It has been claimed that more people are now using alternative medical practices rather than using proper doctors. This essay will argue that it is a dangerous development.
To begin with, there is simply no good argument for using alternative medicines. Any alternative treatment that works will be incorporated into conventional medicine, so to go outside of the mainstream is to take a pointless risk. The vast majority of alternative medical practices, no matter how they are marketed, are at best useless and at worst highly dangerous.
Using any alternative treatment has two potential outcomes. The first is that nothing will happen because most of them are in fact fake. Take acupuncture, homeopathy, or folk medicine, for example. These are simply archaic or idealistic ideas that mostly rely upon the placebo effect. In most cases, they do nothing and any genuine use that they could pose has or will be incorporated into conventional medicine through the scientific method and peer review. In such cases, a patient with an illness will not recover and will waste time in seeking real treatment. In severe cases, these fraudulent practitioners will actually harm their patients because their treatments are dangerous. These alternative medicines are unregulated and used by people who have no proper training, which means that they will not only fail to help but may even introduce new health problems.
In conclusion, the trend of people seeking alternative forms of medicine is massively problematic and puts people at serious risk of illness and death.