Cough syrup - the new alternative therapy

Dr David Newman, writing in The New York Times tells that several much-used remedies just don't work:

Recent press reports detailing the dangers of cough syrup for children have noted that cough syrup doesn’t work. True: No cough remedies have ever been proven better than a placebo....

Patients with ear infections are more likely to be harmed by antibiotics than helped...

Back surgeries to relieve pain are, in the majority of cases, no better than nonsurgical treatment...

More than a half million Americans per year undergo arthroscopic surgery to correct osteoarthritis of the knee, at a cost of $3 billion. Despite this, studies show the surgery to be no better than sham knee surgery, in which surgeons “pretend” to do surgery while the patient is under light anesthesia....

Treatment based on ideology is alluring. Surgeries to repair the knee should work. A syrup to reduce cough should help. Calming the straining heart should save lives. But the uncomfortable truth is that many expensive, invasive interventions are of little or no benefit and cause potentially uncomfortable, costly, and dangerous side effects and complications.

The full article can be found here (originally found on Slashdot Science).

Time to chuck out the Benylin? Alternatively, someone in the "complementary and alternative medicine" business could harness the money-making potential of yet another class of unproven and apparently ineffective treatments. I'll be looking out look out for Gillian McKeith's patent expectorant, or Prince Charles adding a "natural" cough syrup to his Duchy Original range...