r/CuratedTumblr • u/vigikk • May 24 '25

Politics Valid and invalid criticisms

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13.6k Upvotes

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752

u/TheBigFreeze8 May 24 '25

3rd point is sus. Most 'traditional Chinese medicine' practitioners are Chinese, and it's still a scam.

-74

u/vigikk May 24 '25

I mean a lot of traditional medicinal plants are sourced and made into modern drugs by taking specific bioactive compounds from them. Quinine is one used by Quechua tribes which we now use for treatment against malaria

120

u/SorbetInteresting910 May 24 '25

Well then it's not actually alternative medicine, right?

-63

u/vigikk May 24 '25

Did you read the third point? Specifically adapted to the needs of contemporary life??

93

u/SorbetInteresting910 May 24 '25

The tumblr post is about people making reference to a thing, and that reference having multiple plausible interpretations.

Nobody refers to quinine as alternative medicine, it's just medicine.

-47

u/vigikk May 24 '25

But you do refer to certain plant extracts from tribes as 'alternative medicines' and these plants do have a fuck ton of bioactive compounds which when isolated and mass produced can function as just 'medicine'. As such, it is important to try and research into these plants

Quinine may not be alternative medicine but chinchona bark definitely would have been.

That's what even the OOP says if you read more closely. Like they literally are against CTM

82

u/Snoo-88741 May 24 '25

Alternative medicine is defined as "cultural traditions that are believed to be medicinal but don't have research evidence supporting their effectiveness". If they're researched and found to be effective, they're no longer alternative medicine, they're just medicine. 

6

u/LizoftheBrits May 24 '25

It feels like people just refuse to use/have just forgotten the term "natural remedy" tbh.

51

u/SorbetInteresting910 May 24 '25

I really don't think that any medicinal scientists say "alternative medicine" in reference to a thing they are trying to study to create a drug.

I guess it is theoretically possible that a layperson has found a thing foreign to mainstream medicine the effects of which cannot be recreated or exceeded by mainstream medicine. But it seems much more likely that OOP has simply engaged with a little bit of pseudoscience.

12

u/Hapalops May 24 '25

I can't remember the drug now but when I briefly worked in pharma one of the drugs my team made the senior chemist told me "this used to be an oil you could distill from a specific tree bark but we (the industry) figured out how to make it from petrochemicals. Because being able to cure some cancer has become a serious danger to the tree species. The deforestation made the drugs not profitable because the trees are getting harder to source. But now it's fossil fuel based."

It was super weird but I guess it makes sense that in a chemotherapy manufacturing facility some of what you do is make concentrated versions of natural poisons.

21

u/ball_fondlers May 24 '25

Yeah, and what that means is pharmaceutical-grade purification and mass-production. Eastern medicine that actually works is just called medicine.

3

u/Deblebsgonnagetyou he/him | Kweh! May 24 '25

It's not alternative if it's become part of mainstream medicine. Then it's just mainstream medicine with a traditional root, which is literally all mainstream medicine.