Panda Bear – tells CAM like it is

Via Orac I discovered Panda Bear MD – written by an Emergency Medicine Resident Physician who has a way of describing alternative medicine like it is, for example as in this piece:

At a philosophical level, leaving aside the utter ridiculousness of Reiki healers shooting sacred energy from their fingers, this is the difference between real medicine and Complementary and Alternative Medicine whose practitioners, as they don’t treat real pathology, have never developed humility in the face of disease. It is easy, for example, for your acupuncturist to promise a perfect cure because they’re not really treating anything, just some nebulous mumbo-jumbo like a dysfunction of your ability to receive pure qi from the heavens. Side effects? None, of course. It’s perfect medicine because, despite being based on a completely imaginary idea of physiology that has no relation whatsoever to the way things actually are, it can magically target your imaginary complaint.

The whole thing’s worth a read.

Comments

[SkeptiKoSpeptic]

*Yawn*
and here I thought I had come across an educated site.

[Tom Foss]

*Yawn*
Another drive-by woo with a smug bit of doggerel.

Exactly what does being "educated" have to do with the efficacy (or lack thereof) of CAM?

[Jimmy_Blue]

*Yawn*

Another woo who thinks they are "educated" and yet can't even use grammar correctly.

Medicine and healing practices have existed for thousands of years. To dismiss health care practices in other cultures and civilizations, and just say that only current(i.e.commercial) pharmaceutical drugs can be trusted, is really naive, or maybe just narrow minded thinking. The world is not a few hundred years old...oh yes, I believe this was a "scientific fact"..not that long ago!

[Tom Foss]

Medicine and healing practices have existed for thousands of years.

Yes, they have. So have pseudoscience and quackery. What's your point?

To dismiss health care practices in other cultures and civilizations, and just say that only current(i.e.commercial) pharmaceutical drugs can be trusted, is really naive, or maybe just narrow minded thinking.

Actually, it's neither. It's a conclusion drawn from the evidence. No one here dismisses CAM because it's from other cultures, we dismiss it because there's no evidence to suggest it works. When the CAM practitioners provide some evidence, preferrably in the form of a double-blind placebo-controlled study, then we'll accept it as real, honest-to-gosh medicine. Until then, it remains in the same realm of quackery as bloodletting, trepanation, and phrenology.

The world is not a few hundred years old

Ducks can't sing the national anthem. See, I can toss out meaningless non sequiturs too.

oh yes, I believe this was a "scientific fact"..not that long ago!

No, in fact, it wasn't. It was religious dogma, which, like CAM, is utterly unsupported by evidence. Even if "the world is a few hundred years old" were considered a "scientific fact" in the recent past, it still undermines your point--the reason science recognizes that the Earth is 4.3 billion years old is because that's the conclusion the evidence supports. When CAM practitioners provide evidence to support their claims, then scientists will accept them as true just as they accepted the age of the Earth.

So far, however, the evidence shows that things like acupuncture, homeopathy, Reiki, therapeutic touch, and other CAM practices, are no better than placebo--i.e., they have no discernible effect. So scientists, drawing tentative conclusions from the evidence, reject CAM--not out of narrow-mindedness, but out of scientific-mindedness.

[Tom S. Fox]

You know, I frequent on skeptical sites for several weeks now and I'm already sick of this!

"You are all close-minded!"
"Science has been wrong before!"
"Older is better!"

All the usual drivel, all in one post!

Arcording to the logic in that last argument an old black-and-white TV is better than a modern color flat-screen TV.
(Well, I admit this analogy is a little off since the black-and-white TV actually works!)

[Jimmy_Blue]

Jeez you stupid "skeptics" completely miss the point again. Let me reiterate it so we can really see the argument's worth:

Suttee (or sati) has existed for over a thousand years. To dismiss marriage practices in other cultures and civilizations, and just say that only current(i.e. modern) marriage conventions can be trusted, is really naive, or maybe just narrow minded thinking. The world is not a few hundred years old...oh yes, I believe this was a "scientific fact"..not that long ago!

Do you get it now?

Except for that last bit. Not really sure what that has to do with anything. Especially since it's wrong. And stupid. But everyone else is saying it these days.