placebos
the placebo effect has been studied for a long time. placebos work best when people don't know they're getting a placebo. this is fundamentally how alternative medicine works. it sounds all sciency and/or mediciny. people want to believe there's a cure for whatever ails them. voila! the placebo effect kicks in. and often times the patient gets better. so in some very limited sense alternative medicine is real medicine. it's an effective application of a placebo. real doctors and non-medicine practitioners should work together. patients should see the real doctor first. then on the advice of the real doctor they should see the alternative shamans for the actual administration of the placebo. under absolutely no circumstances should an alt-med-quack be permitted to provide primary care. that's a recipe for preventable deaths. and yes, us smart people have to make that rule. and impose it on you. cause if you're the type of person who can't tell when they're getting a placebo, then you're the type of person who can't tell when a well meaning but potentially dangerous alternative non-medicine non-doctor is giving you very bad medical advice.