Which is why a new German study in Neurology isn't nearly as Earth-shattering as the media seems to think, although it is a useful "me, too" piece. That study says that 40% of German patients with incurable gliomas used alternative medicines. A glioma is a type of brain or spinal cord tumor with a very poor prognosis, which occurs in about 10,000 Americans per year.
Of course, alternative medicines, by definition, are those which are unproven. If they did work, you can be sure that at least one greedy pharmaceutical company would happily jump on it and milk it for every cent they could. One thing that really did disturb me, though, was this finding from the German study:
39 per cent used homeopathy...
29 per cent used psychological methods.
I'm not sure what "psychological methods" predominated, but the fact that two out of five used homeopathy concerns me greatly. This is further evidence that our educational system has failed. Homeopathy is, of course, the art of diluting substances with no proven therapeutic benefit down to the point where the therapeutic "solution" actually contains no active ingredient left other than water, or sugar in the case of sugar pills. Logically, it cannot have any benefit beyond a placebo, and we don't treat cancer with placebos, ever.
At this point I'm not yet at the stage myself where I have no hope of a cure and have a lifespan measured in months (I don't think I am yet, anyways) – and I can only imagine the stress, anxiety, and desperation this would produce in me. Peddling this quackery is only giving people false hope, though. At least when you take unproven herbal supplements, there are active ingredients in them, even if there is no proven benefit from them. That's like buying lottery tickets. Homeopathy is worse than gambling.
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