- Professor David Gorski of Wayne State University and Steven Novella from Yale School of Medicine launched a scathing attack on alternative medicines
- Condemned scientists who carry out experiments into ‘quack treatments’
- Branded reiki as ‘faith healing’ claiming trials ‘merely lend legitimacy and take money away from more deserving projects’
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Clinical trials of ‘quack’ alternative medicines should be stopped because they are damaging and financially wasteful, two leading critics have said.
U.S. scientists, professor of surgery and oncology at Wayne State University, David Gorski, and Steven Novella, an assistant professor in neurology at Yale School of Medicine, launched a scathing attack of treatments including aromatherapy, homeopathy and reiki.
They condemned scientists who continue to carry out controlled experiments to discover whether the ‘highly implausible treatments’ work.
The pair brand homeopathy and reilki as ‘faith healing’, claiming clinical trials of the treatments have ‘already been proved to have no benefits whatsoever’, and ‘merely lend them legitimacy and take money away from more deserving projects’.
U.S. scientists, professor of surgery and oncology at Wayne State University, David Gorski, and Steven Novella, an assistant professor in neurology at Yale School of Medicine, have launched a scathing attack of treatments including aromatherapy, pictured, homeopathy and reiki, branding them ‘quack treatments’
The article comes just weeks after Conservative MP David Tredinnick praised the fact herbal remedies and healing were now becoming accepted in parts of the NHS, and called for astrology to be incorporated into the health service.
Professor Gorski said: ‘We hope this will be the first of many opportunities to discuss in the peer-reviewed literature the perils and pitfalls of doing clinical trials on treatment modalities that have already been refuted by basic science.
‘The two key examples in the article, homeopathy and reiki, are about as close to impossible from basic science considerations alone as you can imagine.
‘Homeopathy involves diluting substances away to nothing and beyond, while reiki is in essence faith healing that substitutes Eastern mysticism for Christian beliefs, as can be demonstrated by substituting the word ‘god’ for the ‘universal source’ that reiki masters claim to be able to tap into to channel their ‘healing energy’ into patients.’
Professor Novella argued clinical trials of such treatments would not change the minds of those who already practice them, but might make people who are tempted to try them believe they might actually work.
He said: ‘Studying highly implausible treatments is a losing proposition.
‘Such studies are unlikely to demonstrate benefit, and proponents are unlikely to stop using the treatment when the study is negative.
The U.S. critics, who claim reiki, pictured, is ‘faith healing’, said clinical trials into alternative medicine are ‘damaging and a waste of money, diverting money from other projects’
‘Such research only serves to lend legitimacy to otherwise dubious practices.’
The professors, who run a blog about integrating science and medicine, have called for changes in the medical system to ensure doctors have the time to truly treat patients ‘holistically’ by listening to them and taking account of their circumstances before prescribing them medicine.
They argue this course will bring far more success than doctors offering patients treatments that claim to heal the body and mind but really have no success.
Professor Gorski added: ‘Somehow this idea has sprung up that to be a ‘holistic’ doctor you have to embrace pseudoscience like homeopathy, reiki, traditional Chinese medicine, and the like, but that’s a false dichotomy.
‘If the medical system is currently too impersonal and patients are rushed through office visits because a doctor has to see more and more patients to cover his salary and expenses, then the answer is to find a way to fix those problems, not to embrace quackery.
‘Integrating pseudoscience with science-based medicine isn’t going to make science-based medicine better.
‘One of our bloggers, Mark Crislip, has a fantastic saying for this: “If you mix cow pie with apple pie, it does not make the cow pie taste better; it makes the apple pie worseâ€.
Professor Novella, said: ‘Such research only serves to lend legitimacy to otherwise dubious practices.’ File picture of homeopathic medicine
‘With CAM or “integrative medicineâ€, that’s exactly what we’re doing, and these clinical trials of magic are just more examples of it.’
Professors Gorski and Novella have also called on patients to use their own common sense when looking at the evidence to decide for themselves whether a treatment actually works or not.
Professor Gorski added: ‘Critical thinking will help patients learn to recognize when a course of treatment is not supported by data or to tell when a health claim from any practitioner is just too good to be true.’
The article was published in the journal Trends in Molecular Medicine.
The MailOnline has approached The Society of Homeopaths, the Aromatherapy Council and the Reiki Council for comment.
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