Natural Health

Bias Against Alternative Treatments in Medical Journals

November 8, 2012 by admin in Alternative Medicine, Featured, Science with 0 Comments

The bias against alternative medicine in journals is pronounced. Even when a study’s results show amazing effectiveness, it will be spun to give the impression of failure. The Big Pharma-controlled medical journal industry will not provide a fair forum for alternatives.

Photo by Sonja Laukkanen

by Heidi Stevenson

When reading about the conclusions reached by medical studies, one would expect them to reflect what the studies discover. That, though, would be an unfortunate mistake. The bias of studies against alternative medicines is often clear when comparing results with conclusions and investigating the authors’ assumptions. All too often, what the study finds is not what the authors conclude.

Use of complementary and alternative therapy among patients with
rheumatoid arthritis and osteoarthritis investigated a few patients with the title-specified arthritic conditions. The study, based in Lebanon, found that 20.2% of patients with rheumatoid arthritis used alternatives and 29.3% of those with osteoarthritis did.

Most patients who opted for alternative treatments utilized herbs (82.8%), while others tried exercise, massage, acupuncture, yoga and meditation, and dietary supplements.

Twelve physicians were involved. 9 of them (75%) disapproved of alternative therapies, and only 3 (25%) approved.

Results

Results showed that:

63.7% felt they benefited from the alternative treatment.
24.1% experienced adverse effects, none serious.
- Of those who used herbs, 15.5% experienced skin problems, 8.6% had gastrointestinal issues, and 3.45% had neurological or endocrine problems.
Before alternative treatment, 12.1% had no pain and 87.9% had bearable pain.
- After alternative treatment, 43.1% felt no pain, 48.3% described bearable pain, 5.2% rated their pain as “painful”, and 1.7% described it as “very painful”.
Before alternative treatment, only 8.6% could sleep all night, 43.1% woke 1-2 times, and 48.3% woke 3-5 times.
- After alternative treatment, 65.5% could sleep all night, 32.8% woke 1-2 times, and 1.7% woke 3-5 times.
Activity limitations were decreased substantially by alternative treatments.

Any treatment of conventional medicine that got such results in a study would be getting hailed as the all-purpose fix-everything solve-the-world’s-problems yippee-hit-the-jackpot treatment of the decade. You would see reports that there had been an increase of 256% in patients who reported no pain as a result of the treatment.

Have you ever seen anything close to that in a drug study?

The Spin

So, how did the authors spin these results? They concluded:

Complementary and alternative therapy use is significant among arthritic patients in Lebanon with a high incidence of reported medical intervention as a consequence of concomitant use with herbal medicine. Therefore, the need to educate patients about the expected efficacy, the perceived effects and the possible drug–herb interaction is a requirement.

Huh? What about all those patients whose pain disappeared? Don’t they count?

Apparently not. Neither does the enormous improvement in sleep. Nor the improvements in activity limitations. Nor the fact that they simply felt better. None of this got a mention in the conclusion.

The focus was entirely on the adverse effects, and even there, the authors spun the results. How much of the adverse effects was the result of interreaction with the pharmaceutical drugs people were taking is unknown. But isn’t it interesting that they blame the herbs on the negative effects, not the drugs?

The Bias

Wouldn’t it be interesting to see how much effect the conventional treatments have had for these patients? After all, they did go outside the mainstream to find alternatives, so there must have been a reason. Here’s what the authors had to say:

CAT [Complementary and alternative treatment] has become popular among patients with chronic illnesses. Many reasons are behind this widespread use of CAT therapies including frustrations from conventional medicine, the belief in the safety of CAT especially herbal medicine and the increase in advertisement about the efficacy of CAT.

Note: References removed from quote for easier reading.

At least they admitted that people are frustrated with conventional medicine—but why don’t they investigate the reasons for that frustration, rather than focus on pushing people to tell their doctors about the alternatives they’re using? They don’t even consider that their doctors’ generally negative attitudes towards alternatives would be a likely reason to avoid discussing it with them, nor do they consider that patients might be better off giving up their conventional treatments in favor of the alternatives.

Of course, that will never happen as long as the journals are supported primarily by Big Pharma advertising and reprints for conventional medicine’s purposes.

They refer to patients’ “belief in the safety of” alternative medicines, but fail entirely to discuss the fact that they are, indeed, safe—especially in relation to pharmaceutical drugs—and that the adverse effects noted were certainly almost entirely a direct result of the drugs their doctors had prescribed interacting with the herbs, since the safety profiles of herbs are far too good to allow for any other explanation. The idea that the herbs are to blame is a clear indication of bias.

That point, in particular, demonstrates a bias on the researchers’ part that is entirely unacceptable if their goal is truly to investigate the best possible treatments for people’s medical problems. It’s apparent that they entered the study with the presumption that conventional medicine is superior, and therefore the use of alternatives is not to be trusted.

This particular study is just one of many. With such obvious bias, is it any wonder that they tend to find against alternative medicines? This study demonstrates:

An amazing degree of efficacy for alternative treatments, especially herbs.
Adverse effects that were neither permanent, nor serious, nor demonstrably the fault of the herbs

Nonetheless, the spin is to ignore the benefits, focus on the the adverse effects as if the herbs were the primary problem, and try to push people back to their doctors, even though the doctors are clearly not positively disposed towards how the patients want to be treated.

The dishonesty in such research runs throughout the medical literature. If it isn’t owned by Big Pharma, then it’s vilified.

Is it any wonder that people are fed up with modern medicine?