Can Alternative Therapies Be Dangerous?

The use of alternative therapies is perhaps most controversial with regard to life-threatening illnesses, such as AIDS (acquired immune deficiency syndrome) and cancer. On the one hand, defenders of alternative treatments say that patients who have not been helped by conventional medicine should seek out any approach that they feel may help them. They point out that reputable althernative practitioners have been licensed by states in their respective fields. On the other, many observers say that it is the most desperate patients who are vulnerable to bogus claims made by opportunistic promoters of alternative therapies that may not work. And seriously ill people who seek alternative treatment instead of conventional treatment, they say, face real dangers.

Dr. Arthur Caplan, director of the Center for Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, is concerned that people who seek alternative treatments for serious illnesses will assume that those treatments are generally safe and that "nothing is risky or really dangerous or has side effects." That is not the case, he says. Herbal supplements, in particular, which can be bought without a prescription in supermarkets and health food stores, can be quite potent and are largely unregulated by the FDA because they are considered nutritional supplements.

Martin Raber, an oncologist at the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, says, "The real risk of the alternative therapy movement is...the patient who has a lot to lose.... Talk to me about a woman with breast cancer who rather than take conventional therapy seeks alternative therapy. That's a real tragedy." Raber and most experts believe that modern medicine offers the best hope for people with certain types of cancer.

Alternative-medicine supporters do not believe in the worst-case scenario outlined by Raber. Many of them acknowledge that patients, especially very sick ones, should not simply abandon conventional treatment. However, they suggest that people should not be discouraged from seeking alternative care in addition to conventional care. Most see alternative medicine as a complement to mainstream care.

One of the areas in which alternative therapies can support conventional medicine may be in dealing with chronic illnesses. The 1993 survey published in the New England Journal of Medicine found that most of the patients who sought alternative care had chronic conditions that mainstream medicine had been unsuccessful in treating, such as back pain and headaches. Critics of conventional medicine say that those chronic conditions are too often treated with drugs, which can build up in the body to toxic levels. Critics of alternative medicine allege that herbal remedies have the same toxic effect.

Many alternative practitioners believe that conventional medicine does a superior job in some areas, such as in providing emergency treatment. But Dr. Andrew Weil, director of the program in integrative medicine at the University of Arizona College of Medicine in Tucson, believes that conventional doctors can benefit from alternative approaches to treating more routine ailments. Dr. Jennifer Jacobs, a family practitioner who served on OAM's advisory committee, makes a similar point, saying:

There are certainly situations where modern medicine is appropriate and lifesaving, but perhaps the pendulum has swung too far toward technology and standard pharmaceuticals and not enough toward some of the early healing methods that have a track record in many cultures.

Dr. Christiane Northrup, an obstetrician and founder of a women's health care center in Yarmouth, Maine, says that she employs surgery and prescription drugs in her practice, but also examines "the psychological and spiritual aspects" of her patients. She sees medicine as a combination of conventional and alternative approaches. "The doctor of the future is going to be able to go back and forth between the two sides of the street. We'll have to be more flexible, but we'll have a bigger bag of tricks," she says.

Sources

Kolata, Gina. "On Fringes of Health Care, Untested Therapies Thrive." New York Times (June 17, 1996): A1.

Langone, John. "Challenging the Mainstream." Time (Fall 1996): 40.

Lehrman, Sally. "Alternative Medicine: Insurers Cover New Ground." Harvard Health Letter (December 1996): 1.

Miller, Sue. "A Natural Mood Booster." Newsweek (May 5, 1997): 74.

Okie, Susan. "Herbal Relief." Washington Post Health (October 4, 1997): 12.

Relman, Arnold S. "Alternative Medicine: A Shot in the Dark." Wall Street Journal (July 12, 1995).