To say that the "alternative medicine" and conspiracy theorists about Western medicine are dangerous to society?

[YourAmplePlumPoster]

I have a friend I've known all my life. He first of all refused to have the Covid vaccine and then refused treatment for his prostate cancer and said he was going to treat it with homeopathic medicine. Result was that it spread to his hip bone. Luckily he started chemo and it's worked. What is wrong with these people?

Heartbreaking episode of Panorama on Monday evening. A beautiful young woman with Cancer refused Chemo, because ht her parents were anti valuers.her brothers were devastated. I cannot understand this mindset .I had Chemo last year for ovarian cancer. Bloody terrified! No choice imo .

But she died due to refusing treatment so that is her own doing.

And now the snake oil pedlars have the echo chamber of social media doing the work of selling their rubbish for them. Do they have no conscience when they are literally killing people.

But she was under the influence of her mother who had estranged her from siblings and friends and convinced her that the proper treatment would kill her and the junk stuff would cure her. And of course she was ill and not necessarily thinking straight and apparently her mother nursed and looked after her very well, apart from persuading her not to have treatment.

No conscience at all. Look at the popularity of these disrupters, making money out of their deluded believers. Utterly sickening. Sociopaths with power complexes the lot of them.

I do not believe herbal medicines work effectively in any way.

Disclaimer: This post is specifically about the herb comment; I have always taken and will continue to take anything western / modern medicine has to offer and I don’t believe alternative medicine is a replacement.

I have a life limiting illness and several autoimmune conditions too. I lived in the USA - the home of big pharma - for several years and do you know what helped relieve my worst symptoms? Smoking medical marijuana i.e. a herb. It was recommended to me by a fully licensed doctor (Yale undergrad then Harvard Medical School); I was issued a medical marijuana card and I got it from a licensed dispensary.

No “standard” medications have ever worked for me anywhere near as well and it really did give me my life back (and I tried everything else first, it was the last resort).

Yes, and that's what I was meaning. My cancer was treated by science, and complementary therapies are supporting my general wellbeing (because the lasting effects of the medical treatment are very real).

I very much would like to see some sort of regulation to stop people popping up on social media saying that medicine has it wrong, you just need coffee enemas to cure your cancer. Being diagnosed with cancer is traumatic, and I can understand why people are desperate to find 'another way'. Chemo is tough, no doubt about it.

She was 23, a Cambridge graduate so she wasn’t stupid, an adult with her own mind and intelligence to choose what she believed in.

You said

The strange thing about complementary and alternative medicine is that some people choose to believe it's both ineffective and dangerous, it is essentially a mirror to the anti-vaxxer's argument.

A single complementary medicine can be both ineffective and dangerous. I don’t “choose to believe” that, it’s a fact.

Thissillyfox .paloma was 23 and very bright.However her brother said that she was very ill,and not thinking straight. The family had been subjected to stories of shape shifting lizards, 9 11 theories and so on their whole lives. Their parents were completely transfixed. Having cancer makes you feel vulnerable and its difficult to make informed decisions

Yes, it's a shame when complete nutters die needlessly. I don't think it means banning anything or forcing them to have treatment though. I don't want to live in that sort of society.

I think part of the problem is that we are not very honest about the medicines we have the how medicine is practiced.

A lot of medicine is trial and error, with a bit of evidence thrown in. Most licensed drugs won't work for a large portion of patients they are made for. Some patients just won't respond, some will experience bad side effects, and for the most part we just don't know why. Instead of being honest about this, drugs are presented as magic bullets.

We need to have a more honest and balanced discussion about the benefits and limitations of all forms of medicine. Giving the impression western medicine is infallible and everything else is junk just feeds the conspiracies.

The COVId vaccine was a great example of this. It was incredibly effective, but it was v experimental, and it is clear that a small number of people suffered very bad side effects. From a population perspective, it was a huge triumph of modern medicine, but that is cold comfort for those individuals badly affected.

I hate the conspiracists BTW, that story of the nurse and daughter was appalling. She v likely would have gone on to live a long and healthy life if she had chemo.

@YourAmplePlumPoster No need to apologise - you are as entitled to your opinion as I am to mine!

A single complementary medicine can be both ineffective and dangerous. I don’t “choose to believe” that, it’s a fact.

This.

Also the issue with "complementary" and "alternative" medicines isn't that the medicines are necessarily always bad or harmful (although they can be). There are two critical problems with the way these products are marketed and sold:

• They are very rarely tested with the same degree of rigour as a pharmaceutical product (because the medical establishment doesn't take them seriously)
• They are positioned as being a "natural" alternative which is a completely misleading premise: it assumes there's a neat duality between "natural" and "pharmaceutical" which is just scientifically wrong.

I can see how some "complementary" therapies could play a part in health alongside conventional medicine providing people are clear-eyed about the risks and benefits and understand the evidence base. For example there's clearly tons of anecdotal evidence of the benefits of cannabis in pain relief management and lots of other conditions. I can understand how that could play a part in managing cancer symptoms providing it's not positioned as a "cure" and presented as a reason not to use conventional medicines.

Where its really problematic is with this rhetoric where its sold as a "natural alternative" which is healthier than the "chemicals" presented by the medical establishment, leading people to think that its "healthier". It's a grotesque and dangerous over-simplification.

If people want to spend their money on harmless pills and ointments as a supplement to conventional medicine that's fine. If they are doing so as an alternative to potentially life-saving conventional medicines it's really pretty disastrous. I think people should be free to choose to spend money on this but we should regulate much more heavily the practitioners who present this as a viable alternative to conventional medicine.

But they have all "done their research" don't you know.🙄

I'm all about western medicine, but some alternative therapies do help. I visited a massive hospital in Shanghai a good few years ago and they had your usual wards but also acupuncture, all under one roof. It was fascinating!

I've also heard of ivermectin being used as treatment instead too. Stories that a mates, second cousin knew a bloke down the pub who had been diagnosed with stage 4 cancer took ivermectin instead of chemotherapy and is now clear of cancer.
Unsurprisingly, story comes from conspiracy theory follower. Chem trails, geoengineering fully through to flat earth, dome over the earth believing.

Ivermectin is at least a licensed drug which has gone through rigorous safety trials. Clearly it’s not an appropriate substitute for chemotherapy and this is a dangerous narrative.

But I have heard anecdotes of people with advanced cancer being told to take cannabis oil in place of chemotherapy: I know of a woman who did this and sadly died. That’s a whole new level of dangerous.

Totally with the OP. Homeopathy is bunkum, of course it is. I suppose though that the origins of medicine must have been ancient peoples treating themselves/each other with plants/extracts etc, and recently we've been a bit 'wowed' by evidence that some populations of chimps do this too. So the whole homeopathy thing has a basis in historical fact, but modern medicine (despite occasional massive cock ups) has the strength of science behind it. If you have a general mistrust of science, affecting your outlook on life, give your head a wobble 😀

And your evidence is...?

Totally agree OP!

To quote Tim Minchin:
"By definition", I begin
"Alternative Medicine", I continue
"Has either not been proved to work, or been proved not to work
Do you know what they call 'alternative medicine' that's been proved to work?
Medicine."

Plants and fungi can be medicinal powerhouses, scientific knowledge in this area is still in development. Sure, there’s a lot of hyperbole out there but that doesn’t mean herbal medicine is all quackery. There was a big phase of drug discovery using plants but the tide has turned to synthetic chemistry and modelling because that’s much easier and cheaper now. This Wikipedia page is a good summary I think https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medicinal_plants

I use herbal medicines a lot for mild issues such as headaches, cuts and bruises, sunburn, period pains, colds, inflammation etc but I have a PhD in biochemistry, a diploma in herbology, and know my way around scientific journals so I’m confident I’m not doing myself any harm. I also forage these things and prepare them myself so I’m not relying on someone else’s plant identification skills. For anything serious I go to my gp (and yes I also get vaccinated). If I had cancer I would absolutely be taking whatever the nhs has to offer but I’d also be loading up on certain mushrooms (which have been shown to support the immune system when undergoing chemo) and researching what else is available to support myself.
many plants are attributed anti cancer properties but that doesn’t mean they cure cancer, usually these are full of flavonoids which have antioxidant properties - so absorb free radicals which can damage your dna and kickstart a cancer, so assist prevention, not cure. Basically, eat the rainbow, as it’s the coloured plants that do this.

herbal medicine is a complicated subject and I don’t think people should be taking supplements willy nilly. Just because it’s natural, doesn’t mean it’s safe. But it is science, unlike some of these bullshit therapies that break all the laws of physics.

I agree that some plants can be medicinal powerhouses. For example, Foxgloves (digitalis) is a known heart drug. We don’t know as much about this as we might.

However, this is different from conspiracy theory, which has at its roots devious and malicious intentions, and pushes sledgehammer opinions on the medical sector. Most if not all of those exposed as conspiracy theorists are in it for making large sums of money for themselves, eg Alex Jones.

Yes I agree, I am very suspicious of anyone making bold claims and profiteering. Unfortunately there are a lot of people out there who exploit desperate people and it is shameful.

I've always been very skeptical of anything "alternative". I did try homeopathy once, but took it with a grain of salt.

Never been so thirsty in all my life.