Is Big Pharma hiding the cure for cancer? No but someone else is*

 

Is Big Pharma hiding the cure for cancer? No but someone else is*

The rise of antiscience and why Big Wellness is hiding cures

 

Many times, I see the statement

        ‘’Big Pharma wants you sick’’

Which is probably quite inflammatory, and maybe has a smidge of truth, but a statement I used to semi-believe when I first heard it was

        ‘’Big Pharma is incentivised to keep you dependant on medications such as      cancer treatment or insulin rather than with a one off cure’’

 

Aside from the very biased notion of ‘Big Pharma’ wording, on the surface, the idea that a one and done cure for conditions such as type 1 diabetes or complex cancer is less profitable than multiple lifelong medications seems true in a for profit industry. The idea that they ‘hide’ a cure is unlikely, but the idea they may divert funds away from or not spend resources researching a cure over treatment seemed at least somewhat plausible.

 

But I think it’s not true!

 

You see, Big Pharma is mainly used in a derogatory sense to pharmaceutical companies and drug manufacturers, which is earned in some senses, but typically used to vilify life saving medication or care.

Pharmaceuticals are not a first line treatment for most disorders, the best prevention tends to be good sleep, time outdoors, regular activity, a healthy balanced dietary pattern…. But these things are expensive to the individual, take time and energy (in an ever busy world), and don’t ‘sell’. But these are typically cast aside by either busy patients, stressed clinicians, or, as the media likes to say, power hungry pharmaceuticals.

 

Now, is it true we overmedicate certain conditions- YES

Is it true that these lifestyle changes may prevent, reduce or even cure certain conditions- YES

But that is it.

 

Implying that medical treatment can be substituted by lifestyle changes rather than complemented is wrong in 90% of disorders, and can bring stigma and shame.

 

Aside from tiny changes in risk factors or rates of disease, conditions such as type 1 diabetes, complex cancers, genetic disorders and more are NOT the result of poor lifestyle.

Neurodevelopmental conditions (ADHD, Autism) are also innate from birth, and despite being a subset of other neurodivergences (which include anxiety, depression), and probably have genetic influences, they are yet again blamed on lifestyle or medication.

 

And clinicians don’t (or shouldn’t) discuss just medications without lifestyle changes too, but many reports and studies show modifiable risk behaviours outside of medical, surgical or pharmaceutical care mentioned in consultations and appointments tended to be:

-      Forgotten by the patient when asked to recount what the professional said

-      Seen as infantilising

-      Refused or deemed not possible

Now of course, other factors such as:

-      Short appointments

-      Low clinician continuity

-      Brief encounters so no patient-provider relationship forms

-      Underfunding

-      And some clinicians not raising these, or raising them in judgemental ways

Brings about a decline in ‘medical care’ that focuses on lifestyle over pharmaceuticals, bringing, a perhaps just, stereotype for medication overintervention.

 

But that is not what a cure would be. Big Pharma is actually a diverse roster of for profit drug manufacturers, established names, clinical trials, start ups, innovative entrepreneurs, scientists on grants, students, postdocs, researchers, academics, universities, charitable organisations, non profits, nationalised services, teaching hospitals, clinics, doctors, medics, healthcare providers, patients, families, donors, trusts and more.

 

Among all of them, the share of cost, profit, net loss, margins, motivation, reputation, size and more vary- but with so many diverse interests and stakeholders, no cure will be ‘hidden’ completely.

 

Bioscience and STEM research is underfunded as is, so getting to a treatment, cure or breakthrough is long, hard, costly and mainly trial and error. But, the research itself isn’t solely done by one person. It is a collaborative team, and even if one trial or study is buried, the notions, ideas and technologies are still present for another team to look into the same idea.

 

We need many improvements in open science, minority inclusion, advocating for diverse trials and studies, research funding, replication mandates, ethics reviews, and to reduce the biases against sexes, races or socioeconomic groups, but the research isn’t absolutely lost, it still exists, no matter how small, and continues to grow.

 

Even if a big name brand company for insulin manufacturers or treatments wasn’t incentivised towards funding a cure, a university, charity, organisation or donor with lived/familial experience would 100% be looking into it.

From ALS to brain tumours to T1D to cystic fibrosis to Parkinsons, charities, labs, scientists, students, universities and more exist to precisely focus on non profit areas, and even for profits would want the title and business of being the ‘first ones to find’ a cure, even if it meant eventual downstream loss on treatment profits.

 

And, for national spending, each dollar of research funding to the National Institutes of Health delivers $2.56 return in economic activity, providing a multiplier, whilst maintaining an open mandate for results and activities. Other frameworks and guidelines on non-drug but health discovery on WHO (world health organisation), CDC (Centres of disease control and prevention), FDA (food and drug administration) and the environmental agencies bring in more open mandates for taxpayer funded research.

 

Furthermore, ‘for profit’ as a business model doesn’t always mean huge takehome. Now, granted, the structures of pricing and wealth inequity are direly in need of reform, but most drugs funded fail. The ‘private’ sector is really the only sector with the means, financial and equipment wise, to fund clinical trials and post-exploratory research. An academic or university may find a proof of concept idea, but the industrial sectors take the loss (balanced to potential profit) to study it for safety and real world efficacy, and then take on the role of manufacture. Over 90% of all drug studies show no effect, basically failures on the loss of millions of dollars. And it’s a high risk-high reward game, and net profit can fluctuate into the minuses.

Of course, huge markups and unregulated advertising is not great for consumer health or the reputations of pharmaceuticals, but you may be thinking….. gee, if only the entire world didn’t do that.

AND IT DOESN’T

 

I’ve focused on ‘American Pharma’ because it’s the most well known (and accounts for over half of discoveries for drugs, medical science breakthroughs, and patents) but many other powers in drug discovery and manufacture exist, including Australia, Canada, England, Europe (namely Germany, France, Spain, Italy, Switzerland and Belgium account for 18% of patents), New Zealand, some African countries (especially South Africa, Egypt, Nigeria), China (10% of biotech patents, and huge focus on genetic engineering and CRISPR), Poland and Austria, and Scandinavian countries (Greenland, Denmark, Sweden, Norway and Finland focused on social science interfacing and populational biology), Korea and more

 

For example, in England, we have some framework organisations, namely the NHS (national healthcare service- provides free at the point of contact care, taxpayer funded) and its financial governing body NICE (national institute for health and care excellence) plus for public/global health we work alongside CDC, WHO, FDA (from the US teams) and worldwide with aid networks and epidemiological infectious disease and outbreak surveillance, with many UN member states, European countries, LIC charities and aid relief, non profit organisations, NHS Global Health Partnerships, the antimicrobial resistance worldwide network, the international human health campaign, the research policy guideline group, Public Health England, NHS England (separate to NHS), UKHSA (UK health security agency), DEFRA (Department for environment and rural affairs), APHA (animal and plant health agency), DHSC (department for health and social care) and more.

Big journals and publishers such as BMJ (British medical journal, included with all BMA/GMC subscriptions for practicing doctors), Lancet, PubMed (NIH run), Science, Nature, Cell and more all also prioritise open publishing of ‘public good’ research including best practices for cancer treatment, chronic disorder management, safe prescribing guidelines, ethical codes, infectious disease control and surveillance, genetic sequencing and disorders, and cell mechanisms underpinning health and disease.

In countries like ours, direct to consumer advertising is banned, policies regulate medication guidelines, we have checks and balances for medication continuation (that albeit are imperfect but do prevent overmedication), free and accessible lifestyle programs (including smoking cessation, alcoholism rehabilitation, exercise prescriptions, discounted community events and more), and even if they are slow, busy, have a large wait, or could be bypassed privately, they are the backbone of our nation’s health.

 

This decentralisation of power, responsibility, profit and incentive also means that the cost of treatment and the profit from treatment is disparate.

For example, pharmaceutical manufacturers take on the loss of developing and testing a drug, but once successful, can take on massive profits, such as insulin by Eli Lilly at 2,153% markup, or the 2 major US providers of GLP-1 drugs for diabetes under generic forms being sold at $353 in the US compared to total production cost $0.89 and costing $115 a month in most other countries, with an estimated markup of 40,000% for other generic forms compared to average generic price in the US.

The ethics and morals of this behaviour, between profiting on human lives and taking on the huge cost of research, are debatable, it remains that not all countries work the same way.

So a US company in this climate could taken on a profit from continuous sickness and treatment, but take an academic who takes no profit but could see great suffering of the disease, and be able to create a cheap proof of concept for a cure, this would be picked up either by a for profit in the idea that ‘if we have to lose out, let’s at least get there first’, or by a charity or national institute.

 

But even more so, any other country with a more subsidised and nationalised R&D program (namely England, Canada, Australia, Switzerland, Germany, Belgium) take on the cost of treatment with no profit. For example, of the entire UK NHS budget, 10% (13.75 billion) goes to diabetic treatment, around £25,000 spent per minute or £1.5 million an hour, from limited and stretched funds with no profit incentive. Cutting that cost and replacing with a cure that also removes the issues of unmanaged diabetes, complication costs, stress, fear, emergency care and more would free up a substantial amount for England’s healthcare whilst also, even with treatment, 80% of that whopping figure (11 billion) is spent on treating complications- so absolutely incentivises research into a cure.

 

^above costs were from 2012, however have since risen including percentage of budget and absolute amount spent

 

If you’re still not convinced, what if I told you an ‘anti cancer drug’ is ALREADY sold and praised by ‘Big Pharma’. Okay fine, not quite anti cancer or a drug, but a certain vaccine, HPV (and vaccines in general are great but focus on this for a sec).

Human Papillomavirus is a very common virus that can be passed during skin contact (usually during sexual activity) and most are harmless, but some strains are linked to a very increased risk of cancers, including:

-      Cervical

-      Mouth

-      Anal

-      Penile

-      Vulval

-      Vaginal

And more. Plus genital warts of varying severities. It is silent, hidden, slow growing but very deadly, and cervical cancer is the 4^th most common cancer in women and people with cervixes globally, and about 50% will live 10 years after treatment, whilst the 5 year rate is 60% if any spread occurs.

Cervical cancer is caused by persistent HPV infection, and 20% of children who lose their mothers to cancer lose them to HPV caused cervical cancer.

It takes about 15-20 years for HPV infection to become abnormal cancer cells if left untreated, but in unmanaged HIV (most common accelerator) or in other immunosuppressed individuals, it can be 5-10 years post exposure.

The best prevention is…. The HPV vaccines, produced, manufactured, advertised and sold by many worldwide organisations, plus, ‘Big Pharma’.

The HPV vaccine was actually inspired by an American pharmaceutical study showing the clear link between HPV and cancer in 1980, and 2 researchers in the US in 1990 created the vaccine from the national cancer institute.

 

The vaccine contains a combination of strains, but the 2 most deadly, 16 and 18, which account for over 70% of cancers are the backbone. The vaccine is safe and effective with an efficacy around 100%, one of the highest. Not only can it stop spread of HPV amongst sexual partners, but it prevents oesophageal, penile, anal, vaginal, uterine and cervical cancer (especially in high risk individuals), and if given early enough, has shown nearly full cancer-free effects.

It's recommended teens get 2 doses, and in children who received it at age 12-13 in Scotland in 2008, 0 (ZERO!) cases of cervical cancer were found for 17 years and counting compared to baseline rate of 300 a year for unvaccinated individuals (estimated 5100 cases expected in this time frame in population, and estimated 3621 were averted by vaccination despite increase in screening).

 

So, an anti cancer drug already exists and is highly revered by Big Pharma. It saves money, lives, and surely the stereotype of greedy execs may fall apart as soon as they (or more likely, their loved ones since women make up only 3% of large pharmaceutical C suite members) get a disorder themselves.

 

Yet another nail in the head, Big Pharma doesn’t want you to blame them. What do I mean? Humans are just not very rational. We are guided by emotions over logic, short term feelings over facts, and thinking that falls into fallacies. Two of these, the inaction and appeal to nature fallacy causes us to tend to assume any event happened from action and that anything natural is good. (more on appeal to nature in Big Wellness). Essentially, if I was going to do well at an exam anyway, but you gave me a pill and told me it’ll boost my brain power (even if it’s just a sugar pill), I may revere the pill. But if I was going to get sick anyway, but yesterday you gave me a pill, I may assume the pill caused the sickness.

 

This can lead to issues with true safety and efficacy.

Take efficacy data, some factors can make your drug seem less effective than reality (unless adequately controlled):

-      Individuals may say they are more sick than they are at the start to get in, so placebo group improves anyway and drug seems less effective

-      Control/placebo group still feels cared for and they improve (placebo effect, form of psychotherapy by being cared for)

-      Drug group may falsely chalk up any negative symptoms to the drug (nocebo- technically can happen in both groups but still important)

-      Participants may be filtered out to a subset, so severely ill people who may benefit more may be lost

-      Participants who are treatment resistant or who exhausted all other options may seek to try new things, so may filter for those who have a less effective response

Plus safety profiles

-      Anything positive is placed onto the active activity or treatment

-      But anything negative is also

So you end up with medications being blamed for any and all negative side effects, and the more you have, the true amount of side effects or uncomfortable effects also increase.

Whilst, with alternatives such as sugar pills or inert placebos, people don’t realise the harm until too late and probably don’t have side effects, and by the time they need medical care, the cost is swallowed by healthcare, the efficacy diminishes by late treatment time, and people blame medicine for ineffective, slow, costly and risky treatments.

 

 

 

 

As you can see, no pharmaceutical company single handedly vetoes research, and even if it becomes harder- smaller and diverse organisations worldwide would step into the space. No cure for cancer is being intentionally hidden.

 

Well, not by Big Pharma anyway.

 

But, someone else is hiding quite a few cures up their sleeve….. Big Wellness.

 

From chiropractics to homeopathy, alternative medicine is a buzz word that we are told should 'co-exist' in 'holistic' integrated care.

The premise of combining cultural, religious and historical traditions and solutions with evidence-based care that is carried out by scientific and clinical providers has been touted as the pinpoint of future medicine.

But I believe that's wrong.

 

In Big Wellness…

 

 

Medication is vilified, to varying degrees. From insulin dependant diabetics told to ‘just eat less sugar’ to medicated individuals with mental health conditions being told they aren’t ‘trying hard enough’ and should:

-      Breathe

-      Do yoga

-      Meditate

-      Get a job

-      But not work too much

-      Eat no carbs

-      Eat no sugar

-      Eat only meat

-      Eat vegan

-      Eat vitamins and supplements

-      Sleep more

-      Sleep less

-      Put on makeup

-      Stop wearing makeup

-      Stop using plastic

-      Stop using glass

-      Etc…. the list goes on

It’s impossibly long and varied and contradictory, and even if some anecdotes of ‘my condition was cured by X’ persist, most individuals will not blanketly reverse or stop their condition through lifestyle alone.

 

Furthermore, even with all the will, time and resources in the world, it can be much safer and more effective to take medications (under the guidance of clinicians) for certain conditions, and if needed, complement with impactful lifestyle changes.

 

We can’t always optimise for ‘perfect health’ even in non-ill individuals, whether it be we don’t have the time or funds to cook, we want to enjoy time with our loved ones, we have guilty pleasures, we feel sad, or we are just human. Villifying medications blanketly alongside glorifying niche lifestyle changes that are unachievable and too specific to be helpful to a broad population are recipes for scams, hoaxes, shame, guilt and poor quality of life.

 

No one fad, no diet, no tea or cleanse, no detox, no hormone balance, no programme, no workout, no one food, no one thing will ever be as impactful or health-changing as an overall basic pattern of good sleep hygiene, good activity, good diet- however you decide it looks (and works) for you.

 

So how come Big Wellness exists? And what benefit is hiding cures to them?

 

Finding nuance in alternative medicine (in the sense of the founding principles) will not help make individuals 'healthy again'. 

 

Let's dive in.

 

Alternative medicine itself is a bit of a difficult word to define, some say it's just 'using nature-inspired or traditional solutions for promoting health', whilst the founding principles are more akin to pseudoscience as a conscious rejection of scientific and experimental evidence in favour of anecdotal experience.

In our case, let's first start with the traditionist anti-science route.

 

Science has long been plagued with an image problem, perhaps justified. Scientists are not known as great communicators, media outlets are not known as great explainers, and the general public tend to be left to fend off disinformation and lies left and right.

Science has long been closed off, expensive and barricaded by jargon and pretentiousness, and still is to some extent, so individuals cannot possibly form opinions on every single discovery, experiment and evaluation by themselves.

No wonder that we are left turning to role models, leaders or media headlines, which by their very design rely on inciting excitement, fear or anger, can strip context and nuance from the stories. 

Science itself then gets painted as a static body of facts, and when someone admits mistakes, points out a gap or changes their mind, the reputational trust in science takes a hit.

 

But that's not what science is.

Science is not really a noun. It is not a thing. It is not a collection of agreed upon facts.

Scientist may be a job involved in research and academia, but really, everyone should be a scientist sometimes.

Science means asking questions, evaluating data, forming a hypothesis, collecting perspectives, and presenting it. Science is a process. Science relies on critique. Science relies on making mistakes. Science relies on trial and error.

 

Scientific questioning is what babies use when they test 'what happens if I drop this block from my high chair' to discover the effect of gravity. Scientific questioning is what you use when you gather evidence for and against a person to answer 'are they a good friend?', science is what you use when you evaluate whether you should buy a new product.

The best hypotheses and experiments are ones where you try to disprove the strongest evidence for your own belief.

That sounds odd, but the only way to be 'truth seeking' is to ensure we are on the right tracks, and the best way to check if a certain avenue of questioning is right or wrong, we need to try to find the most overwhelming proof that negates what we know.

 

Take a hypothesis of 'A certain skin disease is caused by skin having bacteria'

Sounds true, sounds easy to test.

So we design an experiment to affirm our hypothesis, we swab 100 people with the disease and find bacteria on all of them. Bam, we found the answer!

 

But not so fast.

What if we rewind and realise science doesn't work that way.

We need to try to disprove our strongest evidence.

So say we think bacteria causes the disease, we need to find if anyone with the disease doesn't have the bacteria, and then if anyone with the bacteria doesn't have the disease.

Now we swab 100 people with the disease (who all have bacteria) and 100 people without- who also all have bacteria!

Turns out, all of us have bacteria and microbes nearly everywhere, and they digest our food, provide immune support, and out compete dangerous new pathogens. All skin will have bacteria on it.

Say we only did the original experiment and came to the conclusion bacteria on our skin causes disease. We may tell everyone to scrub their skin with antibacterials, That probably leads to skin issues on its own (allergies, irritation, breakage), but also, removing bacteria that is naturally found on us can lead to opportunistic infections.

Media and anti-science individuals would have a field day against science. 

Say instead those anti-science groups said 'smelling essential oils stops the disease', they could easily affirm that by anyone getting better through smelling, whilst anyone who doesn't get better they can say didn't smell enough or the right one (which they conveniently sell for 10000s of pounds). Or replace oils for 'stress' or 'religious demons' that they can only cure with their ££££ courses they sell….

So you can see how these errors can make people reject science as a process and consider it as a flawed body of facts.

But science is dynamic and ever changing. Not only do we constantly disprove our work (and that's a good thing!), but equipment, knowledge and ideas may only come later, leading to changes in our theories over time.

Take the fact we found bacteria on everyone, we may need to wait for funding or advances to then measure types or amount of bacteria. Maybe they have something to do with it, or something else entirely like genetics or sun exposure or diets.

The best way to dive in isn't even observing cases, but experiments, where we can control our interventions (such as populating skin cells with bacteria versus with control solutions in different strains or amounts). 

Science is slow and methodical, and that makes it open to critique if it ever admits mistakes, even though that is the very principle of science.

Great experiments may even find that all individuals with the disease have a strain of bacteria A, and not a single individual without the disease has bacteria A. We still don't know if bacteria A causes the disease.

It could be all individuals with the disease live near a pond that has a chemical that causes the disease AND exposes them to bacteria A (which doesn't directly harm them).

Experiments would be done (on animals, cells or humans) to remove or add bacteria A to see if it is correlated (e.g. do all individuals who receive bacteria A get the disease) or if other factors also affect it (a different strain, amount of A, only people susceptible to the disease)

 

But experiments need funding and time and usually provide null results (e..g no effect or relationship between X and Y), which aren't published or celebrated, even though they help advance our lines of questioning.

Most drug trials which show no effect or harm don't get published, which has resulted in other teams (unknowing of the harmful effects) repeating costly trials with what they think are novel findings only to cause further harm (look up monoclonal antibody trials for some graphic but important examples!).

Furthermore, funding or positions require a certain amount of external publication and a push to 'show your work', rather than encouraging methodical scientific experimentation and reasoning, or accepting when individuals change their minds. The system is not going to be fixed overnight, and it has become this way through decades of multifactorial influences, but it also is a big catalyst for fraud, rushed science or bogus claims.

 

All of this has led to some 'anti-science' takes. Now, being against a treatment, trial or theory is not 'anti-science', if anything, most science has no consensus overall, but we tolerate and politely provide reasoning. That's good scientific integrity.

'Anti-science' in this case means against the principles. Against evidence, against trying to disprove your own beliefs, against data, against control groups, against statistical significance.

Science may get things wrong in terms of 'scientists say x, y, z' but the only reason we know we were wrong is because we used science (as a process and a principle) to be curious and truth-seeking. Science is a process, not an answer.

Being anti-science is flouted as an honour in many alternative medicine circles. And to be clear, I am not talking about the 'taking inspiration from natural remedies or family traditions alongside proven treatment', I am talking 'do not trust science, do not seek evidence based care, pay money for my detoxes' circles.

 

These circles are commonly referred to as holistic, integrative, toxin- free, organic, antivax, and more. None of these are blanketly true for all communities, nor are they true for each member, but as a whole, the top level circles are PSEUOSCIENCE.

They can not 'coexist' with medicine, nor should they. We sanewash when we try to 'find nuance' and 'accept their help'. There is no place for these high level anti-science ideas. Because that is the opposite of health and wellness.

Traditional cures, natural remedies and more are hard to pin down between 'scientifically backed' and 'pseudoscience', but really, people paint a false picture.

Science is so so so so so keen on natural remedies, traditional cures, taking inspiration from nature, low risk interventions and more. Science relies on biodiversity and plants and fungi to synthesise, mimic or even use in our medicines.

Just a few medicines that are derived from plants and nature:

    - Opioids from poppies (painkiller)

    - Digitalis from foxglove (heart drug)

    - Aspirin from salicylic acid from willow (fever and pain drug)

    - Avermectins from actinomycete (for treating parasitic worms)

    - Rifampicin from bacteria (antibiotic)

    - Capreomycin from soil bacteria (anti inflammatory antibiotic)

    - Vancomycin from Borneo jungle soil (antibiotic)

    - Morphine from poppy seeds

    - Chemotherapies 

    - Penicillin (from fungi, antibiotic)

    - Statins from fungal molecules (cholesterol drug)

    - And so many more

None of these were rejected by science. If anything, most scientists sample soil, water, jungles, ecosystems and more to find and culture new bacteria, plants and fungi to test for antimicrobial or healing properties.

The only difference between 'herbal medicine' and 'medicine from herbs and plants' is we have tested them and have empirical statistically significant data that they work, they are safe, can be reproduced the same way (to not cause dose or reaction differences between two drugs), and do not cause dangerous side effects.

Take the aspirin you swallow if you have a headache. Some ancient traditions would take the salicylic acid derivatives from eating plants and bark, but this would cause diarrohea, and the dose will vary depending on the concentrations in the plant, and the amount you'd eat would be lots to stomach to get any effect.

We explored these traditions, found benefit, but then used scientific methods to make a small, safe, reproduceable tablet that you can cheaply pick up off the shelf, knowing it is tested, safe, uncontaminated and effective.

Or pasteurising milk. This is not a big ploy, nor does it 'add chemicals'. Pasteurised milk is simply heated to a certain high temperature and kept there for a certain time to kill living organisms (bacteria, denature proteins and enzymes, inactivate viruses) so when we drink it, we do not get sick. The taste isn't different (but most supermarket milk undergoes homogenization, which uniformly distributes the components and can affect taste), and there are 0 (ABSOLUTELY 0) health benefits to unpasteurized milk. Nor can it 'change your DNA' or 'add chemicals to your body'. 

If you prefer the taste of unpasteurized milk, just buy unhomogenized (but still pasteurized milk), which hasn't been stirred to unify it, and it'll taste the same without making you violently sick.

Buzz words such as 'chemicals', 'toxins', 'hormone balancing', 'detox' and more are used to pray on vulnerable individuals. 

First of all, everything is chemicals.

 

100% of people who died had been in contact with dihydrogen monooxidase.

Babies under 6 months will die if they consume just a cupful of oxidane.

And even a healthy adult consuming over 76g of oxidane per kg of body weight in a short time can lead to toxicity and death.

 

Oxidane or dihydrogen monooxidase is H2O, water.

Everything is a chemical. Natural isn't always good (would you eat natural rat poop or arsenic?), and toxicity is dose dependant.

These terms are thrown around with no scientific backing such as 'balance your hormones' or 'drink alkaline water' (see my previous article: back to acids and basics)

 

It is this that is harmful.

This is not accepting religious or cultural differences.

This is rejecting safety.

This is endangering lives.

This is preying on vulnerable individuals for money and fame at the expense of their lives and children's safety.

To be clear, an individual can be misinformed, misguided or scared, and can make a decision not backed by evidence. They are not spreading fake information purposefully. They are trying to protect their loved ones, babies, children and themselves.

An individual may be aware of risks and benefits, but choose to use an alternative practice such as chiropractic adjustment or crystals because it benefits them, that is okay, they have autonomy and I am happy if it helps them.

An individual may say their chronic pain was cured by yoga or juice, I am so happy for them, I am glad.

 

An individual who profits off, preys on and spreads these high level anti science ideas despite knowing the evidence is the real bad guy. That individual is aware, that individual reaps the benefits of nutrition, sleep, good food and probably even vaccines, and yet consciously decides to harm others.

That is the individuals who is spreading deliberate disinformation. That individual is a 'snake oil salesman', that is the harm that alternative medicine brings.

(see my article on 'How safe are vaccines?' on an example with Dr Andrew Wakefield)

Alternative medicine, including chiropractics or homeopathy is not usually harmful in and of itself. I have used essential oils on my pillow or in a humidifier (in safe concentrations) to calm down before bed, I use yoga and pilates to wake up, I practice mindfulness and meditation, I listen to music and affirmations. But that helps me, that does not replace evidence-based care.

Whether I am using these or not, is decided by whether they make me feel good. I will never recommend them over traditional care first, and I will never shame someone for personally choosing to use or not to use them.

 

Traditional care has a history (and a current issue) with access, funding, staffing, racism, sexism, misogyny, socioeconomic disparity and more.

And yet the field of evidence-backed science is not 'drugs for all!', but rather, weighing up the pros and cons of different approaches, and ruling out severe illness.

 

If individuals sought evidence-backed care AND decided to self participate in alternative treatments too for their own benefit, that is great.

The harm is individuals will reject evidence-backed care, healthcare, medical intervention or more, usually leading to worsening of underlying disease.

 

Furthermore, some alternative medicine interventions may be low risk such as listening to mindfulness music, but others may cloud potential health problems, delay medical care, and even cause injury and death.

Take chiropractics.

A chiropractor who says they are into 'alternative and holistic medicine' is hard to distinguish between 'someone who says that word, believes in long term patient relationships, but sticks to physiotherapy esque exercises' versus someone who believes in the principles of founding chiropractic's (that all illness is a result of misalignment and can be fixed by manipulating the body).

 

The harm of seeing a chiropractor after medical intervention (to rule out injury, risk, or need for advanced care) that does physiotherapy is minimal and can really work wonders for pain and fatigue.

But chiropractors who are actually invested in the claims of the field have no advanced knowledge to differentiate between harm reduction and harm causation, and have been known to cause permanent injury and deaths, especially during alignments, and particularly in children.

 

Not to get too downhearted, but cases of permanent paralysis, loss of movement, breaking, spinal chord injury and even some internal decapitations or fractures of the neck and skull have occurred in alarming rates in chiropractic adjustments.

Nearly everyone may benefit from physio and massage to increase movement, give them time to rest and promote health, but that is not what alternative medicine or chiropractics is. Pain relief can occur in the physical manipulation of muscles and tissues, plus having some time to relax and be quiet, but chiropractics as a field is pseudoscience.

All diseases are not caused by misalignment, nor can they be fixed that way.

Potential harm and injury is rife, and the advanced knowledge that even physiotherapists have in differentiating between short term injury (that benefits from manipulation) versus more life threatening injuries is missing from the field. 

Homeopathy may also be touted as 'low risk', but then again, if it encourages people to replace evidence-backed care with alternative means, that is a risk in and of itself.

Furthermore, 'natural' and 'essential oils' or fad diets can actually be very risky for most individuals, including children dieing or having permanent organ injury from accidentally ingesting common oils.

Homeopathy is bogus. The founding principle is:

Take an active ingredient and keep diluting it, and the more you dilute it, the more potent it becomes.

That goes against ALL scientific fact, or even common sense.

Take if you had a cup of juice. It would be like saying if you keep adding water (first a few drops, then a bucket, then tip the cup of juice into a swimming pool), it would keep getting more and more flavourful.

That is false, wrong, and just untrue.

Homeopathic and herbal cures can vary from harmless placebos, to interactions with drugs that can lead to injury or death, but homeopathy is not in any way rooted in truth.

Potency does not increase with dilution, and the very fact that founds homeopathy is the more you dilute it, the more active the original substance is, should discount the entire field.

 

Now some natural remedies that have been tested (but most remain unregulated) may cause no harm, or some small benefit (whether physical, functional or placebo), but the issue with homeopathy is it should have no seat at the table of medicine or science.

The idea that we should study nature and adapt it is well known, accepted and encouraged in science. The idea that any principle of homeopathic dilution should ever be used is just wrong.

 

And that is why harm occurs. Alternative medicine is so broad that blanketly saying each person, member or community who practices what they deem 'alternative medicine' is wrong would alienate a lot of individuals. But it's also true. They are not practicing alternative medicine if they are simply using natural, low cost and low risk remedies. Drinking honey and lemon tea for a cold is branded 'alternative medicine' sometimes, but we all know it's low risk, has some benefit (even if placebo), and doesn't replace other care if we feel worse. That is not what we are talking about removing.

We are removing the founding untruths and the lies that are spread that actively harm people.

Natural remedies, diverse practitioners, lower barriers to access and more all deserve to be expanded in future science.

But that is already what science is, and what scientists are already trying to do.

Nowhere should we accept alternative medicine, homeopathy or chiropractics as a sane or sensible scientific fact. The very principles that govern them are wrong. And individuals who use the buzz word but practice evidence based care should transition to simply stating that.

 'I practice science with a focus on low risk, accessible avenues.'

I practice science with empathy. 

I practice destroying the traditional alienation of science. 

I practice bringing science into the 21st century where patients have a say.

 

I practice science because I care.

That is the truth. That is the future.

 

I practice science with a focus on finding natural drugs and using science to make them safer and more effective.

I practice physio and massage to help with pain management and rehabilitation after you rule out harm.

I practice mindfulness and meditation because it makes me feel better, but I also use chemotherapy.

I practice eating plant based because it feels better, but I don't believe meat causes cancer. (no one food does!)

I use essential oils (Safely, out of reach of children) because it makes me calmer, but I also take antidepressants and understand the oils don't cure polio.

I protect my children with good diets and exercise, but they are also vaccinated.

 

I practice science because science is the process of truth seeking, questioning and curiosity for how we can promote effectively health and quality of life.

 

I practice science for the future.

 

Conclusion:

The communities that promote alternative medicine, chiropractics and homeopathy are broad and hard to uniformly define, but it is not 'low harm evidence-based naturally-inspired cures' but rather a founding principle of lies and anti-truths. Top level individuals who influence these communities are the real harm-causers, and we should not provide a seat at the table for them.