I normally don’t have much good to say about Dr. Gott, but this time he lays the smackdown in this letter:
Alternative remedies are, for the most part, understudied. Their production is not supervised by responsible government agencies.Some alternative drugs appear to show promise, but, if you are willing to be honest, drugs are drugs.
What is the difference between an herbal remedy and a prescription drug? Is it not likely that if “drugs are all garbage,” then this false generalization also applies to alternative therapy?
When I said I’d take your points one by one, I did not realize how unrealistic that position was, so I modified it.
I was not surprised that your letter contained no name, address or e-mail. This is exactly what I would expect from an ignorant and insecure alternative therapist.
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- Is Cheerios really a drug, and why is the FDA targeting the cereal?
- Counseling extremely wealthy patients
- Denying experimental drugs to terminal patients: "Moronic cruelty"
- Why do patients take alternative medications?
- Nintendo Wii as physical therapy
- Obesity
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Alties are like the anti-vaccine nuts: they begin with a fixed conclusion, then cast about for things to support their notions.
Exactly the opposite of the scientific approach, which is to propose a testable hypothesis, then set about testing validity. If the initial work is flawed by bias, then peers reviewing the work will be only too happy to point out the errors and provide the reproducible evidence to refute the claims.
Alties assume that natural is better and no evidence (belladonna, botulinum, digitalis, willow bark, etc.) to the contrary could convince them that many natural compounds have both benefit and harm, and some (tetrodatoxin) only have harm.
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