I missed this article when it came out in July 2011 in the Atlantic magazine, but Utne Reader picked it for its May 2012 issue. Here is the link to the complete article
Triumph of New Age Medicine It's thought provoking although my feelings still are more in line with Dr Salzberg - the first quote below. Yet this article acknowledges all that and basically says: So what? emphasis added in second quote
[quote]Nonetheless, says Salzberg, the bottom line is that studies clearly show alternative medicine simply doesn�t work. And at first glance, that contention seems nearly incontrovertible. The scientific literature is replete with careful studies that show, again and again, that virtually all of the core treatments plied by alternative practitioners, including homeopathy, acupuncture, chiropractic, and others, help patients no more than do �sham� treatments designed to fool patients into thinking they�re getting the treatment when they�re really not. (Even acupuncture can be faked, by tapping the skin in random places with a metal tube; reliably, these taps produce treatment results identical to those of the needles themselves.) �Acupuncture is just a 3,000-year-old relative of bloodletting,� Salzberg told me. [/quote]

[quote]Studies have also shown that alternative treatments such as acupuncture tend to produce a larger placebo effect than merely handing out sugar pills, presumably because alternative treatments involve more ritual, and thus further raise patients� expectations. In other words, alternative practitioners tend to do a better job at �selling� the placebo effect.

One might argue that a system of care that merely delivers a powerful, relatively safe placebo for many conditions�without side effects�has at least something to commend it, when compared with the system of care we actually have today. Yet to focus on alternative medicine�s placebo effect ignores what may be its largest benefit�its adherence to a �healing� model of patient care.

Randomized controlled trials, the medical world�s gold standard for assessing the efficacy of treatments, cannot really test for this effect. Such studies are perfect for testing pills and other physically administered treatments that either have a direct physical benefit or don�t. (In its simplest form, a controlled study randomly assigns patients to receive either a drug or the equivalent of a sugar pill. If the real thing doesn�t bring on more improvement than the placebo does, the drug is a washout.) But what is it that ought to be tested in a study of alternative medicine? To date, the focus has mostly been on testing the physical remedies by themselves�divorced from any other portion of a typical alternative-care visit�with studies clearly showing that the exact emplacement of needles or the undetectable presence of special ingredients in homeopathic water isn�t really having any significant physical effect on the patient.
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Fun reading I wanted to share. Plus there was no nonsense in this article about not getting Radiation and Chemotherapy and Surgery for cancer. I wish the Placebo effect worked on Cancer but we all know it does not.
Charm