In his interview with The Feed Dr. Ken Harvey, President, Friends of Science in Medicine stated
“We certainly do raise concerns and complaints about practitioners who potentially can be dangerous.
“I think there are some areas where we can be quite confident. But there is no good evidence and it’s unlikely that they will be.
“We are not against people going to see a naturapath, or a homeopath, or a hydrologist, but we would like to do understand the limitations of the evidence supporting these particular therapies.”
Reasons Why Real Efficacy of Complimentary Medicine Is Unknown
According to Associate Professor Jon Wardle who conducts research into complimentary therapies, there are reasons why efficacy of some complementary medicine is still unknown or confusing.
1. Clinical and researches in other languages are unknown or inaccessible
Narrator: He says that there is good evidence in some of them, it’s just that the government review excluded it.
“They didn’t look beyond the English language so things like Yoga where all of the research is Indian, things like Tai-chi where all the research is Chinese, things like Shiatsu where most of the research is in Japanese. We just not even look at it all.
Narrator: John says most of us use these therapies alongside mainstream medical treatments and we want good research to inform our health get choices. But when it comes to doing large scale, high-quality clinical trials on complementary therapies, there are challenges.
“It’s much harder to fund research into what we probably term as traditional therapies that have been around for a long time than these new pharmaceuticals that you can patent or monetize more effectively.”
2. Poor differentiation between quack treatments and legit alternative therapies
Narrator: Another problem is that natural therapies as a term is a kind of mixed bag that doesn’t help the public differentiate the quack treatments from ones that are more legit.
“Say you have everything from someone who is using superstitious beliefs and using omens and amulets…”
Reference:
- Are natural remedies a suitable alternative for science-based medicine? (2019) SBS The Feed | Interview with Dr. Ken Harvey, President, Friends of Science in Medicine & Dr. Jon Wardle, Associate Professor
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