If a natural compound is already in use and works, drug companies have an interest in testing derivatives which can be made more effective or lower in side effects, and which can be patented. Aspirin and all forms of opiates are well known examples of drugs originating in this way.
“Drug companies can’t patent natural compounds, so they don’t bother to research them” is a commonly used excuse by alternative medicine industries, but in fact drug companies frequently do test natural compounds. It can be done cheaply with a small sample size, because they don’t have to investigate all the potential side effects or whether it stacks up to all the drugs currently on the market, just whether it works well enough to merit being made the focus of further research to create new medications.
I would like to see sources that show drug companies to be far-reaching and impartial in their exploration of traditional medicines.
A good question then is, since there are also a lot of medicine companies which promote traditional remedies, why are the larger pharmaceutical companies, which exhibit undeniable biases and pay out billions in false advertising lawsuits each year seen as the more valid side of the fence?
Many of these natural health companies employ fully trained doctors and receive patronage from fully trained doctors, and are a growing industry in the US.
Is it then rational to assume that an industry being far outspent by large pharmaceutical companies is picking up market share because the remedies it promotes don’t work?
The whole basis of the argument to dismiss alternative medicines in this thread is based on the idea that it’s possible for people to be irrational about their medical choices: but this is a rationalization, not a rational argument. So the current argument is both that:
A. non-alternative treatments don’t work sufficiently better than alternative treatments for there to be a noticeable negative difference in switching to alternatives (since an abundantly obvious difference in quality of healthcare would not admit of people making the wrong decisions against coercive market forces).
B. alternative treatments fulfill some non-physical need of the patient which draws people to use them.
C. Following this line of reasoning, we should arrive at the conclusion that alternative treatments are no worse than non-alternatives. Since alternative treatments are usually less expensive and less invasive, and since they do meet non-physical need (as we have posited), there is certainly no basis for discrediting them.
I of course pose the ontological question: how exactly is one to presume to lump them all together? Or is the act of this division not also an act of bias towards those treatments associated with particular institutions?
I would like to see sources that show drug companies to be far-reaching and impartial in their exploration of traditional medicines. A good question then is, since there are also a lot of medicine companies which promote traditional remedies, why are the larger pharmaceutical companies, which exhibit undeniable biases and pay out billions in false advertising lawsuits each year seen as the more valid side of the fence?
Because the alternative medicine companies are even worse.
Both mainstream and alternative medicine companies try to skirt the line of what they can legally claim about their products under government regulation, but mainstream drug companies skirt the limits of what they can say while meeting the minimum standards of peer reviewed research, while alternative medicine companies skirt the limits of what they can say without meeting any standards of research whatsoever.
The whole basis of the argument to dismiss alternative medicines in this thread is based on the idea that it’s possible for people to be irrational about their medical choices: but this is a rationalization, not a rational argument.
Can you please explain why it’s a rationalization rather than a rational argument? People are clearly irrational about many things, to their own detriment. People spent hundreds of years if not more tossing around various folk cures for scurvy, when in fact there is only one chemical which works, and works perfectly, to cure it. That’s countless people dying, and a major barrier to world exploration standing for centuries due to people’s failure to find out what works when left to their own devices, when some very simple tests were able to lay the matter to rest forever. Even after the experiments that determined quite conclusively that vitamin C containing foods were necessary to prevent scurvy, there were explorers who refused to believe it. They continued to get scurvy. Why do you not accept as a rational argument the claim that people continue to behave in a similarly irrational manner with respect to medicine today?
So your argument is both that:
A. non-alternative treatments don’t work sufficiently better than alternative treatments for there to be a noticeable negative difference in switching to alternatives (since an abundantly obvious difference in quality of healthcare would not admit of people making the wrong decisions against coercive market forces).
B. alternative treatments fulfill some non-physical need of the patient which draws people to use them.
It’s rationalization instead of a rational argument because postulating that people can sometimes be irrational (e.g.: believing traditional medicine to be magical) isn’t an argument for them making that choice over another. By the exact same argument, you could posit the opposite and it would seem correct: e.g. that people choose non-alternative medicine because they perceive it to be magic.
It’s practically axiomatic to say that people sometimes (even often) act irrationally, but you’ve defined one side as rational and the other as irrational, from what I can tell based solely upon your (unconvincing) arguments that 1. drug companies have broadly tested and dismissed traditional medicines and 2. that alternative medicines don’t work in general. If this isn’t what you meant, please elaborate.
My point about questioning your ontology was in pointing out that you seem to define “alternative treatments” as ineffective without using any data to back up your claims. If you define alternative treatments as ineffective without there being a meaningful ontological distinction unifying them, you’re not making any argument at all but only arguing a tautology. I would argue that this false distinction is rooted in corporate marketing practices intended to guise economic bias behind a word-veil (not that you are doing it on purpose), just like the two American political parties try to define themselves as the correct choice despite there being little identifiable ontological difference between them.
Id est, corporations define things they like as medicine and other things as “alternative treatments”, but the distinction between them is based upon concepts of economic ownership and maneuvering of the market instead of useful empirical evidence.
Excuse me, I didn’t mean to say that this A-B-C argument was your argument. (I’ve corrected the single word in the original post which made it sound like that). I was making a statement about the only argument against alternative treatments which was developed enough to identify in this thread.
In regards to what you were arguing, I answered above by requesting some real data for your broad claims about pharmaceutical companies doing extensive research on traditional remedies.
My point about questioning your ontology was in pointing out that you seem to define “alternative treatments” as ineffective without using any data to back up your claims.
I suggest checking out this book for an abundance of such. It’s a very good read in its own right besides. It’s not that alternative medicine is ineffective by definition, but that it is effectively defined as “alternative” by not meeting the standards of evidence that we demand of mainstream medicine (which are pretty lax standards already.)
Corporations don’t define things they like as mainstream and things they don’t like as alternative, the Food and Drug Administration in America, and comparable organizations in other countries, upholds certain standards for evidence about medicine, and medicine becomes “alternative” by not meeting them.
If a natural compound is already in use and works, drug companies have an interest in testing derivatives which can be made more effective or lower in side effects, and which can be patented. Aspirin and all forms of opiates are well known examples of drugs originating in this way.
“Drug companies can’t patent natural compounds, so they don’t bother to research them” is a commonly used excuse by alternative medicine industries, but in fact drug companies frequently do test natural compounds. It can be done cheaply with a small sample size, because they don’t have to investigate all the potential side effects or whether it stacks up to all the drugs currently on the market, just whether it works well enough to merit being made the focus of further research to create new medications.
I would like to see sources that show drug companies to be far-reaching and impartial in their exploration of traditional medicines. A good question then is, since there are also a lot of medicine companies which promote traditional remedies, why are the larger pharmaceutical companies, which exhibit undeniable biases and pay out billions in false advertising lawsuits each year seen as the more valid side of the fence? Many of these natural health companies employ fully trained doctors and receive patronage from fully trained doctors, and are a growing industry in the US. Is it then rational to assume that an industry being far outspent by large pharmaceutical companies is picking up market share because the remedies it promotes don’t work?
The whole basis of the argument to dismiss alternative medicines in this thread is based on the idea that it’s possible for people to be irrational about their medical choices: but this is a rationalization, not a rational argument. So the current argument is both that:
A. non-alternative treatments don’t work sufficiently better than alternative treatments for there to be a noticeable negative difference in switching to alternatives (since an abundantly obvious difference in quality of healthcare would not admit of people making the wrong decisions against coercive market forces).
B. alternative treatments fulfill some non-physical need of the patient which draws people to use them.
C. Following this line of reasoning, we should arrive at the conclusion that alternative treatments are no worse than non-alternatives. Since alternative treatments are usually less expensive and less invasive, and since they do meet non-physical need (as we have posited), there is certainly no basis for discrediting them.
I of course pose the ontological question: how exactly is one to presume to lump them all together? Or is the act of this division not also an act of bias towards those treatments associated with particular institutions?
Because the alternative medicine companies are even worse.
Both mainstream and alternative medicine companies try to skirt the line of what they can legally claim about their products under government regulation, but mainstream drug companies skirt the limits of what they can say while meeting the minimum standards of peer reviewed research, while alternative medicine companies skirt the limits of what they can say without meeting any standards of research whatsoever.
Can you please explain why it’s a rationalization rather than a rational argument? People are clearly irrational about many things, to their own detriment. People spent hundreds of years if not more tossing around various folk cures for scurvy, when in fact there is only one chemical which works, and works perfectly, to cure it. That’s countless people dying, and a major barrier to world exploration standing for centuries due to people’s failure to find out what works when left to their own devices, when some very simple tests were able to lay the matter to rest forever. Even after the experiments that determined quite conclusively that vitamin C containing foods were necessary to prevent scurvy, there were explorers who refused to believe it. They continued to get scurvy. Why do you not accept as a rational argument the claim that people continue to behave in a similarly irrational manner with respect to medicine today?
No, this is not what I am arguing at all.
It’s rationalization instead of a rational argument because postulating that people can sometimes be irrational (e.g.: believing traditional medicine to be magical) isn’t an argument for them making that choice over another. By the exact same argument, you could posit the opposite and it would seem correct: e.g. that people choose non-alternative medicine because they perceive it to be magic.
It’s practically axiomatic to say that people sometimes (even often) act irrationally, but you’ve defined one side as rational and the other as irrational, from what I can tell based solely upon your (unconvincing) arguments that 1. drug companies have broadly tested and dismissed traditional medicines and 2. that alternative medicines don’t work in general. If this isn’t what you meant, please elaborate.
My point about questioning your ontology was in pointing out that you seem to define “alternative treatments” as ineffective without using any data to back up your claims. If you define alternative treatments as ineffective without there being a meaningful ontological distinction unifying them, you’re not making any argument at all but only arguing a tautology. I would argue that this false distinction is rooted in corporate marketing practices intended to guise economic bias behind a word-veil (not that you are doing it on purpose), just like the two American political parties try to define themselves as the correct choice despite there being little identifiable ontological difference between them.
Id est, corporations define things they like as medicine and other things as “alternative treatments”, but the distinction between them is based upon concepts of economic ownership and maneuvering of the market instead of useful empirical evidence.
Excuse me, I didn’t mean to say that this A-B-C argument was your argument. (I’ve corrected the single word in the original post which made it sound like that). I was making a statement about the only argument against alternative treatments which was developed enough to identify in this thread.
In regards to what you were arguing, I answered above by requesting some real data for your broad claims about pharmaceutical companies doing extensive research on traditional remedies.
I suggest checking out this book for an abundance of such. It’s a very good read in its own right besides. It’s not that alternative medicine is ineffective by definition, but that it is effectively defined as “alternative” by not meeting the standards of evidence that we demand of mainstream medicine (which are pretty lax standards already.)
Corporations don’t define things they like as mainstream and things they don’t like as alternative, the Food and Drug Administration in America, and comparable organizations in other countries, upholds certain standards for evidence about medicine, and medicine becomes “alternative” by not meeting them.