Alternative medicine has once again crept into popular fashion, to the chagrin of legitimate medicine. The only thing that these practices provide is placebos, says ACSH s Dr. Ruth Kava, which is not something most people seek from medical professionals.
ACSH's Dr. Gilbert Ross has noticed the regrettable trend: Despite the fact that there s no such thing as legitimate alternative medicine -- only real medicine and fake medicine -- it seems that more and more people and even doctors are buying into the power of superstition.
The latest surge in popularity of pseudoscientific remedies is partially attributable to the Dietary Supplement Health Education Act of 1994, which allowed supplements and herbal nostrums to be sold without FDA approval and resulted in a market saturated with useless pills and misinformation. No complementary or alternative medicine supplement has ever been shown effective to treat or cure any disease, explains Dr. Ross, and if any supplement were scientifically proven to be effective, it would fall under the category of real medicine. People need to be wary of medical advice that doesn t come from medical doctors. Some of these so-called remedies can be harmful. For a reference on the interactions between drugs and various supplements, see ACSH s publication on drug-supplement interactions.