A hit on alternative medicine – Washington Post

June 19

The June 16 Politics & the Nation article Risky Lyme treatments on the rise read like another hit on alternative medicine by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It had all the key words favored by the CDC: risky, dangerous, expensive, unorthodox and its standard phrases, according to a new report, Officials ... are alarmed. Then there was the CDCs gold-standard complaint: unproven treatments. Well, not to put too fine a point on it, but proof is reserved for mathematics and logic.

The article said, Many of the treatments ... have no evidence of effectiveness. Thats better. Talk about evidence rather than proof. But it didnt list all of the many treatments with no evidence of effectiveness. Obviously, the clinicians using unorthodox therapies would not be able to stay in business if they were not getting positive results from some of the treatments. The article mentioned a few anecdotal accounts of doom but didnt provide information about other factors that could have played a role in the unfortunate outcomes. Nor did it cite any cases in which people were cured or their health improved by the unorthodox therapies.

And since when did garlic supplements become dangerous and expensive?

William Cates, Charlottesville

See the article here:

A hit on alternative medicine - Washington Post