This interview contains a lot of very important information, regardless of how one feels about CAM [Complimentary and Alternative Medicine]. Professor Baum starts by explaining the difference between complementary and alternative medicine. For him, complementary medicine is everything that improves the quality of life of a patient undergoing medical treatments, possibly for life-threatening diseases such as breast cancer. Alternative medicine, on the other hand, seeks to replace scientific medicine. Says Michael Baum:
I'm obviously against alternative medicine, because to me, alternative, by definition, means it does not work. If it works, we would use it.
As an example of that, he cites a few medicines of herbal origin that are being used for cancer therapy such as vinca alkaloids form periwinkle and taxanes from yew trees.
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Later on, they talk about what Baum politely calls "post-modern relativism," the idea that everything is but an opinion. I have an opinion, but you have read some other books and you have therefore another opinion and both opinions are equally valid. As a result, we have now alternative medicine, alternative teaching methods, alternative legal advocates, "but," he says "we haven't yet come up with an alternative Boeing 747 pilot".
He links this to the MMR vaccine crisis where people are being told by alternologists and are convinced that there is a conspiracy of the medical establishment and the government that, in order to protect themselves, they were willing to sacrifice countless children to autism. "This is simply a lie," he says, and he adds that even among his closest friends, there are people who are not immunizing their children and that these children are now unprotected as a result.
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Dawkins asks Baum if he can cite a few examples of complementary/alternative therapies for which he does have time. Baum cites art therapy as an example of complementary therapy in which he has invested quite some time. He also cites acupuncture, which is bonkers as an alternative complementary medicine belief system but which does have some value as a complementary therapy, for example in pain management. Still, his belief doesn't seem to go very far.
He goes on giving an example of the importance of clinical trials and tells a story about how he was chairing a meeting in Florence, Italy on the role of CAM in the treatment of breast cancer. He was in serious pain at the time, so much so that he was limping. An acupuncturist offered him a treatment. The next day, he was completely without pain, and even visited the Uffizi gallery for a few hours. The interesting part is that she offered the treatment, but that he didn't accept it. Had he accepted it, the result would have been so spectacular that he would have become a convert. A nice illustration of the importance of controlled trials.
Baum is also telling Dawkins about how many alternologists always go back to some "golden age" of medicine, and argues that there is no such thing as a golden age of medicine in the past, that the golden age is now, and that it will become more golden if only science can continue. He gives the example of Victorian England where life expectancy was not much more than about 40 years and where 30% of the children died shortly after birth whereas now most children survive, and that we now have life expectancies of close to 80 years, leading us to work longer than in the past.
Dawkins and Baum talk about the importance of science education. Baum tells Dawkins that we have a scientifically illiterate population, a scientifically illiterate house of commons and, worse, that they actually take pride into their scientific illiteracy. Scientists have an important task here, he says, and children should be taught the scientific method from early secondary school in order to have a scientifically literate population.
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Originally Posted by Artemis
