Alternative medicine should be used more in the Western Culture

I'm not sure you understand the importance of randomized trials, or even how the placebo effect works. In 1955, Henry K. Beecher published a report in the Journal of the American Medical Association, where he summarized the results of a series of experiments he had conducted. Beecher reported that 35% of 1082 patients had received some form of benefit from an inert "placebo." Beecher's milestone work was one of the first studies to attempt to quantify the effect of placebos, which had been given in the past to assuage patients who felt they needed medicine. The report showed that the simple act of taking a pill caused a significant number of patients to show improvement. A recent study even showed that patients who knew they were taking a placebo received positive results. This is why nearly all clinical trials for new drugs are "placebo-controlled," meaning that there is a group receiving the experimental treatment, and a group receiving a placebo. Both groups are treated identically, and if the group receiving the actual medicine exhibits more improvement than the control group, then the medicine is considered effective. Studies involving alternative medicine are not typically placebo-controlled. They do not typically have a large sample size, which is used in statistics to reinforce a conclusion. They are usually anecdotal, such as your story of "Sally," and the "evidence," which is a testimonial video produced by a practitioner of alternative medicine. Even if "Sally" was cured entirely by alternative medicine (Of which a change in diet is not a part of, as per your definition of alternative medicine; conventional doctors often recommend dietary changes), her case can not be extrapolated to the entire human population. If she was chosen to appear in a testimonial video, she obviously had above-average improvement. A brief aside, in your rebuttal, you said it was unlikely that "Sally's" improvement was due to the placebo effect, because a conventional doctor had told her her condition was incurable. If "Sally" truly thought her condition was incurable, she would not have visited an alternative medicine practitioner, as people do not submit themselves to hardship if they are 100% sure that there is no benefit to it. Obviously "Sally" believed that there could be some benefit, and therefore could have been influenced by the placebo effect. Most problematic about the video describing "Sally's" condition is the part where she is described as having "vitiligo." This skin condition, which occurs when the cells responsible for producing skin pigments are unable to function, would have been recognized by any competent doctor, and "Sally" would have been treated in one of several ways. I was unable to understand a large part of the video, but if "Sally" was sent home with only foundation, she should have seen a doctor, and not a cosmetics salesman. In your point from Round 3, you paint a very inaccurate and unflattering picture of doctors. Doctors do have notoriously large egos, however they never "do not attempt to cure a disease." Doctors tend to be exceptionally smart, but they can not be relied on to know every symptom of every disease, and it is for that reason that hospitals have libraries of diagnostic books, and in recent years, digital tools to aid practitioners. They trust in their medicine because everything they give a patient has been rigorously tested to prove that it works, unlike alternative medicine, which you still can not seem to find scientific proof for. Doctors aren't trying to hurt patients, either actively, or by casting them out due to ignorances. They also try not to hurt them financially. Do you know how much a full battery of tests costs? It is far easier, and in the majority of cases, perfectly effective to see a patient present with a runny nose and fever and tell them to sleep it off. Doctors will also tell the patient to come back if the symptoms do not get better. This indicates that it might be necessary to look more in-depth. Doing so sooner only results in a waste of both the patient and doctor's time and money. Finally, I sincerely hope that my opponent is Dr. Yvonne M. Stegall, Ph.D, as several paragraphs of Pro's argument have been lifted almost verbatim from her article (4th in the list of sources). In addition, even though Pro provided an impressive list of sources, most of them are completely useless. The first makes outlandish statements like "Most medical schools don't teach disease prevention, proper diet or exercise as a part of health." Doctors know the value of diet and exercise, and ask a patient about their habits during a normal physical. The second does show the complications that result from sinusitis, but it does not mention that, despite Pro's statement to the contrary, doctors can easily differentiate sinusitis from a cold. Though the two conditions present with a runny nose and a fever, sinusitis is distinguished by an intense headache originating in the sinuses, which allows doctors to check for it, recognize it quickly, and treat it before complications develop. Pro's third source is sourced entirely from "www.findthisonline.com," which is currently an empty domain name, and can be assumed to have no medical knowledge, while the fourth source is not necessary to read, because the majority of it is in Pro's Round 2 argument.