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[Frumple]

Lastly I have no idea what you mean by not as profitable.  I guess something would be less profitable if it didn't work?

That probably falls somewhere into the "medicine but not being provided" bit. A great deal of doctors are pretty damned notorious for pushing the most expensive method of treatment. They'll usually back off if the patient is proactive about it (such as asking for generics rather than named brands, as a base example), but first offer and primary suggestion tends not to aim for effective and least expensive, but effective and most expensive. Even when there's no or nearly no difference in effectiveness.

At times, you have to flat out go somewhere else to get an equally effective treatment -- or even slam identical one -- for a lower price. This would be an example of an effective treatment not being provided in favor for a (more) profitable one.

[kaijyuu]

Well actually that isn't my position; that's the Green Party's position. I'm just arguing it as a devil's advocate type of thing, since I'm not educated on the matter enough to have a real opinion. I'm absolutely making an assumption that not all valid methods are being provided, and if you can prove differently, then there's no further debate here.

If there are valid methods not being provided then the problem is that doctors are not supplying all available medicine.  It has nothing to do with alternative medicines which are by their nature not proved to be valid methods.  Again: alternative medicine that works is medicine.

I'm not convinced it's possible to give informed consent in this case.  Maybe if you have studied medicine for years and read all the literature on the treatment you are going to reject and all the literature on the not-proven-to-work or proven-not-to-work treatment you are about to receive then that could qualify as informed consent.  But regular members of the public are not likely to achieve that level of knowledge about the matter - more likely some quack told them that chemotherapy is evil and homeopathy works way better, look at my mail order degree I can't be lying.

Thus I can see an argument for allowing patients to choose between different alternatives that have an actual scientific basis, and maybe for offering a euthanasia option, but including shady alternative medicines that don't work is likely to confuse an average citizen.

* kaijyuu nods

Fair enough on all points.

Lastly I have no idea what you mean by not as profitable.  I guess something would be less profitable if it didn't work?

Well there are two possibilities I can see, both admittedly rather rare:
- There are several rare curable diseases, but aren't properly treated due to the expense of treatment. The medicine isn't in demand enough to mass produce it. I see these brought up every once in a while as a criticism for profit based healthcare.
- It doesn't seem to far fetched to me to come up with alternative treatments that are effective, but not as effective, that are pushed aside as completely irrelevant because they can't be monetized as well. I'm pretty sure most doctors would push the most effective treatments unless they're prohibitively expensive, but lesser ones that a cheaper might be ignored. This is conjecture on my part, so could very well be wrong.

[Glowcat]

When alternate medicine works, its called medicine.

Stupid sleeping and making me miss a perfect opportunity to quote Tim Minchin...

[ChairmanPoo]

There is scant evidence suggesting that any of these purported "alternative treatments" do anything. As a doctor I have  a moral duty to keep scientific integrity when dealing with my patients. I'm not about to start offering to them "complementary" or "alternative" treatments that dont really seem to compliment anything, and I don't think that hospitals (let alone hospitals in a social security networks, or nationalized healthcare systems) should be spending their resources in those. Furthermore I feel duty-bound to let them know my professional opinion - as gently as possible*, of course, as the idea is not to antagonize them by insulting their beliefs, but first make sure they will not stop taking the real stuff, and then try to explain to them why whatever their faith healer of choice is doing does not make much sense.

[scriver]

I'm a bit less sanguine about that view, considering I've used CTM (Chinese Traditional Medicine) to good effect in the past.

Seeming as there is tons of people that swear by homeotherapy as well, such a statement doesn't really mean anything. Especially since traditional Chinese medicine is, from what I know at least, heavily focused on preventing ails rather than during them, which makes it all the more easier to fraud people with it.

Furthermore, nobody is ever saying that there isn't some parts in CTM that works. "Western" medicine, which actually should be titled Scientific Medicine, is loosely based on an equally ancient and equally full of bullshit medicinal tradition, as you probably know, but then we decided to find out what parts of it actually worked and what didnt. All in all, people are saying two simple things:
1, Nobody who practices CTM has any real knowledge of what they're doing. All they have is superstition and unscientific natural philosophy which they arbitrarily decided was correct. And when CTM actually does work, nobody has any idea of the real reason why, or what all the other chemicals you ingested with the working one will do to you.
2, Just like with Western Traditional Medicine, when something out of CTM is proven to work and we know how and why it works, it becomes Scientific Medicine.

Acupuncture used to be (still is in some circles) considered quackery too.

Acupuncture used to be called bullshit because it was said to cure things, cancers, brain diseases, genetic stuff, all of those ails we still haven't got very good cures for (what a coincidence, huh?). Now, it is used as a painkiller and/or relaxation therapy. Anyone claiming it does anything more is still a quack.

Prerog: MASSIVE NINJA INVASION! But then again, I started writing this a few words at a time several hours ago. Gonna go read the rest now.

[kaijyuu]

I'd like to point out that self prescribed placebos still work as effective placebos

[MetalSlimeHunt]

I'm a bit less sanguine about that view, considering I've used CTM (Chinese Traditional Medicine) to good effect in the past. Acupuncture used to be (still is in some circles) considered quackery too.

Yeah, great. Just because CTM happened to stumble upon something that works doesn't mean that you can trust some or even most of it.

Acupuncture used to be considered complete quackery, but then do you know what happened? We did science. We tested it. And it turned out that Acupuncture used for stress and pain relief is real medicine but none of its other uses are. And now we know. We can do that with everything else. I'm not saying we shouldn't do tests. But if the tests call them bullshit they're bullshit and not medicine, which means they need to be discarded.

A lot of modern CTM is just from hostility to real medicine because it is perceived as "Western" and thus "Not appropriate for Chinese people". Its the same bullshit as the occasional claims by Japanese people that they can't digest imported rice because it is "Not Japanese Enough".

By the way: Jill Stein, nominee of the green party for president, is a physician by profession.

Which doesn't necessarily make her credible. Furthermore, being candidate doesn't mean you get to write the platform.

Seems to me that their position is "stop pushing treatments based on profitability and instead offer multiple treatments that suit the patient best." And of course, the patient would be able to choose the treatment that suits them best.

Firstly, that isn't what they're saying. At all. I don't know where you're getting this from. Secondly, a patient doesn't know best. A patient doesn't know about the various treatments available to them. A patient doesn't know about maladies that aren't felt physically. A patient is thus informed by a legitimate doctor in an ethical fashion so that with the patient's status and feelings combined with the doctor's knowledge and expertise they may come to a consensus on the best treatment.

MSH, you seem to be implying that there is One True Medicine (tm) and that all other options are inherently bullshit. Now, we can agree that homeopathy is an example of bullshit, but there are other alternative methods that are not. RedKing gave some examples. The Green Party's position to me reads as supporting those alternative methods, and while pointing out their supporting homeopathy is a valid criticism, it doesn't undermine their entire position on the issue (not nearly).

There is One True Medicine and all other options are inherently bullshit. Alternative medicine that works is called medicine, to quote a certain someone.

There is scant evidence suggesting that any of these purported "alternative treatments" do anything. As a doctor I have  a moral duty to keep scientific integrity when dealing with my patients. I'm not about to start offering to them "complementary" or "alternative" treatments that dont really seem to compliment anything, and I don't think that hospitals (let alone hospitals in a social security networks, or nationalized healthcare systems) should be spending their resources in those. Furthermore I feel duty-bound to let them know my professional opinion - as gently as possible*, of course, as the idea is not to antagonize them by insulting their beliefs, but first make sure they will not stop taking the real stuff, and then try to explain to them why whatever their faith healer of choice is doing does not make much sense.

Thank you.

There you all are. You now have the perspective of an actual doctor on this and why it is bullshit.

[RedKing]

Damn, didn't realize we had a contingent of medical fundamentalists around here. I won't make the mistake of interrupting the adoration of the One True God Medicine with my heathen ways.

And for the record, I'm not saying that CTM is the end-all and be-all of medicine. Hell, 99% of CTM professionals wouldn't say that. What they will say is that Western medicine is fantastic at certain things (treating acute problems) and not so great at others (like treating low-level or chronic problems). It doesn't have to be an all-or-nothing approach.

[GlyphGryph]

That's an accurate criticism of Western medicine, I think. General health in the west is dominated by a lot of bullshit too, especially at the every day level, and I don't think it's appropriate to conflate scientific medicine and western medicine - a lot of out generally accepted medical beliefs have little or no scientific backing, and ineffective methods are quite often popularized while effective methods and accurate information languish because of an inability to market them, or simply because they are dismissed out of hand, or simply because the person who discovered it wasn't able to push it to prominence, or even because it's generally known the doctors you work with don't understand even the most basic techniques in applying statistically powerful medicine to individual cases or even applying statistics, period.

Unfortunately, a criticism of method A (Western Medicine), no matter how accurate, is not support of method B. CTM in general is based on a lot of bullshit and quakery and the version most people see is just as profit centered as Western medicine.

Honestly, I'd love for there to be a reliable field of medicine, or a medical tradition, based around helping those who have chronic but relatively minor (comparatively) issues. But there isn't. It's an area where profits are minimal if you're being honest, where quality information is expensive and hard to come by - if you're not being screwed over by one of those factors, you're probably being screwed over by the other... it's not really conducive to coming up with a good alternative.

* GlyphGryph shrugs.

It's definitely possible for CTM to offer something that will work for you. It's just not likely. (Beyond, as always, the always wonderful Placebo effect)

[scriver]

Damn, didn't realize we had a contingent of medical fundamentalists around here. I won't make the mistake of interrupting the adoration of the One True God Medicine with my heathen ways.

If you got that from what people have been saying here, then I have to question your reading abilities, RedKing. Don't try to pain us as some sort of blindered supremacists, I might as well paint you as a Sino-phile in love with anything remotely "Chinese" and without ability to keep apart your romanticised view of CTM and the reality. So let's keep the personal accusation out of it, shall we?

Me and others have made our position very clear. If it's scientifically proven to work, we have no problems with it. It won't be CTM any more, of course. It will just be medicine.

And for the record, I'm not saying that CTM is the end-all and be-all of medicine. Hell, 99% of CTM professionals wouldn't say that. What they will say is that Western medicine is fantastic at certain things (treating acute problems) and not so great at others (like treating low-level or chronic problems). It doesn't have to be an all-or-nothing approach.

First of all, the concept of "Western" medicine versus "Chinese" is bullshit. We don't do "Western" medicine any more. We used to, but doctors started realising it was baseless folklore. The fact that the medicinal enlightenment happened in the West is completely irrelevant. You might as well claim physics is "Western physics", or that math is "Western math". Secondly, yeah, I'd like to see them back that up with proof.

[RedKing]

When I see a comment like

There is One True Medicine and all other options are inherently bullshit.

I could easily replace the word "Medicine" with "God", and it would fit perfectly into the mouth of a Pentecostal fundamentalist. Claiming that your way is the only correct way and all others are inherently invalid *is* fundamentalism, whether you like it or not. Replace "scientifically testable" with "in the Bible", and you even have the same discriminator as to what's acceptable and not acceptable.

There is a very complex system of thought underlying CTM, but yes...it does derive from a Taoist worldview which is inherently unscientific. If you consider that bollocks, then obviously you're going to consider CTM bollocks. If you actually *do* believe in Taoist metaphysics (and let me remind me you I've been a Taoist for roughly 20 years now), then it's a lot more valid. I'll grant you that that justification is no more sound than Christian faith healing. But the general attitude of "There Is But One Law And It Is SCIENCE" gets old after a while. Some times I think we have a few too many atheists around here. 

[Descan]

But... It's provable. Either it works or it doesn't. It's one of the few things in science we can be fairly close to absolutely certain about. It doesn't matter what world view is behind it. All an ethical doctor should care about is what heals his/her patients.

I don't know how else to argue against that point, Red. That kind of thinking, it just... Throws me off.

[Darvi]

There's a difference between science and faith, and one of the biggest ones is falsifiability. Empirical evidence can prove that a given medicine is better at treating a specific condition as opposed to an alternative method, whereas religion is for the most part a subjective thing.

[RedKing]

I don't know how else to argue against that point, Red. That kind of thinking, it just... Throws me off.

I know. That's why I'm not continuing this argument. It's like arguing apples and walruses.

[Descan]

I can agree to that. There are certain axioms both parties need to hold before any debate can be had. What truth is and how you arrive at it is one of them.