General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Scientific American: Bash Homeopathy and Bigfoot Less, Mammograms and War More [View all]Oneironaut
(5,731 posts)Healthcare is terrible in this country. Even "approved" medicine can be dangerous, with some having a mile-long list of potential side effects.
That doesn't mean, however, that water pills should be considered as a viable alternative to treating diseases like cancer. It just means that we need to find new ways to treat illnesses.
If an alternative form of medicine can't be shown to have effective results against a disease using the scientific method, then it's useless. It's not one or the other - something has to work to actually be useful as medicine.
Your last sentence doesn't address the issue, as alternative medicine (generally) doesn't hurt people. That's not even being argued. What's bring argued is whether or not it actually works. I'm not talking about rubbing aloe on a burn, for example. I'm talking about snake oil peddlers who have people convinced that chemotherapy is an evil plot by big pharma, and they should take water pills instead. That's a dangerous form of quackery.
Imo, good alternative treatments - Yoga, massage, meditation, chiropractic (in some instances, if the benefit can be proven)
Bad - Homeopathic pills, natural oils with no scientific proof of efficacy, prayer, chiropractic (claims of curing cancer and other unrelated diseases with no proof, Chinese medicine, superstition, etc.)