tailieunhanh - Complementary and Alternative Veterinary Medicine Considered

For 250 years, veterinary medicine and its scientific underpinning, veterinary science, have struggled to gain the confidence and respect of clients, fellow health scientists and practitioners, and the general public. And it has been accomplished by means of the scientific method and strict objectivity. To embrace unproven or even discredited “complementary and alternative” techniques surely is regressive both for patients and for veterinarians. Veterinary medicine has always been open and sympathetic to new treatment and diagnostic modalities, but only when they have been proven in controlled studies. In 2002, Abraham Verghese wrote in the New York Times about cancer in humans, “I am not a crusader against alternative medicines. | Complementary and Alternative Veterinary Medicine Considered There cannot be two kinds of medicine conventional and alternative. There is only medicine that has been adequately tested and medicine that has not medicine that works and medicine that may or may not work. Once a treatment has been tested rigorously it no longer matters whether it was considered alternative at the outset. If it is found to be reasonably safe and effective it will be accepted. Angell M. Kassirer J. P. Alternative medicine The risks of untested and unregulated remedies. N Engl J Med 1998 339 839 There is no alternative medicine. There is only scientifically proven evidence-based medicine supported by solid data or unproven medicine for which scientific evidence is lacking. Whether a therapeutic practice is Eastern or Western is unconventional or mainstream or involves mind-body techniques or molecular genetics is largely irrelevant except for historical purposes and cultural interest. As believers in science and evidence we must focus on fundamental issues namely the patient the target disease or condition the proposed or practiced treatment and the need for convincing data on safety and therapeutic efficacy. Fontanarosa P. B. and Lundberg G. D. Alternative medicine meets science. JAMA 1998 280 1618-19 There are no sects in science no schools of truth. While facts of Nature are being studied out and until final certainty is attained there may be legitimate and amicable differences of opinion in the scientific fold but in ultimate truth there is an essential unity and no contradictions are possible. The existence of conflicting sects and schools for instance of chemistry or astronomy or any objective science is unthinkable it is equally incongruous in medicine. The unenlightened public is unable to appreciate the solidarity of truth or to perceive the incongruity of conflicting divisions in medicine or other sciences. Nichols J. B. JAMA 1913 60 332-37 Complementary and Alternative .