Q&A: What are your views on complementary medicine VS traditional medicine?
February 21, 2011 Categories: Alternative Medicine
Question by Susan:
What are your views on complementary medicine vs traditional medicine?
Any views you might have concerning this subject are hugely appreciated!
Do you think complementary medicine keeps up well more effectively than traditional medicine? What are the advantages and disadvantages of both different forms of medicine?
I’ve got to do a presentation on ‘Complementary medicine VS traditional medicine’ so just trying to get as much feedback on the subject as possible!
Cheers X
Best answer:
Answer by DrDontheTermiteGuy
There’s a neat piece on this:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ujUQn0HhGEk
The issue isn’t which is superior so much as how we know which works. Modern medicine is tainted by corporate greed and academic fraud but this is only a little proportion of the knowledgebase. Complementary medicine is a term that implies a value that often can’t be proven. If it wasn’t for the value of the placebo effect, most such approaches would be seen as bare. The difference is that complementary approaches don’t have to be proven, don’t have to be fully researched and really, don’t even have to work. This isn’t to malign traditional knowledge or other cultures’ treatments that can be shown to have value. Traditional medicine seeks to do no harm and as such is heavily weighted to weighing risks and benefits. Complementary medicine has no such constraints.
Give your answer to this question below!
Complementary med, covers a huge amount of ground… homoeopathy, reflexology, chiropractic, theraputic touch, magnets, acupuncture, etc, etc ad nauseum
I have looked at a few ‘complementary medicines’. I actually have read up a lot on the theory of Homoeopathy.
and… there is no evidence that much of it works, except as a placebo
obviously, some things are effective in certain circumstances, such as chiropractic may help with some back problems…. trouble is, that is used WAY beyond it”s remit, and can actually exacerbate some problems
other therapies, such as TT have been proved as rubbish time and again… In the US there was a famous experiment by a 9 year old girl who showed that TT is basically smoke and mirrors.
so… you have to name the individual ‘comps’ before you can actually say “this is nonsense” or “this has some limited merit”
but, to sum it up…… the benefits to mankind from modern medicine outweigh any benefits from ‘comps’ by many, many, MANY orders of magnitude
The assumption that it’s a matter of complementary medicine versus traditional medicine comes from ignoring the meaning of ‘complementary’. If your teacher gave you that title, then I’d return it to them on the grounds of it being faulty.
Complementary medicine is meant to complement conventional treatments, not to replace them.