What's the Harm? - Part 2

So, after a brief hiatus on my part, with too many projects to complete to count, I have time to brows the news from time to time again.

And, after my last post, I have another depressing news item to share from the "what's the harm?" department.

There are news links in Polish here and here (sorry, I could not find an English version).

To summarize:

A six moth old girl was found dead a few weeks ago in the town of Brzezna in the south of Poland, while in care of her parents. It was determined that she had died as a result of malnutrition. After some initial investigation, it was also determined that the parents started using a "natural" approach for the baby's care, including refusal of any vaccines, lack of medical care and a whole bunch of holistic feeding techniques. They attempted to follow advice from a faith healer, who allegedly told the parents to use skim milk and herbs as the baby's diet staple. The healer, called "God's Man" in the area, is well known for advocating abandoning regular medical care and using herbs, fasting and prayer as remedies for any ailments (including cancer!!!).

This case is not the first one for the supposedly "godly" man. A few years ago it was alleged that he had caused a death of a five year old boy, who had kidney problems. After initial, positive reactions to the standard, hospital medical care, the mother took the boy to the healer and believed in his "miraculous" approach, which ultimately resulted in boy's death.

Those two cases are clear answers to the argument for the alternative medicine that I hear very often: "what's the harm?". The answer is very simple, the harm is in believing that unproven, often completely nonsensical treatments can and do work. When someone abandons reason and critical thinking in small cases, it is easy to do the same in cases that can cause harm, death and destruction. Belief in miracles, prayer, alternative medicine (like homeopathy, chiropractic, acupuncture, etc) when your life, or life of your loved ones, is at stake, can really be deadly.

Do You Believe In Magic?

You do, if you use homeopathy, acupuncture, chiropractic, Reiki, some kind of faith healing, and countless other alternative medicine modalities that have absolutely no roots in modern science, reality and critical thinking. Most of them are just ways of "wishing away" the problem, and while some might "work" as a placebo, the might have some dangers associated with their use, and, when used instead of real medical interventions, all of them can be deadly (see here, here, and here).

So, why do we do it? Because we want miracles? Because we don't know any better? Because science is complex and, sometimes, difficult to understand? Probably, all of the above.

It is good to know that we can count on a few brave authors, who do the research, dig out the details and present it in a nice fashion, digestible by the regular folks like us. Among them is Paul Offit, a medical doctor, a researcher, and a strong proponent of reality-based medicine, including vaccines. His previous books, "Autism False Prophets: Bad Science, Risky Medicine and the Search For a Cure", and "Deadly Choices" were both excellent descriptions of the vaccine "controversy", how it started, evolved from bad science to social movement, and how it threatens our health and the well-being (and lives) of our children. Knowing his great writing style and deep commitment to science and research, I was very excited to find out that his new book "Do You Believe in Magic?: The Sense and Nonsense of Alternative Medicine" is out. I should have more of my own thoughts about it in a few days (or weeks, it's summer after all), but in the meantime, here are two reviews available on line:

Book raises alarms about alternative medicine - from USA Today, by Liz Szabo
and
Vaccine advocate takes on the alternative medicine industry - NBC News

There is also more on the topic from Liz Szabo: Alternative therapies, supplements can cause side effects and How to guard against a quack

Go, read it all, and stop believing in magic. It's the 21st Century!

Wasting Your Tax Dollars In The Name of Science

Our governments on all levels have an incredible ability to waste our tax dollars, especially when ideology and plain stupidity get mixed up. This is exactly what happened with The National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine, which was created out of someone "beliefs" and not a sound science. The center continues to waste our money on studies and alternative therapies that have no basis in reality and keep returning negative results.
It is nice to see that a respected journalist Trine Tsouderos, in a major news outlet such as Chicago Tribune, takes a hard and critical look at the Center:

Thanks to a $374,000 taxpayer-funded grant, we now know that inhaling lemon and lavender scents doesn't do a lot for our ability to heal a wound. With $666,000 in federal research money, scientists examined whether distant prayer could heal AIDS. It could not.
The National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine also helped pay scientists to study whether squirting brewed coffee into someone's intestines can help treat pancreatic cancer (a $406,000 grant) and whether massage makes people with advanced cancer feel better ($1.25 million). The coffee enemas did not help. The massage did.

Federal center pays good money for suspect medicine

This is our tax dollars at work, and while the amount might be insignificant in a large scheme of things, this money would be better used for a real research that could, one day, help someone live a little bit longer. David Gorski of Science-Based Medicine put it nicely:

"We have to be good stewards of public money for science," said Gorski, the cancer researcher. "I don't view NCCAM as being a good steward of our public money at the moment. Even if they are doing rigorous science, they are still looking at incredibly implausible things."

Traditional Medicine - Read and Weep

If you are a proponent of some "natural", traditional medicine, if you prefer "natural" cures from what can be produced in a lab, read the article below:

Asian Bear Bile Remedies: Traditional Medicine or Barbarism?

I hope you are as outraged as I am. This is exactly why there should never be a "what's the harm" mentality when dealing with those traditional modalities.