Health Chat
KARIN BHAGAT | Monday February 22, 2010 00:00
From chiropractic to colour therapy, reflexology to reiki, such therapies are now used by many across the globe. Botswana is increasingly no exception. Alternative medicine is big business. Latest estimates put the total in the United Kingdom annual spent for complementary and alternative medicine (commonly known CAM) at close to 4.5billion pounds, a market which has gone by nearly 50 percent in the last 10 years. Over 200 million is spent on remedies bought over the counter such as homeopathic and herbal medicines, but we are increasingly likely to choose a personal consultation with one of nearly several alternative practitioners in Gaborone. As with all success for marketing, the world of CAM shows what can be achieved with nothing but a change of name. The same set of practices that were called quackery or fringe medicine in the mid 20th century was renamed 'alternative medicine' in the 1960s and 1970s. The term 'complementary medicine' was coined during the 1990s and now inspired by the idea that 'alternative' medicine 'can work alongside' and therefore 'complementary' orthodox scientific medicine, all these therapies are bundled together as complementary and alternative medicine, or CAM.
What Unproven And Disproven Therapy Do I Mean?To make things clear, let's have an alphabetical assortment: Acupuncture, aroma therapy, astrological medicine, bach flower remedies, chelation therapy, chiropractic therapy, colon irrigation, cranial osteopathy, ear acupuncture, energy medicine, herbal medicine, homeopathy, iridology, light therapy, magnetic therapy, naturopathy, urine therapy, vibrational healing. Everyone of these either uses diagnostic methods that have not been proven, in factual basis or involves unsubstantiated or disproven claims of effect and benefits.
These remedies and therapies are set to play an increasing role in our health services but oddly, in the era of evidence-based medicine, there is little or no public challenge to their onward march. Most of these treatments are simply ineffectual; such as homeopathy, for example, when there is no medicine in the medicine. Others are dangerous, either in themselves because they may be adulterated with uncontrolled amounts of powerful drugs like steroids or banned amphetamimes. In the series that follow on the health chat column I am going to show you how alternative medicine puts our health at risk, extracts money and resources for health service, is largely unregulated and unaccountable, often shortens the life of people with serious illnesses and sometimes makes fools of all of us. We need to understand how and why this has happened, as well as what it says about us, the 21st century CAM consumers.The unique selling point of alternative medicine is that it offers diagnostic systems and therapies that haven't changed since a 1000 years, with ancient wisdom offered as the source of its authority. But those who promote alternative medicine have a curiously selective approach to ancient wisdom, frequently reviving some of the least plausible aspects of our ancestors thinking.An exploration of the history of medicine immediately exposes a crucial weakness in the philosophy of the CAM campaigners. It shows how they miss one of the most important lessons in history; that it was the rejection of superstition and development of scientific method, which brought about the medicine of colossal benefit to humankind. As recently as 1000 years ago people in the West could only expect to live on average until their mid-40s, with infectious disease killing half of their children before they were 10. Since then, there has been a dramatic increase in life expectancy, evidence have suggested that we are actually healthier than ever before. This new longevity has been made possible by a mixture of scientific medicine and improvement in sanitation, hygiene, living conditions and diet. Our ancestors weren't so fortunate. Once upon a time, a medicine based on faith, magic and superstition was the only medicine. Until around 3000 BCE prayers, incantations and sacrifices were all that anyone had. With minimal understanding of even basic anatomy, any recovery would be attributed to the last thing that was tried, to the whim of the gods, to graven images or to the position of the planets. Little was understood about the mechanism of disease. No one realised that even a tapeworm could be picked up from eating raw meat or that rabies could be contracted from a wolf bite. The unluckiest would be abandoned to die alone or faced permanent exclusion from the society, like leprosy sufferers were until the emergence of modern treatment in the 20th century. In the next column we will discuss the issue of herbal medicine and how it evolves to its current state in the 21st century.