Medical breakthroughs seldom are

The recent articles “Unconventional, unproven remedies lure cancer patients” (The Daily Progress, June 9) and “Mainstream physicians give alternatives a try” (June 10) suggest that many individuals (including doctors) think that unconventional therapies are synonymous with being unproven or having a lack of evidence.

Bernie Siegel, world-renowned physician and author, says that a lot of his colleagues don’t read the journals that cover the information on alternative therapies, but that does not mean it isn’t good science — the real distinction should be between good and bad medicine, not between alternative and conventional.
Richard Sarnat, M.D., a Chicago-area member of the American Medical Association, says that the alternative-medicine movement is spreading from grass-roots populations to the most senior levels of orthodox medicine and that doctors who don’t know about alternative approaches are “losing their practice,” and therefore risk losing ground financially (“AMA makes a change,” Vegetarian Times 1996).

We are regularly warned that alternative medicines do not undergo the rigorous testing required for conventional medicine, yet many experts, such as Thomas
Moore in his book “Deadly Medicine” (1998) reminds us that the U.S Congress of Technical Assessment reported only 10 percent to 20 percent of the medical procedures done by conventional medicine has been proven to be effective. Rand Corporation studies show that one-third of all medical treatments are unnecessary, and estimates suggest that almost half of all articles in medical journals are written by ghostwriters (London Observer 2003).

In the U.S. more than 750,000 people die yearly from “modern medicine,” 106,000 of these from prescription drugs (NaturalNews.com, 2005).
Often the news about conventional health studies or “breakthroughs” is inaccurate, biased and dictated primarily by hype, politics, monetary gain and need for sensationalism.