Terence Hines - Pseudoscience and the Paranormal

Three studies have been published since the above reviews. None is terribly supportive of the positive effects of ginkgo. Mix and Crews (2002) used a double-blind placebo technique to study ginkgo’s effects on cognitive function in cognitively unimpaired elderly. Out of 13 different measures of cognitive function, the ginkgo group was significantly better than the control on only three. Two other studies were uniformly negative. Kang et al. (2002) found that ginkgo had no positive effect on sexual problems due to antidepressant drug treatment. Solomon et al. (2002) found no positive effect on memory in a sample of healthy elderly. Gingko is, of course, not the only herbal touted as a cognitive enhancer. There are dozens of others. Some are aimed at the “worried well” and some at the truly impaired elderly who suffer from Alzheimer’s disease. In a major review McDaniel, Maier, and Einstein (2002) examined the evidence on numerous so-called cognitive enhancers. They found some “mildly suggestive effects” (p. 12) but also report that studies of vitamins C and E have failed to show any improvement of memory function in neurologically impaired elderly patients. In the context of the use of cognitive enhancers to reverse the cognitive effects of aging, it can be noted that consumers are offered no end of creams, ointments, and other compounds that allegedly reverse the effects of aging, be they wrinkles of the face or wrinkles of the mind. In a stinging condemnation of the anti-aging industry, Olshansky, Hayflick, and Carnes (2002), well-known researchers in the biology of aging, note that not one single age-reversing nostrum has been shown to actually work.

St. John’s wort is probably the most famous herbal and also the one that seems to have the clearest evidence of effectiveness, in this case against depression. Several literature reviews (Bilia, Gallori, and Vincineri 2002; Whiskey, Wemeke, and Taylor 2001) have concluded that it is significantly more effective than placebos in the treatment of depression, especially milder cases. St. John’s wort has been accepted as effective because it has proved its effectiveness in appropriately controlled experimental studies. The only way to establish whether or not any substance, herbal remedies included, has a beneficial effect is to subject them to careful scientific testing, ideally using “the highest standards for demonstration of efficacy: the randomized clinical trial” (Margolin, Avants, and Kleber 1998). Practitioners of “alternative” medicine are often unwilling to conduct such studies, relying instead on the invalid argument that they “just know it works” and on equally invalid testimonials.

To the extent that some of the newer herbal remedies really do turn out to be effective, another problem arises. Any truly effective drug will have some side effects in some patients. Just because something is natural does not guarantee that it is safe. Digitalis, for example, can be fatal in certain conditions. The presence of side effects is another reason that it is so important to carefully study the effects of any new substance touted as a remedy. The issue of side effects of the newer herbal remedies is not a simply theoretical one. Nortier et al. (2000) report that an ingredient in a Chinese herbal plant can cause renal (kidney) failure and cancerous tumors in the urinary tract. Ginko biloba (as well as garlic and vitamin E) has been shown (Cupp 1999) to decrease the ability of the blood to clot. This can increase the risk of serious complications during surgery, especially if the surgeon is unaware that the patient has been taking ginko.

The number of different types and varieties of treatments within the broad category of “alternative” medicine is far too great to allow me to deal with each in turn. In this section, however, I will discuss several from this group that are either especially interesting or especially popular.

One branch of “alternative” medicine that makes extensive use of herbal remedies is naturopathy. In the United States, naturopathy traces its roots to the “cereal kings” Sylvester Graham and John Harvey Kellogg and the “water cure” (hydrotherapy) movement of the mid twentieth century. Beyerstein and Downie (2000) have published a review of naturopathy practices. In this paper they report the results of a survey of what types of treatments naturopaths use. Included are acupuncture, aromatherapy, biofeedback, breathing exercises, copper bracelets, enemas or high colonics, faith healing, fasting (also called cleansing), herbs and supplements, homeopathy, hydrotherapy, hypnosis, joint manipulation (aka Rolfing), magnets, massage, positive thinking, Therapeutic Touch, and yoga, among others. Naturopathy shares with many other branches of “alternative” medicine a dislike for objective testing of its claims and procedures as well as use of a vacuous vocabulary with empty talk about energies, vibrations, and life forces.

Yes, you read that right—urine therapy. This is the practice of drinking one’s own urine which, it is claimed, can treat and cure numerous illnesses. I mentioned urine therapy briefly in chapter 10, where it was used as an example of how misleading testimonials are as evidence for the effectiveness of any treatment. When that small section was originally written, it never occurred to me that urine therapy would catch on. But by the turn of the century, urine therapy had become, if not a major one, certainly not a trivial star in the “alternative” medicine sky. The first World Conference on Urine Therapy was held in India in 1996. The second was held in Germany in 1998, and the third was held in Brazil in 2002. Several books on urine therapy have been published, including Christy’s Your Own Perfect Medicine (1994). Gardner (1999) has described the history of urine therapy. Some urine therapists have combined urine therapy and homeopathy by recommending that one dilute the urine in water to such an extent that essentially no urine is left. (No doubt this helps to dilute the “yuck” factor as well!) In fact, drinking your own urine probably won’t do you much real harm. However, since urine consists of the body’s liquid waste products suspended in water, drinking it simply amounts to running the waste back through the system again.

The idea that magnets in one form or another can influence human behavior or have beneficial medical effects dates back to the sixteenth century (Ramey 1998). The first time that magnetism (or what was thought, incorrectly, to be magnetism) became popular as a treatment was in Europe in the latter part of the eighteenth century. This was when Franz Anton Mesmer developed and popularized his idea of animal magnetism . Mesmer believed that disease was caused by an “improper distribution of the body’s ‘magnetic fluids’” (Baker 1996, p. 334). Using a procedure that would evolve into what is now called hypnotism , Mesmer believed that he could cure disease by correcting the fluid distribution. Mesmer settled in Paris in 1778 and by 1784 his claims had attracted so much attention that King Louis XVI ordered a special commission to be established to test these claims. The head of that committee was Benjamin Franklin, then American ambassador to France and recognized as one of the ablest minds of the century.

The commission tried to get Mesmer himself to take part in their experiments, but he refused. One of his best students, Charles Deslon, took his place. The commission’s tests took the form of leading people to believe that they had been “magnetized” when they had not and comparing their behavior to what it was when they had actually been magnetized by Deslon. Conceptually, this approach is very similar to that used more than two hundred years later by Emily Rosa (Rosa et al. 1998) in her study of Therapeutic Touch. Mesmer also claimed that the animal magnetism could be transferred to objects such as trees and glasses of water so in other tests used by the commission subjects tried to distinguish magnetized from nonmagnetized objects.