Testimonials

I mentioned a while back that I wanted to write a blog on my problem with testimonials and alternative medicine in general. As I see it here are some of the issues. When you hear about a testimonial, you're hearing about the 1 case that was successful. Maybe there are hundreds of testimonials, but those are probably a small sampling of the total number of uses. You rarely, if ever, hear about the cases where it doesn't work. You hear about the 1 guy that had good luck by eating carrots and having his eyesight restored. You don't hear about the thousands of people that do the exact same thing with no results. So and so drank some herbal remedy and his cancer went away. How many other people drank that same tea and died of cancer? I've listened to a LOT of testimonials over the years, and tried most of the products being touted. In general none of them have worked, at least not enough to be called effective. The question is, has there ever been a case where the person touting testimonials for a cure, after hearing it didn't work for me, included my "anti-testimonial" in a subsequent sales pitch?

Am I saying I only want to do things that are 100% proven effective? Nope, not at all. What I'm asking though is should I postpone something that has a good chance of saving my life in order to try something based on the hearsay of a few people? And uneducated people on top of it. The doctors were uneducated too, before they went to school, and yet people somehow think the doctors are less knowledgeable than these people that have no medical education whatsoever.

To further complicate things, people are not inherently all that bright.... just look at advertising. People don't understand things like proper testing methodologies and statistical analysis and the like. People just say "hey, I had this problem, ate that fruit, and now my problem is gone... must have been the fruit". Abracadabra, Testimonial. They don't always look at what other changes have been going on in their life lately. They don't look at the fact that they've changed their diet or lightened their work load or started taking some new medicine months before that took a little while to kick in... or maybe all 3 with a half dozen other possibilities. In their mind, they did A and saw result B, so A must cause B. If it were that easy, we'd have no use for the FDA. It is NOT that easy though. Changes and cause and effect need to be measured over time accounting for many more variables than the average person is ever going to consider.

You want a testimonial? How about Aspirin works great for getting rid of headaches. It works for the vast majority of people just fine, so it must be good. Never mind the fact that some people experience a few side effects and get no benefit from it. Never mind the fact that it is associated with a potentially fatal disease if taken by children. There's more than enough testimonials out there to say you should take it. I personally get much more benefit from Advil, so that testimonial is worthless to me.

You want another testimonial? How about if you have ulcerative colitis you should take a prescription drug called purinethol. It works very well for most people, suppressing symptoms with few side effects. Sounds like there are probably a lot of good testimonials for that, in fact I KNOW there are. I tried it too, and in my case, it caused pancreatitis and my weight plummeted to 139 lbs. Another testimonial that is worthless to me. Actually, worse than worthless since taking it was heading me toward really bad times. The difference here though, is the doctor DID include the "anti-testimonial". He told me about the risk.

How all this pertains to alternative medicine.... I do think maybe some alternative medicines might work in some situations. Maybe they would work in mine, maybe not. I'd much rather drink a pot of tea every day than have a doctor remove my intestines. Hell, I'd drink muddy water if I could keep my intestines. But will any of those alternatives save my life in the next couple months guaranteed? And are you willing to bet my life on it? If not, then I might as well have the surgery, and in that case, who needs the alternative? If I had plenty of time to test the waters and sample the selections and see which one showed itself to be effective... and if I had a billion dollars I'd be a billionaire.

-jk