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Failures of Alternative Medicine go Unnoticed
I touched on alternative medicine a couple of posts ago. NBC's Robert Bazell recently published a commentary titled, "Ignoring the failures of alternative medicine."
Last week’s study showing that the widely touted and sold supplement DHEA does nothing to slow the effects of aging was only the latest major piece of research with powerfully negative results from the National Institutes of Health Center for Complimentary and Alternative Medicine. Previous placebo-controlled trials proved the uselessness of St. John’s Wort for depression and saw palmetto for enlarged prostates, shark cartilage for cancer, echinacea for the common cold and glucosamine plus chondroitin sulphate for arthritis. [emphasis added]For one physician-scientist-blogger's view, see Orac's take.
But it doesn’t matter much — few seem to care....
No doubt some of the thousands of products sold as dietary supplements work well, but the industry that sells them has neither motivation nor desire to know which ones work and which don’t.
4 comments:
Quoting Dr Weil is a bit like quoting Dr. Phil. Not the most credible member of the Alt. medicine community.
A bit odd, if recall the study for St. John Wart was just slightly better than the conventional medicines compared, all of which were around the placebo level. Call that a failure if you want. But it cuts both ways.
And look at this second post on that blog linked at the bottom, [quote]While I realize that it is only something you quoted (vs something you wrote), I'll take you to task for the same thing for which I took Tara to task - Glucosamine probably doesn't belong to the 'altie' category. There are a lot of stat sig randomized trials and studies - run by reputable orgs and published in reputable magazine (e.g. JAMA). Even the 'failed' study that it probably being referenced in the quote was not a significant a failure:
p=0.09 on the primary endpoint for Glucosamine plus Chondroitin. May not be technically 'stat sig', but as one statistician recently bemoaned in a published article, the medical community and lay press both think that 0.05 is some kind of mystical number. 0.09 means it is 4.5% chance that they got this result by chance.
(And note that the 'failed' study protocol was a pretty stupid one given the type of success seen in multiple previous studies - in general the successful trials have been long ones (3 years), whereas the 'failed' trial was 24 weeks.)[/quote]
I don't think everything works as advertised, but I have seen enough success, that I can tell something is wrong here. I know that an extract of milk thistle [silymarin? - butchered spelling] is used in Europe for mushroom poisoning, but over here, it is "alternative medicine". Frankly, I am not surprised by Shark Cartilage, but then, that is my bias.
When you say conventional medicines compared to St. John's Wart, do you mean prozac, zoloft and so forth?
I know there was a comparison to paroxetine about a year ago that found them on par when one excluded people who react to a placebo. Although that study was only for six weeks which is frankly an amazingly short time period for that kind of study. (IMO)
However it's fairly dangerous to read too much into a single study, especially a study with the limits of that one (assuming that's the study you were referencing)
Sungazer,
There was a little more discussion on p values in that thread.
if recall the study for St. John Wart was just slightly better than the conventional medicines compared, all of which were around the placebo level. Call that a failure if you want. But it cuts both ways.
I recall a similar thing, and I agree that it should cut both ways.
Regarding your subject in general, I would point out that the Successes of Alternative Medicine ALSO go Unnoticed (for the most part).
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