Published on August 22nd, 2014 | by Rayne

The irony of alternative medicine

I’ve spoken a lot about alternative medicine and pseudoscience. I’ve discussed how and why alternative medicine lures people away from medicine. I’ve discussed how to spot a pseudoscientist and the different forms of pseudoscience. Today I wanted to briefly touch on two of the things I find most ironic about pseudoscience – particular with anti-vaxxers and people who are outright anti-science.

1. Peddlers of alternative medicine reject pharmaceutical companies while conveniently forgetting alternative medicine is a profitable business.
We’ve all heard it before. “Big Pharma keeps people sick so it can continue to bring in profit and money” completely disregarding the fact that money needs to go towards research for newer and more improved medication. Medication that needs to be rigorously tested before it is released for human consumption. Alternative medicine attempts to exempt itself from this practice. It is often untested for efficiently and safety. Perhaps the most ironic thing about this statement is the fact that “Big Placebo” brings in more than a billion dollars per year and its peddlers seem to forget that. The United States alone spends $3.1 billion on homeopathy per year. Next time someone says “Big Pharma is in it to keep people sick for the money” ask them “How do you know Big Placebo isn’t in it for the same reason?“.

Please stop breeding.

No, seriously STOP BREEDING.2. Peddlers of alternative medicine often will reject tested and proven medicine in favour of untested and potential dangerous alternative “treatments”.
Again we’ve all heard of this. Preventative treatments such as vaccinations as bad because anti-vaxxers don’t understand the science behind them, many however will – without question or criticism – accept claims from pseudoscientists and quacks regarding their unproven “treatments”. As an addition to number 2, many followers of alternative medicine and other pseudoscience will swallow the claims of quacks like homeopaths and naturopaths without question only to demand proof of the refutations made by opponents of pseudoscience. I find it especially funny and ironic that a believer in homeopathic vaccines demands proof of how medical vaccinations work while never criticism the mechanics of how homeopathic vaccines.

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