Dr. Martin Rundkvist is a Swedish archaeologist, journal editor, public speaker, skeptic, atheist, lefty liberal, bookworm, and father of two.
Evidence-based medicine, alternative medicine and weaponry change through time because of selection pressure. This means that they evolve and produce a fossil record of discontinued methods and therapies.
Any method or therapy introduced into alternative medicine will face selection pressure from two directions. If a method hurts patients to a visible extent, it will be recognised as weaponry and thrown out of altie medicine. Government regulations will forbid it and the more savvy altie practicioners will soon learn that it leads to nasty law suits.
If on the other hand a method introduced into alternative medicine turns out to be significantly beneficial to patients, it will soon be co-opted by evidence-based medicine and thus leave the altie realm.
So, there is evolutionary pressure on alternative therapies to achieve near-zero effect. This is why homeopathy is still around: its main method being the administration to patients of small amounts of clean water, it's uniquely suited to surviving indefinitely in the alternative-therapy biotope. Homeopathic remedies can neither harm nor benefit patients.
Update 13 November: There's a third kind of pressure on altie medicine to do nothing. Many evidence-based functional therapies incorporate drugs and procedures that can be dangerous if used in the wrong way. In order to be effective, a method must be pretty potent, and all power can be misused. Thus, an altie practitioner can never recommend a potent beneficial method due to the risk of patients ODing and dying.
Respectful Insolence and Neurologica liked the idea, picked it up and ran with it.
[More blog entries about homeopathy, evolution, alternativemedicine, skepticism; Andra bloggar om: alternativmedicin, homeopati, evolution, skepsis, skepticism.]
Medicine & Health
Comments
Excellent proof of Darwinian processes. Except homeopathetic (yes!) medicines can be harmful if idiots try to cure serious diseases with watered out molecules. I once travelled in northern India with a girl (an aquantance made during the journey), when we got quite seriously stricken with diarrhea (after checking into an expensive nice hotel at her request...). I managed to drag myself off to a doctor who prescribed antibiotics, but did not want to give me medicines for my companion without examining her first, since he was a proper professional and such drugs can be dangerous if you have additional problems.
She however, opted for her homeopathic medicines. In a couple of days I was back on wobbly legs . She had worsened and finally admitted to be dragged to the doctor. Her condition had deteriorated enough for dysentry by that time, and mere antibiotics could not cure it. She was sent off on a plane to Thailand to finish up her vacation at a hospital.
Good riddance.
I am very firmly against pumping farm animals full of antibiotics and drugs - it is insane from a scientific stand point not the least. However, nature romantics that try to cure their poor suffering animals ailments with that humbug should be slapped across the face. I shudder to think they might use it on their children also.
So in sum, homeopathic "medicines" have not done enough damage to warrant a ban - but in the wrong hands even the harmless becomes harmful...
Posted by: ArchAsa | November 12, 2007 5:00 AM
Yeah, a huge problem with altie meds is that they keep people from getting real care. And sometimes it puts others at risk, like when antivaxers put at risk a) their children, b) everyone around because they may cause an epidemic.
Posted by: Martin R | November 12, 2007 7:05 AM
Although I see the larger point, I don't think this works very well in Darwinian terms. You have to assume that the alternative therapy is a mature organism trying to replicate itself. But if the alternative therapy is only a larval stage, and its goal is actually to grow up into accepted medicine, then the ones that remain alternative are the failures of the litter, and evolutionary success is growth into a more successful form. And surely evolution is all about self-propagation. An evolutionary pressure to reproduce minimally doesn't make a lot of sense to me...
Posted by: Jonathan Jarrett | November 12, 2007 9:11 AM
Yeah, you could use the metaphor in that way too. But my idea is that alternative medicine is an economic niche where practicioners can survive if they have the right survival traits. Homeopathy is a highly adaptive trait for that niche.
Posted by: Martin R | November 12, 2007 9:20 AM
Just think of them as "living fossils". :)
Posted by: angry doc | November 12, 2007 12:58 PM
If on the other hand a method introduced into alternative medicine turns out to be significantly beneficial to patients, it will soon be co-opted by evidence-based medicine and thus leave the altie realm.
Not only that, in the UK at least, it becomes subject to pharmaceutically-active product regulations. This is a strong incentive for the manufactures of alternative medicines NOT to test their products. See here and here.
Posted by: Tristram Brelstaff | November 13, 2007 2:43 PM