Cures for Sale: reality/distortion Flashcards
What is alternative medicine?
Alternative remedies are those for which there is no reliable evidence to document their value and/or they have been accurately tested and found to be ineffective
How are alternative medicines marketed?
marketed with appeal to tradition, personal stories, and/or anti-science, testimonials, folklore, tradition, belief systems
What is conventional medicine?
Conventional drugs have been proven effective through clinical trials that compare them to a placebo and document their effectiveness, side effects and pharmacokinetics
Can Alternative medicines become conventional medicine?
If evidence of effectiveness were to exist, they would be included in conventional medicine.
What are the 3 questions evidence based medicines have to answer before going on the market?
Does it work?
What are the side effect?
How does it compare to what’s already on the market?
The positives need to out weight the negatives to get the drug on the market
Who can sell alternative medicines? Where are they sold mainly?
There are >1,500 products, on many internet sites: anyone can sell these with no education needed
Is there a lot of money made on these alternative medicines?
Yes, They are starting to rival pharmaceutical companies with the amount of money made by selling their products
Side effect labeling on bottles, alternative vs conventional?
They do not put the side effect on the bottle (conventional medicines need to say the side effects)
The 3 questions clinical trials need to answer?
- Is it safe?
- Does it work?
- How does it compare to what’s already on the market?
What is a double blind study?
- Double blind: neither person nor the care giver knows which group is given the placebo
What is a randomized study?
- Randomized: equivalent groups in terms of age, sex, and lifestyle
What is a placebo response?
Placebo response: most people respond in a positive way if we believe we are doing something helpful or if we think someone is trying to help us
Placebo = I will please
How many people get a placebo response?
Around 1/3 of people get a placebo
What might effect the amount of placebo? (4)
- The time course of the disorder
- The relationship to the caregiver
- The ritual of taking the medicine
- Strength of belief
What is the nocebo effect?
Some people get a negative response (nocebo effect) 15%
What is homeopathy?
A belief system invented in the late 1700s
What is the basis for homeopathic treatments (how do they work)?
Whatever produces a symptom in a normal person will cure the same symptom in disease if you dilute it until nothing is left while following a ritual that will allow water to spiritually retain a memory of the original ingredient.
(If a plant makes you vomit, then you can use it to treat a disease that makes you vomit by diluting it 100-fold and banging it 30 times)
How to prepare a homeopathic remedy?
Dilute the original compound 100 times, bang it, then dilute it 100-fold again and repeat this 30 times
The final concentration is so low that it is basically water (106)
Why are homeopathic remedies bad for the consumer?
Consumer will lose a lot of money and for serious illness like infectious disease they will not get effective treatment and possibly death.
Spending on homeopathy in the US, Canada, Global?
US 2022 - $3 billion on homeopathy
Canada: 3-5 million adults and 1 million children using these products
Global spending on homeopathy in 2022 was greater than $11 billion
