I remain skeptical of medicine, but there is a particular kind of emotional/intellectual scam that is practiced by some alternative medicine practitioners, akin to what Yvain cautions.
Particularly when the standard, tested regimen (say chemo + radiation for cancer) has miserable side effects, it's tempting to go instead for the herbal remedy (or the like).
But until those alternative treatments are subjected to large trials, what we're trading, basically, is the flawed, but at least somewhat familiar and certainly broad-based approach of medical research fo... (read more)
I remain skeptical of medicine, but there is a particular kind of emotional/intellectual scam that is practiced by some alternative medicine practitioners, akin to what Yvain cautions.
Particularly when the standard, tested regimen (say chemo + radiation for cancer) has miserable side effects, it's tempting to go instead for the herbal remedy (or the like).
But until those alternative treatments are subjected to large trials, what we're trading, basically, is the flawed, but at least somewhat familiar and certainly broad-based approach of medical research fo... (read more)