Pondering Alternative medicine
Robert Bazell, NBC Chief science and health correspondent, released a commentary about Alternative medicine this morning. His premise is that the NIH spent millions of dollars testing Alternative Medicine and most of it doesn’t work. Yet, the lack of medical research does not deter people from taking these medications. Read: people are stupid; scientists are smart.
It’s curious to me, however. My experience of people is that they are not, in fact, stupid and use things because they work for them.
The problem with medical research is that it’s geared to fast acting drugs which by pass the bodies own capacity to heal itself. Further, the person who reaches for a alternative medicine, is more likely to embrace an alternative lifestyle - exercise, diet modification, and health.
Medical doctors now embrace lifestyle changes after decades of ridiculing Dr. Dean Ornish and others who promoted the benefits of diet and exercise. If it works, it’s now mainstream science. If it doesn’t work immediately, it’s snake oil.
The question that Mr. Brazell fails to ask in his commentary, is “if these products don’t work, why do people think that they do?” Maybe the NIH should study that and we might all learn to engage our own amazing capacity to heal. But that would put the NIH out of business… and of course Mr. Brazell.
Filed under: Experts
