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| title | chunk | source | category | tags | date_saved | instance |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Alternative medicine | 6/12 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternative_medicine | reference | science, encyclopedia | 2026-05-05T09:16:46.424743+00:00 | kb-cron |
=== Other factors === There are also reasons why a placebo treatment group may outperform a "no-treatment" group in a test which are not related to a patient's experience. These include patients reporting more favourable results than they really felt due to politeness or "experimental subordination", observer bias, and misleading wording of questions. In their 2010 systematic review of studies into placebos, Asbjørn Hróbjartsson and Peter C. Gøtzsche write that "even if there were no true effect of placebo, one would expect to record differences between placebo and no-treatment groups due to bias associated with lack of blinding." Alternative therapies may also be credited for perceived improvement through decreased use or effect of medical treatment, and therefore either decreased side effects or nocebo effects towards standard treatment.
== Use and regulation ==
=== Appeal === Practitioners of complementary medicine usually discuss and advise patients as to available alternative therapies. Patients often express interest in mind-body complementary therapies because they offer a non-drug approach to treating some health conditions. In addition to the social-cultural underpinnings of the popularity of alternative medicine, there are several psychological issues that are critical to its growth, notably psychological effects, such as the will to believe, cognitive biases that help maintain self-esteem and promote harmonious social functioning, and the post hoc, ergo propter hoc fallacy. In a 2018 interview with The BMJ, Edzard Ernst stated: "The present popularity of complementary and alternative medicine is also inviting criticism of what we are doing in mainstream medicine. It shows that we aren't fulfilling a certain need-we are not giving patients enough time, compassion, or empathy. These are things that complementary practitioners are very good at. Mainstream medicine could learn something from complementary medicine."
==== Marketing ==== Alternative medicine is a profitable industry with large media advertising expenditures. Accordingly, alternative practices are often portrayed positively and compared favorably to "big pharma". The popularity of complementary & alternative medicine (CAM) may be related to other factors that Ernst mentioned in a 2008 interview in The Independent:
Why is it so popular, then? Ernst blames the providers, customers and the doctors whose neglect, he says, has created the opening into which alternative therapists have stepped. "People are told lies. There are 40 million websites and 39.9 million tell lies, sometimes outrageous lies. They mislead cancer patients, who are encouraged not only to pay their last penny but to be treated with something that shortens their lives." At the same time, people are gullible. It needs gullibility for the industry to succeed. It doesn't make me popular with the public, but it's the truth. Paul Offit proposed that "alternative medicine becomes quackery" in four ways: by recommending against conventional therapies that are helpful, promoting potentially harmful therapies without adequate warning, draining patients' bank accounts, or by promoting "magical thinking". Promoting alternative medicine has been called dangerous and unethical.
==== Social factors ==== Authors have speculated on the socio-cultural and psychological reasons for the appeal of alternative medicines among the minority using them in lieu of conventional medicine. There are several socio-cultural reasons for the interest in these treatments centered on the low level of scientific literacy among the public at large and a concomitant increase in antiscientific attitudes and new age mysticism. Related to this are vigorous marketing of extravagant claims by the alternative medical community combined with inadequate media scrutiny and attacks on critics. Alternative medicine is criticized for taking advantage of the least fortunate members of society. There is also an increase in conspiracy theories toward conventional medicine and pharmaceutical companies, mistrust of traditional authority figures, such as the physician, and a dislike of the current delivery methods of scientific biomedicine, all of which have led patients to seek out alternative medicine to treat a variety of ailments. Many patients lack access to contemporary medicine, due to a lack of private or public health insurance, which leads them to seek out lower-cost alternative medicine. Medical doctors are also aggressively marketing alternative medicine to profit from this market. Patients can be averse to the painful, unpleasant, and sometimes-dangerous side effects of biomedical treatments. Treatments for severe diseases such as cancer and HIV infection have well-known, significant side-effects. Even low-risk medications such as antibiotics can have potential to cause life-threatening anaphylactic reactions in a very few individuals. Many medications may cause minor but bothersome symptoms such as cough or upset stomach. In all of these cases, patients may be seeking out alternative therapies to avoid the adverse effects of conventional treatments.