Spending on alternative therapies four times greater than on conventional pharmaceuticals
Following on from last Friday's snippet on alternative vs conventional medicine, a study of spending on pharmaceuticals and alternative therapies in Australia shows that four times as much is spent on the untested, unproven therapies (AUS$2.3 billion per year) than on medically recognised treatments and prescribed pharmaceuticals.
Furthermore, untested alternative therapies have increased in price by 120% (i.e. more than doubled) since 1993, even allowing for inflation.
The study is published in the American journal Preventive Medicine.
That's a lot of money to spend on things that might be doing nothing at all or could even potentially be doing you more harm than good...
