Spain plans to ban alternative medicine in health centres

[Sly Saint]

Article in Guardian:

The Spanish government has announced plans to eradicate alternative medicine such as acupuncture or homeopathy from health centres.

The proposal, unveiled by the science and health ministers, aims to avoid the “potential harmful effects” of the practices when they are used as an alternative or a complement to treatment that is itself based on “proof and scientific rigour”, the government said in a statement.

It did not make clear what it regarded as alternative medicine, but gave the examples of acupuncture and homeopathy. “Many people still believe that some treatments work despite there being no scientific proof available,” the statement said.

The government said it wanted to eliminate alternative medicine from health centres, where all treatment must be given by recognised professionals.

It also wants to avoid alternative medicine being taught in Spanish universities

full article here:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/nov/14/spain-plans-ban-alternative-medicine-health-centres

 

[Philipp]

Seems like a good idea in general. If someone really wants to go for stuff like this I don't see why they couldn't do so in private practice. I would have liked it if the focus was less on the inherent dangers of those therapies - which seem to be pretty low - and it was worded more clearly that they should not displace proper care.

There is always the caveat with 'no scientific proof being available' not necessarily meaning something doesn't work while the impossibility to prove a negative is always looming over everything. We really need a word or sentence for 'we really tried to figure out how it works and couldn't, but we also looked at what it does and it really didn't do anything noticable except waste time' which would be true for homeopathy as well as CBT for the most part as far as I know to discern those situations from 'we couldn't figure out how it works because we probably lack the technology and/or ideas, but there seems to be something here that we might figure out one day'.

The comment about someone stopping cancer treatment due to a naturopath telling lies about the effectiveness of vitamins to my mind isn't so much on alternative therapies in general, though. The argument here should be about describing things that have effectively been proven to be mostly useless in a given situation, which is a point that could be raised on many current mainstream psychiatric approaches as well as possibly several medications (but I cannot really comment on those discussions due to a lack of expertise, I just remember that it is apparently reasonably questionable how statins and antidepressants are currently prescribed in some populations; having been personally harmed by the latter I may be biased while not understanding the full scope of the problem though).

 

[alex3619]

The argument here should be about describing things that have effectively been proven to be mostly useless in a given situation, which is a point that could be raised on many current mainstream psychiatric approaches as well as possibly several medications

Yes, sadly. Many antidepressants, and I forget the studies now, don't work on most patients with depression, or don't work well, and come with side effects. The effect is mostly on a minority of patients where they work very, very well, and this raises the average effect size up. This is not all antidepressants, and I forget exactly which ones.