Study: Alternative medicine sometimes causes death

Posted on December 25, 2010 by Michael

It has been documented again and again where alternative medical treatments have killed people. Rather than respond appropriately (and logically!), the usual woo-man answer is to point out all the deaths that occur as a result of real medicine. This, of course, does nothing to answer the initial concern, and even it was a logically valid point in the given context, it is easily countered by pointing out:

  • Mistakes cause many deaths. This does not count against the efficacy of real medicine.
  • People don’t die at an average age of 45 anymore in large part because of modern medicine. You can say “thank you” anytime.
  • People aren’t dying from an intrinsic property of modern medicine.

The reason I make this point is to get it out of the way so I can make this point: Alternative medicine sometimes kills children.

Australian researchers monitored reports from pediatricians in Australia from 2001 to 2003 looking for suspected side effects from alternative medicines like herbal treatments, vitamin supplements or naturopathic pills. They found 39 reports of side effects including four deaths.

The study was published online Thursday in the journal Archives of Disease in Childhood, a specialist publication of the medical journal BMJ.

Unlike conventional medicines, whose side effects are tracked by national surveillance systems, there are no such systems in place for alternative therapies.

One thing the study didn’t say was that much of the harm from alternative (not real) medicine comes from the non-use of real medicine. When people get sick and decide to use unproven treatments rather than actually have something positive done for their health, they often risk becoming sicker. One medical school professor not involved in the study makes the same point:

“Perhaps the most serious harm occurs when effective therapies are replaced by ineffective alternative therapies,” he said. “In that situation, even an intrinsically harmless medicine, like a homeopathic medicine, can be life-threatening,” [Edzard] Ernst said.

It is difficult to know how many deaths come from replacing real medicine with alternative treatments. We know close to a dozen deaths occur every year as a result of faith healing. But that’s for children. I suspect the number would be higher for adults because older individuals are going to tend to have more underlying conditions than any child. And when we expand our horizon to consider general harm or being sick for longer, I believe the numbers would go up even further.

Alissa Lim of the Royal Children’s Hospital in Melbourne and colleagues wrote that all four deaths they identified were caused by a decision to use alternative therapies instead of conventional medicines.

They described one case of a 10-month-old baby who had severe septic shock after being given naturopathic medicines and was assigned to a special diet to treat eczema. In another case, an infant who suffered multiple seizures and a heart attack died after being given alternative therapies — which the parents had chosen due to their concerns about the side effects of regular medicines.

Ernst said people should recognize the limitations of alternative medicines and that practitioners should be careful not to oversell their benefits.

I think I have a better recommendation than Ernst: Let’s just outlaw it all and start saving the health and lives of people.

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The end of homeopathy?

Posted on June 28, 2010 by Michael

Probably not, but one can hope.

British homeopaths are celebrating Homeopathy Awareness Week, yet it seems to me there is very little for them to celebrate.

Earlier this year, a report from the Commons Science and Technology Committee concluded that the principles of homeopathy are implausible and that the evidence fails to show that it works better than placebo. The MPs also criticised homeopaths for trying to mislead the public by providing inaccurate information. Their recommendation to government was to stop funding homeopathy on the NHS.

Then the Prince of Wales’s Foundation for Integrated Health, a staunch supporter of homeopathy in the NHS, folded in the midst of a police investigation for fraud and money laundering.

Last month, the British Medical Association described homeopathy as “witchcraft” and called for an end to all funding on the NHS.

A streak of bad luck? Not really. Homeopathy’s fortunes have been crumbling for quite some time. The evidence to suggest that it has effects beyond those of a placebo has become less and less convincing. In 2005, The Lancet even pronounced “the end of homeopathy”.

I suspect there will come a time when homeopathy becomes far less significant in society, but I believe that day to be very far off. People are just too willing to believe the snake oil salesmen out there – and the snake oil salesmen are all too happy to oblige that will to believe.

But there is some immediate good news. (In fact, so immediate, it’s in the past.)

As a result, one of the five NHS-funded homeopathic hospitals had to close. After assessing the science, its NHS trust found that the evidence did not justify any further funding.

Of course, even the homeopaths knew their junk had no evidence. They aren’t interested in any real science. And just to prove that point, they became bold and made their lying all the more public.

Faced with increasing criticism, UK homeopaths become more and more desperate. My team has found that the Society of Homeopaths even appears to have been in breach of its own code of ethics in attempting to promote homeopathy. On the society’s website, numerous statements about efficacy were made that were not backed by science and so were not allowed under its own regulations.

The society’s chief executive commented at the time, in November 2009, that she was grateful to me for highlighting these issues and that the society would investigate and make amendments where appropriate. The website has since changed but many, perhaps even most, members of that organisation continue to make claims that violate their society’s ethical standards.

I don’t for a moment expect the ethical standards of a fundamentally dishonest organization do anything significant with all these violation. Even if they do manage to clean up some of their act, their basis is still magical thinking that has no roots in science. The only way they could ever be called ethical sans a smirk is if shut down their whole operation.

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