Medical Questions » Alternative Medicine Questions » Question No. 26
| Question: | Why do so many patients turn to alternative practitioners for medical care? I have found orthodox doctors marvellous, and they have saved me from a heart attack, and relieved my gout, but some of my friends insist on going to all sorts of funny ' quacks' . |
| Answer: | It is rare for the practitioners of the alternative forms of medical practice to claim they can cure tonsillitis, appendicitis, urinary infections, heart attacks or gout; all of which can be successfully cured or controlled by conventional medical practice. But when it comes to emotive or difficult-to-treat conditions such as cancer, chronic fatigue syndrome, arthritis and infertility, ' quack' remedies abound
There are considerable dangers involved in the use of some of these treatments. For example, the manipulation of a sore back that is caused by bone cancer could lead to permanent paralysis, and some fad diets can lead to an imbalance in the body' s potassium levels that may result in a heart attack.
Doctors are not against any new form of treatment, but it must be proved to work, and proved to be safe, before they will add it to their already comprehensive armamentarium.
Proof is usually obtained by clinical trials. In these, an experimental drug is given to volunteers who have a specific problem, and compared with another group of patients on a different medication or no medication. At all times doctors observe the patient' s symptoms and signs, and the patients themselves record how they feel. Great care is taken to ensure that there is no risk to the health of the volunteers. Unfortunately, nearly all alternative medical treatments subjected to this type of trial fail. Most of them seem to work because of the placebo effect. The placebo effect is that which occurs because a patient believes he will get better on a certain drug, not because of any direct effect of that drug. |
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