integrated medicine
In their now famous 1998 NEJM editorial about alternative medicine, Angell and Kassirer concluded that “It is time for the scientific community to stop giving alternative medicine a free ride. There cannot be two kinds of medicine — conventional and alternative. There is only medicine that has been adequately tested and medicine that has not, medicine that works and medicine that may or may not work. Once a treatment has been tested rigorously, it no longer matters whether it was considered alternative at the outset. If it is found to be reasonably safe and effective, it will be accepted. But assertions, speculation, and testimonials do not substitute for evidence. Alternative treatments should be subjected to scientific testing no less rigorous than that required for conventional treatments.”
Then and today, I entirely agree(d) with these sentiments. Years later, the comedian Tim Minchin brought it to the point: “You know what they call alternative medicine that’s been proved to work? – Medicine.” So, comedians have solved the terminology problem, but we, the experts, have not managed to get rid of the notion that there is another type of medicine. Almost 20 years after the above editorial, we still struggle to find the ideal name.
Despite their desperate demand ‘THERE CANNOT BE TWO KINDS OF MEDICINE’, Angell and Kassirer still used the word ALTERNATIVE MEDICINE. On this blog, I usually do the same. But there are many terms, and it is only fair to ask: which one is the most suitable?
- ALTERNATIVE MEDICINE is strictly speaking an umbrella term for modalities (therapy or diagnostic technique) employed as a replacement of conventional medicine; more commonly the term is used for all heterodox modalities.
- CHARLATANERY treatment by someone who professes to have expertise that he does not have.
- COMPLEMENTATY MEDICINE is an umbrella term for modalities usually employed as an adjunct to conventional healthcare.
- COMPLEMENTARY AND ALTERNATIVE MEDICINE (CAM) an umbrella term for both 1 and 3 often used because the same alternative modality can be employed either as a replacement of or an add-on to conventional medicine.
- COMPLEMENTARY AND INTEGRATIVE MEDICINE (CIM) a nonsensical term recently created by authors of an equally nonsensical BMJ review.
- DISPROVEN MEDICINE is an umbrella term for treatments that have been shown not to work (as proving a negative is usually impossible, there are not many such therapies).
- FRINGE MEDICINE is the term formerly used for alternative medicine.
- HETERODOX MEDICINE is the linguistically correct term for unorthodox medicine (this could be the most correct term but has the disadvantage that consumers are not familiar with it).
- HOLISTIC MEDICINE is healthcare that emphasises whole patient care (as all good medicine is by definition holistic, the term seems problematic).
- INTEGRATED MEDICINE describes the use of treatments that allegedly incorporate ‘the best of both worlds’, i.e. the best of alternative and conventional healthcare (integrated medicine can be shown to be little more than a smokescreen for adopting bogus treatments in conventional medicine).
- INTEGRATIVE MEDICINE is the same as 10 (10 is more common in the UK, 11 is more common in the US).
- NATURAL MEDICINE is healthcare exclusively employing the means provided by nature for treating disease.
- QUACKERY is the deliberate misinterpretation of the ability of a treatment or diagnostic technique to treat or diagnose disease (quackery exists in all types of healthcare).
- TRADITIONAL MEDICINE is healthcare that has been in use before the scientific era (the assumption is that such treatments have stood the test of time).
- UNCONVENTIONAL MEDICINE is healthcare not normally used in conventional medicine (this would include off-label use of drugs, for instance, and therefore does not differentiate well).
- UNORTHODOX MEDICINE the linguistically incorrect but often used term for healthcare that is not normally used in orthodox medicine.
- UNPROVEN MEDICINE is healthcare that lacks scientific proof (many conventional therapies fall in this category too).
These terms and explanations (mostly my own) are meant to bring out clearly that:
- none of them is perfect,
- none has ever been clearly defined,
- none describes the area completely,
- none is without considerable overlap to other terms,
- none is really useful.
My conclusion, after pondering about these terms for many years (it can be an intensely boring issue!), is that the best solution would be to abandon all umbrella terms (see Angell and Kassirer above). Alas, that hardly seems practical when running a blog on the subject. I think therefore that I will continue to (mostly) use the term ALTERNATIVE MEDICINE (consumers understand it best, in my experience) … unless, of course, someone has a better idea.
I have been alerted to the fact that my former medical school in Munich at one of Germany’s highest-ranked universities is currently running an elective course in homeopathy. For those who do not read German (the original announcement [apparently posted all over Munich university hospitals] is copied below), it teaches the use of homeopathy in/for:
- INTERNAL MEDICINE
- NEONATOLOGY
- SINUSITIS
- RECURRENT OTITIS MEDIA
- INSOMNIA
- PALLIATION OF RESPIRATORY PROBLEMS
- PROSTATE CANCER
- POST-TRAUMATIC SYNDROMES
- BIPOLAR DISEASE
- MULTIMORBID PATIENTS WITH UVEITIS
- COUGH
- DISEASES OF THE FEMALE BREAST
- SUPPORTIVE CANCER CARE
- PAEDIATRIC ASTHMA
The course is being organised by Dr. med. Sigrid Kruse, von Haunersches Kinderspital des Klinikums der Universität München in co-operation with the ‘Landesverband Bayern des Deutschen Zentralvereins homöopathischer Ärzte’. The lecturers of this course seem to be mostly homeopaths from practices in and around Munich.
This article provides further explanations:
The project „Homeopathy in pediatrics“ was established in the Dr. von Hauner’s Children’s Hospital University of Munich in 1995 to integrate homeopathy into a university hospital. Selected children (outpatients and in the wards) are treated conventionally and homeopathically. The Karl and Veronica Carstens-Foundation initially financed the project over six years. An association of parents, whose children were treated for cancer, funded the project for one year. Since 2002, for the first time in Germany, the National Health Insurance is providing the financial background for two consultants for Homeopathy at this University hospital.
Who are we?
Dr. Mira Dorcsi-Ulrich, who initiated the project and carries out the supervision. She is a pediatrician in her own practice with 23 years of experience.
Dr. Sigrid Kruse has managed to integrate homeopathy into the clinic, starting at first in 1995 as a resident for pediatrics. Now she fulfills the requests of doctors and parents in the wards demanding concomitant homeopathic treatment.
Dr. Christian Lucae mainly treats the outpatients while focussing on his research project with children showing attention-deficit-hyperactivity-syndrome (ADHS).
Concomitant homeopathic therapy was successful in the following cases: intracerebral bleeding 3rd degree in premature babies, drug withdrawal in neonates addicted mothers, epilepsy, handicapped children, ADHS, migraine, tic, recurrent infections, asthma and atopic eczema, complications in wound healing and other problems. Homeopathic treatment of children parallel to conventional methods is particularly well accepted in the treatment of cancer. The side effects of oncological treatment like vomiting and stomatitis can be relieved, aggressions and anxiety intercepted and life quality improved.
END OF QUOTE
Which journal with a modicum of self-respect or rigor allows a homeopath to publish anything like the last paragraph without providing a jot of evidence? The answer is the ‘ALLGEMEINE HOMOEOPATHISCHE ZEITUNG’ – no further explanation needed, I think.
Courses like the one above, run at university level, make me first a little speechless and then more than a little angry. Medical schools should have other roles than teaching impressionable students things that fly in the face of science and evidence. They should guide them to become responsible doctors not misguide them to turn into irresponsible quacks. The fact that this comes from the medical school where I, many years ago, studied, graduated, worked and made both my MD and PhD theses renders the whole thing painfully sad for me personally.
But let’s not get depressed… ‘always look on the bright side of life’!!!
Luckily, there are glimpses of a bright side here. For instance, the fact that doctor Quak is one of the lecturers of this course (see below) is not without jollity, I must admit. Also amusing – at least to me – is be the vision of Dr. med. Mira Dorcsi-Ulrich (see below) standing in front of her students explaining the findings of one of the few RCT of individualised homeopathy for paediatric asthma. This study from my team found no evidence that “adjunctive homeopathic remedies, as prescribed by experienced homeopathic practitioners, are superior to placebo in improving the quality of life of children with mild to moderate asthma in addition to conventional treatment in primary care.”
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Here is the German original announcement of the course:
RINGVORLESUNG IM WINTERSEMESTER 2016/2017
HOMÖOPATHIE VON DER THEORIE ZUR PRAXIS MIT PRAXISBEISPIELEN UND PATIENTENVORSTELLUNGEN
1. 20.10.2016 … IN DER INNEREN MEDIZIN: MÖGLICHKEITEN UND GRENZEN Dr. med. Ulf Riker
2. 27.10.2016 … IN DER NEONATOLOGIE: IKTERUS, ASPHYXIE UND UNRUHE Dr. med. Monika Grasser
3. 03.11.2016 … BEI PATIENTEN MIT SINUSITIS Dr. med. Michael Schreiner
4. 10.11.2016 … BEI KINDERN MIT REZIDIVIERENDER OTITIS MEDIA Dr. med. Christian Lucae
5. 17.11.2016 … BEI SCHLAFSTÖRUNGEN Dr. med. Brigitte Seul
6. 24.11.2016 … BEI PALLIATIV-PATIENTEN MIT RESPIRATORISCHEN PROBLEMEN Herbert Michalczyk
7. 01.12.2016 … IN DER BEGLEITUNG VON PATIENTEN MIT EINEM PROSTATA-CARCINOM Uwe Kraemer-Hoenes
8. 08.12.2016 … BEI POSTTRAUMATISCHER BELASTUNGS-STÖRUNG Dr. med. Ingrid Pfanzelt
9. 15.12.2016 … BEI EINER PATIENTIN MIT BIPOLARER AFFEKTIVER STÖRUNG Dr. med. Stephan Gerke
10. 12.01.2017 … BEI EINEM MULTIMORBIDEN PATIENTEN MIT UVEITIS Dr. med. Thomas Quak
11. 19.01.2017 … BEI PATIENTEN MIT HUSTEN Dr. med. Renate Grötsch
12. 26.01.2017 … BEI ERKRANKUNGEN DER WEIBLICHEN BRUST Dr. med. Ute Bullemer
13. 02.02.2017 … IN DER BEGLEITUNG VON KREBSPATIENTEN MIT Q-POTENZEN Miclós Takács
15. 09.02.2017… BEI KINDERN MIT ASTHMA BRONCHIALE Dr. med. Mira Dorcsi-Ulrich
Organisation: Dr. med. Sigrid Kruse, Dr. von Haunersches Kinderspital des Klinikums der Universität München
E-Mail: [email protected] in Zusammenarbeit mit dem Landesverband Bayern des Deutschen Zentralvereins homöopathischer Ärzte,
What? Holistic dentistry? Dentists drilling holes in our teeth?
No, it is something quite different; this article tries to explain it in some detail:
… holistic dentistry involves an awareness of dental care as it relates to the entire person, with the belief that patients should be provided with information to make choices to enhance their personal health and wellness…
Some of the philosophies include:
— Alternatives to amalgam/mercury fillings
— Knowing and following proper mercury removal
— Multi-disciplinary, or integrated, health care
— Nutritional and preventive therapies and temporomandibular joint disorder therapy.
Personally, I find this sounds a bit like a string of platitudes designed to lure in new customers and boost the dental business. An awareness that the mouth and its content is part of the whole body is not a philosophy; alternatives to amalgam have existed since decades and are used by ‘normal’ dentists, integrated health care is a con, nutrition is part of conventional healthcare and temporomandibular joint disorders are most certainly an issue for conventional dentistry. Perhaps another article might do a better job at explaining what ‘holistic dentistry’ is all about:
…Holistic dentistry is not considered a specialty of the dental profession, but a philosophy of practice. For those dentists who take the concept to its core, holistic dentistry includes an understanding of each patient’s total well-being, from their specific cosmetic, structural, functional, and health-related dental needs to the concerns of their total body and its wellness. Holistic dentists tend to attract very health-conscious individuals.
Some of the things holistic dentists are especially concerned about are the mercury found in traditional amalgam dental fillings, fluoride in drinking water, and the potential relationship of root canal therapy to disease in other parts of the body. Holistic dentists’ primary focus is on the underlying reasons why a person has dental concerns, and then help correct those issues by strategic changes in diet, hygiene and lifestyle habits.
Natural remedies to prevent and arrest decay and periodontal (gum) disease can also be utilized. Many holistic dentists are skilled in advanced levels of nutritional physiology and use natural means of healing patients, often avoiding the more standard use of systemic antibiotics, pain control management and surgical procedures.
This partly describes what good dentists have always done and partly it seems to be nonsense. For instance, natural remedies for tooth decay and gum disease? Really? Which remedies precisely? I know of no such treatments that are backed by sound evidence. Let me try a third quote; this one is directly from the horse’s mouth (pun intended), i. e. from a holistic dentist:
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Holistic Dentistry, many times referred to today as “Biological” or “Biocompatible” Dentistry, is based on the concept that the mouth and oral structures are an integrated part of the body. It is a paradigm or a philosophy within dentistry and not a specialty.
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 As holistic dentists we recognize that the mouth is connected to the body and that it cannot be viewed as an independent system. It is a reflection of the overall health of the body and much can be done to impact it both positively and negatively. Like many conventional dentists we first look to see if the foundation is solid. Are your gums bleeding and swollen? Is this a reflection of poor nutritional habits? Or are there signs of infection and disease? Are the teeth moving? Is there a stable bite? Can you chew comfortably on both sides of your mouth? Do you get frequent headaches? Are your teeth in harmony with your jaw joint? Are there signs of oral cancer? |
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| We check the condition of the teeth themselves. Is there more filling than tooth structure? Are the fillings made from the most non-toxic materials available? Are they supporting the bite correctly? Will they be there in five years? Is there decay? Does your diet support your oral health? Then together with our patients we formulate a plan to determine what we can do to help you achieve a stable and healthy mouth. This examination can be a first visit scenario in many dental offices. |
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| Holistic dentists also make fillings, take x-rays and use anesthesia to numb your mouth. However we only use mercury-free white fillings. More importantly, we take extra precautions when removing your old silver fillings to minimize your exposure to mercury vapor. Why don’t we use Mercury? Mercury is one of the heavy metal toxins implicated in Alzheimer’s Disease and autism. However according to the American Dental Association, it is a safe filling material and, as recently as two years ago, the Florida board of dentistry attempted to pass legislation to prevent doctors from advertising as mercury-free dentists.
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See what I mean?
This is more of the same again. PHILOSOPHY? PARADIGM? REUNITE WITH DISENFRANCHISED PARTS OF THE BODY? The more I read about holistic dentistry, the more I suspect that it is the equivalent of integrative/integrated medicine: a smoke-screen for smuggling bogus treatments into conventional care, a bonanza of BS to attract gullible customers, a distraction for highjacking a few core principles from real medicine/dentistry without getting noticed, and a dubious con for maximizing income.
‘Holistic dentistry’ makes not much more sense than holistic banking, holistic hairdressing, holistic pedicure, holistic car-repair, etc., etc. Dentistry, medicine, hairdressing, etc. are either good, not so good, or bad. The term holistic as it is currently used in dentistry is just a gimmick, I am afraid.
If I am wrong, please tell me so, and explain what, in your view, ‘holistic dentistry’ means.
This is your occasion to meet some of the most influential and progressive people in health care today! An occasion too good to be missed! The future of medicine is integrated – we all know that, of course. Here you can learn some of the key messages and techniques from the horses’ mouths. Book now before the last places have gone; at £300, this is a bargain!!!
The COLLEGE OF MEDICINE announced the event with the following words:
This two-day course led by Professor David Peters and Dr Michael Dixon will provide an introduction to integrated health and care. It is open to all clinicians but should be particularly helpful for GPs and nurses, who are interested in looking beyond the conventional biomedical box.
The course will include sessions on lifestyle approaches, social prescribing, mind/body therapies and cover most mainstream complementary therapies.
The aim of the course will be to demonstrate our healing potential beyond prescribing and referral, to provide information that will be useful in discussing non-conventional treatment options with patients and to teach some basic skills that can be used in clinical practice. The latter will include breathing techniques, basic manipulation and acupuncture, mind/body therapies including self-hypnosis and a limited range of herbal remedies. There will also be an opportunity to discuss how those attending might begin to integrate their everyday clinical practice.
The course will qualify for Continuing Professional Development hours and can provide a first stage towards a Fellowship of the College.
Both Dixon and Peters have been featured on this blog before. I have also commented regularly on the wonders of integrated (or was it integrative?) medicine. And I have even blogged about the College of Medicine and what it stands for. So readers of this blog know about the players as well as the issues for this event. Now it surely must be time to learn more from those who are much better placed than I to teach about bogus claims, phoney theories and unethical practices.
What are you waiting for? Book now – they would love to have a few rationalists in the audience, I am sure.
Would you like to see a much broader range of approaches such as nutrition, mindfulness, complementary therapies and connecting people to green spaces become part of mainstream healthcare?
No?
Well, let me tell you about this exciting new venture anyway!
It is being promoted by Dr Dixon’s ‘College of Medicine’ and claims to be “the only accredited Integrative Medicine diploma currently available in the UK… [It] will provide you with an accredited qualification as an integrative medicine practitioner. The Diploma is certified by Crossfields Institute and supported by the College of Medicine and is the only one currently available in the UK. IM is a holistic, evidence-based approach which makes intelligent use of all available therapeutic choices to achieve optimal health and resilience for our patients. The model embraces conventional approaches as well as other modalities centred on lifestyle and mind-body techniques like mindfulness and nutrition.”
Dr Dixon? Yes, this Dr Michael Dixon.
College of Medicine? Yes, this College of Medicine.
Integrative medicine? Yes, this cunning plan to adopt quackery into real medicine which I have repeatedly written about, for instance here, here and here.
Crossfields Institute? Yes this Crossfields Institute which promotes the Steiner/’Waldorf quackery and has Simon Fielding as the chair of trustees.
Simon Fielding? Yes, the Simon Fielding who “devoted much of his professional life to securing the recognition of osteopathy as an independent primary contact healthcare profession and this culminated in the passing of the Osteopaths Act in 1993. He was appointed by ministers as the first chair of the General Osteopathic Council responsible for bringing the Osteopaths Act into force… He is currently vice-chair of the board of trustees of The College of Medicine… In addition Simon has… served as a long term trustee on the boards of The Prince of Wales’s Foundation for Integrated Health… and was the founder chair of the Council for Anthroposophical Health and Social Care.”
You must admit, this IS exciting!
Now you want to know what modules are within the Diploma? Here they are:
- The Modern Context of IM: Philosophy, History and Changing Times in Medicine
- IM Approaches and Management of Conditions (part 1)
- Holistic Assessment: The Therapeutic Relationship, Motivational Interviewing & Clinical Decision Making in Integrative Medicine
- Critical Appraisal of Medicine and IM Research
- Holistic assessment: Social prescribing, a Community Approach in Integrative Medicine
- Managing a Dynamic IM Practice and Developing Leadership Skills
- IM Approaches and Management of Conditions (part 2)
- Independent Study on Innovation in Integrative Medicine
Sounds terrific, and it reminds me a lot of another course Michael Dixon tried to set up 13 years ago in Exeter. As it concerned me intimately, I wrote about this extraordinary experience in my memoir; here is a short excerpt:
…in July 2003… I saw an announcement published in the newsletter of the Prince of Wales’ Foundation for Integrated Health:
“The Peninsula Medical School aims to become the UK’s first medical school to include integrated medicine at postgraduate level. The school also plans to extend the current range and depth of programmes offered by including healthcare ethics and legislation. Professor John Tooke, dean of the Peninsula Medical School, said: ‘The inclusion of integrated medicine is a patient driven development. Increasingly the public is turning to the medical profession for information about complementary medicines. This programme will play an important role in developing critical understanding of a wide range of therapies’.”
When I stumbled on this announcement I was taken aback. Is Tooke envisaging a course for me to run? Has he forgotten to tell me about it? When I inquired, Tooke informed me that the medical school planned to offer a postgraduate “Pathway in Integrated Health” which had been initiated by Dr Michael Dixon, a general practitioner who had at that stage become one of the UK’s most outspoken proponents of spiritual healing and other dubious forms of alternative medicine, and for this reason was apparently very well regarded by Prince Charles.
A few days after I received this amazing news, Dr Dixon arrived at my office and explained with visible embarrassment that Prince Charles had expressed his desire to establish such a course in Exeter. His Royal Highness had already facilitated its funding which, in fact, came from Nelson’s, the manufacturer of homoeopathic remedies. The day-to-day running of the course was to be put into the hands of the ex-director of the Centre for Complementary Health Studies (CCHS), the very unit I had struggled – and even paid – to be separated from almost a decade ago because of its overtly anti-scientific agenda. The whole thing had been in the planning for several months. I was, it seemed, the last to know – but now that I had learnt about it, Dixon and Tooke urged me to contribute to this course by giving a few lectures.
I could no more comply with this request than fly. Apart from anything else, I was opposed in principle to the concept of “integration.” As I saw it, “integrating” quackery with genuine, science-based medicine was nothing less than a profound betrayal of the ethical basis of medical practice. By putting its imprimatur on this course, and by offering it under the auspices of a mainstream medical school, my institution would be encouraging the dangerous idea of equivalence – i.e., the notion that alternative and mainstream medicine were merely two parallel but equally valid and effective methods of treating illness.
To add insult to injury, the course was to be sponsored by a major manufacturer of homoeopathic remedies. In all conscience, this seemed to me to be the last straw. Study after study carried out by my unit had found homoeopathy to be not only conceptually absurd but also therapeutically worthless. If we did not take a stand on this issue, we might just as well all give up and go home…
END OF QUOTE FROM MY MEMOIR
Dixon’s Exeter course was not a brilliant success; I think it folded soon after it was started. Well, better luck up the road in Bristol, Michael – I am sure there must be a market for quackery somewhere!
When a leading paper like the FRANKFURTER ALLGEMEINE ZEITUNG (FAZ) publishes in its science pages (!!!) a long article on homeopathy, this is bound to raise some eyebrows, particularly when the article in question was written by the chair of the German Association of Homeopaths (Deutscher Zentralverein homöopathischer Ärzte) and turns out to be a completely one-sided and misleading white-wash of homeopathy. The article (entitled DIE ZEIT DES GEGENEINANDERS IST VORBEI which roughly translates into THE DAYS OF FIGHTING ARE OVER) is in German, of course, so I will translate the conclusions for you here:
The critics [of homeopathy] … view the current insights of conventional pharmacology as some type of dogma. For them it is unthinkable that a high potency can cause a self-regulatory and thus healing effect on a sick person. Homeopathic doctors are in their eyes “liars”. Based on this single argument, the critics affirm further that therefore no positive studies can exist which prove the efficacy of homeopathy beyond placebo. After all, high potencies “contain nothing”. The big success of homeopathy is a sore point for them, because efficacious high potencies contradict their seemingly rational-materialistic world view. Research into homeopathy should be stopped, the critics say. This tune is played unisono today by critics who formerly claimed that homeopaths block the research into their therapy. The fact is: homeopathic doctors are today in favour of research, even with their own funds, whenever possible. Critics meanwhile demand a ban.
In the final analysis, homeopathic doctors do not want a fight but a co-operation of the methods. Homeopathy creates new therapeutic options for the management of acute to serious chronic diseases. In this, homeopathy is self-evidently not a panacea: the physician decides with every patient individually, whether homeopathy is to be employed as an alternative, as an adjunct, or not at all. Conventional diagnostic techniques are always part of the therapy.
END OF QUOTE
[For those readers who read German, here is the German original:Die Kritiker … betrachten die heutigen Erkenntnisse der konventionellen Pharmakologie als eine Art Dogma. Für sie ist es undenkbar, dass eine Hochpotenz einen selbstregulativen und damit heilenden Effekt bei einem kranken Menschen auslösen kann. Homöopathische Ärzte sind in ihren Augen “Lügner”. Von diesem einen Argument ausgehend, wird dann weiter behauptet, dass es deshalb gar keine positiven Studien geben könne, die eine Wirksamkeit der Homöopathie über einen Placebo-Effekt hinaus belegen. Schließlich sei in Hochpotenzen “nichts drin”. Der große Erfolg der Homöopathie ist ihnen ein Dorn im Auge, weil wirksame Hochpotenzen ihrem vermeintlich rational-materialistischen Weltbild widersprechen. Die Erforschung der Homöopathie solle gestoppt werden, heißt es. Unisono wird diese Melodie von Kritikern heute gespielt, von ebenjenen Kritikern, die früher behaupteten, die homöopathischen Ärzte sperrten sich gegen die Erforschung ihrer Heilmethode. Fakt ist: Heute setzen sich homöopathische Ärzte für die Forschung ein, auch mit eigenen Mitteln, soweit es ihnen möglich ist. Kritiker fordern mittlerweile das Verbot.
Letztlich geht es homöopathischen Ärzten allerdings nicht um ein Gegeneinander, sondern um ein Miteinander der Methoden. Durch die Homöopathie entstehen neue Therapieoptionen bei der Behandlung von akuten bis hin zu schweren chronischen Erkrankungen. Dabei ist die ärztliche Homöopathie selbstverständlich kein Allheilmittel: Bei jedem erkrankten Patienten entscheidet der Arzt individuell, ob er die Homöopathie alternativ oder ergänzend zur konventionellen Medizin einsetzt – oder eben gar nicht. Die konventionelle Diagnostik ist stets Teil der Behandlung.]
While translating this short text, I had to smile; here are some of the reasons why:
- ‘conventional pharmacology’ is a funny term; do homeopaths think that there also is an unconventional pharmacology?
- ‘dogma’… who is dogmatic, conventional medicine which changes almost every month, or homeopathy which has remained essentially unchanged since 200 years?
- ‘liars’ – yes, that’s a correct term for people who use untruths for promoting their business!
- ‘Based on this single argument’… oh, I know quite a few more!
- ‘doctors are today in favour of research’ – I have recently blogged about the research activity of homeopaths.
- ‘co-operation of the methods’ – I have also blogged repeatedly about the dangerous nonsense of ‘integrative medicine’ and called it ‘one of the most colossal deceptions of healthcare today’. Hahnemann would have ex-communicated the author for this suggestion, he called homeopaths who combined the two methods ‘traitors’!!!
- ‘new therapeutic options’… neither new nor therapeutic, I would counter; to be accepted as ‘therapeutic’, one would need a solid proof of efficacy.
- ’employed as an alternative’ – would this be ethical?
- ‘Conventional diagnostic techniques are always part of the therapy’… really? I was taught that diagnosis and treatment are two separate things.
There were many comments by readers of the FAZ. Their vast majority expressed bewilderment at the idea that the chair of the German Association of Homeopaths has been given such a platform to dangerously mislead the public. I have to say that I fully agree with this view: the promotion of bogus treatments can only be a disservice to public health.
“When orthodox medicine has nothing more to offer” is the title of an article by Dr Elizabeth Thompson, a UK medical homeopath. The article was written years ago, but it is still an excellent example for disclosing the dangerously false and deeply unethical reasoning used by many alternative practitioners. The notion that all sorts of disproven treatments like homeopathy are justified when orthodox medicine has nothing more to offer is so very prevalent that I decided to do this post analysing it.
In the following, you see the most relevant sections of Dr Thompson’s original article (in normal print) and my brief comments (in brackets and in bold):
…Some people come when conventional treatments can no longer offer them anything to save their lives. This is a frightening time for them and although the homeopathic approach may not offer a cure at this late stage of their illness (Is she implying that, in some cases, homeopathy can cure cancer?), it can often offer hope of a different kind. (Surely, one does not need homeopathy for giving patients hope). Sometimes it helps people to outlive the prognosis given to them by months or even years. (A prognosis is not a precise time of death; it is based on statistics and therefore depicts a likelihood, not a certainty. Thus patients outlive their prognosis all the time regardless of treatments.) Sometimes it helps them need less (less than what? there is no control group and therefore the statement seems nonsensical) in the way of conventional medicine including pain killers and offers them continuing support despite progressive disease (is she trying to say that in conventional medicine patients with progressive disease do not get continuing support?).
As a doctor working in both conventional and complementary cancer care I have learned the importance of integrating these two perspectives (the integration of unproven therapies into EBM can only render the latter less effective). Ideally the doctor practising homeopathy would work as an integral part of a much wider team which would include family members, nurses, general practitioners, oncologists, surgeons, palliative physicians and other complementary therapists (the concept of a multi-disciplinary team for cancer is one from conventional medicine where it has long been routine). It is disappointing sometimes to see that other healthcare professionals can be unsupportive of a person’s desire to use complementary therapies and for some people the knowledge that the team is not working together can cause doubt and insecurity (for the majority of patients, however, it might be reassuring to know that their oncology-team is evidence-based).
Some patients come at the beginning of their diagnosis wanting to support their bodies with gentler (homeopathic remedies are not gentler, they are ineffective) approaches and help themselves recover from some difficult and powerful treatments such as chemotherapy and radiotherapy (Why are they being told that alternative therapies are effective in achieving these aims when there is no good evidence to show that this is true? Isn’t that unethical?). As well as using homeopathic medicines (no good evidence of effectiveness!!!), the GHH also has experience in using Mistletoe which is given by injection and has been shown to stimulate the group of white cells whose numbers can be depleted during chemotherapy and radiotherapy (also no good evidence that it works clinically!!!).
Other patients come when they have finished most of their treatments but may still not be feeling well despite being given the all clear by their doctors (same again: no good evidence!!!)…
One wonderful aspect of the homeopathic approach is that it can be a very important opportunity to help someone re-evaluate their life and their health (We don’t need to prescribe placebos for that, this aim is better reached by employing a clinical psychologist).
Sometimes hurts in the past have never been healed and sitting with someone as they describe difficult experiences can be itself therapeutic. Combining this therapeutic listening time with substances from nature that gently stimulate the body’s own healing potential (where is the evidence for that claim?) can be an approach that through patient demand and research (what research?) we can demonstrate is really worth offering to many more people…
END OF QUOTE
This text shows in an exemplary fashion how desperate patients can be convinced to make dramatically wrong choices. If you read Dr Thompson’s text without my comments, it probably sounds fairly reasonable to many people. I can understand why patients and carers end up thinking that homeopathy or other disproven therapies are reasonable options WHEN ORTHODOX MEDICINE HAS NOTHING MORE TO OFFER.
But the claim of homeopaths and others that mainstream medicine has, in certain cases, nothing more to offer is demonstrably wrong. Supportive and palliative care are established and important parts of conventional medicine. To deny this fact amounts to a lie! The implied scenario where a patient is told by her oncology team: “sorry but we cannot do anything else for you”, does quite simply not exist. The argument is nothing else but a straw-man – and a vicious one at that.
Moreover, the subsequent argument of homeopaths, “as ‘they’ have given you up, we now offer you our effective homeopathic remedies”, is not supported by good evidence. In other words, one lie is added to another. To call this unethical, would be the understatement of the year, I think.
The ‘ALT MED HALL OF FAME’ is filling up very nicely. Remember: so far, I have honoured the following individuals for (almost) never publishing anything else but positive results (in brackets are the main alternative therapies of each researcher and the countries where they are currently based):
Peter Fisher (homeopathy, UK)
Simon Mills (herbal medicine, UK)
Gustav Dobos (various, Germany)
Claudia Witt (homeopathy, Germany and Switzerland)
George Lewith (acupuncture, UK)
John Licciardone (osteopathy, US)
Today, I am about to admit another female to our club of alt med elite (the group was in danger of getting a bit too male-dominated) : Prof Nicola Robinson from the School of Health and Social Care, London South Bank University, UK. She may not be known to many of my readers; therefore I better provide some extra information. Her own institution wrote her up as follows:
Professor Nicola Robinson joined London South Bank University in March 2011 as Professor of Traditional Chinese Medicine and Integrated Health. Previously she was Professor of Complementary Medicine, University of West London. Professor Robinson’s former posts include; Consultant Epidemiologist Brent and Harrow Health Authority, Senior lecturer in Primary Healthcare University College London, Lecturer at Charing Cross and Westminster Hospital Medical School and Research Fellow at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.
She graduated from Leicester University with a BSc (Hons) in Biological Sciences, and her PhD from Manchester University was in Immunology. She has been a registered acupuncturist since 1982. In 1985 Nicola was awarded an RD Lawrence Fellowship by Diabetes UK and in 1993 she was given an Honorary Membership of the Faculty of Public Health Medicine for her contribution to epidemiology and health services research.
In 2004, Nicola was awarded a Winston Churchill Traveling Fellowship to visit China, to explore educational and research initiatives in Traditional Chinese Medicine at various universities and hospitals. Nicola has a keen interest in complementary medicine and its assimilation and integration into mainstream health care and has been involved in various research initiatives with professional groups.
Nicola has written over 200 scientific articles in peer reviewed journals, prepared scientific reports and presented research at local, national and international conferences. She is the Editor in Chief of the European Journal of Integrative Medicine (Elsevier) as well as being on the editorial boards of other scientific journals. She has had considerable research experience in various aspects of public health that has covered a wide range of subject arenas including: complementary medicine, cancer, patient public engagement, mental health, diabetes, coronary heart disease, HIV, cystic fibrosis and psychosocial aspects of disease. She has various research links in China and has had successfully supervised both Chinese and UK PhD students.
As always, I conducted a Medline search for ‘Robinson N, alternative medicine’, which generated 50 articles. I excluded those articles that were not on alternative medicine (probably from someone by the same name) and those that had no abstract with conclusions about the value of alternative medicine. Of the rest, I included the most recent 10 papers. Below I show these articles with the appropriate links and the conclusion (in bold).
Hu XY, Chen NN, Chai QY, Yang GY, Trevelyan E, Lorenc A, Liu JP, Robinson N.
Chin J Integr Med. 2015 Oct 26. [Epub ahead of print]
Integrative treatment that combines CAM with conventional therapies appeared to have beneficial effects on pain and function. However, evidence is limited due to heterogeneity, the relatively small numbers available for subgroup analyses and the low methodological quality of the included trials. Identification of studies of true IM was not possible due to lack of reporting of the intervention details.
Lorenc A, Banarsee R, Robinson N.
Complement Ther Clin Pract. 2014 Feb;20(1):65-9. doi: 10.1016/j.ctcp.2013.10.003. Epub 2013 Oct 15
Complementary Ttherapies may provide important support and treatment options for HIV disease, but cost effectiveness requires further evaluation.
A review of the use of complementary and alternative medicine and HIV: issues for patient care.
Lorenc A, Robinson N.
AIDS Patient Care STDS. 2013 Sep;27(9):503-10. doi: 10.1089/apc.2013.0175. Review
Clinicians, particularly nurses, should consider discussing CAM with patients as part of patient-centered care, to encourage valuable self-management and ensure patient safety.
Meditative movement for respiratory function: a systematic review.
Lorenc AB, Wang Y, Madge SL, Hu X, Mian AM, Robinson N.
Respir Care. 2014 Mar;59(3):427-40. doi: 10.4187/respcare.02570. Epub 2013 Jul 23. Review
The available evidence does not support meditative movement for patients with CF, and there is very limited evidence for respiratory function in healthy populations. The available studies had heterogeneous populations and provided inadequate sampling information, so clinically relevant conclusions cannot be drawn. Well powered, randomized studies of meditative movement are needed.
Huang W, Taylor A, Howie J, Robinson N.
J Altern Complement Med. 2012 Mar;18(3):242-50. doi: 10.1089/acm.2010.0325. Epub 2012 Mar 2.
This pilot study suggests that TCA could reduce stress and increase the morning rise of the cortisol profile; however, this was not distinguishable from the effect of attention only.
The evidence for Shiatsu: a systematic review of Shiatsu and acupressure.
Robinson N, Lorenc A, Liao X.
BMC Complement Altern Med. 2011 Oct 7;11:88. doi: 10.1186/1472-6882-11-88. Review.
Evidence is improving in quantity, quality and reporting, but more research is needed, particularly for Shiatsu, where evidence is poor. Acupressure may be beneficial for pain, nausea and vomiting and sleep.
Autogenic Training as a behavioural approach to insomnia: a prospective cohort study.
Bowden A, Lorenc A, Robinson N.
Prim Health Care Res Dev. 2012 Apr;13(2):175-85. doi: 10.1017/S1463423611000181. Epub 2011 Jul 26
This study suggests that AT may improve sleep patterns for patients with various health conditions and reduce anxiety and depression, both of which may result from and cause insomnia. Improvements in sleep patterns occurred despite, or possibly due to, not focusing on sleep during training. AT may provide an approach to insomnia that could be incorporated into primary care.
Traditional and complementary approaches to child health.
Robinson N, Lorenc A.
Nurs Stand. 2011 May 25-31;25(38):39-47.
Health visitors had greater knowledge and understanding of TCA than practice nurses or nurse practitioners, often informed by patients and personal experience. Health visitors reported that they discussed TCA with families using a culturally competent and family-centred approach to explain the advantages and disadvantages of TCA. This is probably made possible by their ongoing, close relationship with parents in the home environment and their focus on child health. Other primary care nurses were reluctant to engage with patients on TCA because of concerns about liability, lack of information and practice and policy constraints. Practice nurses and nurse practitioners may be able to improve their holistic and patient-centred practice by learning from health visitors’ experience, particularly cultural differences and safety issues. Nurses and their professional bodies may need to explore how this can be achieved given the time-limited and focused nature of practice-based consultations.
Ronan P, Robinson N, Harbinson D, Macinnes D.
Zhong Xi Yi Jie He Xue Bao. 2011 May;9(5):503-14
The study indicates that patients diagnosed with schizophrenia would benefit from acupuncture treatment alongside conventional treatment.
Huang W, Howie J, Taylor A, Robinson N.
Complement Ther Clin Pract. 2011 Feb;17(1):16-21. doi: 10.1016/j.ctcp.2010.05.013. Epub 2010 Jun 19
This pilot study suggests that TCA may be successful in treating the symptoms of stress, through a combination of specific and non-specific effects; but may not relate directly to how a person perceives their stress.
I think we have here a very clear case: Prof Robinson has investigated a range of very different alternative therapies for vastly different conditions. She drew 9 positive and one negative conclusions. This renders her ‘Trustworthiness Index’ truly remarkable. I am therefore confident that we all can agree to admit her to the ALT MED HALL OF FAME.
On this blog, I have repeatedly tried to explain why integrative (or integrated) medicine is such a deceptive nonsense; see for instance here, here and here. Today, I have reason to make another attempt: The International Congress on Integrative Medicine & Health.
In 2012, I published an analysis of the ‘3rd European Congress of Integrated Medicine’ which had taken place in December 2010 in Berlin (in Europe they call it ‘integrated’ and in the US ‘integrative’ medicine). For this purpose, I simply read all the 222 abstracts and labelled them according to their contents. The results showed that the vast majority were on unproven alternative therapies and none on conventional treatments.
The abstracts from the International Congress on Integrative Medicine & Health (ICIMH, Green Valley Ranch Resort, Las Vegas, Nevada, USA, May 17–20, 2016) which were just published provide me with the opportunity to check whether this situation has changed. There were around 400 abstracts, and I did essentially the same type of analysis (attributing one subject area to each abstract). And what a tedious task this was! I spotted just two articles of interest, and will report about them shortly.
This time I also assessed whether the conclusions of each paper were positive (expressing something favourable about the subject at hand), negative (expressing something negative about the subject at hand) or neither of the two (surveys, for instance, rarely show positive or negative results).
Here are the results: mind-body therapies were the top subject with 49 papers, followed by acupuncture (44), herbal medicine (37), integrative medicine (36), chiropractic and other manual therapies (26), TCM (19), methodological issues (16), animal and other pre-clinical investigations (15) and Tai Chi (5). The rest of the abstracts were on a diverse array of other subjects. There was not a single paper on a conventional therapy and only 4 focussed on risk assessments.
The 36 articles on integrative medicine deserve perhaps a special mention. The majority of these papers were about using alternative therapies as an add-on to conventional care. They focussed on the alternative therapies used and usually concluded that this ‘integration’ was followed by good results. None of these papers discussed integrative medicine and its assumptions critically, and none of these investigations cast any doubt about the assumption that integrative medicine is a positive thing.
I should also mention that my attributions of the subject areas were not always straight forward. I allowed myself only one subject per paper, but there were, of course, many that could be categorised in more than one subject area ( for instance, a paper on an herbal medicine might be in that category, or in TCM or in pre-clinical). So I tried to attribute the subject that seemed to dominate the abstract in question.
My analysis according to the direction of the conclusions was equally revealing: I categorised 260 papers as positive, 5 as negative and 116 as neither of the two. That means for every negative result there were 52 positive ones. I find this most remarkable.
Essentially, my two analyses of conference abstracts published 6 years apart show the same phenomenon: on the ‘scientific level’, integrative medicine is not about the ‘best of both worlds’ (i. e. the best alternative medicine has to offer integrated with the best conventional medicine offers) – the slogan by which advocates of integrative medicine usually try to ‘sell’ their dubious approach to us. It is almost exclusively about alternative therapies which advocates of integrative medicine aim to smuggle into mainstream healthcare. Critical analysis seems to be unwelcome in this area, and – perhaps worse of all – in the last 6 years, there does not seem to have been any improvement.
And that’s just on the ‘scientific level’, as I said. If you wonder what is happening on the ‘practical level’, you will find that, in the realm of integrative medicine, every quackery under the sun is being promoted at often exorbitant prices to the often gullible and always unsuspecting public. If you don’t believe me, search for ‘integrative medicine clinic’ on the Internet; I promise, you will be surprised!
Personally, I am sometimes amused by the sheer idiocy of all this, but more often I am enraged and ask myself:
- Why are we allowing quackery to make such a spectacular come-back?
- Why is hardly anyone voicing strong objections?
- Is it not our ethical duty to do something about it and try to prevent the worse?
Yes, I think he does deserve to join this fast-expanding club which, so far, consists of the following people:
They have been admitted mostly because they have demonstrated that they exclusively or mostly publish positive results about alternative medicine. Therefore, their ‘TRUSTWORTHYNESS INDEX’ is remarkable.
With Peter Fisher, things are a little different, and in a way much more convincing. He also has a remarkable publication record, of course. As the Queen’s homeopath, he is a stark defender of homeopathy. He has just under 100 Medline-listed articles in this area, and, if I am not mistaken, only one of them cast any doubt on the effectiveness of homeopathy.
Peter is also the long-term editor of the journal HOMEOPATHY, and he used this position to fire me from its editorial board. Furthermore, he has been shown to have an unusual attitude towards telling the truth. But the decider for his admission to THE ALT MED HALL OF FAME was the following recent interview for NATURALLYSAVVY where he shows himself as a fierce defender of science, evidence-based medicine and critical thinking:
Andrea Donsky: I understand you arrived yesterday from England. I’m curious what you take for jetlag?
Peter Fisher: We have a traditional combination that we use for jetlag, which is arnica montana, and cocculus indicus. So arnica is something that is traditionally used for bruises, and cocculus is used for sleep problems. So arnica and cocculus combined, 6CH every hour or two, helps with jetlag.
Andrea Donsky: I read about the incredible work you do as an Integrative Medicine Doctor so I thought we would start today’s interview with having you explain what that means.
Peter Fisher: Simply put, it means the best of both worlds: the best of conventional, and the best of complementary medicine. There is also a much longer and more complicated definition, but essentially it’s integrating complementary medicine in care packages to avoid some of the worst excesses of conventional medicines, like over-drugging, and excess use of medication.
Andrea Donsky: I know you don’t see patients with the common cold or flu, but if you did, what would be your protocol?
Peter Fisher: I’ve done quite a lot of research on the flu. It’s quite clear that conventional treatments don’t work all that well, and may even prolong the flu. Most of the conventional treatments push the symptoms down [suppress them] and actually prolong the illness.
Andrea Donsky: So something like Oscillococcinum would be a perfect thing to recommend to people.
Peter Fisher: Yes, and other homeopathic combinations that can speed up the resolution, relieve the symptoms, and make the flu go away quicker.
Andrea Donsky: Tell me a little bit about the European way of practicing medicine. I remember hearing that in Europe doctors prescribe homeopathy alongside medication. Is this true?
Peter Fisher: It varies widely between countries. In France, Germany, and increasingly in Spain, it is the case, but not so much in the UK. A lot of doctors do incorporate it in their practice and they integrate homeopathy when it seems appropriate, but they also use antibiotics and other drugs when they feel it is appropriate.
Andrea Donsky: Do you often approach these skeptics and say: “Listen, you are wrong because there is research behind it!”
Peter Fisher: I will debate with anybody, anytime. The trouble is, skeptics don’t like that because they always lose. I’ve been involved in a series of debates with “so called” skeptics. But many well-known skeptics avoid me because they lose the debate. What they prefer to do is to blog, or tweet, so they can make nasty sneering public remarks and you can’t come back at them. If it’s a proper debate, I say my piece, you say your piece, there’s somebody there to make sure that it’s fair play, and that could be in a journal, it could be in a lower court, I don’t care. There was a big court case in the U.S. that was resolved in September where that happened. An allegation was made that false claims were being made for homeopathic medicines and they lost the case…homeopathy won!
Andrea Donsky: Tell us how you came to be a physician to Her Majesty the Queen.
Peter Fisher: There’s a long tradition of the Royal Family having a homeopathic physician. It actually goes back 150 years to Queen Victoria and her beloved Prince Albert. The founder of our hospital was Prince Albert’s father’s doctor. There has been an official homeopathic physician treating the Royal Family since the 1930s. It’s been me since 2001.
Andrea Donsky: It is nice to hear that the Royal Family is open to integrative medicine. Do you just treat the Queen, or the whole family? I read that Prince Charles eats organic and has an organic garden so I am assuming he is quite open to it as well.
Peter Fisher: I treat the entire family. I think Kate and Will are too young and healthy so they don’t need medicine. But the Prince of Wales, Prince Charles, is very friendly, and he is more than willing to stick his neck out to actually say things. He has spoken at the World Health Assembly, which is the AGN of the World Health Organization. So he’s really quite fond of integrative medicine.
Andrea Donsky: I think that’s incredible. As a conventionally trained physician, how did you become interested in homeopathy?
Peter Fisher: At the end of the Cultural Revolution I went to visit China. I was a medical student at the time, and I remember the moment when it became clear to me. I was in the operating room of a small Chinese provincial town and there was a woman lying on the operating table with her entire abdomen open, fully conscious talking to the anesthetist with three needles in her left ear.
Andrea Donsky: Acupuncture needles?
Peter Fisher: Yes.
Andrea Donsky: That’s amazing.
Peter Fisher: The needles were connected to a little electrical box. I thought, “That doesn’t happen. They didn’t tell us about this at Cambridge.” I went to the best medical school, Cambridge, a very elite medical school, and I just thought, “This can’t happen. This doesn’t happen.” That experience is what made me think that there was more to medicine than what we were taught in medical school. Then a few years later, I became ill myself. I was still a medical student so I went to see a very distinguished professor at my medical school who made a precise diagnosis and said, “Tough, nothing can be done.” So my friends suggested I try homeopathy, and I did, and it helped. So it snowballed from there.
Andrea Donsky: Oftentimes we need to see things for ourselves and/or experience it to believe it.
Peter Fisher: Yes. I got almost obsessed by it, you know. In many ways as a scientific thing it shouldn’t work. I mean I do understand to that extent where the skeptics are coming from. There does appear to be a good reason why it can’t possibly work, and yet it does.
Andrea Donsky: Can you define what homeopathy is and how it works?
Peter Fisher: Homeopathy is based on the idea of like curing like. So you give a very small dose of something that could cause a similar illness if given an enlarged dose. Some people say it’s like holding a mirror up to nature. You’re saying to the body, “OK, this is what your problem is, this is what the disease is.” The idea is that the body has very strong self-healing capabilities; it is strong, but sometimes it can be stupid like when it comes to autoimmune diseases. In that case it is actually the body’s defensive mechanism being misdirected.
Andrea Donsky: Can you explain the difference between a single remedy and a combination?
Peter Fisher: A single remedy is one remedy and a combination is multiple. Broadly speaking, there are two kinds of homeopathy. One is the so-called “keynote prescribing way,” where you prescribe for one or two keynote symptoms like a cold, sore throat, or runny nose.Then there is “constitutional medicine” where you are not so much treating the disease, but rather the person. So for example, if someone has insomnia, muscular aches and pains or even a cold and/or flu, they can take a combination of two, three, four, or even five different homeopathic medicines, which will likely cover the symptoms. This is more for self-treatment, rather than doctor prescribed.
Andrea Donsky: That makes sense. I like that there is a role in homeopathy for both self (like for the common cold) and expert prescribing.
Peter Fisher: Yes. It is one thing if someone has a short-term health issue, but it is another thing if they have a chronic complicated, multi-faceted issue. I mean one of the interesting things about homeopathy is the idea of treating the person, and not the disease
I AM CONFIDENT THAT THE MAJORITY OF MY READERS AGREE TO ADMIT DR FISHER TO THE ALT MED HALL OF FAME.
