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$2.5 billion spent, no alternative cures found An inefficient placebo Finally the media at large dares to go non-PC and reveal that complementary and alternative medicine just doesn’t work. The National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine is an enormous money pit. They (and by “they” I mean “you and I”) have spent 2.5 billion dollars over a decade with almost nothing to show for it! Let’s take a moment to try to grasp this large number. We humans are generally very bad at understanding numbers outside of our everyday scale of living.
Back to the main story.  Science-based medicine for the win! Echinacea, no effect. Ginkgo biloba, no effect. Glucosamine and chondroitin, no effect. Black cohosh, no effect. Saw palmetto, no effect. Shark cartilage, no effect. All of these are no better than a placebo for the various conditions for which they are attributed to affect. The article mistakenly gives minor props to acupuncture, stating that “has been shown to help certain conditions”. Not likely. A bunch of recent studies indicate that traditional acupuncture is NO BETTER than sham (or placebo) acupuncture. Which means that there is on medicinal effect beyond that of a placebo. Other meta studies have reached the same conclusion. Oh, and by the way, chiropractic medicine cannot treat asthma. Read the full story over at MSN.com.  1 comment to $2.5 billion spent, no alternative cures found |
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June 24, 2009 5:36pm by swood | 
How much money has been invested into traditional medicine without curing cancer or alzhiemer’s or plenty of other diseases? I bet a lot more than 2.5 billion dollars.
I always thought that “media at large” was always very anti-alternative-medicine, so such an article does not surprise me. The major drug companies are huge advertisers for main stream media, and therefore reporting studies that bash the competition seems like a logical approach.
Why do prescription drugs that can only be licensed by medical doctors need to be advertised on TV? One theory, which makes sense to me, is that they want people to self-diagnose themselves first and then go find a doctor will will give them the [expensive] drugs. Not a bad business model, although I’m not sure if it is in the best interests of the health of a person.