ALTERNATIVE MEDICINE: PREYING ON THE ILL AND THE ILL INFORMED

6/09/2010

When it comes to building a bridge over a river no one use methods employed, proposed or described thousand years ago but somehow when it comes to medicine even seemingly intelligent people feel happy or even prefer to advocate use of drugs and techniques which were described hundreds or even thousands of years ago without taking any account of vast discoveries made in biological sciences in the interim. Antiquity of such medical systems is actually offered as a great merit!
The goal of medicine is restoring and preserving health. To practice best medicine the practitioner cannot ignore the existing scientific knowledge. But now adays increasingly some people are exactly doing that but instead of medicine they call it alternative medicine.
Many of the alternative medicines are traditional systems which originated a few hundreds or in some cases a few thousands of years ago. For example Ayurveda is said to have started 3 to 5 thousand years ago. The Sushrut Sanghita and Charak Sanghita were written around 500 BC. The Greek and Roman medicine also developed around same time. In India and china the traditional medical systems continued where as in West much was lost after the fall of Roman Empire. Muslim scholars translated many of original Greek, Roman and Indian medical texts and also added a great amount of their own knowledge and developed what is called Unani medicine or traditional Islamic medicine. This was at its zenith around 700 AD. Homeopathy, flower therapy and reflexology originated in recent past mostly in 17th and 18th century.
One of the cornerstones of the systems developed in antiquity was their relation with religion. The reason being is that religion was the main way of explaining the world and worldly phenomena at that time period. The knowledge that agreed with the religion was accepted and the rest discarded or even maligned. The people who taught and practiced the ancient medicines kept up to date with the knowledge which was available to them at that time. In that way they were honest and were practicing good medicine. Alas! same cannot be told about the practitioners of ancient medicine today whose main argument is "it must be good because it was invented by our ancestors many thousand years ago".

Modern medicine is being continuously shaped by the rapid advances taking place in our understanding of human anatomy and physiology in general and cellular and molecular biology in particular. Science demands more rigorous proofs. Quoting a religious or an ancient text is not accepted as a proof. But some of our great advocates of Ayurvedic, Islamic and Chinese medicine are doing exactly that. In developed and relatively rich countries there is no justification to use alternative medicine without the same level of scientific scrutiny used for modern medicine. And then it should become a part of main stream medical education and the practitioners should be governed by the same rigours rules and regulations which are necessary for public safety.

In poor and underdeveloped countries one of the reasons given for the use of alternative medicine is that it is cheaper. But really this is a fallacy. If there is no proof that it works then it is a waste of the country`s meagre resources. A Rich person can indulge in a folly but a poor person can ill afford to lose all his life savings on snake oil.

Quite a significant number of people advocate alternative medicine out of strong loyalty to their culture and religion and though admirable it is; it does not constitute evidence. Many people turn to alternative medicine when their doctors tell them that there is no certain cure for their illness. For an alternative medical practitioner there is no such limitation. He/she has got a potion for every illness. I wonder whether these practitioners know that they are making false claims or they are so brainwashed by the Alternative Medicine Gurus that they unknowingly make them.
What do you think?