Alternative Medicine
This is from Trick or Treatment by Edzard Ernst:
- Although Ginseng is hawked as a cure for everything from cancer to the common cold, there is no evidence that it does any good.
- Shiatsu massage appears to be a "waste of time and expense."
- Chelation therapy, pitched as a cure for heart disease and other ailments is "disproven, expensive and dangerous."
Scott Gottlieb has a nice review in today's Wall Street Journal.
The difference is that all these expenses are outside the normal third-party payer system. So when people buy wothless alternative medicines, they are spending their own money.
By contrast, when people buy worthless therpies in the traditional insurance system they are wasting other people’s money.
Alternative medicine practices are as diverse in their foundations as in their methodologies. Practices may incorporate or base themselves on traditional medicine, folk knowledge, spiritual beliefs, or newly conceived approaches to healing.
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Kyle