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Quack remedies spread by virtue of being useless

newscientist.com — Bogus medical treatments spread in society precisely because they don't work, a mathematical model suggests.

Who dugg this? Made popular May 2, 2009

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  • nullcodes, on 05/02/2009, -0/+19Yes because if you aren't sick you aren't going to have the illness .. or the treatment.. in mind. Also, people who see doctors don't feel the need to say "going to a normal doctor worked, no *****" since it's already established as mainstream remedy. Only the ones going to alternative treatment feel the need to toot their own horn. When the treatment fails, they don't wanna be laughed at for going to a quack homeopathic "doctor".
  • znicket, on 05/02/2009, -0/+19O.k... let me get this straight... People who are using ineffectual treatments stay sick for longer so they have more time to spread the information about their supposed treatment? People who are using efficient treatments get cured and shut up about it?
  • smemily, on 05/02/2009, -2/+18Maybe they can come up with a treatment for paranoia, and mandate it.
  • felman87, on 05/02/2009, -0/+12*****, I'm American. Where the hell am I going to find an apple?!
  • bobbi21, on 05/02/2009, -0/+12And for a lot of illnesses you will eventually get better anyway, even if you're taking an ineffective treatment, you will eventually get better and of course claim the treatment caused that. (no matter how much we complain about it, ppl will always believe correlation = causation.)
  • inactive, on 05/02/2009, -0/+10Yes the W.H.O is a giant worldwide conspiracy of dedicated health professionals with the evil goal of treating the sick, but thank the lord that we have nut-jobs like you, fighting for our right to enjoy disease and premature death!

    Please do your bit for world mental health and refrain from breeding.
  • fixty, on 05/02/2009, -1/+11People also believed the stars controlled their destinies for thousands of years. Just because treatments existed before modern medicine doesn't mean all traditional treatments actually work.
  • Alkali, on 05/02/2009, -1/+10Also, it's not really about people talking or shutting up about a treatment. It's more about people who are sick repeatedly using the ineffective treatment, and other people (sick or healthy) observing them. The observer is likely to use the treatment, and people who are sick longer are likely to use the treatment in front of more observers. Nobody questions the actual effectiveness of a treatment.
  • MalenfantX, on 05/02/2009, -0/+8You absolutely can tell the truth. Alternative Medicine is a scam. It's the stuff with zero evidence to back it. Things that work get integrated into real evidence based medicine.
  • JQP123, on 05/02/2009, -3/+11I'm waiting for religion to be declared a quack psychiatric treatment. WHO where are you?

  • MalenfantX, on 05/02/2009, -0/+8The stuff that works is still mainstream medicine. For example willow bark was used to treat pain. The active ingredient is now known as aspirin, which is not alternative in any sense.
  • memper, on 05/02/2009, -4/+9After about 8 unreadable paragraphs into the article, the summary is in two sentences:

    "Under a wide range of conditions, quack treatments garnered more converts than proven hypothetical medicines that offer quicker recovery, Tanaka found. "The very fact that they don't work mean that people that use them stay sick longer" and demonstrate a treatment to more people, he says."

    Buried for the horrific writing.
  • MattBD, on 05/02/2009, -1/+6A lot of natural remedies work because they contain certain active ingredients, and in many cases these ingredients are just used as a basis for a drug. With natural remedies it's hard to sort the wheat from the chaff, whereas modern drugs are extensively tested.
    There's no doubt many natural remedies work, but there's also many others that don't. Some people in parts of Africa believe that having sex with a virgin cures HIV, and that "cure" is still believed to work despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary. Go figure.
  • jikmo, on 05/02/2009, -0/+5O.o
    wow
    I've never heard of anyone being that confused about how lubricant works. And pouring oil on your joints can't be good for you.
  • fixty, on 05/02/2009, -0/+5caramel snake oil cures bacon lung instantly.
  • diggbury, on 05/02/2009, -1/+6for the swine flu you gotta eat a caramel apple within 1 minute.
  • Garmonbozzia, on 05/02/2009, -0/+5Just put some Windex on it.
  • insanebrain, on 05/02/2009, -0/+4"bogus medical treatments"... not bogus replies.
  • fixty, on 05/02/2009, -3/+6Perfectly explains the persistence of chiropractic wackitude too.
  • LittleDas, on 05/02/2009, -2/+5Terrible article, interesting idea though. It's the first rationale I've heard for why folk medicine persists around the world. Other than lolsuperstition anyway.
  • Mothrog, on 05/02/2009, -0/+3Yup, just look at that population drop!

    http://www.google.com/publicdata?ds=uspopulation&a ...

    Oh, wait.
  • fixty, on 05/02/2009, -3/+6bla bla bla get aids eat garlic bla bla bla
  • dhughes, on 05/02/2009, -0/+3WD-40 on stiff joints, so many people where I live do it I'm embarrassed to say. It's for bolts, metal and stuff like that just because a person's joint is stiff doesn't mean it's literally like a metal joint.
  • fixty, on 05/02/2009, -0/+2You're right, the word "all" wasn't fair as it set up a straw-man, as they say in logic. Besides, I hate it when people speak in absolutes.

    Regarding your example, a well known local sushi chef and restaurant owner got a bladder infection a couple of months ago and died 'cause he putzed around and let it fester instead of taking it seriously.

    People who putz around and encourage their friends to putz around instead of seeking actual treatment cause a lot of unnecessary death. You should stop that, you know, and that's the point of the article.
  • MacEnvy, on 05/02/2009, -0/+2The issue is that you're talking about something clinically shown to have a positive effect, whereas the article is discussing things like homeopathy and acupuncture.

    No one doubts that L-lysine may help with HSV, but you are lumping it in with the others as "alternative medicine", and I don't think it counts as that.

    Alternative medicine in general is bunk, but that's not to say that all non-mainstream treatments don't work. You're acting too defensive about something that isn't intended as the slight that you think it is.
  • Jascol, on 05/02/2009, -2/+4I have to agree that was one of the worst written articles I've read on Digg for a while.
  • jikmo, on 05/02/2009, -0/+2I don't know why people are digging you down. You have a lot of valid points. I think it might be because you mentioned that some doctors recommend certain Chinese medicine, which is true. And diggers, don't give me that "correlation does not imply causation" *****. Of course it doesn't, but strong correlation suggests --influence--, and saying that it's not proof doesn't get you off the hook for ignoring evidence that you don't like.
  • MacEnvy, on 05/02/2009, -0/+2I agreed with you until the last sentence. They HAVE to test each ingredient one at a time so they can discover exactly what is doing the helping. Granted, as a preliminary study they could have used the whole herb to determine efficacy up front, but that has nothing to do with "western medical philosophy having it all wrong", that just has to do with the scientific process and the requirement to have strict rules to determine true causation.
  • Mothrog, on 05/02/2009, -1/+2You're right, it has nothing to do with treating diseases or anything like that. It's all just a conspiracy to kill us! Do the world a favor, get cancer, try your fairy dust treatments, and die quickly and stop wasting everyone else's air.
  • Mothrog, on 05/02/2009, -0/+1"They missed some very important quack treatments such as vaccines"

    Yup, that's why we no longer have smallpox. Those damn vaccines don't work!

    "even the ADA now admits does nothing for teeth"

    Uh, no.
    http://www.ada.org/public/topics/fluoride/index.as ...

    I won't even bother with the rest.
  • znicket, on 05/02/2009, -1/+2Yes. that was going to be my point. In 99.98% of the cases people will get better and they will believe that whatever they did prior to getting better caused them to get better.

    "I had a flu, drank some tea and the flu went away... thanks to the tea". Post Hoc ergo Propter Hoc fallacy.
  • Mothrog, on 05/02/2009, -1/+2"The ignorant one here is the one who thinks foods don't affect your health... "

    The logical fallacy you're going for here is called a straw man.

    "Cannabis works better then chemo"

    No, cannabis can inhibit tumor growth, according to a single study. . See, in the science world, we generally want to see things like repeatability before something becomes well accepted. The study also said nothing about its efficacy in comparison to chemo.
  • jikmo, on 05/02/2009, -0/+1Really??? My friend has that! I need to go find her some caramel snake oil!
  • redcolumbine, on 05/02/2009, -0/+1It's certainly a plausible theory. But I think the long-time-to-proselytize factor is minimal compared to the I-can't-afford-my-prescription-but-can-buy-snake-oil-anywhere factor.
  • Ellipsys, on 05/02/2009, -0/+1As I forgot anything but ITS ALLL QUACKERY is dugg down on digg, here are a few sources for your browsing pleasure. Maybe it will be possible to enlighten a handful of you... this fervor against anything "alternative" is dare I say it...downright religious.

    http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/3115841

    A double-blind, placebo-controlled, multicenter trial of oral L-lysine monohydrochloride for the prevention and treatment of recurrent herpes simplex (HSV) infection was conducted. The treatment group was given L-Lysine monohydrochloride tablets (1,000 mg L-lysine per dose) 3 times a day for 6 months. A total of 27 (6 male and 21 female) subjects on L-lysine and 25 (6 male and 19 female) subjects on placebo completed the trial. The L-lysine treatment group had an average of 2.4 (p less than 0.05) less HSV infections, symptoms were significantly (p less than 0.05) diminished in severity and healing time was significantly reduced (p less than 0.05). L-Lysine appears to be an effective agent for reduction of occurrence, severity and healing time for recurrent HSV infection.

  • inactive, on 05/02/2009, -0/+1Yeah you're right, modern medicines and treatments are a total failure. I'm sure nobody likes getting past the age of 35 which was about the average human lifespan until the age of modern medicine. *Facepalm*
  • anonymousmedic, on 05/04/2009, -0/+1Yogi, as someone who suffers with ADHD, all the research over the past 10 years I've seen points to the fact that St. Johns Wart does NOTHING, even when taken as a whole supplement rather than just the suspected active components. It's not a synergistic reaction between compunds here, it's the simple fact that the compounds do nothing to alter the complicated reactions occuring in the neurons of the brain causing ADHD.

    alfalfa: I can pick and chose events in history to serve my point too. Quinine has been eliminated from most modern maliarial treatments in the first world due to the development of MUCH safer drug therapies and antibiotics that are also effective against malarial parasites. Cranberry juice will only work against certain kinds of bacteria, and that's only if the infection isn't sexually transmitted or fecal in origin, which most modern UTIs in the first world are. Quack advice like that is stupid. Acidifying the urine (Which is what cranberry juice does) will help to prevent infections, but won't "cure" them once they start.
  • MacEnvy, on 05/02/2009, -0/+1Yikes. Do you happen to live in Alberta?
  • Ellipsys, on 05/02/2009, -1/+2The problem is that "Alternative" is used as a blanket dismissal from everything from experimental uses of drugs, to new compounds with promising anecdotal evidence, to herbal medicine, to "crazy stuff" like swinging crystals over people's heads. Its only after the "Alternative" community does "their" tests on this stuff (Which are promptly ignored as biased), and there is so much anecdotal evidence of it working that the "conventional" community finds it financially viable to foot the bill for "their" clinical trials. Before then, they simply say its a hoax or whatnot.

    Your definition of Alternative medicine might just be the crystals and aromatherapy-can-cure-cancer kind, and there I'd agree with you. However, others might say that Cat's Claw leaf extract is a useless therapy simply because it comes from a plant instead of a lab, despite that it has been shown to increase CD57 cell count, or that XXXXX therapy shouldn't even be investigated because it is veiled in Chinese "language" rhetoric about qi or whatnot. By all means debunk what doesn't work, but don't manufacture reasons to ignore potential treatments because they come from out of your comfort zone.
  • Mothrog, on 05/02/2009, -1/+2Well trained... Must be why when you actually go look at their credentials, they never seem to have graduated from reputable, accredited universities.
  • anonymousmedic, on 05/04/2009, -0/+1"Western" Medical Philosophy? You're kidding right. Most physicians in China would LAUGH at the fact you want to use traditional chinese medicine. Most peasants in China would give their left testicle for western medicine, but we spend billions each year on "Mystical Eastern Medicine" that has been proven time and time again NOT to work.

    Magical thinking and conspiracy theory is fun, isn't it.
  • dhughes, on 05/02/2009, -0/+1 No, PEI.

    My fellow Islanders can be nutty, although hundreds if not thousands of Islanders have headed out West to work in the Fort McMurray oil fields.
  • Mothrog, on 05/02/2009, -1/+2Impossible for you to get cancer... Who's the ignorant one again? Please, keep the comments coming. They're hilarious.
  • alfalfa31, on 05/03/2009, -0/+1Bad writing scares me. I can understand a misspelling (though a simple proof read should clear up most of them), but there are sentences in this article that are so badly formed, they can't be considered sentences.
  • alfalfa31, on 05/04/2009, -1/+2In fact they don't HAVE to break the thing down into its constituent parts just to test the individual bits. If it works, leave it alone. Why does modern medicine need to argue with nature, exactly?

    If you get a bladder infection and run to the doctor to get a drug, you're an idiot. A bottle of cranberry juice (real cranberry juice, mind you, not that Ocean Spray BS) will clear it up naturally.

    It's like the whole "Vitamin E is ineffective" thing. Tocopherols are a FAMILY of vitamins, not just DL Tocopherol Acetate. Testing that particular molecule will likely generate little effect, but testing the whole family? Try it out and see.

    Quinine is another example. The natives in Panama didn't get malaria, but the canal diggers did. Why? The very weak tea they drank all day made from the bark of the chinchona tree. So instead of leaving it in the bark, it was extracted. Now you can die from overdosing, should you be so inclined. Why not just leave it in the bark? They used the bark as early as 1633 to cure malaria.

    I think that's the point YogiWanKenobi was making.
  • Mothrog, on 05/02/2009, -1/+1"what you're trying to compare is full body radiation and a herb"

    Speaking of ignorant, chemotherapy and radiation aren't one in the same.

    "As for the data about Cannabis treatments, there is none thanks to ignorant people like yourself."

    "Try and find out the exact numbers of how many people get chemo and how many walk away "

    So, you did make up the number, as I suspected. Good job.

    " there is none thanks to ignorant people like yourself."

    In other words, you have nothing but faith to back up your beliefs. Thanks for clarifying. And, last I looked, there were a few countries and US states where medicinal use of marijuana is legal.
  • Niocan, on 05/02/2009, -1/+1Regardless of your mis-understanding of our conditioned society, what you're trying to compare is full body radiation and a herb. One kills thousands due to medical misunderstandings of symbiotic systems and *radiation*, and one has no detrimental side effects and will cure cancer if there's enough photo/endoCannabinoids in the cancerous area.

    Try and find out the exact numbers of how many people get chemo and how many walk away (Including all the 'not healthy enough', 'treatment had no affect', and all the other terms they use to increase the numbers). Chemo doesn't work, and it does far too much harm to the body for any rational mind to accept it's 'benefits'.

    I suggest not giving into 1960's propaganda and come to learn about most mammals' EndoCannabinoid systems. As for the data about Cannabis treatments, there is none thanks to ignorant people like yourself.
  • Mothrog, on 05/02/2009, -1/+1"Incorrect, you just can't expand on that issue because you've been trained not to."

    Uh, yeah. Something like that.

    "Chemo has a 5% success rate"

    Uh huh. And where did you get that number? What primary cancer is it based on? And what stage? Or, did you just simply make it up? And what exactly is the success rate for cannabis treatment? Oh, right, you can't answer that because there's no data on it. Oh, and let's not forget chemo is often a last resort.
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