Your point seems to be that any efficacy of non-mainstream medical practices is so minor and marginal that it should all be ignored.

Please understand my point is simply that a somewhat more balanced and open approach is warranted, as it may lead to more breakthrough discoveries like Artemisinin.

To your points:

1) Artemisinin has scientific, peer reviewed research to support its claims.

Yes, of course, I agree completely.

But the point is that people who push the view that any medical practice that comes from the natural/traditional/alternative medicine world is by-definition false and harmful snake-oil are overlooking the fact that there are several important medical breakthroughs that had already been practiced in the medical fringes for years/decades/centuries before anyone in the mainstream got around to researching them.

Other promising recent examples include:

- the microbiome/neurology link [1],

- the use of infrared light to treat neurodegenerative illnesses such as Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, MS and ALS [2], and

- the use of low-intensity pulsed electromagnetic fields to shrink tumors [3].

2) "The market" is provably an unreliable source of evidence given the historic success of snake oil and the popularity of many treatments later found to be dangerous.

Note I said "at least somewhat suggestive of some degree of efficacy". Yes of course the market is fallible. It comprises at least 7 billion people, many of whom are delusional. But some of them are also discerning, intelligent, educated, science-literate people who, having exhausted all the options offered by mainstream medicine, seek an alternative and find it extremely beneficial.

3) Your friends absolutely cannot reliably detect a placebo effect. No one can, that's the whole reason to double blind tests.

Sure, but I'm talking about cases where someone has suffered a chronic condition like migraine or CFS or fibromyalgia for many years, and has gone through 5, 10 or more treatments (both mainstream and natural), all without success, then finally they discover a treatment that permanently relieves their issue. Someone who has been through that (of which I am one) knows how to tell whether or not a treatment is effective.

That said, the validity of your comment depends on exactly how you define 'placebo'. If you were to respond that these conditions are likely emotional in origin, and that the treatment just relieved the emotional issue, I would agree with you. However, in these cases there are have still be physiological symptoms that corrected after the treatment (which could be verified with pathology testing).

It's at this point you risk descending into a debate about whether placebos can actually have physiological effects or are rather just imaginary feelings of wellbeing [4], at which point I lose interest in the discussion, as my only real concern is in getting well and helping others do the same, not wasting time in arguments over definitions.

4) Please don't misquote me. I did not say alternative medicine is "never more effective than a placebo". The statement was "almost none" which is true

My apologies, that wasn't meant as a quote of yours, but rather a characterisation of much of the standard position I'm used to hearing from avowed "skeptics".

But the problem with taking the "almost none" position with medicine is similar to the "almost all startups fail" position, which is that the exceptions, whilst they may be very rare, are also the most important cases.

It's quite easy to be highly successful predicting the failure of startups; you just predict the failure of every new startup to launch, and achieve a > 99% success rate.

But the problem is that you'll miss the next Google, Facebook, Airbnb etc. I.e., the times you're wrong are the times it matters most to be right.

In my experience and observation, the case is very similar with medicine.

[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4662178/

[2] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4707222/

[3] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3770670/

[4] https://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/is-harnessing-the-power...