All those statistics don't even begin to approach the number of lives saved by antibiotics, vaccinations, sanitation and all other innovations that allowed Western medicine to get to be able to kill those people!!!!
Again, one statistic says it all: life expectancy rises where the scientific method thrives (and where economic inequality is minimized, particularly by
ACCESS TO WESTERN HEALTH CARE!!!) and doesn't where it does not.
Chinese medicine never made the advances that allowed life expectancy to double, nor did any other "traditional" culture. It is only the scientific method that allows treatment to get better over time.
Ironically, as a result of the triumph of the scientific method, we have become more afraid of the risks from Western medicine than we are of the risks of not using it-- which are dramatically greater. Don't even get me started on lives saved by eradicating smallpox, polio vaccination, etc. -- compared to the 1 in a million chance of harm from those. And yes, when you vaccinate a 100 million, you'll get those 1 in a million deaths and disabilities and those are a tragedy, but they don't change the fact that you prevented thousands of others.
And in terms of using diet and exercise for preventions-- that's very nice, but human beings have a seriously hard time changing their behavior and the idea that we'd all live forever if only we'd eat right and exercise has truth to it-- but so does the fact that we, nonetheless, for a variety of reasons, won't do it!!! Those "preventable" deaths look preventable on paper-- if only all those smokers would just quit, if only everyone would use condoms, if only kids wouldn't take dumb risks-- but in reality, people's behavior is far harder to change than "just stop" or "just do it" Not to say we shouldn't try-- but
alternative medicine isn't going to work if people (and this clearly is the majority) don't want to change their lifestyles.
It looks nice on paper, but in reality, crisis medicine is more effective because it deals with how people actually behave, not how we think they should.
And if we want to learn better about changing people's behavior-- ie, helping kids make better and healthier choices-- we're going to have to use the scientific method to sort the wheat from the chaff of all these harmful methods.
Ignore it, and you are simply putting your anecdotes of pain up against their tales of success-- and you can't tell anything real about which are more common. Use it, and you can rapidly find out what harm is being done and what stuff might help.
Sure, it's not perfect, but it's a damn sight better than "I had a wonderful time" "I had a terrible time" ad infinitum
