In the 1980s and early 1990s, critics of alternative medicine argued that it can work, but lacked the science to prove it. It was against their own beliefs that people sought treatments based on their faith.
And yet, as we approach the milestone of 50 years since the first medicinal cannabis plant was grown in North America, most alternative medicine providers see little reason to temper their practice.
Some objections to the practice seem relatively small, like the fact that its proponents do not seem to have a sound understanding of the substances they practice. For example, many practitioners say the controversial practice of homeopathy works and promote it as the only effective treatment for common ailments. Yet their laboratory and experimental data suggests homeopathy might just not work. And, in a recent study, researchers found homeopathy to be “fraudulent.”
None of these stories of confusion and impossibilities should necessarily discourage people from adopting the practice. In fact, most interventions do work, and vast amounts of scientific research show that people benefit from them.
But alternative medicine — including everything from herbal medicine to acupuncture to meditation — comes with challenges, mostly around people’s irrational beliefs. They make it easy for the practitioners of alternative medicine to violate the basic ethics of scientific research, and to threaten human health, for the sake of avoiding inconvenient truths about the effectiveness of their interventions.
The definition of reality changes radically from one moment to the next, depending on the particular agenda of the individual taking part. My colleague Jack Striegel is a leading scholar of the scientific beliefs and motivations of individual people and their belief systems. He’s taken a close look at how beliefs differ, for instance, from those of the people who participate in the worldwide research, and found a large number of misconceptions that drive them to choose alternative therapies.
These beliefs can serve as vital sources of health, including higher quality of life. But they can also lead people to disregard the scientific consensus when they choose treatments based on their own beliefs rather than on well-established scientific data.
Translating beliefs into action
Some aspects of people’s beliefs may be harder to change than others. If beliefs of unknown effectiveness or safety remain unshaken, it’s difficult to anticipate and change them as science advances.
The case of homeopathy — an alternative medicine practice in which often mixtures of whole ingredients can supposedly relieve symptoms in people who have the diseases the remedies are intended to treat — demonstrates how unrealistic it is to think people can change their beliefs without scientific evidence or scientific literature that has refuted them.
Homeopathy is almost impossible to test on humans. It relies on people’s ideas about nature, based on their religious and/or superstitious beliefs about how the world works. It contradicts all existing scientific evidence on the health effects of its ingredients.
There is also nothing to disabuse people of their ideas about what homeopathy is. All of its empirical failures serve only to validate believers’ beliefs.
Our ability to understand the beliefs of people drives much of what researchers and doctors study. Yet many believe their own beliefs about illness and healing completely.
Even those who do not believe in homeopathy seem to believe that it works. One reason is that other alternative therapies are also quite effective, including acupuncture, traditional Chinese medicine, herbal medicine and, of course, cannabis.
The point of all this research is not to diminish the benefits of these and other alternative treatments. The point is to help people who believe their belief in alternative medicine prevents them from using the scientific evidence to avoid painful, damaging and potentially life-threatening interventions that might actually work.
Unlike natural therapies, interventions based on claims of effectiveness can cause serious harm. People who rely on them may choose to delay or avoid using more effective and potentially lifesaving medical interventions.
All modern health guidelines call for people to do something that could be associated with prolonged sickness or even death: take care of their bodies and get preventive health care. As we look back over the past half century and consider what’s going on with alternative medicine, it’s time to reflect on our perceptions of reality and translate that into good choices about how we treat ourselves.
Dr. Christian Sebastian is an Associate Professor of Medicine and Epidemiology at UC San Francisco, the Director of the Center for Medicine and Society and the Associate Director of the Center for Ethics and Social Science. He is also a fellow of the American College of Physicians.
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