Quack remedies spread by virtue of being useless

12:32 01 May 2009 by Ewen Callaway

Eating a vulture won't clear a bad case of syphilis nor will a drink made of rotting snakes treat leprosy, but these and other bogus medical treatments spread precisely because they don't work. That's the counterintuitive finding of a mathematical model of medical quackery.

Ineffective treatments don't cure an illness, so sufferers demonstrate them to more people than those who recovery quickly after taking real medicines.

"The assumption is that when people pick up treatments to try, they're basically observing other people," says Mark Tanaka, a mathematical biologist at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, who led the study. "People don't necessarily know that what somebody is trying is going to work."

The World Health Organization is demanding better proof that folk medicines work before they can be approved. And the Malaysian government has rejected more than a third of the 25,000 applications to register traditional medicines it has received because the treatments are ineffective or dangerous.

Despite these efforts, quack medicine persists around the world. Some Nigerians treat malaria with witchcraft, a South African health minister recently claimed that garlic and beetroot treat HIV, and western health stores brim with unproven treatments for almost any disease imaginable. For instance St John's wort does nothing for attention deficit hyperactive disorder in children, a recent placebo-controlled trial concluded.

more:

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn17064-quack-remedies-spread-by-virtue-of-being-useless.html

the old herbal remedies do work and probably don't have a higher failure rate than drugs made in a lab.

Garlic,mashed in oil, works for ear infections.

the FDA, most doctors, and the WHO are all against most folk medicines precisely because some of it "does" work. Trust me, your local dermatologist wants you to see him/her and spend thousands of dollars to keep the blackheads away when iodine and epsom salt works like a charm. And here are words I live by which has kept me alive for almost 60 years and except for a small go round with colon cancer, in excellent health......."the power that made ya has the power to heal ya" That can be any power you choose.

I think I will continue to be a child then. I like being healthy

Of COURSE a mathematical biologist is going to say that! :sarcasm:

He draws the same conclusion from his study of BACTERIA. It's just been extrapolated to 'apply' to humanity. At any rate, if this is applicable as anything other than a mathematical formula, it is just the way evolution wants it.


I have shown how mutation modifier genes in bacteria can succeed in a population even when they are extremely rare and have deleterious effects on the genome. Other evolutionary problems I have addressed include the coevolution of pathogens with behavioural traits in the host population, the optimisation of life-history traits in viruses and natural selection on pathogens within patients.
http://www.babs.unsw.edu.au/directory.php?personnelID=31


Oh, but wait! Does this apply to Western cultures? He THINKS so ... based on subjective observation.
Debate. That PROVES it!


But is this model valid in cultures where evidence-based medicine predominates, and government groups such as the US Food and Drug Administration vet most medical treatments?

Tanaka thinks so, pointing to the popularity of alternative medicines and the debate over the effectiveness of FDA-approved drugs. "In many situations people will just observe and copy anyway, regardless what the official information is," he says. And in some cases, one peer-reviewed study may conclude that a drug works, while another shows it doesn't. "Even where there is a bit of clinical research, we don't really know yet whether at lot of medicines are effective," he says.


But patients who are conditioned to it will continue to take what the doctor/pharmacist gives them, even if it doesn't work.

:rofl: