Alternative Treatments For Cancer

Some Alternative Treatments For Cancer

The Rules of Science

Instead of subjecting their work to scientific standards, promoters of questionable "alternatives" would like to change the rules by which they are judged and regulated. "Alternative" promoters may give lip service to these standards. However, they regard personal experience, subjective judgment, and emotional satisfaction as preferable to objectivity and hard evidence. As noted in a recent New England Journal of Medicine editorial:

Many advocates of alternative medicine, in contrast, believe the scientific method is simply not applicable to their remedies.When deliberating on the essence of alternative medicine we should simultaneously reflect on the intellectual and moral basis of regular medicine. alternative and regular medicine are speaking different languages; alternative medicine is not unconventional medicine; the paradigm of regular medicine is rational thinking; the paradigm of alternative medicine is irrational thinking; the present popularity of alternative medicine can be explained by romanticism; some concepts of alternative medicine are falsifiable and others are not; alternative medicine and evidence-based medicine are mutually exclusive; the placebo effect is an important factor in regular medicine and the exclusive therapeutic principle of alternative medicine; regular and alternative medicine have different aims: coming of age vs faithfulness; alternative medicine is not always safe; alternative medicine is not economic; and alternative medicine will always exist. The fact that an "alternative" method may exert a placebo effect that relieves symptoms is not sufficient reason to justify its use. Without controlled clinical trials, any treatment that is used could receive credit for the body's natural recuperative ability.

Science versus Vitalism

Practitioners whose methods are based on vitalistic philosophy maintain that diseases should be treated by "stimulating the body's ability to heal itself" rather than by "treating symptoms." Many chiropractors claim to assist the body's "Innate Intelligence" by adjusting the patient's spine. Ayurvedic physicians refer to "prana." The "energies" postulated by vitalists cannot be measured by scientific methods.

Although vitalists often pretend to be scientific, they really reject the scientific method with its basic assumptions of material reality, mechanisms of cause and effect, and testability of hypotheses. Some "alternative" proponents are physicians who have strayed from scientific thought. "Alternative" promoters often claim that their approach promotes general health and is cost-effective against chronic health problems. "Alternative therapy" is a marketing term that should not be permitted. Many news reports have exaggerated the significance of the National Institutes of Health (NIH)'s Office of Alternative Medicine (OAM). Most of OAM's advisory panel members have been promoters of "alternative" methods, and none of its publications have criticized any method. Today the agency is called the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM) and has an annual budget exceeding $100 million .

In 2002, Wallace I. Sampson, M.D., editor of the Scientific Review of Alternative Medicine summed up what has happened:

It is time for Congress to defund the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine.