Q&A: Alternative Medicine
Alternative Medicine
Question
Good morning. I listen to your lectures on mysticism. Last night I heard your opinion about alternative medicine. I understood that in your view the definition is medicine that has been studied but whose effectiveness cannot be proven. The health funds make a different distinction. From my experience, I’ve come across the profession of chiropractic, which is defined by the health fund as alternative medicine. I don’t know what the level of the research is. My personal impression is that the definition stems from doctors’ ego.
Answer
Until I saw your question, I thought this was my own brilliant insight—that is, just my personal opinion. Now I went to Wikipedia, and right at the beginning of the entry I found the following gems:
The treatments included in alternative medicine are characterized by the fact that they are not supported by scientific research, or there is even scientific research that refutes their validity. This is because if the effectiveness of a treatment from the world of alternative medicine is confirmed by scientific studies, that treatment is adopted into the stream of conventional medicine.
In other words, alternative medicine is medicine that is not backed by scientific research and for which there are no indications that it works. But according to that, standing on one leg every morning while humming “A Nest for a Bird Among the Trees” is also an alternative medicine for lung cancer. After all, it meets all the conditions: it isn’t backed by scientific research, and there’s no indication whatsoever that it works. To be more precise, in addition to the negative criteria (medicine that doesn’t work and hasn’t been studied), one should add a positive criterion as well: a technique that meets the previous conditions and that a few fools think nevertheless does work. That is the full definition of alternative medicine. Except that now we need to look for the fool who believes in the above standing-on-one-leg-while-humming technique, and surely someone like that will be found (for example, among today’s anti-vaccine crowd I’m sure there are many such people), and everything falls back into place.
I’m not claiming that doctors’ egos and corporate interests don’t influence medicine. That’s true, just as in any field. But even if that is true, I see no substitute for research, and as long as there is no systematic research establishing some technique, then even if the reason there is no research is ego and corruption, without research I have no indication to think it’s valid. Maybe it works, but by the same token maybe standing on one leg works too. There is no substitute for systematic, controlled research—which alternative medicine avoids like fire. And if by chance it slips up and does conduct such a study and it succeeds, presto—the technique has thereby moved into conventional medicine, and once again we are left with the usual collection of techniques.
Discussion on Answer
Wikipedia’s ridiculous definition (which the Rabbi happily joins in with) is of course also begging the question or setting up a straw man. The distinctive feature of alternative medicine, as opposed to conventional medicine, is that it isn’t medicine of cut and drug (old conventional medicine). It also usually rests on principles of treating the root cause rather than the symptoms, and it also takes into account the effect of the mind on the body. True, by that definition not only chiropractic is alternative medicine, but maybe physiotherapy too. But that’s a matter of semantics. In principle, when people talk about conventional medicine they mean the mentality of technicians and technocrats (lacking spirit and vision) who don’t see their patient as a human being but as a machine, like a computer or something, and that has negative implications for treatment. That is the original intention behind the term alternative medicine. Out of the collection of medicines within it, what has been proven has been proven (confirmed), and what hasn’t, hasn’t (and what has been refuted has been refuted), and that’s that.
The fact that some parts of it have been confirmed and receive funding from the state and official recognition does not change the fact that they are alternative medicine. The reason it is treated with disdain is because its non-technocratic character is fertile ground that attracts charlatans and assorted “spiritual types.” But that has nothing to do with whether it is correct or not, only with whether it works or not, and that’s all.
The health funds provide alternative treatments because it makes them money.
That doesn’t make alternative medicines something evidence-based (all alternative medicines are not research-based, otherwise they would be considered conventional. And a large portion of them have been refuted in controlled research). The claim that conventional medicine does not see the patient as a person or does not try to treat the root cause but only the symptoms is a false and mistaken claim.
Lev,
you’re continuing the nonsense people were talking here. It’s simply misleading the public to call alternative medicine that has been proven and works “conventional medicine.” It isn’t. It just works (if it indeed works), and that’s all. There are two different medical philosophies here. And to call them by the same name just because they both work is, at best, stupidity (like calling two different medical procedures by the same name just because both are effective), and at worst fraud.
If something doesn’t work, then it doesn’t work, period. There’s no room here for agendas. You’re just as foolish as those various devotees of alternative medicines that were put to the test and not proven.
Correction:
Lev,
you’re continuing the nonsense people were talking here. It’s simply misleading the public to call alternative medicine that has been proven and works “conventional medicine.” It isn’t. It just works (if it indeed works), and that’s all. There are two different medical philosophies here. And to call them by the same name just because they both work is, at best, stupidity (like calling two different medical procedures by the same name just because both are effective), and at worst fraud.
If something doesn’t work, then it doesn’t work, period. There’s no room here for agendas. You’re just as foolish as those various devotees of alternative medicines that were put to the test and not proven.
Immanuel, you are mistaken (or alternatively are using your own unique definitions). Any medical fact proven by research is considered part of the conventional medical mainstream, and therefore is discussed in the leading medical journals, taught in medical schools, and implemented by licensed physicians. By the accepted definition, what makes something “non-conventional” is the absence of a solid evidentiary basis, or “facts” that have been refuted by research (such as homeopathy and the like).
By the way, there is one inaccurate sentence in the passage I quoted. There definitely are techniques in alternative medicine that have been refuted. What is true is that there are no techniques in it that have been confirmed (because those then come to be regarded as conventional).