The inner ramblings of a distracted postdoc...
“Breaking news update! New alternative therapy shown to cure HIV!” Headlines like these can be extremely misleading. Especially considering how short the modern human’s attention span is. As a millennial I am quite aware how technology has crippled society, so a headline like this is seldom read in its entirety. You can put money on the fact that you’ll hear the next “woke” person stating opinions like fact while spewing off random news headlines all while saying, “it’s a conspiracy,” or “the man is just trying to keep us down!”
The fact of the matter is that while some alternative therapies are beneficial, not all are effective. In fact, placing too much faith in the “placebo” can actually do more harm than good if an effective medical intervention is foregone for an ineffective alternate therapy. An individual who faced much scrutiny for his use of non-traditional approaches to treating human disease was the late self-proclaimed doctor Sebi. He was a proponent of natural remedies to cure diseases like cancer and HIV. There was relatively little scientific explanation behind his ‘cures’ and even less scientific evidence which led to the controversy concerning his methodologies. The lack having to go through the stringent process of FDA approval on many of these homeopathic remedies also causes skepticism.
There’s something about the government’s seal of approval that makes traditionally educated and trained individuals feel more at ease with accepting something as effective. As a scientist studying the efficacy of natural compounds as epigenetic regulators of gene expression, I recognize the merit behind some of these alternative therapies, but not without sufficient study. It is easy to make a hypothesis about how a certain food or natural remedy works, but prescribing something as a treatment with limited understanding of its side effects can be extremely dangerous. Sometimes the amounts of a natural compound or food product necessary to achieve beneficial results that proponents of alternative therapies claim will ‘cure’ a person are physiologically un-achievable. A review of the scientific literature will show you that too much of anything will eventually become toxic to diseased cells. During my tenure as a PhD student, I’ve come across many ‘legitimate’ scientific publications that claim efficacy of a natural compound that utilizes concentrations that are impossible to achieve in the human organism. What’s worse, they don’t have a non-diseased control to demonstrate the relative safety of using such high concentrations.
I am a proponent of medicine because it works. Basic science made a discovery that then had to go through several rounds of approval before reaching clinical trials of which there are several phases. There’s evidence that supports the claim that the medicine is effective and does more good than harm. In accordance to the Hippocratic Oath to do no harm, most physicians and medical professionals are concerned with the well-being of their patients. Contrary to popular belief, all doctors and people of science aren’t out to get rich and keep the masses sick and dependent on drugs so they can line their pockets....