If you are a doctor and you are angrier about alternative medicine than you are about the millions of people who seek alternatives because the mainstream system does not research, cannot effectively treat, or worse, routinely gaslights these patients, then you have work to do.
Most people want care that is safe, effective, and based on science. They want care that is accessible and affordable (whether covered by insurance or available via a national health service). Many are systematically denied this on the basis of gender, race, class, or diagnosis.
So what do some do instead? They Google their symptoms, buy Goop products, surf Amazon.com for supplements, seek out faith healers, and if they have the money, bounce around from alternative practice to alternative practice. All the things MDs laugh at or debunk.
These are, in economic terms, perfectly RATIONAL responses to what is a major MARKET FAILURE in medicine and medical research. But why study that problem when you can smugly debunk?
I sometimes wonder if debunking isn’t its own form of coping mechanism. Medicine fails patients. Patients self-experiment and desperately seek answers. “Skeptics” debunk and deride. Round and round it goes, with very little conversation about root causes.
Also, “alternative medicine” comprises thousands of different treatments. Some of it does in fact work. Some of it is rooted in science. Some of it is quackery. The same can be said of “mainstream medicine.”
https://t.co/2lYlSlmQHQ
https://t.co/2lYlSlmQHQ
