Guys, guys, guys... you can't argue with people sold on the idea of alternate medicine. Let me just give an example.
Freashmen year I meet a girl in my Gen Bio class. Stellar student, absolutly superb. Best memory I have ever seen and she would understand concepts before you even finished explaining them. Anyway, she one of those far left wing democrat/hippie types. She was a biochemistry major and around juinior year (after she scored a 39 on the MCAT and kept up her 4.0) she began to get really interested in "alternate treatments". I was a good friend of hers and at first listened to her ideas and beliefs, but it began to get just insane to listen to. Here are two of our conversations...
Her: I'm so glad there is a "Renew" gas station close to the college now
Me: Isn't that the gas station that sells 80% ethanol gas...?
Her: Yea, its awesome. Filled up my car this morning there.
Me: Whoa, don't you drive a ford focus? The engine isn't made for ethanol concentration above 10%.
Her: Pfft, yea thats what the oil companies want you to think
Me: You're damaging your engine and loosing fuel effiency
Her: Nope, ethanol burns hotter and better and gives off more energy than gasoline.
Me: Whats the enthalpy for octane?
Her: About (negative) 5000
Me: And the enthalpy for ethanol?
Her: Around -280.
Me: Ummm... Okay, [HER NAME], you're the smartest chemist I know... what has more energy per gallon when it burns in a car.
Her: Ethanol. It said so online.
Me:
Another more medical related example. This was in senior year when she really started getting extreme.
Her: All pharmaceutical drugs are bad poisenous toxins that kill us.
Me: Right...
Her:I know I'm right. Name ONE drug that does more good than bad.
Me: You're kidding? Okay... Penicillin.
Her: Kills our gut bacteria as well, which hurts us.
Me: Yea but sepsis would have killed us first... whatever, okay, Quinine (anti malarial)
Her: That's not a drug, its a plant extract.
Me:
A lot of 'drugs' are extracted from nature... but okay, fine, how about Lipator, it saves millions from heart attacks
Her: It has side effects.
Me: Everything has side effects
Her: Exactly, every medical treatment is toxic and bad for us
Me: *sigh*
And thats how she, the smartest person I ever met with unlimited potencial, decided to use her 39 MCAT and 4.0 GPA to apply to and attend a Native American school of Shamanistic healing in northern Wisconsin. I saw some of the material they mailed her, it showed people wearing fox pelts and holding beads.
My point is, you can't use logic and science on a sizable portion of the population. Show them proof dinosaurs excisted and they say God put the proof there to fool them, etc etc. These same people will ignore scientific medicine and choose to believe in some other form of treatment. Berries, teas, rain dances, or (to a lesser extent) chiropracters. A lot of these alternate treatments have some proven health benefits (e.g. chiropracters and acupuncture) but a lot of people will take these minor findings and run wild with them, saying that do 1000x more than they really do.