Alternative medicine , peripheral medicine , or pseudomedicine is the use and promotion of practices that are unproven, unproved, impossible to prove, or very dangerous in relation by its effect, in an attempt to achieve the healing effect of the drug. The scientific consensus is that alternative therapies are not, or can not, work. In some cases natural laws are violated by their basic claim; in some far worse treatments that its use is unethical. Alternative treatments, products, and therapies vary from ineffective to having known harmful and toxic effects.
Alternative therapy may be credited for perceived improvement through placebo effects, decreased use of medical treatment (and therefore potentially lower side effects), regression of the mean, or natural course of the condition or disease. Alternative medicine is not the same as experimental or traditional medicine, although both can be misused by alternative means.
Alternative medicine is used by many, although its popularity is often exaggerated. A substantial amount of funds were used to test alternative treatments, with more than US $ 2.5 billion being spent by the United States government alone. Almost nothing shows any effect other than the wrong treatment, and most studies that show any effect are statistical worms. Regulations and licensing of alternative medicine and health care providers vary between and within countries. Although legislation makes it illegal to market or promote alternative therapies for use in the treatment of cancer, many practitioners promote it. Alternative medicine is criticized for taking advantage of the weakest members of society.
Terminology has shifted over time, reflecting the branding favored by practitioners. For example, the institution of the National Institutes for Health of the United States who studied alternative medicine was established as the Office of Alternative Medicine , became National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine , and is currently branded National for Complementary and Integrative Health . Therapy is often framed as "natural" or "holistic", clearly contrary to conventional drugs that are "artificial" and "narrow in scope", deliberately misleading statements. A powerful alternative medicine lobby exists that promotes this belief, and has successfully lobbied for alternative therapies to be subject to much less regulation than conventional medicine. This so far sometimes enables alternative therapies to promote use when there is proven no effect, just a tradition of use. When used in conjunction with functional medical care, alternative therapies do not "complement" (increase the effect, or reduce side effects) of treatment. Significant drug interactions caused by alternative therapies may even negatively impact functional treatment, making them less effective, especially in cancer.
Alternative diagnosis and treatment is not part of medicine, or science-based curriculum in medical schools, nor is it used in any practice based on scientific knowledge or experience. Alternative therapy is often based on religious beliefs, traditions, superstitions, belief in supernatural energy, pseudosain, error in reasoning, propaganda, deceit, or lies. Alternative medicine is based on misleading statements, shamanism, pseudosain, antiscience, deception, and poor scientific methodology. Promoting alternative medicine has been called dangerous and unethical. Testing alternative medicine with no scientific basis has been called the waste of scarce research resources. Critics argue that "there really is no alternative medicine, only functioning drugs and no drugs", that the idea of ​​"alternative" care is paradoxical, because every successful treatment is by definition "medicine". Strong criticisms of the promotion of "alternative" treatments target how they teach wrong reasons and spread misconceptions about science, which are potentially very dangerous.
Video Alternative medicine
Definition and terminology
Alternative medicine
Alternative medicine is loosely defined as the set of products, practices, and theories that their users believe or perceive to have a drug healing effect, but its effectiveness has not been clearly established using scientific methods, or whose theories and practices are not part of biomedical, or whose theory or practice is directly incompatible with scientific evidence or scientific principles used in biomedicine. "Biomedicine" is a part of medical science that applies the principles of biology, physiology, molecular biology, biophysics, and other natural sciences to clinical practice, using scientific methods to establish the effectiveness of the practice. Unlike medicine, alternative products or practices do not come from using scientific methods, but may be based on rumors, religions, traditions, superstitions, beliefs in supernatural energy, pseudoscience, errors in reasoning, propaganda, deceit, or sources not other scholarly.
In the General Guidelines for Traditional Drug Research Methodology and Evaluation , published in 2000 by the World Health Organization (WHO), complementary and alternative medicine is defined as a set of broad-based health care practices that are not part of the country's traditions alone and not integrated into the dominant health care system.
This phrase also refers to a variety of related and unrelated products and practices, and theories ranging from biologically reasonable practices and products and practices with some evidence, practice and theory that are directly incompatible with basic science or clear evidence, and products that have proven to be ineffective or even toxic and dangerous.
The terms alternative medicine , complementary medicine , integrative medicine, holistic medicine , natural medicine , unusual drug , peripheral drugs , non-conventional medicine , and new age drugs are used interchangeably as they have the same one. mean and almost the same in some contexts, but may have different meanings in some rare cases.
The meaning of the term "alternative" in the expression "alternative medicine", is not that it is an effective alternative to medical science, although some alternative drug promoters may use loose terminology to give an effective impression. Loose terminology can also be used to indicate the sense that dichotomies exist when not, for example, the use of "western medicine" and "eastern medicine" expressions to show that the differences are cultural differences between East Asia and western Europe; rather, the difference is between evidence-based medicine and unsuccessful treatment.
Complementary_or_integrative_medicine "> Complementary or integrative treatment
Complementary medicine ( CM ) or integrative medicine ( IM ) is when alternative medicine is used in conjunction with functional medical care, with the belief that it enhances the treatment effect. However, significant drug interactions caused by alternative therapies may negatively affect treatment, making treatment less effective, especially cancer therapy. Both terms refer to the use of alternative medical treatments alongside conventional medicine, for example the use of acupuncture (putting needles in the body to influence the flow of supernatural energy), along with using science-based drugs, with the belief that acupuncture enhances the effectiveness or "complementary" knowledge.
Obat allopathic
Allopathic medicine or allopathy is a phrase commonly used by homeopaths and advocates of other forms of alternative medicine to refer to mainstream medicine. This is used to describe the traditional European practice of heroic medicine, which is based on a balance of four "humor" (blood, mucus, yellow bile, and black bile) in which the disease is caused by the excess of one humor, and thus will be treated with the opposite. This description continues to be used to describe anything that is not homeopathic. In addition to India, the term is not used outside of alternative medicine and is not accepted by the medical field.
Allopathy refers to the use of pharmacologically active agents or physical interventions to treat or suppress the symptoms or disease pathophysiology processes or conditions. The German version of the word, allopathisch , was created in 1810 by the homeopathic author, Samuel Hahnemann (1755-1843). The word was created from allo - (different) and -patrick (related to disease or treatment method). In alternative medicine the circle of expression "allopathic medicine" is still used to refer to "a broad category of medical practices sometimes called Western drugs, biomedicine, evidence-based drugs, or modern medicine" (see article on scientific medicine).
The use of this term remains common among homeopaths and has spread to other alternative treatment practices. The meaning implied by the label has never been accepted by conventional medicine and is considered patronizing. Recently, some sources have used the term "allopathic", especially American sources who want to distinguish between Doctors of Medicine (MD) and Doctors of Osteopathic Medicine (DO) in the United States. William Jarvis, an alternative medicine and public health expert, states that "although many modern therapies can be interpreted to suit allopathic reasons (eg, using laxatives to relieve constipation), standard drugs never pay allegiance to the allopathic principle" and that labels "allopath" comes from scratch "considered very mocking by ordinary drugs".
Many conventional medical treatments are obviously incompatible with the nominal definition of alopathy , as they seek to prevent disease, or eliminate the cause.
CAM
CAM is an abbreviation of complementary and alternative medicine. This is also called sCAM or SCAM with the addition of "so-called" or "supplement". Words of balance and holism are often used, claiming to account for a "whole" person, in contrast to the supposed drug reductionism. Because of many names, this field has been criticized for an intense change to what is essentially the same practice: as soon as one name is declared identical to the quackery, a new name is chosen.
Traditional medicine
Traditional medicine refers to the pre-scientific practices of a particular culture, contrary to what is usually practiced in other cultures where medicine dominates.
"Eastern medicine" usually refers to traditional Asian medicines where conventional bio drugs are widely penetrated later.
Holistic medicine
Problem with definition
Leading members of the science and community of biomedical sciences say that does not mean defining an alternative treatment apart from conventional medicine, that the expression "conventional medicine", "alternative medicine", "complementary medicine", "integrative medicine", and "holistic medicine" refers to the drug altogether.
Others in both biomedical and CAM communities say that CAM can not be defined exactly because of the diversity of theories and practices it includes, and because the boundary between CAM and biomedicine is overlapping, porous, and changing. The phrase "complementary and alternative medicine" (CAM) rejects an easy definition because health systems and practices refer to diffuse, and their boundaries are not well-defined. Health care practices that are categorized as alternatives may differ in their historical origins, theoretical bases, diagnostic techniques, therapeutic practices and in relation to mainstream medical. Some alternative therapies, including traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) and Ayurveda, have antique origins in East or South Asia and are entirely an alternative medical system; others, such as homeopathy and chiropractic, originated in Europe or the United States and appeared in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Some, such as osteopathy and chiropractic, use manipulative treatment methods; others, such as meditation and prayer, are based on mind-body intervention. Treatment is considered an alternative in one location can be considered conventional elsewhere. Thus, chiropractic is not considered an alternative in Denmark and also osteopathic drugs are no longer considered an alternative therapy in the United States.
Critics say the phrase is deceptive because it implies there is an effective alternative to science-based medicine, and that it is deceptive because it implies that treatment increases the effectiveness of science-based drugs, while alternative medicine has tested almost always did not have a measurable positive effect compared to placebo.
Different types of definitions
One common feature of all the definitions of alternative medicine is its designation as "in addition" to conventional medicine. For example, the descriptive definition widely referenced from complementary and alternative medicine made by the US National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health (NCCIH) of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), states that it is "a diverse group of medical and healthcare treatments. , practices, and products that are not generally considered part of conventional medicine ". For conventional medical practitioners, it does not mean that practitioners or practitioners are no longer considered an alternative.
Some definitions seek to define alternative treatments in terms of social and political marginality for mainstream health care. This may refer to a lack of support received by alternative therapies from medical institutions and related bodies regarding access to research funding, sympathetic coverage in the medical press, or incorporated into a standard medical curriculum. In 1993, the British Medical Association (BMA), one of the many professional organizations that have attempted to define alternative medicine, states that it is called "... forms of care that are not widely used by conventional health professions, and skills that are not taught as part of the undergraduate curriculum of conventional medical and paramedical health programs ". In the US context, the influential definition created in 1993 by Harvard-based physician, David M. Eisenberg, characterizes alternative medicine "as an intervention not widely taught in medical school or commonly available in US hospitals." This descriptive definition is inadequate in recent times when some conventional doctors offer alternative medical treatments and CAM courses or introductory courses can be offered as part of standard undergraduate medical training; alternative medicine is taught in more than 50 percent of US medical schools and more and more US health insurance companies are willing to provide reimbursement for CAM therapies. In 1999, 7.7% of US hospitals reported using some form of CAM therapy; this proportion has increased to 37.7% in 2008.
A panel of experts at a conference convened in 1995 by the US Office for Alternative Medicine (OAM), devised a theoretical definition of alternative medicine as "a vast domain of healing resources... in addition to those embedded in politically dominant health systems, societies or cultures certain in a certain historical period ". This definition has been widely adopted by CAM researchers, cited by official government bodies such as the UK Department of Health, attributed as a definition used by Cochrane Collaboration, and, with some modifications, is preferred in the 2005 consensus report from the US Institute. Medicine, Complementary and Alternative Medicine in the United States .
Definition of the conference of OAM 1995, the expansion of the 1993 Eisenberg formulation, silent about the question of the medical effectiveness of alternative therapies. Its supporters argue that it avoids relativism about different forms of medical knowledge and, while it is essentially a political definition, this should not imply that mainstream biomedical dominance is solely due to political power. According to this definition, alternative and mainstream medicine can only be distinguished by referring to what is "intrinsic to the politically dominant health system of a particular cultural society". However, there is no reliable method for distinguishing between cultures and subcultures, or to regard them as dominant or subordinate, or accepted criteria for determining the dominance of cultural entities. If the politically dominant healthcare system culture is perceived to be equivalent to the perspective of those responsible for the medical management of leading health care institutions and programs, the definition fails to recognize the potential division within such elites or between health care elites. and a wider population.
The normative definition distinguishes alternative medicine from biomedical mainstream in provision of unproven, unvalidated, or ineffective therapy and support of theories without recognized scientific basis. These definitions characterize practices as alternative medicine when, used independently or as substitutes for evidence-based drugs, they are put forward as having medicinal healing effects, but are not based on evidence gathered by the scientific method. Describing this perspective, the 1998 editorial co-authored by Marcia Angell, former editor of The New England Journal of Medicine, argues that:
It is time for the scientific community to stop giving alternative free ride medicines. There can be no two types of drugs - conventional and alternative. There are only medications that have been adequately tested and medications that have not, medications that work and drugs that may or may not work. After treatment has been rigorously tested, it is no longer important whether it is considered an alternative at the outset. If found safe enough and effective, it will be accepted. But statements, speculations, and testimonies do not replace evidence. Alternative treatments should be subjected to scientific testing that is no less rigorous than is required for conventional treatments.
However, the division's division has been criticized, as not all forms of standard medical practice have shown adequate evidence of benefits, nor is it possible in many instances that conventional therapy, if proven to be ineffective, will be classified as CAM.
Similarly, public information websites administered by the Commonwealth of Australia's National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) use the "CAM" acronym for various health care, therapeutic practices, procedures, and devices not covered by conventional medicine.. In the Australian context it is stated to include acupuncture; aroma therapy; chiropractic; homeopathy; massage; meditation and relaxation therapy; naturopathy; osteopathy; reflexology, traditional Chinese medicine; and the use of vitamin supplements.
"Alternative Medicine Council" The Danish National Health Council (Sundhedsstyrelsens RÃÆ' Â¥ d for Alternativ Behandling (SRAB)), an independent body under the National Health Council (Danish: Sundhedsstyrelsen), uses the term "alternative medicine" for:
- Treatment performed by a therapist who is not an authorized health care professional.
- Treatments performed by authorized health care professionals, but based on methods used primarily outside the health care system. People who do not have health care authorization [also] are allowed to do maintenance.
Proponents of the evidence base for drugs such as Cochrane Collaboration (established in 1993 and from 2011 provide input for WHO resolution) take the position that all systematic review of care, whether "mainstream" or "alternative" should be held to the standards of current scientific methods In a study entitled Development and classification of operational definitions of complementary and alternative medicine for Cochrane Collaboration (2011), it was proposed that indicators that acceptable therapies include government licensing of practitioners, coverage by health insurance, approval statements by government agencies, and recommendations as part of the practice guidelines, and that if something is currently accepted standard therapy, then it is unlikely to be widely regarded as CAM.
Maps Alternative medicine
Type
Alternative medicine consists of various health care practices, products, and therapies. The joint feature is a claim to heal that is not based on the scientific method. Alternative medicine practices vary in their foundations and methodologies. Alternative medicine practices can be classified based on their cultural origin or by the type of belief that they are based on. Methods can combine or based on traditional medicinal practices of a particular culture, people's knowledge, superstitions, spiritual beliefs, belief in supernatural energy (antiscience), pseudoscience, errors in reasoning, propaganda, deception, new or different concepts of health and disease, anything other than evidenced by the scientific method. Different cultures may have their own traditional practices or unique beliefs that have been developed recently or for thousands of years, and certain practices or entire practice systems.
Unclear trust system
Alternative medicine, such as using naturopathy or homeopathy as a substitute for conventional medicine, is based on a belief system that is not based on science.
Supplements
Traditional ethnic system
Alternative medical systems may be based on traditional medical practices, such as traditional Chinese medicine (TCM), Ayurveda in India, or other cultural practices around the world. Some useful traditional medicine applications have been researched and accepted in ordinary medicine, but the underlying belief system is rarely scientific and unacceptable.
Traditional medicine is considered an alternative when used outside its home region; or when used in conjunction with or in place of known functional treatments; or when reasonably expected that the patient or practitioner knows or should know that it will not work - such as knowing that the practice is based on superstition.
Since ancient times, in many parts of the world a number of famous ingredients having abortifacific properties have been used in traditional medicine. Among them are: tansy, pennyroyal, black cohosh, and the now extinct silphium. The historian of science Ann Hibner Koblitz has written on the protoscientific origins of this popular knowledge in the observation of livestock. Women who know that grazing on certain crops will cause animals to abort (with negative economic consequences for farms) will tend to try the plants on themselves to avoid unwanted pregnancies.
However, modern users of this plant often lack the knowledge of proper preparation and dosage. The medical historian John Riddle has spoken of the "broken chain of knowledge" caused by urbanization and modernization, and Koblitz has written that "people's knowledge of effective contraceptive techniques often disappears over time or becomes inseparable from useless practices or dangerous." The use of herbs that are less informed or indiscriminate as abortifacients can cause serious and even deadly side effects.
Supernatural Energy
The basis of belief may include belief in the existence of supernatural energy unnoticed by physics, as in biofield, or in belief in the properties of physical energy inconsistent with the laws of physics, as in the treatment of energy.
Holistic therapy
Herbal remedies and other substances used
Substance-based practices use substances found in nature such as herbs, foods, non-vitamin supplements and megavitamins, animal and fungal products, and minerals, including the use of these products in traditional medical practices that can also incorporate other methods. Examples include healing claims for non-vitamin supplements, fish oil, Omega-3 fatty acids, glucosamine, echinacea, linseed oil, and ginseng. Herbs, or phytotherapy, include not only the use of plant products, but may also include the use of animal and mineral products. It is one of the most commercially successful branches of alternative medicine, and includes tablets, powders and elixir sold as "nutritional supplements". Only a very small percentage of these have been shown to have properties, and there are few rules for the standard and safety of their contents. This may include the use of known toxic substances, such as the use of toxins in traditional Chinese medicine.
Religion, faith healing, and prayer
NCCIH Classification
A US institution, the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health (NCCIH), has created a classification system for complementary and alternative medicine branches that divides them into five major groups. These groups have some overlap, and distinguish two types of energy drugs: true involving scientifically observable energy (including magnetic therapy, color stitch and light therapy) and putative , which physically calls undetected or unverifiable energy. None of this energy has any evidence to support that they affect the body in a way of positive promotion or health.
- Comprehensive medical system: Cut more than one of the other groups; examples include traditional Chinese medicine, naturopathy, homeopathy, and ayurveda.
- Mind-body intervention: Explore the linkage between mind, body, and spirit, under the premise that they affect "body functions and symptoms". The relationship between mind and body is a conventional medical fact, and this classification does not include therapy with proven functions such as cognitive behavioral therapy.
- "Biology" based practice: Use substances found in nature such as herbs, foods, vitamins, and other natural substances. (Note that as used herein, "biology" is not not referring to the biological sciences, but is a newly created use by NCCIH in the primary source used for this article. "Biology-based" as it was created by NCCIH may refer to chemicals from nonbiological sources, such as the use of lead poison in traditional Chinese medicine, and other nonbiological substances.)
- Manipulative and body-based practices: the manipulation of features or movement of body parts, such as done in bodywork, chiropractic, and osteopathic manipulation.
- Energy medicine: is a domain related to alleged and verifiable energy fields:
- Biofield therapy is intended to affect the energy fields that supposedly surround and penetrate the body. The existence of the energy field has proven to be untrue.
- Bioelectromagnetic-based therapy uses verifiable electromagnetic fields, such as pulsed fields, alternating current fields, or direct current in a non-scientific way.
History
The history of alternative medicine can refer to the history of a diverse group of medical practices that were collectively promoted as "alternative treatments" beginning in the 1970s, to a collection of individual histories of the group's members, or western medical history. a practice labeled "irregular practice" by western medical institutions. This includes a history of complementary medicine and integrative medicine. Prior to the 1970s, western practitioners who were not part of science-based medical formation were referred to "irregular practitioners", and dismissed by medical institutions as unscientific and as shamanic practices. Until the 1970s, irregular practices became increasingly marginalized as shamanism and deception, as western medicine increasingly incorporated scientific methods and discoveries, and had an appropriate increase in the success of its treatment. In the 1970s, irregular practices were grouped with traditional practices of non-western cultures and with other unproven or unproven practices that were not part of biomedicine, with the whole group marketed and promoted collectively under one phrase "alternative medicine".
The use of alternative medicine in the west began to increase following the counter-cultural movement of the 1960s, as part of a new age movement that increased in the 1970s. This is because misleading "misfiring" alternative mass marketing becomes an effective "alternative" to biomedicine, changing social attitudes about not using chemicals and challenging any formation and authority, the sensitivity of giving the same measure of beliefs and other cultural practices. (Cultural relativism), and increasingly frustrated and discouraged by patients about the limitations and side effects of science-based drugs. At the same time, in 1975, the American Medical Association, which played a central role in the fight against shamanism in the United States, abolished the shamanic committees and closed its Investigative Department. In the early to mid-1970s, the phrase "alternative medicine" came into widespread use, and the phrase became mass-marketed as an effective "natural" and "alternative" treatment pool for science-based biomedicine. In 1983, the mass marketing of "alternative medicine" was so pervasive that the British Medical Journal (BMJ) pointed to "an endless stream of books, articles, and radio and television programs in the society of virtue of medicine (alternative medicine) ranging from meditation to drilling holes in the skull to allow more oxygen ".
Medical education
Particularly as a result of reforms after the Flexner Report of 1910 medical education in medical schools established in the US in general does not include alternative medicine as a teaching topic. Usually, their teaching is based on current practice and scientific knowledge about: anatomy, physiology, histology, embryology, neuroanatomy, pathology, pharmacology, microbiology and immunology. Medical school teaching covers topics such as doctor-patient communication, ethics, medical arts, and engage in complex clinical reasoning (medical decision-making). Writing in 2002, Snyderman and Weil say that at the beginning of the 20th century Flexner model has helped create a 20th century academic health center, where education, research, and practice can not be separated. While this has greatly improved medical practice by defining with increased certainty of disease pathophysiology, a single focus on pathophysiology has diverted many mainstream American drugs from clinical conditions that are not well understood in mechanistic terms, and are not treated effectively. by conventional therapy.
In 2001 some form of CAM training was being offered by at least 75 of 125 medical schools in the US. Incredibly, the University of Maryland Medical School, Baltimore includes a research institute for integrative medicine (a member entity of Cochrane Collaboration). Medical schools are responsible for providing medical degrees, but doctors usually can not legally practice drugs until they are licensed by local government authorities. Doctors licensed in the US who have attended one of the medical schools established there usually have passed the Doctor of Medicine (MD). All countries require applicants to license an MD to become an approved medical school graduate and complete the US Medical License Exam (USMLE).
Benefits
There is general scientific consensus that alternative therapies do not have the required scientific validation, and their effectiveness is not proven or denied. Many claims about the efficacy of controversial alternative medicines, as research on them are often of low quality and methodologically flawed. Selective publication biases, marked differences in product quality and standardization, and some companies making unfounded claims question the claims of efficacy from isolated instances where there is evidence for alternative therapies.
Scientific Review of Alternative Medicine shows confusion in the general population - one can associate symptomatic relief with ineffective therapy simply because they take something (a placebo effect); the natural recovery of or cyclical nature of a disease (regression error) is misinterpreted as an alternative medicine taken; someone who is not diagnosed with science-based drugs may never have the disease that is actually diagnosed as an alternative disease category.
Edzard Ernst characterizes the evidence for many alternative techniques as weak, nonexistent or negative and in 2011 published his estimate that about 7.4% is based on "strong evidence", although he believes that it may be too much. Ernst has concluded that 95% of the alternative treatments he and his team studied, including acupuncture, herbal remedies, homeopathy, and reflexology, "are statistically indistinguishable from placebo treatments", but he also believes there is something that can be learned by conventional physicians. chiropractors and homeopaths: this is the therapeutic value of the placebo effect, one of the strangest phenomena in medicine.
In 2003, a CDC-funded project identified 208 treatment-setting pairs, of which 58% had been studied by at least one randomized controlled trial (RCT), and 23% had been assessed by meta-analysis. According to a 2005 book by the US Institute of Medicine panel, the number of RCTs focused on CAM has increased dramatically.
In 2005, Cochrane Library had 145 systematic Cochrane reviews and 340 non-Cochrane systematic reviews. Analysis of the conclusions of only 145 Cochrane reviews was made by two readers. In 83% of cases, readers agree. At 17% where they disagree, the third reader agrees with one of the early readers to rank. These studies found that, for CAM, 38.4% concluded positive or possibly positive effects (12.4%), 4.8% concluded no effect, 0.7% concluded harmful effects, and 56.6% concluded not enough evidence. Assessment of conventional treatment found that 41.3% concluded positive or perhaps positive effects, 20% concluded no effect, 8.1% concluded the harmful effects, and 21.3% concluded not enough evidence. However, CAM reviews utilize the 2004 Cochrane database developed, while conventional reviews used the early Cochrane 1998 database.
In the same way as conventional therapies, drugs, and interventions, it may be difficult to test the efficacy of alternative treatments in clinical trials. In cases where established treatment is effective, for a condition already available, the Helsinki Declaration states that withholding such treatment is unethical in most circumstances. The use of standard care treatments in addition to the alternative techniques being tested can produce confusing or difficult to interpret results.
Cancer researcher Andrew J. Vickers has stated:
Contrary to popular and scientific writing, many alternative cancer treatments have been studied in good quality clinical trials, and they have proved ineffective. The "unproven" label is not appropriate for such therapy; it's time to point out that many alternative cancer therapies have been "unproven".
Action mechanism
Placebo effect
A research methodologist and author of "Snake Oil Science", R. Barker Bausell, has stated that "it becomes politically correct to investigate nonsense." There is a concern that having only NIH support is used to provide "unfounded legitimacy of unauthorized treatment."
The use of placebo to achieve a placebo effect in integrative drugs has been criticized as, "... diverting research, money, and other resources from a more fruitful investigative line to pursue a theory that has no basis in biology."
Other critics argue that academic supporters of integrative medicine sometimes recommend misleading patients using known placebo treatments to achieve a placebo effect. However, a 2010 family doctor survey found that 56% of respondents said they had used placebo in clinical practice as well. Eighty-five percent of respondents believe that placebos can have psychological and physical benefits.
Integrative medicine has been criticized because practitioners, trained in science-based medicine, intentionally mislead patients by pretending not to have a placebo. "Quackademic medicine" is a derogatory term used for integrative medicine, which medical professionals consider infiltrating from quackery into an academic-based medical science.
The trend analysis in the criticism of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) in five prestigious American medical journals during the reorganization period in medicine (1965-1999) was reported as showing that the medical profession has responded to CAM growth in three phases, and that in each phase, changes in the market medications have influenced the type of response in the journal. Changes include relaxed medical licensing, development of managed care, increased consumerism, and the establishment of the USA Office of Alternative Medicine (later National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine, now National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health). In the "condemnation" phase, from the late 1960s to early 1970s, writers made fun of, exaggerated risks, and petitioned states to include CAM; in the "reassessment" phase (the mid-1970s to the early 1990s), as increased consumer utilization of CAM induced worries, the authors reflected on whether patient dissatisfaction and deficiencies in conventional care contributed to the trend; in the "integration" phase of the 1990s doctors began studying to work around or manage CAMs, and the conquest of CAM for scientific oversight has been a key means of control.
Regression to mean
Interference with functional care
Use and settings
Appeal
Complementary medicine practitioners usually discuss and advise patients on available alternative therapies. Patients often express interest in mind-body complementary therapy because they offer a non-drug approach to treat some health conditions.
In addition to the socio-cultural basics of the popularity of alternative medicine, there are some psychological problems that are crucial to its growth. One of the most important is the placebo effect - a well established observation in medicine. Associated with it are similar psychological effects, such as the desire to believe, the cognitive bias that helps maintain self-esteem and promote harmonious social functioning, and the fall of post hoc, ergo propter hoc .
Marketing
Complementary & amp; alternative medicine (CAM) may be related to other factors mentioned by Edzard Ernst in an interview on The Independent:
Why is it so popular? Ernst blames providers, customers, and doctors whose negligence, he says, has created a gap in which alternative therapists have stepped up. "People are told lies.There are 40 million websites and 39.9 million lying, sometimes outrageous lies.They mislead cancer patients, who are encouraged not only to pay their last penny but to be treated with something that shortens their lives." the same time, people are gullible. It takes honesty for the industry to succeed. It does not make me popular in the public eye, but it's the truth.
Paul Offit proposes that "alternative medicine be shamanic" in four ways: by recommending against useful conventional therapies, promoting potentially harmful therapies without adequate warning, draining patient bank accounts, or by promoting "magical thinking."
Social factors
The authors have speculated on socio-cultural and psychological reasons for the appeal of alternative medicines among minorities who use them in lieu of conventional medicines. There are several socio-cultural reasons for interest in this treatment that center on the low levels of science literacy among the wider community and an increase in antispesial attitudes and mysticism of the new age. Related to this is the strong marketing of excessive claims by the alternative medical community combined with inadequate media scrutiny and attacks on critics.
There is also an increasing conspiracy theory against conventional medicines and pharmaceutical companies, distrust of traditional authority figures, such as doctors, and dislike of current scientific biomedical delivery methods, all of which have led to patients seeking alternative treatments for treating various diseases. Many patients do not have access to contemporary medicine, due to lack of private or public health insurance, which causes them to seek cheaper alternative medicines. Doctors are also aggressively marketing alternative medicine to benefit from this market.
Patients can resist the painful, unpleasant, and sometimes dangerous effects of biomedical treatment. Treatments for severe illnesses such as cancer and HIV infection have significant side effects. Even low-risk drugs such as antibiotics can potentially cause life-threatening anaphylactic reactions in some individuals. Many medicines can cause mild but disturbing symptoms such as cough or stomach upset. In all of these cases, patients may seek alternative treatments to avoid the adverse effects of conventional treatments.
Use prevalence
Complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) has been described as a broad domain of healing resources that encompasses all health systems, modalities, practices and theories and beliefs that accompany it, other than intrinsic to the politically dominant health a particular cultural or cultural system in a given historical period. CAM covers all the practices and ideas as their users themselves define as preventing or treating illness or improving health and well-being. Limits in CAM and between CAM domains and dominant systems are not always sharp or fixed.
According to recent research, the increasing popularity of CAM needs to be explained by moral beliefs or lifestyle choices rather than economic reasons.
In developing countries, access to essential medicines is severely limited by lack of resources and poverty. Traditional medicine, often very similar or forms the basis for alternative medicine, may consist of primary health care or integrated into a health care system. In Africa, traditional medicine is used for 80% of primary health care, and in developing countries as a whole more than a third of the population does not have access to essential medicines.
Some people propose to adopt a reward system to reward medical research. However, public funding for research exists. Increasing funding for research on alternative medical techniques is the goal of the US National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine. NCCIH and its predecessor, Office of Alternative Medicine, have spent over US $ 2.5 billion on such research since 1992; this study largely did not demonstrate the efficacy of alternative treatments.
Alternative medicine has risen "in countries where Western science and scientific methods are generally accepted as the primary basis for health care, and evidence-based practices are the dominant paradigm" described as "puzzles" in the Australian Medical Journal.
In the US
In the United States, the 1974 Crime Prevention and Treatment Act (CAPTA) requires that states receive federal money, they must exempt religion on abandonment and child abuse laws on religious-based healing practices. Thirty-one countries have the exception of child abuse religions.
The use of alternative medicine in the US has increased, with a 50 percent increase in spending and a 25 percent increase in the use of alternative therapies between 1990 and 1997 in America. Americans spend many billions on therapy each year. Most Americans use CAM to treat and/or prevent musculoskeletal conditions or other conditions associated with chronic or recurrent pain. In America, women are more likely than men to use CAM, with the greatest difference in the use of mind-body therapy including specific prayers for health reasons. In 2008, over 37% of American hospitals offered alternative therapies, up from 27 per cent. in 2005, and 25% in 2004. More than 70% of hospitals that offer CAM are in urban areas.
A survey of Americans found that 88 percent thought that "there are some good ways to treat diseases not recognized by medical science". The use of magnets is the most common tool in energy medicine in America, and among users, 58 percent describe it as "some sort of scientific", but that is not scientific at all. In 2002, at least 60 percent of US medical schools had at least some class time spent teaching alternative therapies. "Therapeutic touch", taught in over 100 colleges and universities in 75 countries before the practice was denied by a nine-year-old child for a school science project.
Prevalence of specific therapeutic uses
The most commonly used CAM therapy in the US in 2002 was prayer (45%), herbal medicine (19%), respiratory meditation (12%), meditation (8%), chiropractic (8%), yoga (5-6%). ), body work (5%), diet based therapy (4%), progressive relaxation (3%), mega-vitamin therapy (3%) and visualization (2%)
In the UK, the most commonly used alternative therapies are the techniques of Alexander, Aromatherapy, Bach and other flower remedies, work therapy including Body Massage, stress therapy Counseling, hypnotherapy, Meditation, Reflexology, Shiatsu, Ayurvedic medicine, Nutrition medicine, and Yoga. Ayurvedic medicine treatment is mainly plant based with some use of animal ingredients. Safety issues include the use of herbs containing toxic compounds and lack of quality control in Ayurvedic facilities.
According to the National Health Service (UK), the most common complementary and alternative medications (CAM) supported by the NHS in the UK are: acupuncture, aromatherapy, chiropractic, homeopathy, massage, osteopathy and clinical hypnotherapy.
In palliative care
Complementary therapy is often used in palliative care or by practitioners trying to deal with chronic pain in patients. Integrative drugs are considered more acceptable in the interdisciplinary approach used in palliative care than in other medical fields. "From the initial experience of care to the dying, palliative care simply takes the need to place the patient's values ​​and lifestyle habits at the core of every design and delivery of quality care at the end of life.If the patient wants complementary therapies, and during the treatment provides additional support and do not harm patients, they are considered acceptable. "Non-pharmacological interventions of complementary medicine may use mind-body interventions designed to" reduce joint pain and mood disorders and improve quality of life. "
Rule
In Austria and Germany complementary and alternative medicine is mainly in the hands of doctors with MDs, and half or more of American alternative practitioners are licensed MDs. In Germany herbs are strictly regulated: half prescribed by doctors and covered by health insurance.
Some of the complementary/traditional/alternative medicine professions, such as chiropractic, have achieved full regulation in North America and other parts of the world and are organized in a manner similar to those that govern science-based medicine. In contrast, other approaches may be partially recognized and others have no rules at all. The regulations and licensing of alternative medicine range from country to country, and state to state.
Government agencies in the US and elsewhere have published information or guides on alternative medicine. The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), has issued an online warning to consumers about drug health fraud. This includes the section on Alternative Drug Fraud, such as a warning that Ayurvedic products are not generally approved by the FDA before being marketed.
Risks and issues
Negative results
Regulatory adequacy and CAM security
Many claims regarding the safety and efficacy of alternative treatments are controversial. Several alternative treatments have been associated with unexpected side effects, which can be fatal.
The common concern voiced about complementary alternative medicine (CAM) is how to regulate it. There have been significant developments on how CAM should be assessed before resale in the UK and EU in the last 2 years. Nevertheless, it has been suggested that current regulatory agencies are ineffective in preventing patient fraud as many companies have re-labeled their drugs to avoid new laws. There is no general consensus on how to balance consumer protection (from false claims, toxicity, and advertising) with the freedom to choose solutions.
CAM advocates suggest that industrial regulation will adversely affect patients seeking alternative ways to manage symptoms, although many of the benefits may represent a placebo effect. Some argue that alternative medicines should not require more regulation of over-the-counter medicines that can also be toxic in overdoses (such as paracetamol).
Interaction with conventional medicines
Alternative forms of biologically active treatment can be harmful even when used in conjunction with conventional medicines. Examples include immuno-augmentation therapy, shark cartilage, bioresonance therapy, oxygen and ozone therapy, and insulin potentiation therapy. Some herbal remedies can cause harmful interactions with chemotherapy drugs, radiation therapy, or anesthesia during surgery, among other problems. An anecdotal example of this dangers was reported by Associate Professor Alastair MacLennan of the University of Adelaide, Australia about a patient who nearly died of blood on the operating table after neglecting to mention that he had taken a "natural" potion to "build up his strength" before the operation, including a strong anticoagulant almost causing his death.
For ABC Online , MacLennan also provides another possible mechanism:
And lastly there is cynicism and disappointment and depression that some patients experience from one alternative medicine to the next, and they discover after three months the placebo effect fades, and they are disappointed and they move on to the next, and they are disappointed and disappointed, and it can create depression and make the treatment of patients with something effective difficult, because you may not get compliance, because they have seen failure very often in the past.
Side effects
Conventional treatments are subjected to testing for undesirable side effects, while alternative treatments, in general, are not subjected to such testing at all. Each treatment - whether conventional or alternative - that has a biological or psychological effect on the patient also has the potential to have harmful biological or psychological side effects. Efforts to disprove this fact related to alternative treatments sometimes use the natural appeal error, that is, "What is natural can not be harmful." Certain patient groups such as patients with impaired liver or kidney function are more susceptible to side effects than alternative treatments.
The exception to normal thinking about side effects is Homeopathy. Since 1938, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has regulated homeopathic products in "some very different ways than other drugs." Homeopathic preparations, called "remedies," are very dilute, often well beyond the point where a single molecule of the original (and possibly toxic) active ingredient may still exist. They are, therefore, considered safe on that count, but "their products are exempt from the requirements of good manufacturing practices related to expiry dates and from testing of finished products to identity and strength", and their alcohol concentrations may be much higher than those permitted in medicine conventional..
Treatment delay
Those who experience or feel successful with an alternative therapy for minor ailments can be convinced of its efficacy and convinced to forecast the likelihood of success to some other alternative therapies for more serious, possibly life-threatening illness. For this reason, critics argue that therapy that depends on the placebo effect to define success is very dangerous. According to mental health journalist Scott Lilienfeld in 2002, "unvalidated or unsupported mental health practices can cause individuals to abandon effective care" and refer to this as "opportunity cost". Individuals who spend a lot of time and money on ineffective treatments can be left with little precious good, and may miss the opportunity to get treatment that can be more helpful. In short, even harmless treatments can indirectly produce negative results. Between 2001 and 2003, four children died in Australia because their parents chose naturopathic medicines, homeopathy, or other ineffective alternatives and diets rather than conventional therapies.
Unconventional cancer "heals"
There has always been "a lot of therapy offered outside conventional cancer care centers and based on theories not found in biomedicine." Alternative cancer treatments are often described as 'unproven', which suggests that proper clinical trials have not been performed and that therapeutic treatment values ​​are not known. "However," many alternative cancer treatments have been investigated in good quality clinical trials, and they have been shown to be ineffective.... Label 'not proven' unsuitable for such therapies, it's time to emphasize that many alternative cancer therapies has been 'not proven'. "
Edzard Ernst has stated:
... every alternative cancer cure is false by definition. There will never be alternative cancer drugs. Why? Because if there is something that looks half-promising, then a general oncology will check it, and if there is something on it, it will become mainstream almost automatically and very quickly. All of the curative "curative healing remedies" based on false claims, are false, and, I would say, even criminals.
Disclaimer of science
"CAM", meaning "complementary and alternative medicine", is not also researched as conventional medicine, which underwent intense research before it was released to the public. Funding for research is also rare so it is difficult to conduct further research for CAM effectiveness. Most of the funding for CAM is funded by government agencies. The proposed research for CAM was rejected by most private funding agencies because the research results were unreliable. Research for CAM must meet certain standards of the research ethics committee, which most CAM researchers find almost impossible to meet. Even with little research done, CAM has not been proven effective.
Steven Novella, a neurologist at Yale School of Medicine, writes that government-funded studies to integrate alternative medicine techniques into the mainstream "are used to give the impression of legitimacy to unauthorized treatment." Marcia Angell considers that critics feel that health practice should be classified only on scientific evidence, and if treatment has been rigorously tested and found to be safe and effective, science-based medicine will adopt it regardless of whether it is considered an "alternative" to start. with. It is possible for methods to change categories (proven vs. unproven), based on increased knowledge of their effectiveness or lack thereof. A prominent supporter of this position is George D. Lundberg, former editor of the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA).
Writing in 1999 at CA: A Cancer Journal for Doctors Barrie R. Cassileth mentions a 1997 letter to the US Senate Subcommittee on Public Health and Safety, which has deplored the lack of critical thinking and scientific rigor in the OAM - supported research, has been signed by four Nobel Prize Winners and other prominent scientists. (This is supported by the National Institutes of Health (NIH).)
In March 2009, a staff writer for the Washington Post reported that the upcoming national discussion on expanding access to health care, improving medical practice and saving was to give a group of scientists an opening to propose closing the Complementary Medicine Center and Alternatives. They cite one of these scientists, Steven Salzberg, a genome researcher and computational biologist at the University of Maryland, who says "One of our concerns is that NIH is funding pseudoscience." They note that most studies are based on a fundamental misunderstanding of physiology and disease, and have shown little or no effect.
Authors such as Carl Sagan, a prominent astrophysicist, proponent of scholarly skepticism and author of The Demon-Haunted World: Science as Candle in the Dark (1996), have railed against the lack of empirical evidence to support the existence of an alleged energy field in where this therapy is predicted.
Sampson also showed that CAM tolerates contradictions without reason and in-depth experiments. Barrett has pointed out that there is a policy in NIH never saying anything does not work just different versions or doses that may give different results. Barrett also expressed concern that, just because some "alternatives" have benefits, there is the impression that the rest deserve the same attention and respect even though most are worthless, as they are all classified under one alternative medical title.
Some critics of alternative medicine are focused on health fraud, misinformation, and shamanism as a public health issue, notably Wallace Sampson and Paul Kurtz founders of the Alternative Medicine Review Review and Stephen Barrett, co-founder of the National Council on Health Scams and webmasters from Quackwatch. Reasons for opposing alternative treatments include that:
- Usually based on religion, tradition, superstition, belief in supernatural energy, pseudosain, error in reasoning, propaganda, or deceit.
- Alternative therapies usually have no scientific validation, and their effectiveness is not proven or denied.
- Treatment is not part of a conventional science-based health system
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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