Said Doug: "I completely agree with this. I'd like to see rigorous trials of alternative therapies, but as far as I know, there have been very few. Am I wrong? And if I'm not wrong, why have there been so few trials?" ---------------------------END---------------------------------------------------------------------------
There have been trials of acupuncture for pain relief & it is definitely not a placebo effect, There is convincing physiology to back up the evidence by the way, stemming from the so-called Gate theory of pain.
The urine thing - has only recourse to authoritarian claims - but may be backed up by ex-PM's of India. Not a good idea to guide therapy on.
Quackery as Woyjek implies, has long precedent when people are in desperation. The same sadly, applies to children with malignancy.
Whoever said it, the various new generation of drugs are fairly well targeted by prior hypothesis as opposite ot the 'serendipity' of penicillin. But - again whoever sid it, the data emerging on SSRI's is quite bad. I recommend David Healey: "Let Them Eat Prozac"; 2004; published by CAUT via James Lorimer.
As for authoritarianism in medicine, I would venture that indeed the profession as whole is extremely authoritarian and as an indicator of that, fights exposures of its misdemeanours very hard. It is a matter of what is taught as being predominant in medical school & their selection practices. Plus their "perceived" class position. Somebody somewhere objected on two other lists to the matter of "objective" and "subjective" positions of what they termed "Leninists" [equatable presumably with Neanderthal] mentality. As a Leninist - I reply that drs are a a typical example where a layer has an objective situation (most are workers - albeit priviliged - in most environments] & yet are encouraged to have a subjective view of not-workers. Hari Kumar
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