[chrisbennet]

"By definition, Alternative Medicine has either not been proved to work, or been proved not to work. Do you know what they call Alternative medicine that's been proved to work? Medicine." --Tim Minchin

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ujUQn0HhGEk

[isolli]

And how would you call medicine that has been proven not to work? This is what the original discussion is about: the medical system can be too slow to recognize and stop harmful practices.

There are many examples: Thalidomide, operating on babies without anesthesia [0], intensive glucose control [1], adenoid removal (the topic here) etc.

[0] http://www.nocirc.org/symposia/second/chamberlain.html [1] https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa0810625