For the no shit file, alternative medicines don't work.

In the 24-week study, 1,583 patients with osteoarthritis of the knee were randomly assigned to one of five groups. Some patients took glucosamine, some took chondroitin and some took both. Others, serving as comparison subjects, took a placebo or celecoxib, sold as Celebrex, a prescription drug that is approved for osteoarthritis.

No effect was found for glucosamine, chondroitin or a combination of the two. But the study found that the patients who took celecoxib had a statistically significant improvement in their symptoms.

This type of medicine is just such bullshit, and represents sloppy thinking on the part of those that think they work. The idea is, your knee hurts, so you ingest the proteins and chemicals that make up cartilage. Sorry, but it just doesn't work that way, if you have liver damage, eating liver or dried liver pills will not help. If you have Alzheimers, eating cow brains will not fix you. Sorry, you have a digestive system, it doesn't necessarily know you have bad knees.

Dr. Tim McAlindon, chief of rheumatology at Tufts-New England Medical Center in Boston, said that glucosamine traveled to the liver, which then broke it down. Almost no glucosamine that is eaten actually gets into the blood, where it can travel to the joints, Dr. McAlindon said, adding, "The amount that gets beyond the liver is minuscule."

Chondroitin, a large molecule, is digested, Dr. McAlindon said, but it is broken into pieces in the intestines and none of it gets through intact to the joints.

In other no shit news, Iraq is now pretty much in a civil war.