Sen. Harkin bitches about how 'Alternative' medicine is bunk

[SirNitram]

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[quote]“Good morning. This is the latest in an ongoing series of hearings that will guide us as we craft comprehensive health care reform legislation in the months ahead. In his speech to Congress Tuesday evening, President Obama made clear that he expects Congress to pass a bill this year, and we fully intend to take him up on that challenge.

“I thank our committee chair, Senator Kennedy, for giving the go-ahead for this hearing. Of course, we all look forward to his speedy return to the Senate.

“I am pleased to co-chair this morning’s hearing with Senator Mikulski. And I am eager to hear our distinguished witnesses’ ideas on using integrative care to keep people healthy, improve healthcare outcomes, and reduce healthcare costs.

“It is fashionable, these days, to quote Abraham Lincoln. So I would like to quote from his 1862 address to Congress – words that should inspire us as we craft health care reform legislation. Lincoln said, “The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty . . . . As our case is new, so we must think anew, and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country.â€

[The Minx]

Heaven forfend that we should demand supporting evidence that something works before asking people to fork over large sums of money with the expectation that it will improve their health. Lets instead actively try to accept as much as possible without trying to scrutinize it first. I wonder who has been contributing to his campaigns.

[The Cleric]

I'm all for preventative medicine, but alternative bullshit is, well, bullshit.

[General Havoc]

I'd actually like to qualify that a bit. Most alternative bullshit is bullshit. "Alternative" Medicine is a misleading term. Some archaic practices actually do have legitimate medical use.

Leeches, as an example, are ridiculed nowadays because they date from the period where everyone thought that the cure for most illnesses was to bleed people a bunch. However some trauma surgeons now employ them so as to aide people who have had fingers or limbs re-attached in healing, as the leeches can actually help to prevent the onset of blood gangrene while the body repairs the micro-capillaries of the severed digit. I've personally employed "alternative" herbal remedies (no, not what you're thinking) for things like the Migraine Headaches I suffer from that have refused categorically to respond to anything else, including hospital-grade anesthetics or morphine drips.

98% of Alternative medicine is complete bunk, Hippy bullshit propagated by charlatans and snake-oil salesmen. A fair look at the stuff that does work however is not entirely unreasonable.

[The Minx]

Of course some of it might be useful, after all, the active ingredients in some drugs were discovered from studying herbal medicine for instance. Unfortunately, many of the proponents of alternative medicine are blasting the whole approach of clinical trials, and want an express route to application, like the guy in the OP article seems to be doing.

[Cynical Cat]

Around here the hippies are small fry in the "alternative" medicine racket. Who beats them? The whacko religious faith healers? Nope. New Agey Psychic bullshit artists? Nope.

Traditional Chinese Medicine. Combines quackery with the killing of endangered animals for profit. Fuck them.

[General Havoc]

Yeah, we get quite a bit of that down here too. The "herbal" remedy I was referring to above? A traditional Chinese recipe. It's some kind of noxious soup of about fifty five different herbs, no animal parts, but there are plenty of remedies they use that call for Rhino horn or some such.

Let it all go through clinical trials and see what happens.