Trick or Treatment—The Undeniable Facts about Alternative Medicine (Electronic book text)

Even before the principles of evidence-based medicine were formalized, Lind, Hamilton, Louis, Nightingale, Hill and Doll, and hundreds of other medical researchers used the same approach to decide what works (lemons for scurvy), what does not work (bloodletting), what prevents disease (hygiene) and what triggers disease (smoking). The entire framework of modern medicine has emerged thanks to these medical researchers who used scientific methods such as clinical trials to gather evidence in order to get to the truth. Now we can find out what happens when this approach is applied to alternative medicine.

Alternative medicine claims to be able to treat the same illnesses and diseases that conventional medicine tries to tackle, and we can test these claims by evaluating the evidence. Any alternative treatment that turns out to be effective for a particular condition can then be compared with conventional medicines to decide if the alternative should be used partially or wholly to replace the conventional.

We are confident that we will be able to offer reliable conclusions about the value of the various alternative therapies, because many researchers have already been conducting trials and gathering evidence. In fact, there have been thousands of clinical trials to determine the efficacy of alternative therapies. Some of them have been conducted with great rigour on large populations of patients and then independently replicated, so the overall conclusions can be relied upon. The remaining chapters of this book are devoted to analysing the results of these trials across a whole range of alternative therapies. Our goal is to examine the evidence and then tell you which therapies work and which ones fail, which ones are safe and which ones are dangerous.

At this early stage of the book, many alternative therapists might feel optimistic that their particular therapy will emerge triumphant when we analyse the data concerning its efficacy. After all, these alternative therapists can probably identify with the mavericks that have populated this chapter.

Florence Nightingale would have been perceived as a maverick during her early career, because she was prioritizing hygiene when everybody else involved in healthcare was focused on other things, such as surgery and pills. But she proved that she was right and that the establishment was wrong.

James Lind was also a maverick who turned out to be right, because he showed that lemons were effective for scurvy when the medical establishment was promoting all sorts of other remedies. Alexander Hamilton was another maverick who knew more than the establishment, because he argued against bloodletting in an era when bleeding was a standard procedure. And Hill and Doll were mavericks, because they showed that smoking was a surprisingly deadly indulgence, and moreover they produced data that stood up against the powerful interests of the cigarette industry.

Such heroic mavericks pepper the history of medicine and they also act as powerful role models for modern mavericks, including alternative therapists. Acupuncturists, homeopaths and other practitioners rail against the establishment with theories and therapies that run counter to our current understanding of medicine, and they loudly proclaim that the establishment does not understand them. These therapists predict that, one day, the establishment will acknowledge their apparently strange ideas. They believe that they will earn their own rightful place in the history books, alongside Nightingale, Lind, Hamilton, Hill and Doll. Unfortunately, these alternative therapists ought to realize that only a minority of mavericks ever turn out to be on the right track. Most mavericks are simply deluded and wrong.

Alternative therapists might be excited by a line from George Bernard Shaw’s play Annajanska, the Bolshevik Empress, in which the Grand Duchess points out: ‘All great truths begin as blasphemies.’ However, they might be less encouraged by the caveat that should accompany this line: ‘Not all blasphemies become great truths.’

Perhaps one of the best reasons to categorize a medical treatment as alternative is if the establishment views it as blasphemous. In this context, the aim of our book is to evaluate the scientific evidence that relates to each alternative treatment to see if it is a blasphemy on the path to revolutionizing medicine or if it is a blasphemy that is destined to remain in the cul-de-sac of crazy ideas.

2 The Truth About Acupuncture

‘There must be something to acupuncture

— you never see any sick porcupines.’

Bob Goddard

Acupuncture