evidence
The aim of this retrospective chart-review was to identify the percentage of non-musculoskeletal and musculoskeletal conditions treated by interns in the NUHS Student Clinic. The information was taken from the charts of patients treated in the fall trimester of 2011.
The results show that 52% of all patients were treated only for musculoskeletal conditions, and 48% were treated for non-musculoskeletal conditions, or musculoskeletal plus non-musculoskeletal conditions.
The authors draw the following conclusions: The NUHS Student Clinic interns are treating a greater percentage of non-musculoskeletal conditions and a lesser percentage of musculoskeletal conditions than practicing chiropractic physicians. The student interns also treat a lesser percentage of non-musculoskeletal and a greater percentage of musculoskeletal conditions than allopathic practitioners. This comparison would suggest that NUHS is nearing its institutional goal of training its student interns as primary care practitioners.
The very last sentence of the conclusions is particularly surprising, in my view. Do these findings really imply that the NUHS is training competent primary care practitioners? I fail to see that the data demonstrate this. On the contrary, I think they show that some US chiropractic schools want to promote the notion that chiropractors are, in fact, primary care physicians. More worryingly, I fear that this article demonstrates how, through the diligent work of chiropractic schools, the myth is being kept alive that chiropractic is effective for all sorts of non-musculoskeletal conditions. In other words, I think we might here have a fine example of unsubstantiated beliefs being handed from one to the next generation of chiropractors.
Evidence-based chiropractic my foot! They continue to “happily promote bogus claims”.
Australian researchers wanted to know whether acupuncture is effective for alleviating the symptoms of fibromyalgia, a common painful condition for which no universally accepted treatment exists. For this purpose, they conducted a Cochrane review. After extensive literature searches, they identified 9 RCTs, extracted their data and assessed risk of bias.
The results show that all studies except one were at low risk of selection bias; five were at risk of selective reporting bias; two were subject to attrition bias (favouring acupuncture); three were subject to performance bias (favouring acupuncture) and one to detection bias (favouring acupuncture).
Three studies utilised electro-acupuncture (EA) and the remainder manual acupuncture (MA) without electrical stimulation.
Low quality evidence from one study (13 participants) showed EA improved symptoms with no adverse events at one month following treatment.
Moderate quality evidence from six studies (286 participants) indicated that acupuncture (EA or MA) was no better than sham acupuncture, except for less stiffness at one month. Subgroup analysis of two studies (104 participants) indicated benefits of EA. Mean pain was 70 points on 0 to 100 point scale with sham treatment; EA reduced pain by 13% (5% to 22%).
Low-quality evidence from one study suggested that MA resulted in poorer physical function: mean function in the sham group was 28 points (100 point scale); treatment worsened function by a mean of 6 points.
Moderate quality evidence from one study (58 participants) found that, compared with standard therapy alone (antidepressants and exercise), adjunct acupuncture therapy reduced pain at one month after treatment.
Low quality evidence from one study (38 participants) showed a short-term benefit of acupuncture over antidepressants in pain relief.
Moderate-quality evidence from one study (41 participants) indicated that deep needling with or without deqi did not differ in pain, fatigue, function or adverse events.
Four studies reported no differences between acupuncture and control or other treatments described at six to seven months follow-up.
No serious adverse events were reported, but there were insufficient adverse events to be certain of the risks.
The authors draw the following conclusions: There is low to moderate-level evidence that compared with no treatment and standard therapy, acupuncture improves pain and stiffness in people with fibromyalgia. There is moderate-level evidence that the effect of acupuncture does not differ from sham acupuncture in reducing pain or fatigue, or improving sleep or global well-being. EA is probably better than MA for pain and stiffness reduction and improvement of global well-being, sleep and fatigue. The effect lasts up to one month, but is not maintained at six months follow-up. MA probably does not improve pain or physical functioning. Acupuncture appears safe. People with fibromyalgia may consider using EA alone or with exercise and medication. The small sample size, scarcity of studies for each comparison, lack of an ideal sham acupuncture weaken the level of evidence and its clinical implications. Larger studies are warranted.
What does all that mean? In my view, it means that there is no sound evidence base for acupuncture as a treatment of fibromyalgia – or as we expressed it in our own systematic review of 2007: The notion that acupuncture is an effective symptomatic treatment for fibromyaligia is not supported by the results from rigorous clinical trials. On the basis of this evidence, acupuncture cannot be recommended for fibromyalgia.
In 2010, NICE recommended acupuncture for chronic low back pain (cLBP). Acupuncturists were of course delighted; the British Acupuncture Council, for instance, stated that they fully support NICE’s (National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence) decision that acupuncture be made available on the NHS for chronic lower back pain. Traditional acupuncture has been used for over 2,000 years to alleviate back pain and British Acupuncture Council members have for many many years been successfully treating patients for this condition either in private practice or working within the NHS. In effect, therefore, these new guidelines are a rubber stamp of the positive work already being undertaken as well as an endorsement of the wealth of research evidence now available in this area.
More critical experts, however, tended to be surprised about this move and doubted that the evidence was strong enough for a positive recommendation. Now a brand-new meta-analysis sheds more light on this important issue.
Its aim was to determine the effectiveness of acupuncture as a therapy for cLBP. The authors found 13 RCTs which matched their inclusion criteria. Their results show that, compared with no treatment, acupuncture achieved better outcomes in terms of pain relief, disability recovery and better quality of life. These effects were, however, not observed when real acupuncture was compared to sham acupuncture. Acupuncture achieved better outcomes when compared with other treatments. No publication bias was detected.
The authors conclude that acupuncture is an effective treatment for chronic low back pain, but this effect is likely to be produced by the nonspecific effects of manipulation.
In plain English, this means that the effects of acupuncture on cLBP are most likely due to placebo. Should NICE be recommending placebo-treatments and have the tax payer foot the bill? I think I can leave it to my readers to answer this question.
Hot flushes are a big problem; they are not life-threatening, of course, but they do make life a misery for countless menopausal women. Hormone therapy is effective, but many women have gone off the idea since we know that hormone therapy might increase their risk of getting cancer and cardiovascular disease. So, what does work and is also risk-free? Acupuncture?
Together with researchers from Quebec, we wanted to determine whether acupuncture is effective for reducing hot flushes and for improving the quality of life of menopausal women. We decided to do this in form of a Cochrane review which was just published.
We searched 16 electronic databases in order to identify all relevant studies and included all RCTs comparing any type of acupuncture to no treatment/control or other treatments. Sixteen studies, with a total of 1155 women, were eligible for inclusion. Three review authors independently assessed trial eligibility and quality, and extracted data. We pooled data where appropriate.
Eight studies compared acupuncture versus sham acupuncture. No significant difference was found between the groups for hot flush frequency, but flushes were significantly less severe in the acupuncture group, with a small effect size. There was substantial heterogeneity for both these outcomes. In a post hoc sensitivity analysis excluding studies of women with breast cancer, heterogeneity was reduced to 0% for hot flush frequency and 34% for hot flush severity and there was no significant difference between the groups for either outcome. Three studies compared acupuncture with hormone therapy, and acupuncture turned out to be associated with significantly more frequent hot flushes. There was no significant difference between the groups for hot flush severity. One study compared electro-acupuncture with relaxation, and there was no significant difference between the groups for either hot flush frequency or hot flush severity. Four studies compared acupuncture with waiting list or no intervention. Traditional acupuncture was significantly more effective in reducing hot flush frequency, and was also significantly more effective in reducing hot flush severity. The effect size was moderate in both cases.
For quality of life measures, acupuncture was significantly less effective than HT, but traditional acupuncture was significantly more effective than no intervention. There was no significant difference between acupuncture and other comparators for quality of life. Data on adverse effects were lacking.
Our conclusion: We found insufficient evidence to determine whether acupuncture is effective for controlling menopausal vasomotor symptoms. When we compared acupuncture with sham acupuncture, there was no evidence of a significant difference in their effect on menopausal vasomotor symptoms. When we compared acupuncture with no treatment there appeared to be a benefit from acupuncture, but acupuncture appeared to be less effective than HT. These findings should be treated with great caution as the evidence was low or very low quality and the studies comparing acupuncture versus no treatment or HT were not controlled with sham acupuncture or placebo HT. Data on adverse effects were lacking.
I still have to meet an acupuncturist who is not convinced that acupuncture is not an effective treatment for hot flushes. You only need to go on the Internet to see the claims that are being made along those lines. Yet this review shows quite clearly that it is not better than placebo. It also demonstrates that studies which do suggest an effect do so because they fail to adequately control for a placebo response. This means that the benefit patients and therapists observe in routine clinical practice is not due to the acupuncture per se, but to the placebo-effect.
And what could be wrong with that? Quite a bit, is my answer; here are just 4 things that immediately spring into my mind:
1) Arguably, it is dishonest and unethical to use a placebo on ill patients in routine clinical practice and charge for it pretending it is a specific and effective treatment.
2) Placebo-effects are unreliable, small and usually of short duration.
3) In order to generate a placebo-effect, I don’t need a placebo-therapy; an effective one administered with compassion does that too (and generates specific effects on top of that).
4) Not all placebos are risk-free. Acupuncture, for instance, has been associated with serious complications.
The last point is interesting also in the context of our finding that the RCTs analysed failed to mention adverse-effects. This is a phenomenon we observe regularly in studies of alternative medicine: trialists tend to violate the most fundamental rules of research ethics by simply ignoring the need to report adverse-effects. In plain English, this is called ‘scientific misconduct’. Consequently, we find very little published evidence on this issue, and enthusiasts claim their treatment is risk-free, simply because no risks are being reported. Yet one wonders to what extend systematic under-reporting is the cause of that impression!
So, what about the legion of acupuncturists who earn a good part of their living by recommending to their patients acupuncture for hot flushes?
They may, of course, not know about the evidence which shows that it is not more than a placebo. Would this be ok then? No, emphatically no! All clinicians have a duty to be up to date regarding the scientific evidence in relation to the treatments they use. A therapist who does not abide by this fundamental rule of medical ethics is, in my view, a fraud. On the other hand, some acupuncturists might be well aware of the evidence and employ acupuncture nevertheless; after all, it brings good money! Well, I would say that such a therapist is a fraud too.
In a recent comment, US chiropractors stated that there is a growing recognition within the profession that the practicing chiropractor must be able to do the following: formulate a searchable clinical question, rapidly access the best evidence available, assess the quality of that evidence, determine if it is applicable to a particular patient or group of patients, and decide if and how to incorporate the evidence into the care being offered. In a word, they believe, that evidence-based chiropractic is possible, perhaps even (almost) a reality. For evidence-based practice to penetrate and transform a profession, the penetration must occur at two levels, they explain. One level is the degree to which individual practitioners possess the willingness and basic skills to search and assess the literature.
The second level, the authors explain, relates to whether the therapeutic interventions commonly employed by a particular health care discipline are supported by clinical research. The authors believe that a growing body of randomized controlled trials provides evidence of the effectiveness and safety of manual therapies. Is this really true, I wonder.
In support of these fairly bold statements, they cite a paper by Bronfort et al which, in their view, is currently the most comprehensive review of the evidence for the efficacy of manual therapies. According to these authors, the ‘Bronfort-report’ stated that evidence is inconclusive for pneumonia, stage 1 hypertension, pre-menstrual syndrome, nocturnal enuresis, and otitis media. The authors also believe that it is unlikely manipulation of the neck is causally related to stroke.
When I read this article, I could not stop myself from giggling. It seems to me that it provides pretty good evidence for the fact that the chiropractic profession is nowhere near reaching the stage where anyone could reasonably claim that chiropractors practice evidence-based medicine – not even the authors themselves seem to abide by the rules of evidence-based medicine! If they had truly been able to access the best evidence available and assess the quality of that evidence surely they would not have (mis-) quoted the ‘Bronfort-report’.
Bronfort’s overview was commissioned by the General Chiropractic Council, it was hastily compiled by ardent believers of chiropractic, published in a journal that non-chiropractors would not touch with a barge pole, and crucially it lacks some of the most important qualities of an unbiased systematic review. In my view, it is nothing short of a white-wash and not worth the paper it was printed on. Conclusions, such as the evidence regarding pneumonia, bed-wetting and otitis is inconclusive are just embarrassing; the correct conclusion is that the evidence fails to be positive for these and most other indications.
Similarly, if the authors had really studied and quoted the best evidence, how on earth could they have stated that manipulation of the neck cannot cause a stroke? The evidence for that is fairly overwhelming, and the only open question here is, how often do such complications occur? And even the biased ‘Bronfort-report’ states: Adverse events associated with manual treatment can be classified into two categories: 1) benign, minor or non-serious and 2) serious. Generally those that are benign are transient, mild to moderate in intensity, have little effect on activities, and are short lasting. Most commonly, these involve pain or discomfort to the musculoskeletal system. Less commonly, nausea, dizziness or tiredness are reported. Serious adverse events are disabling, require hospitalization and may be life-threatening. The most documented and discussed serious adverse event associated with spinal manipulation (specifically to the cervical spine) is vertebrobasilar artery (VBA) stroke. Less commonly reported are serious adverse events associated with lumbar spine manipulation, including lumbar disc herniation and cauda equina syndrome.
Evidence-based practice? Who are these chiropractors kidding? This article very neatly reflects the exact opposite. It ignores hundreds of peer-reviewed papers which are critical of chiropractic. The best one can do with this paper, I think, is to use it as a hilarious bit of involuntary humour or as a classic example of cherry-picking.
Come to think of it, chiropractic and evidence-based practice are contradictions in terms. Either a therapist claims to adjust mystical subluxations, in which case he/she does not practice evidence-based medicine. Or he/she practices evidence-based medicine, in which case adjusting mystical subluxations cannot be part of their therapeutic repertoire.
Towards the end of the article, we learn further fascinating things: the authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article – oh, really?!?! Furthermore, we are told that this ‘research’ was funded by the ‘National Center of Complementary and Alternative Medicine’ (NCCAM) of the National Institutes of Health.
Can it be true? Does the otherwise most respectable NIH really give its name for such overt nonsense? Yes, it is true, and it is by no means the first time. In fact, our analysis shows that, when it comes to chiropractic, this organisation has sponsored almost nothing but utter rubbish, and our conclusion was blunt: the criticism repeatedly aimed at NCCAM seems justified, as far as their RCTs of chiropractic is concerned. It seems questionable whether such research is worthwhile.
The NHS tells us that our “choices include more than just which GP or hospital to use. You also have choices about your treatment decisions…” In most other countries, similarly confusing statements about PATIENT CHOICE are being made almost on a daily basis, often by politicians who have more ambition to win votes than to understand the complex issues at hand. Consequently, patients and consumers might be forgiven to assume that PATIENT CHOICE means we are all invited to indulge in the therapy we happen to fancy, while society foots the bill. Certainly, proponents of alternative medicine are fond of the notion that the principle of PATIENT CHOICE provides a ‘carte blanche’ for everyone who wants it to have homeopathy, Reiki, Bach Flower Remedies, crystal healing, or other bogus treatments – paid for, of course, by the taxpayer.
Reality is, however, very different. Anyone who has actually tried to choose his/her hospital will know that this is far from easy. And deciding what treatment one might employ for this or that condition is even less straight forward. Choice, it turns out, is a big word, but often it is just that: a word.
Yet politicians love their new mantra of PATIENT CHOICE; it is politically correct as it might give the taxpayer the impression that he/she is firmly installed in the driving seat. Consequently PATIENT CHOICE has become a slogan that is used to score points in public debates but that, in fact, is frequently next to meaningless. More often than not, the illusion of being in control has to serve as a poor substitute for actually being in control.
To imply that patients should be able to choose their treatment has always struck me as a little naïve, particularly in the way this is often understood in the realm of alternative medicine. Imagine you have a serious condition, say cancer: after you have come over the shock of this diagnosis, you begin to read on the Internet and consider your options. Should you have surgery or faith healing, chemotherapy or homeopathy, radiotherapy or a little detox?
Clearly PATIENT CHOICE, as paid for by society, cannot be about choosing between a realistic option and an unrealistic one. It must be confined to treatments which have all been shown to be effective. Using scarce public funds for ineffective treatments is nothing short of unethical. If, for a certain condition, there happen to be 10 different, equally effective and safe options, we may indeed have a choice. Alas, this is not often the case. Often, there is just one effective treatment, and in such instances the only realistic choice is between accepting or rejecting it.
And, anyway, how would we know that 10 different treatments are equally effective and safe? After going on the Internet and reading a bit about them, we might convince ourselves that we know but, in fact, very few patients have sufficient knowledge for making complex decisions of this nature. We usually need an expert to help us. In other words, we require our doctor to guide us through this jungle of proven benefits and potential risks.
Once we accept this to be true, we have arrived at a reasonable concept of what PATIENT CHOICE really means in relation to deciding between two or more treatments: the principle of shared decision making. And this is a fundamentally different concept from the naïve view of those alternative medicine enthusiasts who promote the idea that PATIENT CHOICE opens the door to opting for any unproven or disproven pseudo-therapy.
To be meaningful, ethical and responsible, choice needs to be guided by sound evidence – if not, it degenerates into irresponsible arbitrariness, and health care deteriorates into some kind of Russian roulette. To claim, as some fans of alternative medicine do, that the principle of PATIENT CHOICE gives everyone the right to use unproven treatments at the expense of the taxpayer is pure nonsense. But some extreme proponents of quackery go even further; they claim that the discontinuation of payment for treatments that have been identified as ineffective amounts to a dangerous curtailment of patients’ rights. This, I think, is simply a cynical attempt to mislead the public for the selfish purpose of profit.
Guest post by Louise Lubetkin
Those who recognize and appreciate a fine example of pseudoscientific baloney when they see one know that there is no richer seam, no more inexhaustible source, than the bustling, huckster-infested street carnival that is alternative medicine. There one can find intellectual swindlers in abundance, all offering outrageously implausible claims with the utmost earnestness and sincerity. But the supreme prize, the Fabergé egg found buried among the bric-a-brac, surely belongs to that most convincing of illusionists, the physician reborn as an ardent advocate of alternative medicine.
Why would any physician, exhaustively trained in the basic sciences that underpin every aspect of medical practice, decide to toss aside the entire canon in favor of a return to blatant mumbo jumbo?
There can be only two possible explanations, and they’re mutually exclusive.
First is the unsavory possibility that the physician who embraces alternative medicine is a cynical charlatan who knows full well that what is being offered is worthless, but sees it as a path to a more lucrative form of practice that is largely paid for out of pocket, in cash, requiring no tedious insurance company paperwork and avoiding the unpleasant possibility of Medicare audits.
And then there is the opposite explanation: the physician has actually become a true believer, in which case the wholesale rejection of his or her scientific training is essential in order to resolve the uneasy tension between what the physician knows to be fundamentally true and what he or she ardently believes and wishes were true. The two are diametrically opposed: one is a system of thinking in which each component has been painstakingly validated, assessed and reassessed over time, and revised where necessary with the emergence of new knowledge. The other is a simply a belief system founded on faith and wishful thinking.
Alternative medicine, particularly in the realm of cancer, has a long history of attracting people who are seduced by simplistic explanations of this dauntingly implacable and hugely complex constellation of diseases and become gripped by a messianic conviction that this is the true path to a cure. Never mind that such explanations have usually been around for a very long time and have been repeatedly debunked in carefully conducted studies. There is usually an element of paranoia involved: they see themselves as martyrs and explain the medical profession’s indifference to this revolutionary truth as a conspiracy designed to maintain a profitable status quo by silencing dissidents, especially when they arise from within the medical profession itself.
Which of these explanations is the correct one in any particular situation is not always easy to discern. Take the case of Nicholas James Gonzalez, M.D., a New York physician turned alternative practitioner whose practice focuses largely on the treatment of advanced cancer by nutritional means.
THE ORIGINS OF GONZALEZ’S TREATMENT
Gonzalez presents himself as a true believer who became a convert to alternative medicine after coming across the work of William Donald Kelley, D.D.S., a Texas orthodontist who had his own Damascene conversion when his doctors told him that he was dying of pancreatic cancer and that there was nothing more that they could do for him. Undeterred, Kelley claimed that he had cured himself by means of a rigorous diet combined with frequent self-administered coffee enemas. After thus miraculously dragging himself (and his enema bucket) back from the banks of the River Styx, Kelley decided to abandon straightening children’s teeth in favor of treating people with advanced cancer – perhaps not the most logical career move, to be sure, but Texas is Texas.
Probably the most famous of Kelley’s patients was the actor Steve McQueen, who, in the advanced stages of mesothelioma, turned to the erstwhile orthodontist in search of a cure. Not surprisingly, McQueen died despite Kelley’s ministrations, an unfortunate turn of events which Kelley rationalized away by claiming that he had in fact successfully cured McQueen, but that the medical establishment had subsequently had McQueen murdered in order to prevent him “blowing the lid off the cancer racket.”
But back to Gonzalez.
Like Kelley before him, Gonzalez bases his treatment on the work of James Beard, a long-dead Scottish embryologist who, more than 100 years ago, put forward the notion that all cancer was caused by wayward cells called trophoblasts. Trophoblasts are the cells which organize around the developing embryo very early in pregnancy, and which ultimately give rise to the placenta. Beard, of course, lived and died long before the advent of electron microscopy, the unraveling of the structure of DNA and a myriad other crucial discoveries that have helped to elucidate the hugely complex phenomenon that is collectively referred to as cancer. While his observations concerning the similarities between the invasiveness of cancer and the ability of the primitive placenta to tunnel its way into the uterine wall were undoubtedly astute, they are inadequate to explain what is now known about the etiology and progression of cancer.
Having observed that the placenta’s invasion of the uterine wall ceased at the very moment that the fetal pancreas became active, he took a leap of faith and postulated that it was the fetal pancreatic enzymes that were responsible for arresting the growth and invasion of the trophoblast layer. Beard went further, suggesting that quite apart from their role in digestion, pancreatic enzymes actually represent the body’s main defense against cancer, and therefore it should be possible to control cancer by administering large quantities of pancreatic enzymes.
This hundred-year-old hypothesis forms the cornerstone of the cancer treatment program devised by Gonzalez. (It should also be mentioned that Gonzalez doesn’t limit himself to the treatment of cancer, but uses the same methodology for treating a range of chronic degenerative diseases, including multiple sclerosis, presumably on the assumption that wayward trophoblasts are responsible for these, also, although it is difficult to imagine exactly how.)
Beard rightly surmised that pancreatic enzymes could not be successfully administered by mouth because the acid environment of the stomach would inactivate them immediately. Furthermore, being proteins themselves, any orally administered pancreatic enzymes would be quickly broken down by the gastric enzyme pepsin. Beard therefore advocated administering the enzymes by hypodermic injection.
In this, and in other ways, Beard seems to have been considerably more circumspect about his theory and its therapeutic implications than his modern day acolytes. It is interesting to note that he conspicuously refrained from making any claim that his method was a cure for cancer. A contemporary account of the public debate over Beard’s theory of cancer origins and treatment, which appeared in 1907 in the New York Times, is available here.
Much has happened since Beard’s day, it’s true, but gastric physiology and the essentials of protein digestion have not changed an iota. Pepsin is still pepsin, and the stomach is still awash in acid. Nevertheless, Gonzalez insists that the oral route is perfectly adequate. This odd departure from otherwise strict historical orthodoxy may have more to do with regulatory issues than pharmacokinetics: the type of enzymes he uses are viewed as dietary supplements by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) rather than as prescription drugs, and are therefore unregulated.
GONZALEZ’S TREATMENT
In addition to pancreatic enzymes taken by mouth, Gonzalez prescribes a restrictive diet (which, even for those whom be pronounces to be obligate vegetarians, includes raw liver), and a staggering number of nutritional supplements which patients must take at regular intervals throughout the day and night.
The dietary guidelines he issues to his patients contain an amazing array of obviously unsound statements which bespeak not only a total abandonment of logical thinking on the part of their author, but also a casual disregard for objective fact, as though the solid benchmarks of physiology and biochemistry, such as pH, were just another narrative.
And then of course there’s the obligatory detoxification, without which no alternative treatment regimen could possibly be considered complete. But beyond its role as a doctrinal tenet, the notion that the body is inadequate to the task of handling its own waste holds a special utility for the practitioner of alternative cancer treatment. By insisting on regular and vigorous detoxification, the practitioner can reinforce the idea that the treatment regime – in this case, the pancreatic enzyme barrage – is working so well that the patient’s liver and bloodstream are in danger of being overrun by waste products from tumor breakdown. This must be a great boost to a patient in the advanced stages of cancer who is grimly contemplating his umpteenth coffee enema of the week and struggling to swallow another round of 30 supplement pills. However, most self-respecting physicians and patients would surely like to have that comforting assertion about massive tumor destruction confirmed with some kind of objective test such as imaging. And if the liver is really so hobbled by its task that it has to be supported by regular retrograde sluicing with tepid coffee, perhaps a few blood tests of liver function might be in order? It appears that such considerations are purely for pedants and infidels: real believers have no need for such niceties.
And then there are the supplements, in staggering quantities and bewildering combinations:
Five times during your waking hours take:
- 16 pancreas glandular tissue
- 1 magnesium citrate 60mg
With two doses of pancreas glandular take
- 2 chicken collagen type II
During breakfast and dinner (twice daily) take:
- 1 amino acids
- 1 Calsym (vitamin D3 and calcium carbonate)
- 1 thyroid (sic)
- 1 vitamin E 100 IU
During each meal (3 times daily) take:
- 1 adrenal glandular
- 2 vitamin C
- 1 Atlantic kelp
- 2 Formula #1 (sic)
- 1 liver
- 1 lung
- 2 magnesium citrate 60mg
- 1 digest aid
- 1 multivitamin
- 1 multimineral
- 3 pancreas glandular tissue
- 3 thymus glandular tissue
- 1 vitamin 400 IU
During lunch only take:
- 1 beta carotene 25,000
- 1 copper gluconate
- 1 potassium citrate
- 1 vitamin A 10,000 (which incidentally is twice the recommended daily allowance)
At bedtime take:
- 2 iron
- 2 magnesium citrate 60mg
- 4 RNA/DNA (sic)
At 3:30am take:
- 16 pancreas glandular tissue
The patient following such a program would take 187 supplement pills daily. Regardless of the dosage of active ingredients involved, the sheer volume and weight of excipients that are ingested during any one 24 hour period is surely something to take into account, especially in a patient debilitated by the ravages of advanced cancer. In a regimen that puts such emphasis on detoxification this is a curious departure indeed.
But onward.
THE EVIDENCE
In 1999, Gonzalez published a paper in the journal Nutrition and Cancer (abstract here) claiming that he had achieved significantly increased survival in 11 patients with inoperable pancreatic cancer by treating them with what he described as “an aggressive nutritional therapy with large doses of pancreatic enzymes.”
Now bear in mind that pancreatic cancer is one of the most aggressive and deadly of all malignancies. The majority of people with pancreatic adenocarcinoma, which is by far the commonest form of pancreatic cancer, die within a few months of their diagnosis; only one in five patients survive the first year, and just four percent of patients live five years beyond diagnosis.
So when Gonzalez published his paper asserting that 9 of the 11 patients (81%) whom he had treated with this regimen survived one year, while 5 (45%) survived two years, and the remaining 4 patients were still alive and holding their own at the 3 year mark, people sat up and took notice.
Despite the fact that this was a very small study, and rife with biases (not least, an obvious selection bias: a further 12 patients who were unable to comply fully with the treatment were excluded from the analysis), it was sufficiently positive a report in an otherwise unrelievedly gloomy prognostic landscape that it prompted further investigation. Ultimately a full-fledged phase III clinical trial comparing Gonzalez’ nutritional protocol to the standard chemotherapy regimen in pancreatic cancer patients was sponsored by the National Institutes of Health and was carried out at Columbia University.
Perhaps not surprisingly, the trial turned out to be hugely contentious and very unorthodox. As a means of eliminating experimental bias, clinical trials are typically “blinded” and randomized – i.e., they are carefully designed so that patients are randomly assigned to one group or the other, and neither the patients nor the physicians know which treatment they are receiving. But in this case there was no way that the trial could be randomized or blinded. Patients could choose whether to undergo chemotherapy or to be assigned to the Gonzalez protocol group, so both they and the investigating physicians knew what treatment they were getting from the beginning.
When it became apparent, as it quickly did, that the results were not going to reflect well on his treatment protocol. Gonzalez began clamoring loudly for an investigation, claiming that the clinical trial had been deliberately rigged to discredit him. (Those interested in the background to the clinical trial, including a very thorough discussion of its ethical and scientific implications, can read about it in several installments, titled “The Ethics of CAM Trials” (parts I-V), here.)
The results of the clinical trial were reported in a paper published in October, 2009, in the Journal of Clinical Oncology (article here). To summarize the results, the 32 patients who underwent traditional chemotherapy lived more than three times as long (14 months vs 4.3 months), and had a measurably better quality of life, including less pain than those treated by the Gonzalez protocol – and since pancreatic cancer is notoriously painful, this is a hugely important consideration in any treatment, regardless of whether or not it extends survival.
But perhaps the most extraordinary and disturbing aspect of the paper was this paragraph, in the Methods section, describing the Gonzalez protocol:
“The enzyme treatment included orally ingested proteolytic enzymes, nutritional supplements, detoxification, and an organic diet (unaltered from the pilot study). Patients received three pancreatic enzyme and two magnesium citrate capsules with each meal. The patients also took specified numbers of capsules with magnesium citrate and Papaya Plus every 4 hours on an empty stomach. The dose for patients with stage II disease was 69 enzyme capsules, and the dose for patients with stages III or IV was 81 capsules per day. After day 16, patients had a 5-day rest period and then resumed treatment on day 22. Treatment could be adjusted by the physician and could be increased for cancer progression. A diet that required at least 70% of the food to be raw or minimally cooked was required. All food was organic. Prescribed detoxification procedures included coffee enemas twice each day; skin brushing and cleansing; salt and soda baths; and a liver flush, clean sweep, and purging.”
Excuse me? A liver flush? What is that, exactly? And could someone please explain what is meant by “a clean sweep”? And purging? If it’s not an indelicate question, might we be told exactly what that consists of?
How this extraordinary paragraph found its way into print, unchallenged, in the venerable Journal of Clinical Oncology is unfathomable. Why didn’t the editors, or the authors, for that matter, feel that it might be useful – in fact, essential – to (a) append an explanation of exactly what was meant by these terms, and (b) to include some kind of rationale for their use?
And then, of course, there’s the larger question of how the institutional review board at Columbia managed to sidestep the ethical issues inherent in approving a trial that was set up to compare the apples of standard treatment with the oranges of liver flushes and clean sweeps. If there was genuine clinical equipoise here we’re in deep, deep trouble.
You might think that this study, with its damning result, would be the end of it. But you’d be wrong. Gonzalez has written a book, a paranoid, self-exculpatory monologue, a martyr’s manifesto detailing what he perceives as his deliberate persecution at vast public expense by a pernicious cancer industry mafia whose goal is to silence him forever. (Presumably the hit man who got Steve McQueen was no longer available?)
So what are we to make of Gonzalez? Is he a cynical fraud or does he genuinely believe that coffee enemas, skin brushing and massive doses of supplements are capable of holding back the tsunami of cancer?
At the end of the day it hardly matters: either way, he’s a dangerous man.
Acupuncture is not just one single form of therapy, there are dozens of variations of this theme. For instance, acupuncture-points can, according to proponents of this form of treatment, be stimulated in a number of ways: needles, heat (moxibustion), electrical current, laser-light, ultrasound or pressure. In the latter case, the therapy is called acupressure. This therapy is popular and often recommended as a form of self-treatment, for instance, to alleviate nausea and vomiting of all causes.
Chemotherapy-induced nausea/vomiting can normally be successfully treated with standard anti-emetic drugs. Some patients, however, may not respond satisfactorily and others prefer a drug-free option such as acupressure for which there has been encouraging evidence. A brand-new study sheds new light on this issue.
Its objective was to assess the effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of self-administered acupressure using wristbands compared with sham acupressure wristbands and standard care alone in the management of chemotherapy-induced nausea. Secondary objectives included assessment of the effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of the wristbands in relation to vomiting and quality of life and exploration of any age, gender and emetogenic risk effects. The trial was conducted in outpatient chemotherapy clinics in three regions in the UK involving 14 different cancer units/centres. Chemotherapy-naïve cancer patients were included receiving chemotherapy of low, moderate and high emetogenic risk. The intervention were acupressure wristbands pressing the P6 point (anterior surface of the forearm), sham-wrist bands providing no pressure on acupuncture-points or no wrist-bands at all; all three groups had standard care in addition. The main outcome measures were the Rhodes Index for Nausea/Vomiting, the Multinational Association of Supportive Care in Cancer (MASCC) Antiemesis Tool and the Functional Assessment of Cancer Therapy – General (FACT-G). At baseline participants also completed measures of anxiety/depression, nausea/vomiting expectation and expectations from using the wristbands.
In total, 500 patients were randomised (166 standard care, 166 sham acupressure + standard care, and 168 acupressure + standard care). Data were available for 361 participants for the primary outcome. The primary outcome analysis (nausea in cycle 1) revealed no differences between the three arms. Women responded more favourably to the use of sham acupressure wristbands than men. No significant differences were detected in relation to vomiting outcomes, anxiety and quality of life. Some transient adverse effects were reported, including tightness in the area of the wristbands, feeling uncomfortable when wearing them and minor swelling in the wristband area.There were no statistically significant cost differences associated with the use of real acupressure bands.
In total, 26 patients took part in qualitative interviews. The qualitative data suggested that participants perceived the wristbands (both real and sham) as effective and helpful in managing their nausea during chemotherapy.
The authors concluded that there were no statistically significant differences between the three arms in terms of nausea, vomiting and quality of life.
Intriguingly, this study was published in two different journals; and the second article reporting the identical data concluded that no clear recommendations can be made about the use of acupressure wristbands in the management of chemotherapy-related nausea and vomiting.
A further equally new study tested acupressure for post-operative nausea/vomiting. One hundred and thirty-four healthy, non-smoking women scheduled for breast surgery were randomised either to P6 stimulation or to sham control. Wristbands were applied and covered with a dressing before induction of anaesthesia. Follow-up was carried out three times within 24 h postoperative. Primary outcomes were postoperative nausea and/or vomiting.
One hundred and twelve patients completed the study. There were no statistically significant differences in the incidence of nausea or vomiting. Approximately, one third of the patients reported adverse-effects caused by the wristband, for example, redness, swelling and tenderness.
The authors of this trial concluded as follows: We did not find the Vital-Band effective in preventing either nausea or vomiting after operation in women undergoing breast surgery.
There has been quite a bit of previous research on acupressure. The most recent summary included 2 meta-analyses, 6 systematic reviews and 39 RCTs of acupressure for various conditions. Its authors stated that the strongest evidence was for pain (particularly dysmenorrhoea, lower back and labour), post-operative nausea and vomiting.
So, is acupressure effective in reducing nausea and vomiting or not? The evidence is contradictory to a degree that is baffling. If we look closer at the existing trials, we are likely to find that the more rigorous studies and those published by researchers who do not have an axe to grind tend to produce negative findings. I am therefore not convinced that acupressure has any effects beyond placebo.
Sorry, but I am fighting a spell of depression today.
Why? I came across this website which lists the 10 top blogs on alternative medicine. To be precise, here is what they say about their hit-list: this list includes the top 10 alternative medicine bloggers on Twitter, ranked by Klout score. Using Cision’s media database, we compiled the list based on Cision’s proprietary research, with results limited to bloggers who dedicate significant coverage to alternative medicine and therapies…
And here are the glorious top ten:
Andrew Weil – Dr. Andrew Weil’s Daily Health Tips
Joy McCarthy – Joyous Health Blog
Stacey Chillemi – Stay Healthy and Cure Your Conditions Naturally
Kristi Shmyr – Prana Holistic Blog
Cathy Wong – Alternative Medicine Blog
Renee Canada – Hartford Healthy Living Examiner
Dee Braun – Natural Holistic Health Blog
Geo Espinosa – Dr. Geo’s Natural Health Blog
All of these sites are promotional and lack even the slightest hint of critical evaluation. All of them sell or advertise products and are thus out to make money. All of them are full of quackery, in my view. Some of the most popular bloggers are world-famous quacks!
What about impartial information for the public? What about critical review of the evidence? What about a degree of balance? What about guiding consumers to make responsible, evidence-based decisions? What about preventing harm? What about using scarce resources wisely?
I don’t see any of this on any of the sites.
You see, now I have depressed you too!
Quick, buy some herbal, natural, holistic and integrative anti-depressant! As it happens, I have some for sale….
Lymph oedema in the arms or legs is a frequent complication after lymph-node dissections for cancer. Treatment or prevention can be difficult, and the results are often unsatisfactory. Consequently, the burden of suffering of cancer patients affected by this problem is immense.
Amongst several options, a little-known massage technique, called lymph-drainage (or lymphatic drainage, LD), is sometimes recommended. It consists of gentle manual movements which lightly push the lymph fluid through the lymphatic vessels that eventually enter into the blood circulation. During a session of lymph-drainage, a specially trained massage therapist lightly moves his or her hands along the lymph vessels to facilitate the lymph flow. The treatment is agreeable and relaxing, but does it really reduce the oedema?
A recent systematic review and meta-analysis of RCTs evaluated the effectiveness of LD in the prevention and treatment of breast-cancer related lymph-oedema. The primary outcome for prevention was the incidence of postoperative lymph-oedema. The outcome for management of was a reduction in oedema volume.
In total, 10 RCTs with altogether 566 patients were identified. Two studies evaluating the preventive outcome of LD found no significant difference in the incidence of lymph-oedema between the LD and standard treatments. Seven studies assessed the reduction in arm volume, and found no significant difference between the LD and standard treatments.
The authors conclusion was negative about the value of LD: The current evidence from RCTs does not support the use of LD in preventing or treating lymph-oedema. However, clinical and statistical inconsistencies between the various studies confounded our evaluation of the effect of LD on breast-cancer-related lymph-oedema.
Perhaps a brand-new clinical trial which had not been included in the above assessment would have persuaded the authors to be a little more optimistic. This study evaluated the effectiveness of LD in the prevention of lymph-oedema after treatment of breast cancer. The study-population consisted of 67 women, who had undergone surgery for breast cancer. From the second day of surgery, 33 randomly chosen women were given LD. The control group consisted of 34 women who did not receive LD. Measurements of the volumes of both arms were taken before surgery and on days 2, 7, 14, and at 3 and 6 months after surgery.
Among the women who did not have LD, a significant increase in the arm volume on the operated side was observed after 6 month. There was no statistically significant increase in the volume of the upper limb on the operated side in women who underwent LD.
The authors conclude that regardless of the surgery type and the number of the lymph nodes removed, LD effectively prevented lymph-oedema of the arm on the operated side. Even in high risk breast cancer treatments (operation plus irradiation), LD was demonstrated to be effective against arm volume increase. Even though confirmatory studies are needed, this study demonstrates that LD administered early after operation for breast cancer should be considered for the prevention of lymph-oedema.
So, does LD reduce oedema or not? This does not seem to be such a difficult question that it should take decades to resolve! And who would doubt that it is an important one? Lymph-oedema has the potential to seriously impede the quality of life of many patients, and it can even contribute to unnecessary mortality. The fact that the few available studies are too small and too weak to generate reliable results is disappointing and shines a dim light on the supposedly patient-centred research in oncology, in my view.
The concept of LD is plausible, at least some of the findings from clinical trials are encouraging, and the problem of lymph-oedema is both prevalent and relevant. So what is stopping us from funding a large, well-designed and definitive study?
