I still disagree; I believe you are using an improperly narrow definition of “science” that is too focused on immediate application. History is a science; we can study history to learn more even knowing that many historical writings are flawed, biased, or just plain wrong. In this instance, many modern medicines come from old knowledge - parts of the willow tree were used for pain relief for centuries before we realized acetylsalicylic acid could be synthesized. Nobody would chew willow bark for a headache today, but the knowledge pointed us in the right direction to make medicine. Likewise, I believe there are things in naturopathy that can point us to new or better sources of modern medicines, even though I would not use naturopathy to actually treat someone. I distinguish this from homeopathy, which is 100% bullshit.
I’m trying to find an article about it, but in 2009 the Chinese government made warning labels mandatory on willow bark tea after 7 kids died from Reye’s Syndrome while using willow bark tea in place of aspirin. The problem is that the information is lost in a dearth of “fake news” claims by people shilling willow bark tea - but it was in the news cycle at the time. I was traveling there frequently and remember it quite well.
And I say that as someone who eats gold pears when I get an upset stomach, and who also got irritated when people would joke about me eating kidneys because I wasn’t pregnant. I think there is a place for natural remedies that work for you, and there is a place for opinion in medication on the level you would find available on a store shelf.
EDIT
Best I can find is from the National Reye’s Syndrome Foundation:
http://www.reyessyndrome.org/aspirinlists.html
They mention it there, but I know it happened and can’t find an actual news article about it.
The flaw in your argument is that alt med is incapable of separating what is true from what seems to be true. Herbalisim is filled with claims. A very few of them are grounded in fact, but without science alt med keeps them all, both those with promise and the vast majority, those without. Without systematic study that is controlled for bias, alt med has no way to move forward, no way to toss out the chaff and keep the grain.
Try asking a promoter of alt med which alt med modalities are bogus. Reflexology? Urine Therapy? Iridology? High colonics? Tongue diagnosis? Cupping? Or ask them which herbs are proven to be ineffective. In many, maybe even most, cases you’ll find that practitioners refuse to rule out any alt med modality or herb, because they have no objective way to separate one from the other, and may have a post modernist belief that they are all different, equally valid ways of treating disease.
As Mark Crislip likes to note mixing nonsense with science doesn’t make the science better, just like mixing cow pies with apple pie doesen’t make the apple pie better.
And I have to say you are being naive about alt med if you think nobody would use willow bark instead of aspirin.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00020HYNO/ref=psdc_3763571_t2_B0001VWBGE
I know whose side I’d be on in that argument.
Raw milk from a cow whose health you have personally ascertained is safer than a box of milk from who-knows-where that the store owner claims was produced safely and inspected adequately and shipped hygienically.
The fact that it’s unprocessed is a tiny risk - easier for me to manage personally than I can validate the supply chain and packaging technologies of corporate milk.
And - mathematically, scientifically - my ancestors drank raw milk for thousands of years and yet they survived to produce me. By comparison, corporate box milk in packaging that leaches pseudoestrogens into the product has little or no track record; even if I could prove that what’s in the box is what it says, corporate milk is a relatively unproven and somewhat unquantifiable risk at this point in time.
Thanks to 4H training and competitions, my spouse can taste raw milk and tell you what the cow ate, whether it had mastitis, and whether the milk was contaminated after milking (even I can tell obvious things, like whether the cow was Holstein or Guernsey). Raw milk can be validated, it’s not dependent on trust in nebulous authority.
True that! I’ll strip the bark off the tree and chew it if I have a need.
Officer: “Sir, why are you chewing the bark off that tree”
Drunk person: “Ihht’s a whillow… I have suchhh a head ache… Just neeed some whillow bark…”
I have to stop arguing now because I can’t stop giggling. 
Be careful with the “hippie” attribute in regard to Germany. I already warned you about about the “Neue Germanische Medizin”, but many people are not that cranked up to 9000 with that and still, mostly totally unconsciously, buy into some right-wing esoteric stuff not at all fitting the general “liberal” or “left” idea of hippies we have today.
(On a tangent, some hippies were into that “old mother earth” stuff, and hippie paganism was giving a bit of midwifery for spin-offs into metal and other subcultures.)
The question why I can get naturopathic, osteopathic, TCM and acupuncture treatment on my general health insurance has several answers. (Note: you don’t get it on general basic health insurance, this is a special “offer” of many - still general - health insurances!)
One answer is a competitive advantage for the insurer, because a) people who try out this stuff usually are interested in their health, which reduces cost in the long term and b) people flock to insurers which offer this.
The reason why these treatments are widely accepted is that alternative medicine is , anschlussfähig. It is a closed system, which reproduces itself, and still allows everyone to join on the basis of common least denominators. I would say that a ‘sceptical view’ of medicine and pharmaceutical companies is one of those. A belief in the power of healing in nature, a nearly mythical natural force, is another. An undercurrent of hippie there - but only superficially, methinks. Anthroposophical beliefs are very common in German-speaking countries, especially in Switzerland and Southwestern Germany. In those areas an attitude including ideas of a struggle for life are very much anschlussfahig as well.
It’s almost schizcoprenic: questioning medical and other “authority”, the average German would happily accept the teaching of Hahnemann and Steiner ignoring the authoritarian and fascist attitude perpetuated in those peculiar communities.
And every customer buying organic (i.e., bio) would pay extra for demeter products because they have higher standards, but not many reflect on the underlying anthroposophical word view.
It’s a mess.
Es gibt nichts richtiges im falschen, one wants to shout.
The placebo effect is noise in test data. It’s the error bars for “works” and “doesn’t work”
You don’t do things for the placebo effect because it means you’re ignoring finding out what’s really going on and really treating it. This is assuming the non-treatment mode you’ve decided on doesn’t have adverse effects itself.
And thanks to M. Night Shyamalan and Zoey Deschanel the secret is out.
The wrong one, apparently.
And - mathematically, scientifically - my ancestors drank raw milk for thousands of years
If you can’t figure out that the ones that didn’t survive obviously aren’t going to reproduce, then I suggest you keep words like “Mathematically” and “Scientifically” the outta your mouth. It’s as ignorant as saying “Well, my ancestors for thousands of years wern’t vaccinated, and they survived, so therefore vaccination is pointless.”
(Side note, if you actually DO believe that too, I don’t care and I don’t want to know.)
Raw milk can be validated, it’s not dependent on trust in nebulous authority.
So, apparently, it’s science when it agrees with you, but “Nebulous authority” when it doesn’t. Go talk to someone else, I don’t need to relive the same wrong and simply ignorant arguments, but without the interesting blog to give me reason to forgive the woo.
Lots of Waldorf schools in the US, FWIW.
I’ve seen homeopathic sunscreen for sale in Germany. I don’t know what the SPF was. I suppose you can get away with that in Northern Europe.
Here in the US, thanks to a loopy but powerful (Democratic) Senator who believed in alternative medicine, we earmark a ton of money for a division of NIH called the National Center for Complementary Medicine and Integrative Health. The original narrative behind creating and funding the NCCIH was that the reason these alternative approaches were not proving themselves was that there was no money for research in it, that Big Pharma would only give funnel money into profitable treatment (somewhat true) and that the NIH, CDC, and FDA were in Big Pharma’s pocket (generally false).
Starting in the mid-90s substantial funding became available for research on such treatments. Was the consequence a flood of case-controlled studies proving the effectiveness of homeopathy and healing touch? No. There were a few really bad studies with minimal effect, and lots of crickets. Some of the big alternative medicine organizations aggressively promulgated position papers on why their treatment was not amenable to scientific testing. NCCIH had so much trouble giving money away that it eventually branched out, and now funds things like medicinal use of marijuana, a completely conventional part of core medicine. However, I know people who have been funded by NCCIH, and they have been told by their program directors that for political reasons they would prefer to fund research into actual alternative medicines. They just can’t find many practitioners with sufficient understanding of research, or maybe sufficient belief in their own practice, to take them up on it.
I see complementary medicine as an affront to human progress. Moreover, I believe you can dislike corporate medicine and and deplore imperfect training of medical practitioners without just giving up and turning to the medical scam artists of the 19th century and their direct philosophical descendants.
It’s not meant to be offensive. I use the term “hippie” in the sort of “nature loving” sense; Americans might be surprised at how widespread and popular niche alternative therapies are there, and that they’re covered by insurance. But you’re echoing exactly what I was saying, so we’re on the same page.
Oh, I never thought it to be offensive. I just thought it would be a dangerously friendly characterisation of something which has serious roots in fascist ideologies.
The whole “green” political movement of the 1970s and 80s in Germany had troubles distancing itself from a “Blut und Boden” and “Umweltschutz ist Heimatschutz” brand of politics. Some of it split of in an own political franchise, know known as ödp, which still exists. Others went to the DVU and NPD. There is a whole bunch of fringe groups organising these undercurrent, but TBH, most peeps who are into “alternative” methods aren’t organised, and don’t give a shit about politics in detail.
The philosophical background, however, also carries them - mostly unbeknownst to themselves.
And that does not make anything better, if you ask me.
I’ll be happy to, since your mind is closed, and you’ve been kind enough to make sure I know it. Be well, and prosper.
Well said!
Despite my belief that homeopathy was a valuable and productive step in the development of modern medicine, I don’t want to be treated by dilution homeopathy today.
Nor do I want cupping, hydrotherapy, lobotomy, caustic enema, or mercury chloride… all of which were “conventional medicine” at one time. I might consent to being bled or leeched under some circumstances… but not by anyone using 19th century techniques!
I’m happy to use the products of the local herbalist because they work, and I like putting money back into the community, and her methods are extremely environmentally sustainable.
Closed minded, following the science, Tomato tomahto. Either way you like it, you are right, I’m not spectacularly likely to change my mind in any argument we would be likely to have here. And you be well too, take care of yourself.
I certainly hope you don’t think of science as a closed-minded discipline. The best scientists are ones curious about things that aren’t already “decided upon”.
yeah, it’s also worth noting the connection between the Nazis and homeopathy, the occult, and other wooey notions. it’s all a part of the same anti-enlightenment German Romantic milieu that the Nazis grew out of.
I hadn’t heard of this Neue Germanische Medizin before, but it seems like it’s filled with neo-nazis and anti-semites.
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