Cairnarvon has been on me in my Alternative Medicine post. I’m not taking the side of alternative medicine but I am asking what I think is a valid question. This is best illustrated by example.

My alternative medicine friend said that extract of elderberry is an example of an effective alternative medicine. I found the study he referred to on the subject:

Randomized study of the efficacy and safety of oral elderberry extract in the treatment of influenza A and B virus infections.

Zakay-Rones Z, Thom E, Wollan T, Wadstein J.
Department of Virology, Hebrew University-Hadassah Medical School, Jerusalem, Israel.

Elderberry has been used in folk medicine for centuries to treat influenza, colds and sinusitis, and has been reported to have antiviral activity against influenza and herpes simplex. We investigated the efficacy and safety of oral elderberry syrup for treating influenza A and B infections. Sixty patients (aged 18-54 years) suffering from influenza-like symptoms for 48 h or less were enrolled in this randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled study during the influenza season of 1999-2000 in Norway. Patients received 15 ml of elderberry or placebo syrup four times a day for 5 days, and recorded their symptoms using a visual analogue scale. Symptoms were relieved on average 4 days earlier and use of rescue medication was significantly less in those receiving elderberry extract compared with placebo. Elderberry extract seems to offer an efficient, safe and cost-effective treatment for influenza. These findings need to be confirmed in a larger study.

First of all, let’s assume this study is correct and that elderberry extract is effective medicine. That’s science, right? We did the study, the extract is effective, it’s real science and real medicine, right?

But what about the fact that Orac and others will have been calling it “woo” until now, dismissing it as junk peddled by quacks. Oh wait, but it works!

My point is somewhat subtle here so let me be explicit: alternative medicine should not get, and currently does get, a free pass from having to prove that it works. Medicine should be evidence based. There is nothing wrong with and everything good about using scientific studies to determine the efficacy of medicine.

But some go too far and assume that all alternative medicine must be bullshit. This is an assumption. If extract of elderberry can work it’s possible that other “alternative” remedies also work.

I do think “woo” is a big danger. Too many people believe really dumb things. It does undermine real medicine when people’s ignorance and superstition gets unwarranted acceptance. So I don’t disagree with Cairnarvon or Orac and I wouldn’t even be writing about this except that I have a friend who believes that he does work based on evidence that helps people using alternative medicine and that got me thinking.

I love this show. It is smart, funny and “adult”, meaning they talk like I do and address mature themes.

But it is totally fucking lame that Season 3 is not available on iTunes. Somehow these TV execs just can’t seem to pull their heads out of their asses. I’m not going to subscribe to Showtime. I am going to download Weeds from iTunes, like I have for Season 1 and Season 2.

I also like Heroes. I purchased the last season on iTunes as well. Now, due to heads-up-asses TV execs, Heroes is no longer on iTunes. So I am Tivo-ing it for free. Hey, guys, great thinking! Less revenue! Was that your plan?

PUT YOUR FUCKING CONTENT ON ITUNES!

A friend of mine is practitioner of alternative medicine. Meanwhile, I am a scientist (of sorts) and a skeptic and I agree entirely with the notion of evidence-based medicine. Modern medicine is successful because it is science. We repeatedly test things and we use what works and reject what doesn’t.

The problem with alternative medicine is that it is not subject to this methodology. You’ll notice that if you buy a echinacea, for example, it makes claims on the bottle and then has a little warning that says these claims have not been proven or verified in the same way as pharmaceuticals.

Furthermore, things like acupuncture and chiropractic have often been proven to be ineffective.

So what’s at work here?

First of all, the placebo effect is well documented as being effective. If I give you a pill and tell you it will make you feel better, if you believe me, you will feel better. Placebos are good medicine in that they create favorable outcomes for many, many people.

Alternative medicine, taken in the worst light, probably acts as a placebo. And in that way, there is really nothing wrong with it.

But my friend makes more substantial arguments. His concern is holistic, meaning his goal is for people to actually be healthy. If, for example, you don’t exercise and your diet is shit, Lipitor will treat your high cholesterol. It won’t make you healthy. In fact, it enables you to be less healthy. He maintains that western medicine, in this case, has an effective drug but it does not have the right answer for getting and keeping people healthy.

He also feels that the statistical basis of “evidence based medicine” too often makes claims that are later invalidated. This is, in fact, true. Researchers continually confuse correlation with causation. They find barely significant results and get big headlines. Later, there are new headlines with contradictory results.

I don’t know what the answer is. Clearly modern medicine is indispensable, effective and necessary. Less clearly, but perhaps importantly, alternative medicine yields positive outcomes (a fact) and looks at health holistically, something sorely lacking in modern medicine. Your doctor should perhaps insist you get on the treadmill, get off the fast food and actually live a healthy lifestyle instead of relying on a pill to make it all better. A pill, I’ll add, that can have tangible side effects.

I’m as ready as most scientists to reject alternative medicine as complete bullshit. But my friend treats people who get better. He understands health in the big picture. He also knows when modern medicine is the correct approach. It makes me wonder whether there isn’t something we could learn from alternative medicine if we were a little more open minded.

This is obvious but I can’t help commenting.

1. If you don’t consider yourself attractive, you don’t post your photo on your profile. Instead you use some clever avatar.

2. If you think you are unattractive except in specific photos, you choose a photo that makes you look as attractive as possible. There are tons of people who are not hot who have profile photos that look hot.

3. If you consider yourself attractive, you always post your photo everywhere. Flickr, for example, is full of self-portraits by pretty people.

It’s #2 that I find most interesting. People want other people to think they are hot, even if they are not hot. I consider myself in this category too!

For many, many people seeming to be hot is the next best thing to actually being hot.

Let me add that I’m not a shallow, superficial person and I don’t really care if people are hot or not. It’s hardly a noble attribute. In fact, it confuses me how important it is to some people.

So here is my question to you: would you rather be ridiculously hot and of average intelligence or ridiculously intelligent and of average hotness?

An unrelated question: would you rather be rich and unhappy or poor and happy?

The Star Tribune is reporting: Woman cited for yelling obscenities in her home; could be jailed, fined.

A Scranton woman who allegedly shouted profanities at her overflowing toilet within earshot of a neighbor was cited for disorderly conduct, authorities said…Her next-door neighbor, a city police officer who was off-duty at the time, asked her to keep it down, police said. When she continued, the officer called police.

What is it about some cops that makes them complete fucking assholes?