The question I’d like an answer to is this: why do self-professed Christians tell lies?

Depends on your definition of alt-med. If you include things like St John’s Wort for depression (which in double blind placebo trials has been shown to be marginally, but statistically significantly more affective than the placebo to the same degree as most SSRIs) then no. Some alt-med in such cases is science based.

Same goes for things like glucosamine and chrondroitin, which both demonstrably ameliorate the symptoms of arthritis. Ginger re:high blood sugar, Ginkgo re:peripheral circulation and some impotence, Saw Palmetto re: prostate health (a lipid in Saw Palmetto berries is a DHT inhibitor and a mild aromatase inhibitor), Lycopene re: prostate health, soy isoflavones re: menopause and so on and so forth.

There is no formal demarcation around “alt med” which has allowed cowboys to operate on both sides of the debate. On one hand, marketing and hype surrounding homeopathy and “scienciness” has enabled snake oil salesmen to borrow from the respectability of research into similar (from the consumer’s perspective) products.

Conversely, people with either a chip on their shoulder about anything alternative to drug company manufactured, or indeed, an interest in the drug industry, to engage in pseudo-skepticism. St John’s Wort vs SSRIs is a classic example.

This of course doesn’t save the supernatural-based, woo products and services.

Anyhoo, as Brian Dunning pointed out in a recent episode of his Skeptoid podcasts, alternative medicine apologists–and what is alt med but witchdoctory in a cheap tuxedo?–will make a parallel case to that set out above: they cite the prohibitive costs of reality-based medicine (Skeptoid is a US podcast) as a reason for opting for untested snake oil.

When arguing generally with religion and/or woo, the “supernaturalists” (for a lack of a better word) a quick to remind us that they aren’t all killers and assorted nasties and that exaggerations are being made. I think perhaps the opposite may possibly be the case, at least globally speaking.