WHO’s first traditional medicine summit splits opinions | Hacker News Reader

WHO’s first traditional medicine summit splits opinions

nature.com

10 pointsgmays12 comments

> With billions of people already using traditional medicines, the organization needs to explore how to integrate them into conventional healthcare and collaborate scientifically to understand their use more thoroughly, says Shyama Kuruvilla, WHO lead for the Global Centre for Traditional Medicine and the summit, who is based in Geneva, Switzerland. Many researchers who study traditional medicines agree — but some are not sure whether the summit will deliver.

This seems like a noble approach. I mean say what you want about "quackery", but traditional medicine is rooted deep in many cultures. The west doesn't necessarily have an equivalent outside of Bacon's scientific method. It's not like you're making big pharma money with it.

If traditional medicine worked, it would be called medicine

Some chunk of traditional medicine has psychodelic component.

Slowly but consistently, thanks to careful testing, there is some flow of "plant medicine" application from "traditional medicine" to medicine.

Not sure that homeopathy, acupuncture, etc will be able to survive careful scientific verification to become part of the modern medicine.

> Not sure that homeopathy, acupunctue, etc.

These have been tested and... surprise(!), never perform better than placebo.

The best than can be said about them is that at least they aren't actively damaging unless they stop the afflicted you seeking 'conventional'(?) treatment.

Technically, the best that can be said is that like any placebo, they can work pretty darned well. Parents use placebo treatments with kids all the time because they work. :)

A fair point, but then you might as well just administer a simpler placebo without the woo :). In the case of homeopathy that would be asking people to just drink a little water.

Anyway... IIRC the current consensus is that the "more extreme" the intervention appears the more beneficial the placebo effect is, so...

It is called medicine in large parts of the world.

Much of it does work. Indeed, there is plenty of scientific medicine in Europe which works which isn't used in the US (ammonium bituminosulfonate comes to mind).

Here's a problem:

- You can only bring profitable things to market.

- Anything used in the EU, China, or India for more than 20 years cannot be patented.

- Processes like FDA approval costs $$$

- If you receive FDA approval, you'll be undercut by vendors selling for commodity prices

There are other problems like it. Overall, the set of common medicines available in the US, China, and the EU differ quite a bit (e.g. you can't buy basic American antihistamines like diphenhydramine in Chinese pharmacies).

Really, the best way to solve this is public funding:

- Provide research grants for universities to run traditional medicines through RCTs, see which ones work, and publish results.

- Find some way to run the ones which work through FDA without private funding.

That could separate the good from the bad. My hope is a summit like this helps do that.

If traditional medicine worked, the entrenched incumbents would probably try anything to keep their market share of continuous "treatments".

We're not a shining example of physical or mental health here in the west.

Western medicine essentially requires published scientific studies done in a way that minimizes variables and generates strong confidence.

There are a lot of room for things that work, but cannot meet the control or confidence guarantees of official medicine. The problem is that grey area leaves room for (1) really bad treatments (2) idiocracy in attempting to solve serious issues with useless techniques.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V9bT73BM2Ic#t=28s

Sounds like WHO is still controlled by China, they love this stuff over there https://www.reuters.com/world/china/china-relies-traditional...

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