Part of the scientific method is observation.  Mankind has observed herbal and natural remedies to work for thousands of years - and it is patently absurd for any thinking person to believe naysayers who would tell us that nature is ineffective or that only unnatural patented compounds in forms not found in nature are effective.

The problem with so-called science based medicine is that the science of any age is often proven to be the quackery of tomorrow.  Those who believe that today's science has all or even most of the answers are more guilty of making their beliefs a religion than are those who favor natural and alternative healing.  Should I point out that sciencebasedmedicine is a mainstream site who picks and chooses studies and so-called science to disprove virtually anything that is not something that is approved, controlled and profited from by mainstream medicine?

Maybe a good clue as to the slant of that site is that the person who wrote the blog you quote also wrote how much he admired the thoroughly discredited big pharma shill Stephen Barrett and even said that he was flattered to be compared to him.  That tells me all I need to know about that site.  Here is a good look at his hero, Stephen Barrett and the fallacies of science based medicine:

www.canlyme.com/quackwatch.html

http://bolenreport.com/

Let's take a look at nature versus so-called science based medicine, shall we?  From my recent article:

Which is really safer or more effective – nature or mainstream drugs?

For generations we have been told by mainstream medicine that their drugs are safer and more effective than natural alternatives such as those man has used for healing for thousands of years. Similarly, we have been told that herbs and other natural alternatives are unproven, usually of little or no value and often may be dangerous. History tells us an entirely different story.

Proponents of mainstream drugs and critics of natural healing usually cite the lack of scientific studies proving the effectiveness or safety of herbs and natural alternatives. Likewise, mainstream drug advocates point to the wealth of studies which prove the effectiveness and safety of patented mainstream drugs. However, relatively few comprehensive studies have been conducted on herbs other than to find a compound that can be synthesized or uniquely isolated so it can be patented and profited from by the drug companies. Drug companies are by far the largest source of funding for medical studies and the cost of such studies is a huge barrier for natural alternatives. The FDA trial process costs hundreds of millions of dollars, and no one can afford to get a natural item approved that they cannot control. Whole herbs and extracts of herbs that contain multiple compounds found in nature cannot be patented.

Despite the complicated, expensive and time consuming process of getting FDA approval, many point to all the harmful drugs that have been approved as an indication that the system is deeply flawed and rigged in favor of those who have the money. It has been shown that studies tend to return positive results for the funders up to eight times more often than independent studies on the same item.

The FDA approval process did not prevent us from having rigged studies on Vioxx. Nor did it prevent rigged studies for decades on the safety - and even claimed health benefits - of smoking cigarettes. Those are just two examples in a very long list of drugs and other items mainstream science told us were safe but weren`t. For example: thalidomide, heroin, opium, cocaine, Avandia, Fosamax, Prozac, Paxil, Aleve, Bextra, Aspartame . . the list goes on and on.

Another problem with mainstream medical studies is the apparent lack of quality standards employed by pharmaceutical companies in selecting doctors who oversee drug testing. A New York Times investigation in 2007 found that in Minnesota alone at least 103 doctors who had been disciplined or criticized by the state medical board received a total of $1.7 million from drug makers between 1997 to 2005. The median payment over that period was $1,250; the largest was $479,000.

One such doctor was Dr. Faruk Abuzzahab, whom the Minnesota Medical board accused of a "reckless, if not willful, disregard" for the welfare of 46 patients, 5 of whom died in his care or shortly afterward. The board suspended his license for seven months and restricted it for two years after that. One of Dr. Abuzzahab`s patients was David Olson, whom the psychiatrist tried repeatedly to recruit for clinical trials. Drug makers paid Dr. Abuzzahab thousands of dollars for every patient he recruited. In July 1997, when Mr. Olson again refused to be a test subject, Dr. Abuzzahab discharged him from the hospital even though he was suicidal, records show. Mr. Olson committed suicide two weeks later..

The drug industry has been riddled with scandal again and again - including faked studies, rigged studies, hidden evidence of dangers, ghostwriten articles, fake medical journals, sex scandals, and much more. Merck, Vioxx. Pfizer, Avantis, GlaxoKilineSmith, Baxter Labs, the list goes on and on and on and leaves virtually no major pharmaceutical company untouched:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2002/feb/07/research.health1

http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/extract/329/7460/247

Look at all the hits and damning evidence you get when you search for "drug company scandals". Absolutely shameful!

The latest example:

http://www.healthiertalk.com/pfizer-caught-faking-it-again-1280

Another problem with mainstream drugs is the influence peddling of the pharmaceutical companies to get doctors to prescribe their medicines. Many doctors receive incentives for prescribing drugs - such as honorariums, free lunches and other gifts, and even free massages and cruise trips, to name a few. There have been a number of scandals concerning drug companies essentially bribing doctors to prescribe their drugs and many cries for reform to insure that drugs are prescribed according to the patient’s best interests and not the financial interests of doctors and drug companies.

Besides all the incentives, some doctors make profits directly from the drugs they prescribe, often with unhealthy consequences for their patients.  In an article that appeared in the New York Times in May 2007 it was revealed that some of the world’s largest drug companies are paying hundreds of millions of dollars to doctors every year in return for giving their patients anemia medicines which regulators now say may be unsafe at commonly used doses.

The same article noted that:

"Federal laws bar drug companies from paying doctors to prescribe medicines that are given in pill form and purchased by patients from pharmacies. But companies can rebate part of the price that doctors pay for drugs, … which they dispense in their offices as part of treatment. … Doctors receive the rebates after they buy the drugs from the companies. But they also receive reimbursement from Medicare or private insurers for the drugs, often at a markup over the doctors’ purchase price."

See:  http://news.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/05/09/doctors-getting-paid-to-prescribe-dr...

No wonder a Harris Poll found that only 13% of Americans believe that pharmaceutical companies are "generally honest and trustworthy."

Over 95% of the 15,000 plus approved medicines have side effects and in many instance those side effects lead to further conditions requiring still more drugs with more side effects in a never ending cycle. Millions of serious adverse reactions are reported each year and over 140,000 deaths in hospitals and homes happen each year even when the drugs have been properly prescribed and administered. We are told that there is always risk versus reward to be considered. But it appears that often a great deal of the “reward” is a drug company profits regardless of risks, as was the case when the makers of Vioxx (Merck) reaped billions of dollars of profit while the body count piled up even higher than all the lives we lost in the Vietnam War. The same thing appears to be happening now with Paxil:

http://www.tbyil.com/Depression_Drugs.htm

Meanwhile, major side effects caused by natural herbs are rare and deaths almost non-existent.

Often we see the supporters of mainstream medicine refer to natural healing as "woo" and sometime they liken belief in natural herbs as more akin to some kind of religion instead of "real science".  Is that really true?  True science is based on observation. Mankind has observed nature to work and has used nature for healing for thousands of years, just as most of the people in the world continue to do and as the majority of people in most countries continue to do.  Among those countries are several countries ranked above the U.S. (the world's most medicated country) in health rankings, including two of the top three ranked countries. Despite all of the15,000 plus approved drugs, our life expectancy ranks below 40 plus other countries and is closer to that of Mexico than it is the top 10 countries.

To claim that nature, from whence life itself came, is "woo" is patently absurd. Of course most of us would like to see scientific proof that anything we take is safe and effective, but when medical science has been sold off to the highest bidder far too often, I will choose what has been observed to work and what I myself have observed to work over and do my own homework before I accept anything that what medical science tells me will work and is safe.

When you combine the record of safety and effectiveness of approved drugs with the fact that history has taught us again and again that the science of today has but a fraction of the answers and is often overturned tomorrow, I would say that blind belief in mainstream medicine is far more of a religion than belief in nature.

I readily agree that just because something is natural does not mean that it will work or that it is safe, but I like the comparative safety records of nature versus approved drugs. And when it comes to what really works or not, the pharmaceutical industry itself admits that most of its drugs do not work for most people.  According to Doctor Allen Roses, worldwide vice-president of genetics at GlaxoSmithKline and academic geneticist from Duke University, "The vast majority of drugs - more than 90 per cent - only work in 30 or 50 per cent of the people."

Despite the claims that herbs, natural remedies, vitamins and minerals have little or no effectiveness, one thing the studies do largely agree on:  a great many of our health problems can be traced to vitamin and mineral deficiencies.  On the other hand, no one ever became ill due to a deficiency in pharmaceuticals. 

http://www.tbyil.com/Nature_versus_Medicine.htm

In another century or so, today's science will again be largely turned over as has always been the case.  Nature on the other hand will remain true as it has since mankind first put down footsteps in the sands of time.  Someday we will look back on today's mainstream medicine as being based largely on pseudo science and ignorance, not nature.  Given the fact that we have been unable to produce mainstream drugs that do not have side effects over 95% of the time and which largely only treat symptoms instead of actually healing, and given the way mainstream medicine has clung to the tried and failed barbaric cancer treatments of trying to cut out, poison out or burn out the symptoms of cancer, I would opine that mankind will someday look back on today's mainstream medicine as the true dark ages of medicine.

BTW, do you even know where the term "quack" came from?  It was first used to describe mainstream practitioners when the term "quacksalver" was coined to describe dentists who used mercury. Now there's one of your science-based medicines for you!

Here's a good look at your lovely maim-stream medicine and how trustworthy it is:

Modern Medicine: How Healing Illness became Managing Illness 

It isn't pretty and it isn't what they teach in medical school, but it is hard to argue with history and facts. 

If natural healing such as man has used for thousands of years is "woo", then what would that make unnatural medicines that treat symptoms and have side effects - "poo"?

"There are more quacks in the orthodox profession than there are outside its ranks." Dr. J. P. Baldwin

"Modern medicine" may well be defined as "the experimental study of what happens when poisonous chemicals are placed into malnourished human bodies." - A. Saul, Contributing Editor, Journal of Orthomolecular Medicine

Welcome to OUR world, naysayer.

From what I have read on the sciencebasedmedicine blog, it is basically a glorified web-chapter of propaganda-R-us.

An excellent example of just the kind of rhetoric the is mentioned.

As usual the majority of the commenters See Science as being infallible, forgetting the most important theory that even Einstein(though he did his best) could not even disprove..

Actually, the commenter see science as science and the accusation is more rhetoric.

.it's called the Heisenberg Uncertainty principle.
Why are you bringing up quantum mechanics?

The problem with blogs like that, is they lack conscience.

They deal with evidence.

Its all about enforcing their vaccine dogma.

Another false accusation made in the absence of facts.  So far this has been an excellent example of what the author critiques about alt-med sites, all blustering attacks with no facts.

Psuedo-science blogs are part of the new religion where self proclaimed experts indoctrinated by the establishment maintain such a level of cognitive dissonance that changing course is not an option.

Not self proclaimed.  Unlike the many self proclaimed experts here, these bloggers have hold MD, PhD, DVM degrees.

None of the articles I have read on the site have any sort of objectivity.

All of the ones I read were highly objective relying on feelings but on data.  That is as objective as you can get.

They seem to think people in alternative medicine are against science, when the truth is to the contrary.

Views like the ones generally expressed here indicates that altmed proponents are against science.  Or at the very least don't understand how science is conducted and it's limitations.

Having a conscience means being with and against systematic knowledge.

That is not having a conscience.  Systematic knowledge has been responsible for all our advances in the past 350 years.

Proclaimed truth requires trust,

Science doesn't deal with truth, that is an abstract philosophical concept.  Scientists speak about facts.

----------------

Part of the scientific method is observation.   Mankind has observed herbal and natural remedies to work for thousands of years -

That's wrong. Many of the so-called cure have turned out to be absolutely useless.  Of course for thousands of years humans had very little choice since modern organic chemistry is only about 200 years old. However in that short time, it has managed to make far more progress than in the past 30 000 years of human existence.

and it is patently absurd for any thinking person to believe naysayers who would tell us that nature is ineffective or that only unnatural patented compounds in forms not found in nature are effective.
A straw man argument since this argument is not being made.

The problem with so-called science based medicine is that the science of any age is often proven to be the quackery of tomorrow. 

Same kind of rhetoric as in the first post.

Those who believe that today's science has all or even most of the answers are more guilty of making their beliefs a religion than are those who favor natural and alternative healing. 

Another strawman argument.  Only the anti-science people are making this claim and projecting it on others.

Should I point out that sciencebasedmedicine is a mainstream site who picks and chooses studies and so-called science to disprove virtually anything that is not something that is approved, controlled and profited from by mainstream medicine?
Another false claim.  They do not discriminate as long as it is real science.  Since this audience may need a refresher they should look in wikipedia which has excellent articles on science,  Pseudoscience, Fringe science, Junk science, and Cargo cult science

Maybe a good clue as to the slant of that site is that the person who wrote the blog you quote also wrote how much he admired the thoroughly discredited big pharma shill Stephen Barrett and even said that he was flattered to be compared to him.  That tells me all I need to know about that site.  Here is a good look at his hero, Stephen Barrett and the fallacies of science based medicine:

An excellent example of what they write about.  Attacking the person with scurrilous claims.  BTW this is called poisoning the well which we can add to the strawman.

----------

All in all a vindication of everything written in the blog.