Why is biopuncture controversial?
Biopuncture is controversial because, like other modalities in alternative medicine, there is often little evidence to show the therapy works and is safe. Watch preventive medicine expert David Katz, MD, explain his concerns about biopuncture.
Transcript
[MUSIC PLAYING] Well, in the absence of any published peer-reviewed evidence, you just don't know if something works.
And then, really, the basis for all decision-making in medicine needs to be about, what is the potential for harm,
and what is the probability of benefit?
Well, very often, in the whole world of alternative medicine, it advances because people get ideas and implement them.
And sometimes, the ideas come from no place obvious, sometimes they come from animal research, but generally, they don't come from research that's
fully mature, and that's what conventional medicine is looking for-- randomized, clinical trials, placebo control, all of that.
We don't have that for biopuncture we just don't have that. So the initial part of the controversy for someone like me, who practices
evidence-based integrative medicine, is I could find no evidence. So I searched the literature for any studies
addressing biopuncture, any at all, and I couldn't find any. Well, in the absence of any published, peer-reviewed evidence, you just don't know if something works.
And then, really, the basis for all decision-making in medicine needs to be about, what is the potential for harm,
and what is the probability of benefit? Well, you need the studies to talk about the probability of benefit, and then, in terms of potential harm,
you always have to assume there's some. In this case, although the remedies have been used in homeopathy for centuries,
they've been used orally, and when you inject something it changes the game. It's a totally different interaction with your immune system.
Just, imagine taking all the different things you eat and injecting those into your body and the havoc it could wreak.
That's my concern here. There could be infection, there could be inflammatory responses, there could be allergies, and at the extreme, there could be life-threatening allergies,
called anaphylaxis. and until we have evidence that, that doesn't happen and that there's clearly a benefit,
I would say, proceed very cautiously with this modality. [HEART BEAT]
alternative medicine
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