[jiggawatts]

In an ideal world, all of the following should be flat out banned:

Homeopathy.

Crystal healing.

Chiropractic.

Herbal medicine.

Chinese traditional medicine.

Cupping.

Acupuncture.

However, this would upset a lot of people and reduce taxes collected, so... never going to happen.

[dunco]

I used to have a similar outlook, but I have moderated it in recent years. These things should be regulated, but not banned.

You should have hardcore warnings on them (like on aus cigarrettes for example) that state clearly that studies have shown these ingredients or procedures have been shown to be no different from placebo for whatever, or have low quality/few studies. I think you should even have QR codes that link to a page that summarizes the evidence for them and links to the primary source. vitamins etc should also be clearly separated from actual medicine in pharmacies. In the case of cigarretts in Australia, this strategy has been proven to be more effective than the comparable strategy of banning marijuana (more kids in aus have tried marijuana than cigarettes now)

Banning these things can have several negative effects that probably harm the project of getting society to move away from this type of quackery.

Firstly you cannot stop people from wanting these things by banning them, so you will create a black market for them which is less safe, and also opens up a funding stream for nefarious actors.

Secondly, we should not close our minds to the fact that at some time in the future, it is a virtual guarantee that there will be some useful compound in, for example, some chinese medicine herb. if we snuff out all these practices, we deny ourselves one avenue for finding out about these compounds that we might otherwise simply not come across.

Third, banning stuff gives ammo to conspiracy theorists: "they are banning it because they don't want you to have it because they know it works and doctors will be out of business"

Go ahead and ban stuff that endangers near extinct animals, or maybe something that genuinely causes serious acute harm to a user, but generally I think its better to inform and regulate, rather than ban. You think you would be helping people but they don't want your help and they think you're trying to hurt them. Give them the info to work it out instead. Also, if some small girl wants to play an imaginary witch game with crystals, but all they crystals are banned, thats pretty sad to me.

Chiropractors should not be able to call themselves Drs. though. should straight up be a crime.

[jiggawatts]

I used to have the moderated outlook, but then I saw how traditional medicine is the #1 reason for rare animals being poached. I also saw how the related disinformation drove people towards quackery like Ivermectin and Chloroquine.

If you let crazy people gives themselves titles like Doctor and open a shopfront, all legit and everything, then people will just take that kind of thing on face value.

Freedom doesn't mean the freedom to defraud and wipe out entire species.

A lot of people here are voting me down and saying that I'm totalitarian. I'm just advocating for banning some quacks from practising fake medicine. The opposite is allowing our planet's wildlife to be permanently, irrevocably wiped out in the name of old people getting erections or whatever.

Honestly, which is the more extreme position in your mind: Specicide or Regulation?

[dunco]

They might be voting you down because it looks like you may not have read my entire reply. I specifically noted the caveat of endangered species and a Dr. Title being used by people who should not use it as situations that probably justify a ban.

I think we likely agree on these points, but perhaps not on the surrounding ones which don't have significant harm outside of parting foolish people from their money.

[jiggawatts]

I did read that bit too.

Several of my acquaintances have been recently defrauded out of thousands of dollars by phishing attacks. You know the type: you get an SMS about an $925 Amazon purchase that you made, just enter your credit card details here to cancel. That kind of thing.

Should we just let this stuff happen? Take the safety signs off and let Darwin sort them out? Why bother with those expensive tests and government approvals for medicine? Just let people figure what works and doesn't work on their own! I mean, sure, those foolish people will get themselves killed taking placebos for their cancer, but that's their own fault for getting tricked, right?

"They should have known better."

[dunco]

Maybe my position can be clarified a bit better: We both want to minimize this problem and stop it from happening. My argument is not that we should ignore the problem, my argument is that banning these things is not the most effective solution.

My view is that we are likely to have a greater impact on stopping this problem by using tactics other than banning them.

I'm sorry to hear about your aquantances phishing attacks. There are parallels to be sure, but Phishing attacks are a clear deception, and everyone upon being phished will agree that they have been done wrong by, so it is easy to make these illegal; you don't create a black market for people who want to go out and get phished anyway. Unfortunately the same is not true of people who purchase quack therapy. Most will continue to think that their money was well spent.

[noduerme]

>> Freedom doesn't mean the freedom to defraud and wipe out entire species.

I appreciate this statement. But this statement is contrary to the modern Christian view. The modern evangelical Christian view is that God made Man to do whatever he wanted with the earth. That's the basic justification for wiping out species or strip-mining or polluting the air or the water. "Freedom" is a concept that was meant to imply freedom from imprisonment, torture, harm or oppression. Not the freedom to demolish anything in sight. Or the freedom to con other people. They use "freedom" like it's an end-run around morality.

[AnimalMuppet]

I deny that you describe the modern Christian view. The Christian view is that God made the world, and that humans are sub-rulers of it, but not owners. They are taking care of the property of another. They are not free to trash it.

[noduerme]

Agreed on all points (especially about chiropractors calling themselves doctors). One major driving force behind quackery seems to be the ability to assert that it's banned because it works so well it would put pharma out of business. But as we've seen from the dire warnings and non-banning of Ivermectin, these things can now burst into mass poisonings in a matter of days, much faster than any regulatory body let alone public messaging campaign can keep up.

[dunco]

yes this is true and a good point. It is hard to account for active disinformation campaigns. I think it is generally safe to assume they won't be as extreme as those for ivermectin in most cases.

One counterpoint is that not banning things could increase general public trust in the regulator which could make disinformation less effective.

[noduerme]

But not taking action against something harmful could also make the regulator look like they're not doing their job.

I'm not in favor of banning anything (pot smoker, drinker, and big fan of the Darwin Awards here). I don't think bans accomplish much besides increasing demand and black market crime around the forbidden thing. But I still have no idea how you stop grandma from eating horse paste when she hears on facebook that it cures covid.

[rajup]

Agree with most of those, but I think herbal medicine may have some merits and should not be flat out banned. I mean tons of modern day medicine is plant derived...

[LocalH]

At least two of those are not the quackery that you think they are, but rather should be a tool in the toolbox. Why should we throw out the historical knowledge behind natural medicine entirely?

[jiggawatts]

You'll find that if you do a survey, other people will also say some of them are not bullshit, but they won't agree with you on which two those are. That's the problem.

[alasdair_]

>Acupuncture

Acupuncture is FDA approved for the treatment of certain types of chronic pain (and, I believe, asthma). It's not entirely bullshit.

[jiggawatts]

"Not entirely bullshit" treatments are my favourite kind of treatments -- far superior to the "mostly proven" treatments those quack doctors keep trying to force onto an unsuspecting public.

[alasdair_]

Doctors can, and do, prescribe medications for off-label uses even if there is no proof that they work. Using acupuncture for an off-label use is the same thing.

[tartoran]

While I know chiropractice is filled with quacks, some of it genuinely helps people. I’ve watched a series on youtube where people with very bad posture recover then are unrecognizablly much better after a few treatments and it’s quite authentic as well. I don’t think banning it would be a very productive endavor. Homeopathy is kindof a quack but placebo isn’t so if people swear by it let them be, it doesn’t bother me in the slightest.

The only solution is education. Who gets something out of education can get better odds but at the end of the day people will do what the believe is best for them. Covid conspiracy theories and the reluctance to vaccinate is a very good example on how stubborn people are. Spending resources to fight against that is not the best use of resources imo.

[throwawayboise]

Yes it's one thing to see a chiropractor for back pain or posture, quite another to believe that spinal adjustments can cure disease or infection.

[FastEatSlow]

> While I know chiropractice is filled with quacks, some of it genuinely helps people

That could be the Placebo effect, but my opinion is very much biased by my experience of quacks, it's sad to see older people fall for what quacks write.

> The only solution is education.

My friend's sister is a nurse, so I thought he'd be more educated about it. Turned out that he's terrified of it now from her stories about blood clots.

[tartoran]

Sure but not old people fall for it. Some are skeptical of quackery because they are either better educated or experienced enough to have the intuition they’re being led on. Others don’t and their gullibility will make them victims in many other areas. Education is the only possible help they could get. Banning whatever quacky things will only make them more desirable.

[jiggawatts]

People say the same kind of thing about all of the others. "Traditional herbal medicine does help some people." isn't a good argument if it doesn't help most people and is downright harmful in a significant fraction of the cases.

[tartoran]

That last statement is also true for western medicine. Im not equating the two in no way btw but farmaceutucals have had their bad apples and caused lots of harm as well (definitely more good than harm, im not questioning that part). I wouldn’t personally reach out for chinese herb conctions but if some people swear by it let them have it.

[jiggawatts]

The problem is that some people swear by pangolin scales and rhino ivory.

[meowface]

Some of the techniques some chiropractors use are legitimate (whether or not the theories they believe about the techniques are), but the best thing to do is find a science-based physical therapist who also uses those techniques.

[olau]

I once went to a chiropractor with a bad lumbar.

She started off x-raying my back to check if something was really bad (it wasn't), then did her little grappling knee chiropractor thing (which felt good), then proceeded to use an electric massage hammer to loosen up the muscles. After a couple of treatments, my back was back to normal.

I found a stomach exercise program, and the extra training combined with much better awareness of the symptoms, which I think I got out of the whole affair, has kept me well since.

I understand why you are saying what you are saying, I was there once too. But I think you're underestimating something. The chiropractor who treated me spent most of her time helping people with back pain. You could hear she had a pretty well-informed idea of what was wrong with my back, probably because she had seen hundreds of backs like mine before.

And if you actually study what doctors and physical therapists are doing, a lot of it is 100% in the quack domain. For instance, they see one symptom and then immediately jump to a conclusion about it. I don't blame them. When I see people developing software, I can't say most of them are being very scientific either.

Your therapist needs to have a good idea what's wrong with you, and effective means of getting to it. The actual theory they have in their mind is less important. I'm not religious or spiritual, but I believe my decision to go try the chiropractor was rational.

[meowface]

I'm sure there are plenty of ineffective doctors/therapists and plenty of effective chiropractors.

I believe a genuinely scientific doctor wouldn't merely use heuristics and would use actual science and personal examination to determine the best way to treat someone's problem. I believe some who may who title themselves "chiropractor" possibly may be good at accurately diagnosing and resolving people's back issues, but with a chiropractor you take on additional risks, like risk that your chiropractor happens to be one of the many who believe all diseases stem from spinal problems and can be treated through spinal manipulation, along with many other pseudoscientific, untrue beliefs.

It seems the best professional would be someone who titles themselves a doctor and attempts to be scientific and empirical, without believing anything about spinal issues causing all diseases, but who otherwise fits the description of the chiropractor you saw.

It's true that someone with a false, unscientific theory may end up more effectively treating particular patients than someone else with a true, scientific theory, but someone who's both effective and has a true, scientific theory will surely be superior to the alternatives. I see no reason why a scientific doctor can't specialize in back pain, use x-rays, use the devices you mention, etc. I believe many do.

Perhaps at that point it merely comes down to semantics of the title they use and the school they went to, but the pseudoscientific associations are so historically strong that it seems like it'd be a red flag that anyone would want to consider themselves a part of that profession in the first place. At the very least, you'd think they'd want to "fork" it and take the good parts and leave the bad parts.

If I couldn't seem to find a doctor who meets those criteria I describe above, I'd possibly consider trying to find a chiropractor who seems to use a science-based approach, but only if I had no other choice.

[AnimalMuppet]

Well... chiropractors are fairly scientific when it comes to straightening out your spine. They have a lot of science (anatomy) and training, and at least the ones I've tried have done it pretty well.

Curing, say, asthma? Yeah, maybe not so much.

[dendriti]

You can't know whether your symptoms might have eased without any treatment at all...

[sgtnoodle]

It's semantics, but I hope that you mean that, in an ideal world, those things wouldn't exist. There's nothing ideal to me about living in a global totalitarian nanny state.

It's also not completely black and white. For example, the "science" behind homeopathy is absurd, and the medication is literally just water. That doesn't mean it can't be effective at treating someone's malady as a placebo, though. Little children with a sore throat may refuse to nap until they get "medicine".

Many adults also struggle with accepting inaction as the best course of action. If paying someone to stab them with little needles lowers their blood pressure during a stressful time, then perhaps it was worth it?