The list of pseudotherapies is as diverse as it is dangerous. From angelotherapy to biopuncture, passing through iriogenetics, ozone therapy, the Hebrew pendulum, reiki, cellular re-information and so on to sound therapy and homeopathy, they complete a list of more than 70 practices that are offered today as acts doctors without having scientifically proven its effectiveness
All of them are collected by Association to Protect the Sick from Pseudoscientific Therapies (APETP)an entity that has recently launched a European manifesto against them so that the European Union changes its laws in this regard and prohibits or criminalizes them “because they kill thousands of people.”
«And they kill them with names and surnames, like Francesco Bonifazfrom 7 yearswho was given by his doctor homeopathy instead of antibiotics. died in Italy. What mario rodriguezfrom 21 yearswhich was treated with vitamins for your cancer. died in Spain. What Jacqueline Aldersladefrom 55 yearswhose homeopath told him to stop his asthma medication. died in ireland or as cameron ayres6 months old, whose parents did not want to give him “scientific medicine”. died in england…»
Pseudotherapies: the reasons for their danger
Pseudotherapies, adds the aforementioned association, many of them pseudoscientific and also known as ‘alternative therapies‘, ‘complementary‘ or ‘integrative‘, represent a great danger for several reasons:
- There is the risk of patients abandoning effective therapies by practices that lack curative value, and this can cause serious health problems and even death.
- Regardless of treatment abandonment, some pseudotherapies may have negative health effects.
- They usually produce economic or moral damages in patients.
To understand in depth what a pseudotherapy is, they explain from the association, we must first understand when we can consider that a therapy has been scientifically validated.
The word ‘science’ comes from Latin and means ‘knowledge’, but science is not worth just any kind of knowledge.
In science, only what we can confirm by scientific evidence is accepted, a special type of evidence that is obtained by using a reliable method of study that we call the scientific method.
«From a scientific point of view, the belief based on scientific evidence about the structure of penicillin cannot be considered as beliefs at the same level of reliability; an informal belief, based on informal or interpretive evidence regarding the future plot of a television series; or the belief in fairies, which is not based on any kind of evidence.”
The danger of falling lies in wait for everyone
We are all susceptible to falling into psychotherapy, he tells EFEsalud Mati Matarredona, psychologist and member of the APETPbecause when someone is sick, two very powerful personal circumstances are added that are taken advantage of by “fraudsters”: extreme vulnerability and great uncertainty about the future.
In Spain, the homeopathy, dioxideor chlorine in all its aspects and osteopathy (the latter in a legal limbo) are the most demanded pseudosciencesaccording to Matarredona, who points to strong industrial interests, in the case of homeopathy, throughout Europe.
However, in Spain, homeopathy as a teaching has been removed from the Universities, and in the United Kingdom from the public health service, while in France the subject is under study.
APETP was founded in 2015 as a result of the death of Mario Rodriguezwho He died of leukemia when he was 21 years old and after abandoning chemotherapy for some remedies recommended by José Ramón Llorente, who presented himself as a specialist in naturalistic and orthomolecular medicine.
The young man’s father managed to put the healer on the bench for intrusion and homicide, but José Ramón Llorente was acquitted when the judge considered that the final decisions regarding treatment, successful or not, “were adopted freely and consciously by the young person himself” and because it was not possible to “ponder” to what extent the delay in his treatment caused his death.
That is why this association, which chairs the PhD in Biomedicine Elena Campos Sánchez and has 300 members, pursues that the law typifies pseudotherapies, as well as the substances they use and the services they provide.
In their manifesto they explain that there is a belief that there is a conflict between the freedom to choose a medical treatment and the elimination of pseudotherapies, “but it is not true.”
And they point out that lying to patients to sell them useless products that can kill them violates the right of citizens to receive truthful information about their health.
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