Wonderful overlooked fact about Obamacare--it will curtail mandatory alternative medicine coverage!

[MineralMan]

302. Meditation and massage are not part of what I consider to be

Last edited Fri Jul 13, 2012, 02:13 PM - Edit history (1)

"alternative medicine." Not at all. Both are well known to provide comfort, but are not medical treatments.

Your researcher is also heavily into homeopathy. Go find a study that show homeopathy to be effective. Homeopathy is the very definition of woo.

The thing is that some stuff pandered by the alternative medicine community actually involves active principles. Some of the herbals do have medicinal uses. The ones that work the best are actually part of the pharmacopeia. As has always been the case, dosages are difficult to control when working with the actual botanicals, and some botanicals can kill if misused. So, the ones that work, like digitalis, are made synthetically today and in standard strengths so they can be used accurately. Yes, they came from plants originally, but dosing yourself with foxglove is dangerous. There are many other examples of botanicals that have become part of regular medical care, but they are standardized and regulated, like all other prescription drugs.

The problem isn't with alternative medicine's reliance on natural remedies. The problem is that practitioners don't discriminate, and a lot of bogus crap is included under the umbrella of "alternative health care." Crystal healing, "network" chiropractic, laying on of hands, hot stone therapy, and a host of other bogus treatments, along with patently useless things like homeopathy are all part and parcel of the alternative health care business. Let that industry live by the same standards as the medical industry, with the same regulation, and we'd soon find out what is bogus and what is not. Big Natural Healthcare is as much a profit machine as Big Pharma, but with far less regulation.

No sale.