Jo Marchant - Cure: A Journey into the Science of Mind Over Body

One weekday morning last summer, I was in the local park. It was a cheerful south London scene, with kids splashing in water fountains and playing soccer on the grass. I perched on the edge of the sandpit with two other mothers, clutching sunscreen and rice cakes as we watched our children build lopsided castles with brightly colored plastic spades.

One of the women, a bright, articulate mom I had just met, was explaining how a homeopathic medicine had cured her of longstanding, debilitating eczema. I love homeopathy! she said. As a scientist, I had to protest. Homeopathy is effectively water (or sugar pills) in fancy bottlesany active substance in these treatments is diluted far beyond the point at which any single molecule of the original could possibly remain. But theres nothing in homeopathic remedies, I said.

My new friend looked at me scornfully. Nothing measurable, she replied, as if I were slightly dim for not grasping that its healing properties are due to an indefinable essence thats beyond scientists reach. And in those two words, I felt that she summed up one of the major philosophical battles in medicine today.

Stacked up on one side are the proponents of conventional, Western medicine. They are rational, reductionist and rooted in the material world. According to their paradigm, the body is like a machine. For the most part, thoughts, beliefs and emotions dont feature in treatment for a medical condition. When a machine is broken, you dont engage it in conversation. Doctors use physical methodsscans, tests, drugs, surgeryto diagnose the problem and fix the broken part.

On the other side is, well, everyone else: followers of ancient, alternative and Eastern medicine. These holistic traditions prioritize the immaterial over the material; people over conditions; subjective experience and beliefs over objective trial results. Rather than prescribing physical drugs, therapists using acupuncture, spiritual healing and reiki claim to harness intangible energy fields. Advocates of homeopathy arent concerned that their remedies contain no physical trace of the active ingredient, because they believe that an undetectable memory of the drug somehow remains.

Conventional medicine still has the upper hand in the West, but alternative medicine is embraced by millions of people. In the U.S., the wonders of spiritual healing and reiki are regularly discussed on television news. As many as 38% of adults use some form of complementary or alternative medicine (62% if you include prayer). Each year they spend around $34 billion a year on it, In London, where I live, mothers commonly put amber necklaces on their babies in the belief that this gemstone has the power to ward off teething pain. Intelligent, educated women reject crucial vaccines for their children and, like my friend, embrace treatments that make no scientific sense.

Not surprisingly, scientists are fighting back. Professional skeptics on both sides of the Atlanticdebunkers like James Randi and Michael Shermer; scientist bloggers like Steven Salzberg and David Gorski; the biologist and author Richard Dawkinsaggressively denounce religion, pseudoscience and especially alternative medicine. The 2009 book Bad Science, in which epidemiologist Ben Goldacre criticizes those who misuse science to make unjustified health claims, has sold more than half a million copies in 22 countries. Even comedians from Tim Minchin to Dara Briain are joining the fight, using their jokes to champion rational thinking and point out the absurdity of treatments like homeopathy.

Their followers are standing up against the tide of irrationality with meetings, articles, protests, and what science journalist Steve Silberman calls anti-woo lines drawn in the sand, such as a petition signed by hundreds of U.K. doctors demanding that the National Health Service stop spending money on homeopathic treatments. Clinical trials prove that most alternative remedies work no better than placebos (fake treatments), the skeptics point outpeople who use them are being duped. Many argue that these bogus treatments need to be stamped out. Theres nothing we need in health care that we cant get from conventional, evidence-based cures.

Im all for defending a rational worldview. I believe passionately in the scientific method: I have a PhD in genetics and medical microbiology, and I spent three years probing the inner workings of cells at a top London hospital. I believe that everything in nature can be studied scientifically if we ask the right questions, and that the medical treatments we put our trust in should be tested in rigorous trials. The skeptics are right: if we abandon science for wishful thinking we might as well be back in the dark ages: drowning witches, bloodletting and praying that God will save us from the plague.

But Im not sure that simply dismissing alternative medicine is the answer. In my work as a science journalist, I encounter not just those who are cured by modern medicine but those who arent: patients whose lives are devastated by gut problems or fatigue yet are dismissed as not having a real condition; people suffering from chronic pain or depression, prescribed ever-higher doses of drugs that create addiction and side effects but dont solve the underlying problem; cancer patients who receive rounds of aggressive treatment well past the point at which theres any reasonable hope of extending their lives.