Complementary and Alternative Medicine

The main point made by people who dismiss Complementary and Alternative Medicine (CAM) as a pointless waste of time and money is that there is no scientific evidence whatsoever that it works. For conventional medicine, there is of course an enormous amount of scientific research to back up the effectiveness of medical treatments. This is because of the fundamental difference between conventional medicine and CAM. Conventional medicine regards the body as a complex and sophisticated machine and illness as a breakdown of one or more parts of the machine. Its aim is to get the machine working properly again by removing the problem parts or treating them so that they return to working order. CAM, in the form of such things as homeopathy, acupuncture, and medical herbalism, regards illness as a breakdown of the body’s natural healing systems. It believes that there is a natural, non-physical force in all of us that enables the body to heal itself and its aim is to make that force powerful enough to overcome illness and restore health. This natural, non-physical force, however, cannot be detected using the usual scientific techniques. So it is impossible to prove its existence scientifically, and this has led some people to reject the whole idea of CAM. With conventional medicine, we can test scientifically whether treatments have an effect on the body by looking for changes in the body’s cells, nerves, organs, and systems as a result of treatment. With CAM, we cannot prove whether or not the natural force for restoring health exists. However, it is possible to see what effects CAM treatments have had on the cells and structures of the body in order to assess their effectiveness. One example of scientific evidence for the effectiveness of CAM treatments is a study that showed that homeopathic medicine had an effect on the brain activity of sufferers of fibromyalgia, a painful muscle disorder. Research also indicated that acupuncture was effective in the treatment of patients suffering from Crohn’s disease, a painful disorder of the digestive system. Tests on their digestive systems showed that they had less inflammation after acupuncture treatment. Another study concerned the highly diluted solutions used in homeopathic medicines. Skeptics claim that these cannot possibly have any effect because they are so diluted and little or nothing of the original substance remains. But a study showed that ultra-high dilutions of histamine (a protein involved in allergies) have an influence on cell activity in the body. One of the most common tools of conventional medical research is a test called an RCT. This is a comparative test to discover the effectiveness of, for example, a new drug. Some subjects are given the drug and others are given a dummy pill. The subjects do not know whether they have taken a real pill or a dummy one, known as a placebo. Researchers then look at whether the people who took the real pill showed more improvement than the people who took the dummy pill, or placebo. The same kind of test is also carried out for CAM treatments, and it seems an obvious thing to do in order to get evidence of their effectiveness. However,