If you've been following my blogs, you know I have serious reservations about alternative medicine. I come to this opinion from a specific perspective that was nicely articulated in a blog recently referred to me. Let me share some of the comments made by an internist from the Great Lakes region.

He states that "mainstream" medicine is "simply medicine that works. It has been studied, tested, deployed, followed, and is proven to do what it says. Alternative medicine is any treatment that is not yet, or may never be, mainstream. If it is found to work, it becomes mainstream very rapidly. If it is not proven to work, it remains "alternative."

In other words, the medicine I practice and trust is that which is subjected to objective clinical trials; if a treatment method does not prove to be effective, it's given up. By contrast, most alternative treatments are not rigorously tested—in many cases, those therapies that have failed to be proven effective by any degree of scientific study, such as homeopathy and chelation therapy, continue to be promoted and used.

The blogger continues: "Calling something ineffective is not a value judgment, only a finding of fact. People who willingly peddle unproven therapies are, however, misguided if done in innocence and immoral if done with foreknowledge."

Quite frankly, I fail to understand why so many people continue to rely upon alternatives rather than science-based medicine. One possible explanation is dissatisfaction with their doctor when a patient fails to respond to his or her treatments, especially if a friend mentions how well some alternative treatment has worked.

Another explanation is that promoters of alternative medicines so often promise that some herb or salve or contact treatment will work, and patients with an ailment respond to that hope. Medical doctors like me are usually unwilling to promise therapeutic success, let alone a cure, because they know that treatment results are often unpredictable.

Promoters of alternatives also frequently assert that the failure of mainstream medicine to accept their alternative treatments is part of a conspiracy on the part of doctors and the pharmaceutical industry. But to me, the only conspiracy is that of science.

For more detailed and elegant comments on the problems with alternative medicine, you can go to palMD and click on Alternative Medicine—Back to Basics.