Acupuncture is just as nonsensical as homeopathy, broad accepted or not. Alternative medicine is medicine that isn’t actually medicine at all.
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Citations please.
Many, many acupuncture patients around the world would very much disagree with you. Along with insurance companies which cover it as an accepted treatment.
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Um… You guys realize homeopathic medicine and Integrative Medicine are not the same thing right? The LA Times article mentions that the billionaire was healed from a cold from “homeopathic medicine” which lead him to an interest in alternative medicine but the center is for Integrative Medicine. Surely there are many terrible Integrative Doctors but ultimately it’s medicine that is conventional but looks at root cause and environmental irritants. If you went to an integrative doctor for something like “acne” they might ask you to change your diet first rather than immediately offer a prescription. If through a series of environmental approaches your acne wasn’t cleared up then you would end up getting the same prescription that a normal doctor would recommend. If went to a doctor because you are having anxiety, a good integrative doctor would ask questions about your workplace conditions, home life, relationship status and possibly recommend exercise or therapy. Perhaps you might see this all as a waste of time and money, but I don’t, and typically speaking if your doctor doesn’t just throw drugs at you the moment you have an issue they’ve probably been influenced by integrative practices. Ever tried CDB oil for muscle pain or any other issue? Guess what, an integrative doctor would be way more likely to have read up on it and would be willing to try it as a first stop. Lastly there are plenty of conventional doctors that will prescribe purely for profit, or did we all forget about the whole opioid epidemic going on?..
The Defining Principles of Integrative Medicine:
Patient and practitioner are partners in the healing process.
All factors that influence health, wellness, and disease are taken into consideration, including mind, spirit, and community, as well as the body.
Appropriate use of both conventional and alternative methods facilitates the body’s innate healing response.
Effective interventions that are natural and less invasive should be used whenever possible.
Integrative medicine neither rejects conventional medicine nor accepts alternative therapies uncritically.
Good medicine is based in good science. It is inquiry-driven and open to new paradigms.
Alongside the concept of treatment, the broader concepts of health promotion and the prevention of illness are paramount.
Practitioners of integrative medicine should exemplify its principles and commit themselves to self-exploration and self-development.
https://integrativemedicine.arizona.edu/about/definition.html
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I have nothing to add.
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Hardly a “College of Homeopathy” at all. $50 million on a new building that is not going to be designed with homeopathy by the architects and won’t be built with homeopathy by the construction workers. $5 million for new, homeopathic-agnostic labs. And $145 million for endowed chairs – these people have to have advanced degrees so it’s not going to be Joe Homeopathy off the street getting these positions. The Times article mentions homeopathy once and every “skeptic” goes nuts claiming $200 million is being flushed down the toilet.
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No, I don’t think I do. Or rather, I didn’t realize that homeopathy isn’t usually included with integrative medicine.
If they’re going to do this they also have to investigate the looming homeopathic industrial waste situation.
Think about it, homeopathic remedies are created by diluting things in water, throwing away 90% of it, diluting it again, throwing away 90% of that, over and over again, at each step it gets stronger … what happens to all the stuff they discard? it goes down the drain, ends up super-diluted in the sea … listen up sheeple, if homeopathy is real we have a looming massive sea based homeopathic toxic waste crisis in the making … or not
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So … this comment intentionally left blank?
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Yeah, if ti costs $200 mill to put the bullshit to rest, so be it…
Cannabis is currently considered alternative medicine. There is a definite need for further research to validate its beneficial use.
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An oldie but goodie: https://boingboing.net/2009/07/03/if-woowoos-ran-the-e.html
Here’s a 2005 article about them in which they were already financing homeopathy at UC Irvine:
Also:
Among the DOD-related projects, which are a collaboration with the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences, the military medical school in Bethesda where Jonas is a clinical professor, are several to determine whether the use of extremely diluted poisons, including cyanide and botulinum toxin, might protect soliders from higher doses to which they could be exposed in biological warfare.
What, no iocaine?
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Yep, that’s one opinion, from a skeptic group. Thank you.
As I say, if it was simply a ‘superstition’, it wouldn’t be as popular, effective, or covered by insurance in some plans. It’s OK if you don’t agree, but that’s only an opinion.
The popularity of delusions is not a measure of anything. See: Religion.
The efficacy of acupuncture has not been proven to the point that it is accepted as medicine.
Insurance companies will cover whatever bets will make them money. That something can be insured means little in this context.
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That would be a shock to people who find it an effective form of medicine.
Shockingly, people who use it don’t rely on your approval to do so (or skeptic websites, etc). Maybe it’s something that should be… I dunno… studied?
Acupuncture has no more validity as a treatment method than any other elaborate placebo. Like wet-cupping, or exsanguination.
And all too often “integrated medicine” turns into “my spirit coach said I should stop taking my chemo because it unbalances my chakras. So, now I have this metastatic thing the doctors can’t figure out. Take that science.”
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No. That’s not how evidence works.
If you want to claim a treatment is valid and works, it’s your job to provide good evidence it does.
It’s not my job to prove something that keeps failing in the scientific literature doesn’t work.
A lot of women for instance report feeling some relief of their period symptoms after eating chocolate. Does that make chocolate a valid replacement for taking a midol?
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Maybe a $200M grant to study a popular “placebo” is a good thing?
What I’m saying is that acupuncture, which has been popular for many hundreds of years, has never had a really thorough study done to prove or disprove its efficacy. Unlike homeopathy, which has been thoroughly proven to be bunk, I’d think that a major investment in a college lab that can study it to see whether it’s a helpful treatment would be a positive investment.
I didn’t ask you.
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Obviously the literature department and creative writing are gonna be involved
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