7 Ways Alternative Medicine Tricks You Into Thinking It Works
6. It Creates 'Goodies' And 'Baddies'
Fact: Pharmaceutical intervention can come with side effects. Nearly everything on this planet regardless of its origins will come with a side effect.
While those side effects are
tightly monitored and heavily documented by pharmaceutical companies, they can be off-putting to someone with a chronic illness
and several different types of medication.
This is where clever marketing and the capitalisation of scientific ignorance begins, you've just had your first session with an alternative practitioner – you feel like someone cares. Now, they've told you there is a better way than all that medication. A path away from chemicals, an "all-natural way".
For those of you that don't know, the Appeal To Nature fallacy is a logical fallacy where the entire planet is pigeon-holed into "Good" or "Bad" - everything "Natural" is good and everything created in a laboratory (i.e: chemicals) is "Bad". Those who employ this fallacy conveniently forgot that:
1. Everything is chemicals.
2. The origin of a compound is not an indication of its safety.
3. Poo is natural.
The fallacy is used to create a false dichotomy between nature and science and serve as a way to keep scientifically illiterate people scared and confused.
Appeals to Nature are a waste of time, especially seeing as the "naturalness" of a substance doesn't determine whether it's harmful or not. Using this form of black and white "Everything natural is good and everything chemical is bad", equates to "Arsenic is always good because it's found in nature but Aspirin is always bad because its chemical name is Acetylsalicylic Acid and it's made in a laboratory" - completely forgetting Aspirin is derived from the bark of the willow tree and being near large concentrations of Arsenic is a terrible idea.
It's useful to remember that everything can have harmful effects if given in a large enough quantity – there's a reason why the fundamental premise of toxicology is "The dose makes the poison".
If it seems like the livelihood of someone depends on them scaring you about "chemicals", it's probably because their livelihood depends on you being scared.