‘A potential treasure trove’: World Health Organization to explore benefits of traditional medicines

[Sly Saint]

From herbalists in Africa gathering plants to use as poultices to acupuncturists in China using needles to cure migraines, or Indian yogis practising meditation, traditional remedies have increasingly being shown to work, and deserve more attention and research, according to a World Health Organization official.
A historical lack of evidence, which has seen traditional practices dismissed by many, could change with more investment and the use of modern technology, according to Dr Shyama Kuruvilla, who leads the WHO Global Traditional Medicine Centre.

Earlier this year, countries agreed the WHO should adopt a new global traditional medicines strategy for the next decade that “seeks to harness the potential contribution of TCIM [traditional, complementary and integrative medicine] to health and wellbeing based on evidence”.

It includes plans to establish a robust evidence base for traditional medicine practices, develop regulation of treatments and practitioners and, where appropriate, integrate the practices into mainstream biomedical healthcare.

hmm "based on evidence", heard that one before.

‘A potential treasure trove’: World Health Organization to explore benefits of traditional medicines

UN body to study possibility of integrating centuries-old practices into mainstream healthcare

www.theguardian.com

 

[rvallee]

The logical conclusion to the creep of regressive pseudoscience. Medicine is eating itself, and they will genuinely wonder why people equate their expertise with the Reiki clinic that used to be down the road, and is now down the hall.

traditional remedies have increasingly being shown to work, and deserve more attention and research, according to a World Health Organization official

It has actually not. Where herbal remedies have been shown to work, it's because they have organic compounds and a lot of drugs actually come from that process. Very often there are no artificial methods, because nature is already the perfect method to produce them.

It includes plans to establish a robust evidence base for traditional medicine practices, develop regulation of treatments and practitioners and, where appropriate, integrate the practices into mainstream biomedical healthcare.

Already have been doing that. It's been disastrous, because once you mix clean drinking water with raw sewage, you don't end up with clean sewage, you end up with twice as much dirty water.

There have been some concerns that the WHO strategy could create a backdoor for unscientific systems such as homeopathy to enter the mainstream but Kuruvilla points out that homeopathy does not fit the WHO’s definition of traditional medicine – it was only created in the late 18th century – and that there is not strong enough evidence for the practice.

LOL, LMAO even. This is like a child who constantly changes the rules and now what used to be the safe base is made of lava.

“Meditation was all this ‘woo-woo stuff’ but now, seeing all these advances in neuroscience and showing changes in brain waves from functional magnetic resonance imaging, which we couldn’t do before – actually being able to trace the pathways that lead to changes in health measurements – I think this is really, really exciting,” she says.

Just hang this in the Louvres of pseudoscience, this might be the most pseudoscientific assertion in history.

All of this has been investigated plenty. And just like supplements, it's a total bust. But it's alluring and popular, and that wins over correct every single time. They call this evidence-based medicine. Somehow feels like a sick joke. A traditional joke is "what is the difference between real medicine and alternative medicine? Real medicine is the one that works". Erasing the line means erasing the entire basis of medicine's credibility.