Best medicine for stopping quacks in their tracks is to use laws we have
TD AND pharmacist Kate O’Connell is proposing a law targeting quack doctors selling fake cancer cures. She plans on publishing a bill next month making it a criminal offence to advertise or offer a cancer treatment that has not proven effective by medical trial.
It’s a great start, but why limit the new law just to cancer treatment?
Yes, quack cancer cures are a big racket. Type “cure cancer alternative medicine” into Google and you’ll get around 1,220,000 results. But various other alternative therapies are a massive industry too, despite little or no evidence of their effectiveness.
The alternative or complementary field covers a vast range of therapies, many of which have nothing in common with each other apart from the fact they are considered as being outside conventional medical practice.
You see, ‘alternative medicine’ is itself an odd concept in that there are really only three kinds of medicine: medicine that is proven to work, medicine that is proven not to work, and medicine that has not been conclusively studied.
If alternative medicine actually worked, it would be called ‘medicine’, to paraphrase Dara Ó Briain. He has said: “Oh, herbal medicine’s been around for thousands of years!
“Indeed it has, and then we tested it all, and the stuff that worked became ‘medicine’. And the rest of it is just a nice bowl of soup and some potpourri, so knock yourselves out.”
But does it actually matter if a therapy can be scientifically proven to work once the person using it feels a benefit and no harm is done, except to their wallet?
Yes, it matters. The problem with alternative treatments – aside from expense and risk of adverse effects – is they might sidetrack sick people from real, scientifically proven therapies.
Science has long decried acupuncture, acupressure, homeopathy and the like as dangerous nonsense that preys on the gullible. Again and again, carefully controlled studies have shown alternative medicine works no better than a placebo.
Therapies like distance healing and crystals have zero scientific mechanism by which they can cure anything. Take homoeopathy – it uses solutions so dilute that patients are, in effect, drinking pure water.
Recently, a working group by Australia’s National Health and Medical Research Council reviewed 176 trials of homeopathy in 68 different illnesses and conditions to see if the practice worked.
Writing about the study for the ‘British Medical Journal’, group chair Professor Paul Glasziou concluded that homeopathy has “no discernible convincing effects”. It was found to be effective for zero out of 68 illnesses.
Some unfortunate cancer patients have died after avoiding lifesaving chemo for ketogenic diets or coffee enemas. And when you buy a herbal medicine you have no clue how much active ingredient is in it, or if it will interact harmfully with any other medicines you are already taking.
The first thing you need to know about any sort of medical treatment is if it works or not. The evidence comparing alternative therapies with conventional medicine is clear: Modern medicine is not perfect, but alternative approaches are useless.
Alternative medicine’s biggest selling point is that it’s been used for centuries but there are a lot of ancient medicinal cures we don’t use any more. We don’t eat dried mummy powder and we generally don’t use leeches.
Alternative practitioners also forget symptoms can improve for a range of reasons, like just allowing an illness to run its course. Your shoulder pain will likely go away after a few weeks or days, regardless of whether you have a few acupuncture sessions, drink a potion or not.
Only rigorously controlled trials can tell us whether the therapy or other factors caused the observed outcome and the fact some patients swear by acupuncture is not proof that it works.
Doctors and the pharmaceutical industry have perfected the treatment of illness and disease, but their backgrounds are that of science, research and logic. Alternative medicine’s background is the opposite of all these things.
The thing is, when you enter the realms of health or science you actually need to prove what you are saying. The standards are higher – theyneedtobe.
It is, of course, hard to trust the pharmaceutical giants that make such huge profits. But isn’t the multi-billion euro alternative medicine industry just as bad? At least the pharmaceutical companies are selling drugs that have been tested and proven to be effective.
IF a medical doctor was offering treatments that are not clinically proven, we wouldn’t accept it. Why accept an alternative or complementary practitioner for treatment that lacks medical proof ?
Complementary therapists are not subject to professional statutory regulation at the moment, although they are subject to a range of other legislation and regulation, like consumer legislation, competition, contract and criminal law.
I don’t agree with the notion of regulating alternative medicine and pseudo-science, though – that would only legitimise it.
A ‘registered’ faith healer is no better than an ‘unregistered’ one. And any attempt to ‘license’ nonsense wouldn’t stop people handing over their money and putting themselves at risk.
Taking advantage of patients’ desperate desire to do anything to help their illness is the lowest form of quackery and those making false or misleading claims about treating or curing cancer and other illnesses should face legal action.
I don’t agree with the notion of regulating alternative medicine and pseudo-science – it would legitimise it