There isn’t much that rattles the sedate world of medicine. Events like the usual “quack” identified after years of successful practice or the multibillion-dollar pharmaceutical giant being sued over some alleged side effects of a drug that never worked in the first place, barely cause a flutter. For decades, differing brands of health sciences have been locked in battle over therapeutic ideology. The dispute goes to the core of scientific principles and behind the very ethics of care and cure. Science is finally taking sides in the manner of medicine’s practice, and the centuries-old realm of homeopathy is being demolished by its longtime foe. Suddenly, the pendulum is swinging toward conventional medicine.
A research study published last week in The Lancet, an authoritative scientific journal, has shown startling evidence that homeopathic treatment works no better than dummy drugs. The collaborative study between Swiss and British scientists compared the therapeutic outcomes of over two hundred trials involving homeopathy and conventional (allopathy) medicine and concluded that whatever beneficial effects are seen with the former are purely a case of mind-over-matter.
As expected, the publication has stirred a hornet’s nest of protest from proponents of alternative medicine. Put on the defensive, Paula Ross, chief executive for The Society of Homeopaths, argues that “the placebo-controlled randomized trial is not a fitting research tool with which to test homeopathy”. However, when present-day statisticians rate such trials with the highest grade of scientific evidence, then practitioners of alternative medicine know that they have their backs against the wall. The question that arises is, if this manner of statistical methodology is not suitable for homeopathy, then what is?
After having gone into decline in the twentieth century, homeopathy has staged a comeback over the past decade. The working mantra of homeopathy is that somehow “like cures like”. It claims that substances causing specific symptoms in a healthy individual can cure the very same symptoms in someone who is sick. Concerns are gaining that a traditional philosophy that remains as yet undeciphered has been leniently allowed the medicinal mandate to persevere.
On the other hand, practitioners of holistic medicine bandy that “if it is truly a placebo effect, (then) isn’t that a fine medicine?” Such arguments are frivolous and only aim to undermine the unanswered question — does this medicine really work and if so, how? To their credit, practitioners of such holistic sciences usually form powerful alliances with their patients, an aspect mostly lacking in allopathy. Since both patients and their caregivers commonly share strong beliefs about the effectiveness of their treatment, this in itself could be empowering and also restorative. But, the patients who take alternative medicine deserve more than just the placebo effect.
The era that we live in today is one of evidence-based medicine. The world exacts evidence in every aspect of life, not just empty rhetoric. It’s distressing to watch the chariot that first carried the founding principles of various alternative therapies still trudging along in the same fashion. The reverse is true for conventional medicine.
In the 18th century, prevailing “convention” prescribed bizarre practices like purging, bloodletting and blistering as therapies for various maladies. In the light of scientific innovations such previously wanting remedies have been replaced by their tested and proven cousins in allopathy. Allopathy though, has changed, evolved, improved and become more precise. Unfortunately, homeopathy along with its holistic cousins remains mired in tradition and a flawed philosophy.
While allopathy has a more rigorous and self-critical scientific methodology, alternative medicine functions on an opinion-based principle. Similarly, allopathy is less optimistic and more realistic when it comes to accepting the limitations of the human condition.
And yet, the use of alternative or holistic medicine is mushrooming in all parts of the world. Surveys have revealed that a third of the population in Europe and half that of United States use some form of alternative medicine.
Being a man of science, my fragile intellect finds this popularity incomprehensible. One assumes that there is something earthly and, dare I say it, natural about alternative medicine. Homeopathy, ayurveda, yoga and herbalism are all identified by one peculiarity — the absence of chemicals that, across the spectrum of alternative medicine, is an anathema to be experimented with.
Human instinct is so set that it is forever waging an imaginary war between the “natural” and the “synthetic”. I suppose it is this allure of being at one with nature that seduces our health instinct. In alternative medicine, nature is revered as being innocent and almost a symbol of virtue. These therapies provide patients with the generous rhetorical embrace of a benevolent “nature”. It is romanticized to the extent of honorific simplicity where the use of alternative remedies means to conform to nature’s laws. After all, it’s assumed that anything “natural” cannot be toxic to the body, especially if their ingredients can be coaxed into releasing their healing touch.
As is the case in most countries, strong cultural beliefs are essential in the upkeep of traditional medicine. There is almost something sacred in the medicinal beliefs of any given society. Richard Fuller, a religious-studies professor at Bradley University in Illinois, calls alternative medicines “systems that dispense heavy doses of unconventional religion”. Conversely, if medicine is not to degenerate into a mixture of ad-hoc hypotheses, then intellectual discussion must be taken out of cultural and spiritual beliefs of society and laid at the doorway of science.
It’s claimed that most holistic remedies live up to medicine’s primary principle — “first do no harm”. This isn’t entirely true. If such potions are ineffective at best, then they are downright dangerous at worst. This is particularly true if they keep patients from seeking established remedies for serious ailments. The sick and the infirm have a duty to know what they are banking on. Certainly, it isn’t much to expect nonconventional therapies to meet the same standards of safety and efficacy that are reserved for allopathic ones.
If the practice of medicine is to remain viable, then it should be able to sustain a thorough but objective criticism of its founding principles. Unfortunately, the current status of alternative medicine, including homeopathy, remains that such objective evidence is yet to be forthcoming. One cannot deny that healing power exists outside the realm of allopathy. Surely, there’s more than one way to skin a cat. If cure exists in another system then it needs to be taken out of its medicinal boondocks. Toward this, opinion-based methodology must be brought in line with evidence-based practice. And then, let good health be the final arbiter.
