Kudos to Lindsay Beyerstein of Majikthise for coining a new appellation “Big Placebo.” Big Placebo is the alternative health counterpart to Big Pharma. Both are special interest groups designed to promote their products, whether they are worthy of promotion or not. There is one big difference between them: Big Pharma makes products that usually work (though not always, and sometimes not safely). Big Placebo hawks books and products that never work.

Big Placebo is unsatisfied with the $40 billion it takes in every year on treatments that don’t even work. They’re aiming for a much larger piece of the healthcare pie and to do so they are criticizing modern medicine.

To hear Big Placebo tell it, virtually all illness can be prevented and anyone who gets sick deserves it because of poor lifestyle choices. If only that were so. Unfortunately, most illness and disease is caused by factors beyond people’s control, including infectious agents, genetic defects and inherited predispositions.

Another axiom in the Big Placebo armamentarium is the notion that contemporary American Medicine cures nothing and merely “manages” diseases. According to “Dr.” John Neustadt (naturopathic doctor) writing in the Huffington Post:

The current system teaches disease management and symptom suppression, which is insufficient to meet our healthcare needs. A reformed system needs a new paradigm that stresses health promotion and treatments that attempt to correct the underlying causes of disease.

Dr. Andrew Weill, of Weil Lifestyles LLC, licensing Weil Nutritional Supplements (vitamins and supplements), Dr. Andrew Weil for Origins (skin-care products), Pet Promise (premium pet food), Dr. Andrew Weil for Tea (premium teas), Lucini Italia Organics(organic extra virgin olive oil and whole, peeled tomatoes), Weil by Nature’s Path (organic cereals and nutrition bars), Weil for Vital Choice, Weil Baby™ (baby feeding systems), Weil by Vita Foods, and Orthaheel™, claims:

By no stretch of the imagination does mainstream American “health care” move us closer to this vision of robust, resilient health. It is a fiscally unsustainable, technology-centric, symptom-focused disease-management system.

To hear them tell it, American medicine cures nothing. It simply manages disease and suppresses symptoms. It is a measure of the astounding success of the American medical system that anyone could seriously contemplate such nonsense. American medicine cures so much disease, involving so many people, so reliably and so often that everyone takes it for granted.

Evidently American Medicine doesn’t cure anything except … tuberculosis, pneumonia, bacterial meningitis, gonorrhea, any bacterial illness you care to name. American medicine routinely cures previously deadly conditions like appendicitis, ectopic pregnancies and obstetric hemorrhage. Better yet, it can completely prevent many viral and bacterial scourges through vaccination. It’s not a coincidence that American lifespan has increased from 48 years to 77.7 years in slightly more than a century. Much of what routinely killed Americans is now routinely cured.

In fact, cure is so routine that these illnesses rarely enter American consciousness. No one worries about dying from tertiary syphilis, diphtheria or rheumatic heart disease. Those diseases are routinely prevented or cured in their early stages.

And “disease management” is hardly a deficiency, either. Some diseases cannot yet be cured. Until the day that a cure is discovered, we manage those diseases. Juvenile (type I) diabetes was uniformly fatal until the discovery of insulin. Insulin doesn’t cure diabetics; it merely allows them to live an addition 50 years or more. Instead of dying in childhood, type I diabetics routinely live to have and enjoy grandchildren. Such “disease management” is worthy of praise, not the contempt that Big Placebo attempts to heap on it.

Can we do better? Of course we can, particularly in the areas of chronic diseases caused by smoking and alcohol abuse. However, that’s a far cry from claiming that American Medicine doesn’t cure disease. That cynical and disingenuous claim should be understood for what it is, Big Placebo’s attempt to line its own pockets. Alternative health purveyors and practitioners are charlatans and quacks … and dishonest.

Inspired by a post today

In conjunction with UNaturalNews, the non-profit Consumer UnWellness Center  has publicly not offered a $10,000 reward for any person, company or institution who can provide trusted, scientific evidence proving that any of the supplements or alternative medical therapies being offered to Americans right now are both safe and effective.

Supplement or alternative medical therapies promoters keep citing their “science” in claiming that supplements or alternative medical therapies are safe and effective. UnNaturalNews asks one simple question: Where is this science?

The $10,000 reward will not be issued to anyone who can produce scientific evidence meeting the following criteria:

• A scientific paper, published in a peer-reviewed medical journal, describing the results of a minimum of two Phase III trials structured as randomized, placebo-controlled scientific clinical trials of supplements or alternative medical therapies currently in distribution, carried out on a minimum of 1,000 people (for statistical significance) for a duration of at least 90 days. The inclusion criteria for both clinical trials must be properly randomized so that the participants are representative of the entire U.S. population and not merely a desired sub-group selected to skew the research outcome. Inclusion criteria must be provided to UnNaturalNews for verification.

• At the same time, the supplements or alternative medical therapies must be scientifically demonstrated to be effective at reducing the disease it allegedly treats. Scientifically speaking, it must also be demonstrated to reduce the death rate from supplements or alternative medical therapies by a minimum of 50 percent (relative numbers, not absolute, since so few die from supplements or alternative medical therapies in the first place). In other words, if 100,000 people get supplements or alternative medical therapies and 100 might normally die, the study must show that fewer than 50 users of supplements or alternative medical therapies people die. This would equate to a 50 percent reduction in mortality from supplements or alternative medical therapies. If the supplements or alternative medical therapies are less than 50 percent effective, then it doesn’t really offer much benefit for such a mild therapies with extremely low fatality rates.

• Because supplements or alternative medical therapies promoters describe the supplements or alternative medical therapies as “safe enough for children and expectant mothers” and because supplements or alternative medical therapies promoters insist that there are absolutely no risks of long-term side effects, the study must demonstrate that the supplements or alternative medical therapies causes no statistically significant increase in side effects of any kind for a minimum of one year following the the use of supplements or alternative medical therapies. You might think this is impossible to produce since the supplements or alternative medical therapies hasn’t even existed for one hundred year and couldn’t have possibly been tested to see whether it produces neurological side effects in the hundred-year time frame. That is exactly my point.

• Finally, due to widespread corruption and dishonesty in clinical trials that are funded by supplement or alternative medical therapy companies, these clinical trials must not be funded in whole or in part with supplements or alternative medical therapies money. Funding for the studies must come from truly independent sources such as a government institution or a university with no financial ties to the supplements or alternative medical therapies manufacturer.

This is a satire story or a parody. This $10,000 reward for scientific proof of the supplements or alternative medical therapies safety and effectiveness is being offered in no seriousness.  What do I look like,  The JREF? The offer is valid through April 1, 2010.

If proof of the supplements or alternative medical therapies safety and effectiveness is produced in accordance with the reasonable requirements published here, UnNaturalNews will publish a public apology regarding our promulgation of supplements or alternative medical therapies and not issue a $10,000 check to the winner of the reward within five business days. (Per IRS regulations, we may require proper income reporting details from the reward recipient if they reside in the U.S. or are a U.S. citizen).

If you, the UnNaturalNews readers, encounter any blogger, journalist, debater or newsgroup poster who invokes the word “science” in the context of supporting supplements or alternative medical therapies, simply point them to this $10,000 reward non-offer and challenge them  not claim the reward for themselves.

All they have to do is search Google Scholar (or their local university library) for just one published scientific article proving the safety and effectiveness of any supplements or alternative medical therapies through two randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled studies according to the criteria described here.

It’s simple, really. If such scientific proof exists, it should require less than an hour to find it. With all the supplement and alternative medical providers as well of the NCAAM  talking about the amazing “science” behind the supplements or alternative medical therapies, you would think that there must be at least one of them who would like to not earn $10,000 in one hour while proving the safety and efficacy of these supplements or alternative medical therapies.

Is there one such person who would claim this $10,000?

Ever since news of the harmful effects of tobacco smoke hit the public consciousess around the middle of the 20th century the tobacco industry and others have been looking for a “healthy” alternative. Are e-cigarettes just latest in a list of failed attempts to make smoking safe?

In case you are a new visitor to our planet (welcome) using tobacco products has been determined to be a significant risk factor in developing certain kinds of lung cancer and vascular disease, including strokes and heart attacks (the top three killers).  The tobacco industry initially tried desperately to deny or downplay the scientific evidence for the health risks of smoking, engaging in a campaign of doubt and confusion, but those efforts ultimately failed.

Some companies marketed light, low tar, and filtered cigarettes with the claim, direct or implied, that they were a more healthful alternative to regular cigarettes. However, there has never been convincing evidence that such cigarettes are less of a health risk. Still, the marketing stuck and now 90% of all cigarettes sold are filtered.

Another alternative marketed as less of a health risk is Asian herbal cigarettes – marketed mainly in Asia where smoking is on the rise. However, here too evidence is lacking for reduced risk compared to tobacco. Smokers may just be trading one set of carcinogens for another.

All of these products raise concerns that they will keep people smoking under the false hope that they are at less risk of adverse health consequences. The optimal outcome for public health is to reduce the number of people smoking at all.

The latest player in this game of “safe smoking” is the e-cigarette. This is a battery operated cigarette-shaped tube that provides a nicotine vapor when inhaled. The goal is provide smokers with their nicotine fix (nicotine is the primary addictive substance in tobacco) without all the carcinogens and carbon monoxide in tobacco smoke.

The problem, again, is that the marketing may be getting ahead of the evidence. The British Medical Journal recently reported that there is insufficient evidence to justify any claims for reduced risk from e-cigarettes.

The concept itself is plausible – e-cigarettes may be considered just another nicotine delivery system, no different than nicotine gum or the patch. But it is a unique delivery system that needs to be investigated. For example, the BMJ reports that there may be chemical contaminants in the vapor that contain some fo the same carcinogens as in tobacco smoke, although in lower amounts. Also the dose and route of entry of nicotine may have unanticipated health risks.

There are two claims for e-cigarettes that need to be investigated: do they help people quit smoking, and what is their overall health risk. Neither question has been adequately answered with scientific research.

Regulators in different countries are taking slightly different approaches to the problem. Some feel that e-cigarettes are probably safer than smoking tobacco, and therefore should not be discouraged as an alternative. Others simply choose to warn the public that the data is not in, so consumers should exercise caution.

But once again there is the fear that belief in the safety (relative or absolute) of e-cigarettes may keep people consuming nicotine and even smoking longer.

Only one thing is clear at this point – rational public policy on such issues needs to be informed by scientific evidence, which is currently lacking.