Detoxification (alternative Medicine) - Criticism

Criticism

Body cleansing and detoxification have been referred to as an elaborate hoax used by con artists to cure nonexistent illnesses. Some doctors contend that the "toxins" in question do not even exist. Alternative medicine proponents frequently cite heavy metals or pesticides as the source of toxification; however, no evidence exists that detoxification approaches have a measurable effect on these or any other chemical levels. Medical experts state that body cleansing is unnecessary as the human body is naturally capable of maintaining itself, with several organs dedicated to cleansing the blood and gut. Professor Alan Boobis OBE, Toxicologist, Division of Medicine, Imperial College London states that

The body’s own detoxification systems are remarkably sophisticated and versatile. They have to be, as the natural environment that we evolved in is hostile. It is remarkable that people are prepared to risk seriously disrupting these systems with unproven ‘detox’ diets, which could well do more harm than good.

The apparently satisfied testimonial and anecdotal accounts by customers can often be explained by disguised employees companies or individuals creating false anecdotes, legitimate customers who are experiencing the placebo effect after using the products, natural recovery from an actual illness that would have occurred without the use of the product, psychological improvements on illnesses that are psychosomatic or the result of neurosis, or the lack of a larger number of dissatisfied customers not posting equally applicable anecdotes about their poorer experiences.

Read more about this topic:  Detoxification (alternative Medicine)

Famous quotes containing the word criticism:

    Good criticism is very rare and always precious.
    Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)

    To be just, that is to say, to justify its existence, criticism should be partial, passionate and political, that is to say, written from an exclusive point of view, but a point of view that opens up the widest horizons.
    Charles Baudelaire (1821–1867)

    The visual is sorely undervalued in modern scholarship. Art history has attained only a fraction of the conceptual sophistication of literary criticism.... Drunk with self-love, criticism has hugely overestimated the centrality of language to western culture. It has failed to see the electrifying sign language of images.
    Camille Paglia (b. 1947)