Scientific Proof doesn’t work that way.
“Five
to twenty trials are needed to prove or disprove effectiveness of each product
or method. After staff expenses, $100 million per year can support only 10-20
reliable trials per year” Wallace Sampson, MD, Editor of the Scientific Review of Alternative Medicine
“…It
has been estimated that the FDA approval process takes an average of 12 years
and costs $231 million. This presents unique difficulties for independent
researchers and for therapies that do not lend themselves to patentability….” David
F. Horrobin Trends in Pharmacological Sciences, Vol. 22, No. 2, February 2001
So, for acceptable scientific proof, you need up to 20 independent replicated
trials, that is, same testing method for same product and condition, and the
process will take about 12 years.
Two
Case Studies
Once upon a time two researchers cried ‘Eureka’. They had both found something that reduced
the pain from arthritis. They had tried
it informally on friends and relatives and it worked. They had the case reports to prove it. Both thought of Nobel prizes and
lotsa-money, and helping people of course.
Next step was scientific proof and acceptance by the medical fraternity.
One researcher had invented a blue pill. He sold his rights to a big phamaceutical company
who could afford the $231 million, and twelve years later his pill was
prescribed everywhere for arthritis and he got one cent for every pill
sold. He retired to live in the sun. The pills cost 5 cents to make and the drug
company charged $1 each. They had to
recover their $231 million to pay for the next magic pill they found.
The other researcher had invented a blue strap, with a
magnet attached. Although he had
patented his device, he could not say that this was the only possible magnet-on-a-strap
for effective pain relief. No-one was
interested in financing the $231 million for proof, as they could see no way of
recovering their costs. But his blue
strap worked just as well as the blue pill.
So he mortgaged his house, again, had some blue straps
made and went out to persuade the scientific community to do the studies for
him. Unfortunately, there was no acceptable
theory of operation to explain why the blue strap worked and no-one would fund
a study.
NOTE this
is known as the Tomato Effect - “The tomato effect in medicine occurs when a
highly efficacious therapy for a certain disease is ignored or rejected because
it does not 'make sense’ in the light of accepted theories of disease mechanism
and drug action. Doctors at the University
of New Mexico School of
Medicine introduced the tomato effect in JAMA. May 11, 1984. Its name is
derived from the history of the tomato in North America.
By 1560, the tomato was becoming a staple of the continental European diet.
However, it was shunned in America
until the 1800's. Why? Because we knew it was poisonous. Everyone knew tomatoes
belong to the nightshade family. The leaves and fruit of several plants in this
family can cause death if ingested. The fact that Europeans were eating
tomatoes without harm was not relevant. It simply did not make sense to eat
poisonous food.” - Conventional medicine's conflict of Interest Robert W.
Maver, F.S.A., M.A.A.A. The World Research News, 1st quarter 1998 issue
Our researcher was stuck. He found a few GP’s who tried them, found
they worked, and sent their patients to buy them from him, and those patients
sent other people to him. He was
selling by word-of-mouth advertising.
He did a little research, found this was called Network Marketing and
that he did not need lots of start-up capital, started recruiting distributors
and didn’t look back. Twelve years
later, he retired to live in the sun, just up the beach from the first
researcher.
And they both lived happily ever after.
Independent
studies
Studies funded by the manufacturer are always suspect.
“Overall, studies funded by a company were four
times more likely to have results favourable to the company than studies funded
from other sources.” — Smith R (2005) Medical Journals Are an Extension of the
Marketing Arm of Pharmaceutical Companies. PLoS Med 2(5): e138 doi:10.1371/journal.pmed.0020138
So independent studies are preferred for scientific proof, but they still
need to be funded. The drug
manufacturers get round the problem by funding the universities, not individual
studies. The universities know that if
the right studies do not get funded, there will be no funding next year.
But there are lots of research ideas chasing very
little funding. And a subject with no
sound theoretical background has little chance of funding.
Magnotherapy researcher
cannot get funding. Biologist quits
research laboratory to earn more money fitting gas boilers By Sally Pook, Daily Telegraph(Filed: 24/02/2004)
Dr Gensberg has been carrying out research into
the effects of electro-magnetic fields on the body. He believes his work, which
investigates how wounds heal, could eventually help to relieve the
pain of
arthritis sufferers and cancer patients.
He says no one has so far made proper molecular studies into how such
fields can speed up the healing of wounds on the body.
And, of course, independent researchers want to
research their own topics, not duplicate other people’s research.
So that is why there are over 700 independent studies on magnotherapy and less than a
handful have been repeated.
So don’t expect magnotherapy to be scientifically proven in the near future,
it is a long slow process.
