Casey: Part I: Traditional remedies: Snake oil for the 21st century

Last spring, Chinese basketball star Yao Ming suffered a stress fracture to his left foot, prematurely ending his season with the NBA’s Houston Rockets. In April, he traveled home to consult with practitioners of traditional medicine.

“Traditional Chinese medicine has a history of thousands of years in our country,” Yao said, “so there must be something to it.”

In reaching this conclusion, Yao relied on what is known as an appeal to tradition, the irrational belief that something is effective or correct solely because it’s been around for a long time. Although mental illness was once thought to be caused by demonic possession, the fact that this belief persisted for millennia did not make it right.

Two thousand years ago, life expectancy in China was about the same as it was everywhere else: approximately 28 years. Despite the continued widespread use of traditional medicine, life expectancy in China was just 35 years as recently as 1949.

Since then, life expectancy in China has more than doubled, though it is still five years less than in the U.S. After centuries of limited improvement in this broad health metric, China can thank the application of science — not tradition — for its leap in lifespan over the last 60 years.

Unlike traditional remedies, modern disease prevention and treatment is based on the principle that scientific testing is necessary to prove the effectiveness and safety of any procedure or drug before it is administered.

Viagra, the well-known erectile dysfunction drug, was extensively tested prior to its release and subsequent studies have clearly confirmed its efficacy. In contrast, popular traditional Chinese treatments for the same condition call for the ingestion of powered rhino horn or a nice hot bowl of tiger penis soup.

Unfortunately for the men — but especially for the animals, some of which are now on the brink of extinction — the treatments are a scam.

This isn’t to say that all traditional medicines and treatments don’t work. To the contrary, many modern medicines are based on compounds found in nature that were originally discovered and used by our ancestors. But the fact that some traditional cures work is not proof that they all do.

Regardless of their origin, truly effective treatments are based on double blind testing, not legend, hearsay or anecdotal evidence.

Yet we are inundated with advertisements for herbs, homeopathic treatments and traditional remedies despite a dearth of conclusive proof regarding their efficacy and safety. That wasn’t always the case.

In 1994, Congress passed the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act, a bill championed by Sen. Orrin Hatch. Not surprisingly, Hatch’s home state of Utah happens to be a major manufacturing center for the dietary supplement industry.

The act exempted supplements and “natural” products from regulation by the Food and Drug Administration prior to release. As long as a manufacturer markets its product as a supplement and avoids words like “cure” in its advertising, it can sell just about anything without the burden of first proving that it works.

Pharmacies and health centers now stock minimally regulated supplements alongside FDA-approved medicines, leaving most consumers unable to differentiate between ineffective scams and proven remedies.

Today, the FDA can only take action after a product is shown to pose a health risk. In 2004, after 19,000 reported adverse reactions and several high-profile deaths, the FDA finally banned ephedra. In effect, guinea pigs have been replaced with consumers.

Since the implementation of the 1994 act, growth in the supplement market has been staggering. In 2007, sales of dietary supplements totaled $102.75 billion in the U.S. alone. The Natural Marketing Institute predicts that revenues will top $170 billion by 2012.

Given the dollars at stake, it is no surprise that the industry is deeply involved in the political process and aggressively lobbies against enhanced regulation. Supplement manufacturers also use their market strength to spend millions on advertising, which means that our commercial news outlets may find it more profitable to market the industry’s products rather than investigate their effectiveness.

Many consumers assume that the health care products on store shelves have been thoroughly tested and proven effective. However, as long as the present system is in place, the public is best served by a maxim as old as many of the traditional cures marketed today: caveat emptor — let the buyer beware.

Matthew Casey is a Medford, Mass., resident.