Wednesday, January 14, 2009

You Say 'Homeopathy', I Say 'Placebo'...

Or sugar pill...

Alternative medicine fascinates me; I hold some (reasonably) strong opinions about alternative therapies. As ,it seems, do lots of people.

I freely admit that I am not the most open-minded of individuals. My training is all in Western Orthodox medicine; so I am biased.

However, I am prepared to recognise that just because I don't believe in something, does not make it untrue.

But I do place a lot of faith in scientific method, and the assessment of therapies through randomised controlled trials. If something works, it should be demonstrable under controlled conditions.

Shouldn't it?

Whatever works for you is fine by me, even if I don't agree with it, or believe in it...

But it does seem to me that some of these therapies exploit people, or, in the worst cases, prevent them from accessing treatment strategies that are proven.

Can't we all work together?

2 comments:

Kate said...

Your title cracked me up!

Steph Nile said...

Giving a remedy to a friend and seeing it work is enough for me for the time being. It's a start, but its clearly not enough to convince someone who is dead against it.

We sorely need to share information; a Clinical Database would be wonderful. But Clinical Trials? Phew! Who would fund? Not drug companies, that's for sure!
(Student Homeopath)