Letter to an editor Dear editor: There are three opinions of your readers about alternative medicine that I would like to comment. One of them thinks that it depends on people to choose one treatment or another. Although I agree in some parts with this argument, patients must know the exact effects of every therapy in their bodies. The point here is that some alternative medicines may work for several problems, but they might be harmful too. We have to be sure that we are not breaking something while trying to fix some others. Alternative medicines are not under this control because they are not called medicines by the Pharmaceutical Society, that specifies the properties and indications of medicines and drugs. How many people can understand all of this? If we call them medicines, we are putting a lot of people in danger. The second opinion is about acupuncture or homeopathy as complementary therapies. In my view, these techniques might be helpful, so I totally agree with this writer, but it would be a big mistake to substitute real medicine. Why? Because I believe that they may be useful due to the placebo effect. Certainly there will not have any secondary effect because homeopathy is basically water, but even in this case, we should be in contact with our doctor or pharmacist. Finally, I totally agree with the writer who speaks about two important points. One is which is called ‘small numbers’. He is talking about the fallacy of ‘anecdotal evidence’ that is the only argument that supports alternative medicines. He also speaks about the regulation of those who play with people health. There must be a law similar to the law with alcohol or tobacco: no advertising. Moreover, there should be a label close to the names of these people and their workplaces: ‘This is not an official health center. The therapies that are running here are not substitutes of medicines and they are not proved to be effective by a scientific method’.

SMARTPHONES AND SOCIAL MEDIA Just twenty years ago nobody had smartphones. We did not share our lives in social networks and we did not speak at all about followers, stories, tweets or tags. Some of us even did not know the name of the symbol ‘at’ because we had not started using emails yet. Can we understand now our lives without social media? The first iPhone was launched in 2007. Facebook and Twitter already existed, but it was the launch of smartphones what made our lives so different. We changed the way we read news, me meet up with friends, we listen to music or we watch TV. Maybe for teenagers es impossible to think about living without the access to absolutely everything immediately. We have almost all the knowledge that humankind has created along the History in our pocket. This has changed our way of life. How many people depends emotionally on their success or repercussion in social media? How many jobs have social networks created? How many journalists work exclusively in Twitter or they might lose their jobs if their articles do not get enough ‘likes’ or ‘retweets’? The applications of smartphones are limitless. Let’s think about Education. If we could make the use of smartphones globally, we might break the digital divide. We are close to have a worldwide access to the internet, but we need to make this a real spread of education for everybody. The potencial is enormous and now we have a chance with smartphones. I believe that the combination of smartphones and social networks has changed everything. Unfortunately, the social life through our smartphones has as many applications as dangers. Lots of people are in risk of losing contact with reality, with real friends. The bullying phenomena has raised in High Schools. We have to surf between fake news. There are so much information that our main problem is to figure out where the truth is. Too many information is a bad as no information at all. But with no doubt, this new reality is the invention of our lives.