of medicine, conventional and alternative. There is only medicine that has been adequately tested and medicine that has not, medicine that works and medicine that may or may not work."—The New England Journal of Medicine, 1998
.....On Fridays, I receive my weekly edition of What’s New?, written by physicist Bob Park......Last Friday, Bob reported on the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM). Evidently, a woman named Josephine Briggs has now replaced Stephen Straus as director of the organization. Writes Park, she “is expected to continue his policy of rigorous science.”
.....The skeptical and scientific-minded Park is a fan of the NCCAM. How come? Aren’t good critical thinkers foes of “alternative medicine”? Yup.
.....When Straus died seven months ago, Park reported:
[As the first director of the NCCAM, Straus’s] task was to turn the quack-dominated Office of Alternative Medicine [OAM], created by Congress, into a scientific center. He did it with grace, the only way possible, subjecting one quack cure after another to randomized double-blind tests, while enduring attacks from scientists who thought he moved too slowly. One after another all failed.
.....Wikipedia explains thatNCCAM was established in October 1991, as the Office of Alternative Medicine, which was re-established as NCCAM in October 1998. Its mission statement declares that it is "dedicated to exploring complementary and alternative healing practices in the context of rigorous science; training complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) researchers; and disseminating authoritative information to the public and professionals.".....—“In the context of rigorous science.” That’s the crux.
.....Wikipedia explains that the NCCAM does have its critics:
Critics attest that despite the publicized intentions at its founding, NCCAM and its predecessor, the Office of Alternative Medicine, have spent more than $800 million on … research since 1991 but have neither succeeded in scientifically demonstrating the efficacy of a single alternative method nor declared any alternative medicine treatment effective.
.....Surprise, surprise!.....As I recall, Park approves of NCCAM on the grounds that, though research on CAMs is arguably a total waste of time and money, the operation of NCCAM—i.e., its systematically putting CAMs to the test with scientific rigor—is the best way to teach the public what it otherwise will not learn.
.....And what’s that?
.....This shit doesn’t work. OK? It would be great if it did, but it doesn't.
.....Long live the NCCAM! Well, sorta.
3 comments:
Yes, but, if people try something and they get better, because it has some mental component, then the fact that "scientifically" it can't be proved is immaterial, right?
There is something to that, I suppose. But:
(1) it is not entirely clear (in the case of CAMs) that there is always a "mental component." The placebo effect is one explanation (if, that is, the PE exists, which is now questionable) for "improvement," but it is not the only one. Most maladies improve spontaneously--i.e., "by themselves." (2) The chief argument against "alternative" remedies and cures has always been that they produce the phenomenon that sufferers will fail to pursue medicine (i.e., science-based approaches) in favor of "alternative" approaches. Sometimes, the phenomenon is "harmless"; at other times--as in the case of Bob Marley, to cite a celebrated instance--it is not. (3) Even granting (which I do not grant) that the placebo effect is a powerful mechanism, surely the fact that people delude themselves by embracing pseudoscience is not "immaterial." If people will embrace pseudoscience here, why not elsewhere--e.g., in the case of global warming or the "dangers" of fluoridation? Nope, in a democratic society, the embrace of irrationality should be OPPOSED.
Re doubts about the placebo effect, see The New England Journal of Medicine
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