Anti-woo commentators are a bunch of smug and condescending...

[Ms. Toad]

410. Because the label "woo" hasn't been used on DU

to apply to medical treatments which are do not have "solid, peer reviewed evidence to support their viability." It is used exclusively to refer to CAM, even when the evidence on CAM is equivalent or better than the evidence on a treatment which is part of traditional medicine. And it continues to be used to dismiss CAM generically (for example acupuncture, chiropracty, and osteopathy) even though there is solid evidence behind using those practices to treat certain conditions - when, in contrast, it is not generically used to dismiss traditional medicine even when traditional medicines are used to treat conditions for which there is no evidence it is effective (e.g. many of the off label uses for conditions for which a specific medication has not been tested).

For example, by that definition you claim to be using, the traditional medicine my daughter is taking is "woo." It was the subject of a study which was halted because of an unexpected correlation with negative outcomes (death and transplant). That study was only random double blind placebo study on the use of this medication for her condition.

If I had just told you she was using Ursodiol (or ursodeoxycholic acid) for a cholestatic liver disease it probably would not even have crossed your mind to check to see if it was "woo" because you would have recognized it as traditional medicine. Had you checked because you didn't recognize the name of the drug, a quick google search will turn up pages and pages of articles suggesting it is an appropriate treatment for a cholestatic liver disease - and because it is part of the arsenal of traditional medicine that would have been the end of it. You certainly wouldn't have done the research to discover the study contraindicating its off label use for my daughter's condition.

On the other hand, if I told you that she was using milk thistle for a liver disease, your immediate reaction would have been "woo," and because it is part of the arsenal of CAM, you would have continued to call it "woo," without ever bothering to do any searching to back up you knee jerk opinion - and likely wouldn't even have followed any links I provided about the research on it.

From a scientific basis, there is more support for using milk thistle to treat liver diseases than for using Ursodiol for my daughter's disease - neither is proven, either way, but there are positive correlations between milk thistle and liver disease and either neutral (prior less rigorous, lower population studies) or statistically significant negative correlations in the most rigorous study for the use of Ursodiol. But the bottom line is that using Ursodiol would ultimately be considered acceptable medical care - and using milk thistle would be derided as "woo," not because one has more scientifically rigorous studies supporting its use, but because one triggers the "woo" reaction and the other doesn't - and no amount of scientific rigor ever changes that in the discussions on DU.

So yes - my daughter is using "woo," to treat a liver condition that will ultimately require her to have a transplant. But the "woo," using the definition you say you are using is the medicine her doctor is prescribing for her - not the milk thistle. But if you are at all honest, you know that is not the one that would be labeled "woo" and not the one I would be told, on DU, that I am a fool for letting her use.

And it is that reality - not the definition you say you are using (because in reality it is not the one applied) - which prompted my response.