Deception Industry

2010/06/01 Arturo Elosegi Irurtia - Ekologiako katedradunaZientzia eta Teknologia Fakultatea. EHU Iturria: Elhuyar aldizkaria

• Medikuntza
• Etika

(Photo: © Heinz Leitner/350RF)

In all cultures and times there have been shamans, doctors, doctors, sorcerers or healers, and all cultures have had great appreciation, despite using totally different methods. Some advised making spells, killing chickens, etc. as a result of diseases such as the eye or spells. And heal the sick! Perhaps not always, but if he did not heal, there was always some reason: the rite was not filled properly, the witch who threw his eye was stronger than our magician, or who knows. But overall, the doctor made a big difference. It is believed.

Others used medicinal plants. Today we know that many herbs contain effective active ingredients. Check with pharmaceutical companies that are buying thousands of hectares of jungle. But imagine the work of the doctors of yesteryear, having no idea what caused the disease. Where to start choosing herbs? How to try these? Ethnology tells us. Walnut looks like a brain, so it cures mental illness. The herb of the liver has leaves in the form of liver, so it seems perfect to cure liver diseases; the Lobaria, which looks like the lungs, to cure lung diseases. That is, God shaped the plant somewhere so that we know what it was healing. Very reliable.

Do not think that such problems only occur in tribal societies. Today it is clear that until 200 years ago doctors, even those in the most developed countries, did more harm than benefit in most cases. Think that the usual remedies were swallowing mercury and arsenic or drawing blood. Even George Washington died bleached by his doctors! However, the doctors at the time were proud of how well their methods worked. Proof of this was personal experience throughout life.

But since then things have changed a lot. Science brings three novelties to medicine. First, a lot of discoveries: that infections come from microbes, that chemical reactions are a consequence of molecular interactions, blood circulation, etc. I have mentioned lung diseases, and today we are clear that silicosis, tuberculosis and lung cancer have different causes and remedies. Second, new technologies: From x-rays to antibiotics, from axial tomography to genetic diagnosis. These technologies have opened up new avenues for diagnosis and treatment. And thirdly -- no less important -- clinical trials to solve what works and what doesn't. In medicine is the key, efficiency.

In fact, given the simplicity of personal deception, doctors have long decided that personal experience is useless and that to resolve whether a treatment is good or bad strict clinical trials should be conducted with many patients. Do we want to see if a medicine is effective? We should compare this drug with a placebo in a double-sided blind trial, that is, without patients or doctors knowing who takes it, who takes it. This, and not another, shows whether a treatment is effective or not. Clinical trials have shown that many remedies used by traditional medicine were not helpful, and that alternative therapies, even those used today, are useless, except to deceive people.

Thanks to the three innovations mentioned, the advances of medicine in the last century are surprising: from organ transplantation, brain surgery and assisted fertilization, doctors constantly surprise us. Every month there are news media that surprise everyone, and more importantly, we have many very dominated diseases and some, like baztanga, based in the world.

Sasimedicine boom

However, even though medicine has given rise to such revolutions, sasimeasures are increasingly successful. It enters a pharmacy and homeopathic balls, magnetic dolls or Bach flowers are more abundant than conventional medicines. You will tour any city and see reproducers, naturopaths or aromatherapy more than conventional clinics. No matter how the diagnoses of these therapists have neither legs nor head, nor show that many clinical trials are useless. The deception industry is in effect thanks to therapists, vendors and customers. Some will devote themselves to good will, to deception, others to barbarism, to deliberate deception, and finally, they have not believed in what they are selling little, nor have they been ashamed to sell, but they have sold. Among them all, the deception industry is fattening.

It seems a lie, but among the consumers of these deceptions there are many people learned. I have many companions, who in their daily research use very strict scientific procedures, which lead children to iridiologist, crystal therapy, anthropophone, or whom I know. And to convince everyone, because their experience has shown them to be very effective. Anyone who has completed primary education should know that the effectiveness of a substance with zero concentration is zero or that it is not possible to magnetize water. Well no, homeopathy ever higher, and everyone has a power balance on the wrist.

In addition, it is increasingly widespread that these "alternative" therapies are not affected. And the worst thing is that, as it does not harm, they are increasingly used with children. Is it not harmful to take the patient to voodoo instead of going to the doctor? I at least know those who have made a hard "getaway", involved in the emergency of the hospital with the child about to die for having attended the homeopath. I know those who have been victims of a mad infection and who have died, because they were not "those who go to the doctor." I know those who have abandoned cancer treatment to take a warm pseudoratio and soon after have died in the most miserable way. That is, damage and terrible.

Medicine is not, of course, perfect. But the scientific method is improving day by day. The path to faster improvement is known: to equip physicians with resources and time and require patients to be treated carefully, and to ask researchers to use even stricter procedures, increasingly refined experiments. However, among all alternative therapies nothing has changed for decades. Most of them were created by some illuminator from the void, invented some incredible principles, and centuries later their followers find themselves in it, admiring their writings, ignoring all scientific evidence.

It is time to end these nonsense, to leave a better future for generations to come, to banish superstition and dogmatism. You too, reader, have responsibility for this. The next time they offer you an alternative garbage in the pharmacy, the next time a friend tells you that you go to the new wizard I don't know what, to have it clear. You can be a promoter or enemy of the deception industry, there are no intermediaries.