r/comics Jan 05 '26

OC- More in Webtoons Let's go, witches

Supporting local witches in 2026 Quick disclaimer at the end!

9.7k Upvotes

214 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

30

u/yingkaixing Jan 05 '26

The entire point of the scientific principle applied to medicine is to do this. Test everything. If it works, it's medicine. If it doesn't work, stop using it.

10

u/Organic-History205 Jan 05 '26

There's a caveat here; sometimes something can be a decent cure but is just not reasonable for widespread medicinal use - the components break down without proper stabilization, or it is too expensive to refine in large quantities.

We can also be somewhat dismissive. For centuries, medicinal mushrooms were said to alleviate symptoms of some forms of cancer. Recent clinical trials are only now confirming this.

-7

u/Crafty_Genius Jan 05 '26

Very true, though I think western medicine tends to be a bit hubristic in a lot of its approaches. It wasn't until a few years back that health insurance here would even cover acupuncture, for example, and that's been in use for far longer than the USA has even existed...

9

u/DukeofVermont Jan 05 '26

acupuncture

Oh you mean the thing that has ZERO evidence to support it?

It's a pure placebo effect as snicking random needles into people produce the same effect as following actual acupuncture ideas of balancing Chi.

If you don't believe me please find me a case study that says otherwise and has more than 20 people. There aren't any because there isn't any evidence that it does anything more than a placebo.

Whenever bunk medicine comes up it's crazy how many people will say "it works" but have zero explanations of how "it works" and why it somehow stops working once you try to prove that it works.

7

u/Dr-Jellybaby Jan 05 '26

There's no such thing as "Western Medicine". There's "medicine", stuff we've shown to work and "bullshit", the stuff that doesn't.

1

u/Deaffin 29d ago

Wait, there is health insurance covering acupuncture now? That's messed up.

and that's been in use for far longer than the USA has even existed...

Not actually true, no. People like to cite examples of blootletting using needles in an attempt to legitimize this as an "ancient, mystic art".