Healthy Skepticism Library item: 1987

Warning: This library includes all items relevant to health product marketing that we are aware of regardless of quality. Often we do not agree with all or part of the contents.

Publication type: news

Alternative medicine needs firm standards
Toronto Star 2005 Aug 7
http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1123278613422&call_pageid=970599119419&DPL=IvsNDS%2f7ChAX&tacodalogin=yes

Keywords:
alternative acupuncture herbal

Notes:

Ralph Faggotter’s Comments: Newspapers are notorious for promoting unproven medicines and health practices, so it is refreshing to see one newspaper displaying an uncharacteristically cautionary tone.

Full text:

Aug. 7, 2005. 01:00 AM
Alternative medicine needs firm standards

It has taken some time, but society appears to be tempering its blind trust in alternative medicine. There is growing awareness, at least at Queen’s Park, that treatments are not necessarily harmless simply because they are centuries old.

Canadians have spent billions of dollars on herbal medicines and other therapies of questionable value.

Lax regulation of some treatments, such as acupuncture, have left the public unprotected. And charlatans have done brisk business selling phoney cures to cancer patients, and others rendered vulnerable by fear and suffering.

Critics have long called for a crackdown on the merchants of false hope. They have also sought more scientific studies on unproven herbal remedies, and urged much stronger government regulation of alternative medicine.

Notable developments have occurred on all three fronts in recent weeks:

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Two Canadians, including a Toronto man, have been charged in connection with foreign clinics that milked millions of dollars from desperate cancer patients by promoting an alleged cure based on magnets.

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A major study in The New England Journal of Medicine has found that echinacea, one of the best selling herbal remedies in North America, is of no use in treating or preventing the common cold.

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Ontario Health Minister George Smitherman has announced plans to regulate acupuncture and traditional Chinese medicine. Practitioners are to be certified, and overseen, by a regulatory college.

Of these recent developments, Ontario’s promised intervention in alternative treatments stands to have the greatest impact on public health.

Currently, virtually anyone can perform acupuncture in this province.

There is no set training required, no certification necessary and no government-backed college or professional body to discipline bad practitioners. The same goes for dispensing traditional Chinese herbs.

Yet sticking needles into people, or giving them herbs with potent chemical properties, carries significant risk.

Patients’ lungs have been punctured by acupuncture needles that were inserted a bit too far. The needles can aggravate chronic pain, rather than cure it. There’s an obvious infection risk if needles are re-used and improperly sterilized, and there have even been cases of needles accidentally left stuck in patients when treatment ended and they were sent home.

While acupuncture is generally safe, it is hard to know how often mishaps have occurred because no one tracks problems.

What is certain is that no medical procedure is completely risk-free, and dangers only escalate when untrained people are allowed to treat patients.

Regulation is meant to protect the public by making training mandatory, setting firm professional standards, and driving away Ontario’s poorly trained, fly-by-night needlers.

However, the province has no intention of covering acupuncture, or traditional Chinese medicine, under its already hard-pressed Ontario Health Insurance Plan.

That is a proper approach on two grounds: The cash-strapped OHIP system is in no shape to take on a heavy new commitment, and there is limited scientific proof that alternative therapies work, especially Chinese herbs.

Some of these herbs have been used for 2,000 years. But tradition does not equal evidence. And feel-good anecdotes don’t amount to proof.

Whether regulated or not, alternative medicine should be approached with care, caution, and a healthy dose of skepticism.