Alternative truths from another planet (AT FAPs): part three

Here are 3 more short pieces of alternative medicine satire. if you like them, please consider to send me your own short articles.

AT FAP No 7 (sent in by ‘Ex-Acupuncturist’)

Heroin junkies are now putting another type of needle in their body to get high…  Acupuncture needles!  Acupuncturists have long theorized that an endorphin release is part of the clinical effect of acupuncture.  Endorphins are the body’s own painkillers.  They are in a group of chemicals called endogenous opioids.  While sceptics have pointed out that endorphin release is also a key part of the placebo effect, it seems that ancient Chinese wisdom wins this round of the battle.

“The key is to twirl the needle in the correct direction for each individual,” one experienced user reported.  “In general, men get clockwise, women counter-clockwise, but it reverses depending on the phase of the moon and whether the kidney pulse on the wrist is floating or deep.  It may sound strange, but once you hit the right point and twirl the right way, you’re talking to the rabbit on the moon for hours.”

Apparently, heroin-like effects aren’t the only drugs acupuncture can mimic.  Homeless researcher William S. Burrows reports point combinations which replicate cannabis, magic mushrooms, and even methamphetamines.  “We confirmed this with a double-blind test down in the park.  I drew the point combinations and labelled them with codes, then taught a few volunteers how to do the needling without telling them what combinations mimic each drug.  Then I hit the bar while they rolled dice and randomly did these combinations on hundreds of homeless addicts, who then were observed and interviewed by different volunteers who didn’t know what group they had been randomized to.  The differences between the meth points and the horse points were pretty obvious by behaviour, but we also gathered more objective data such as blood pressure, pupil size, and pre- and post- treatment urinalysis results.  Most of our volunteers are users of real drugs, but when you get the acupuncture right it the metabolites show up in urine.”

Science journal editor Dr. Edward Ernest was impressed.  “This acupuncture research carried out by homeless drug addicts, literally under a bridge, is better and more convincing than all previous acupuncture research combined.  What’s more impressive is that it’s being replicated as we speak in addicted populations around the world, all through grassroots efforts.”
When asked why his research was so well structured and recorded compared to previous acupuncture research, Burrows said, “I’m not sure, but it may have something to do with how important getting high is to addicts.  Regular acupuncturists are just telling people they can treat normal pain and diseases, and many of those go away on their own.  We are dealing with serious drug habits here, it’s not something to mess around with.  Regular people can be fooled with post hoc reasoning, regression to the mean, and a good bedside manner.  Junkies in withdrawal have a higher standard of evidence.”

While getting high with acupuncture is safer and less expensive than using black market drugs, public health officials are already warning users that familiar communicable disease dangers exist if needles are shared.  “We are discussing setting up a free acupuncture needle exchange to reduce the risk of hepatitis and HIV transmission.”

AT FAP No 8 (by Edzard Ernst)

THE END OF EBM and the arrival of VBM

Inspired by a recent popular vote in Scotland on the need of having homeopathy free on the NHS, top-ranking health politicians from across the UK have met to discuss the implications of this intriguing and ground-breaking development. The politicians were taken by the idea of replacing evidence with a popular vote. They felt that they were much more familiar with the various ways to influence voters than with the often fiendishly complex issues of scientific evidence. “Everything becomes understandable and transparent with one single stroke”, one senior official commented, “what could be more logical than finally democratising health care? It was time anyway to break the dictatorship of science; as politicians, we cannot tolerate to be told by scientists what is right and wrong.”

The panel drew up plans to have all major health care decisions decided by popular vote. Pilot projects that followed this courageous move have already generated most encouraging results: diabetics voted to have free chocolate, claudicants opted for cheaper cigarettes, addicts wanted to legalise hard drugs and the entire population of Totness was in favour of replacing conventional by alternative medicine.

On the basis of these findings, the secretary for health issued a press release pointing out that innovations of this nature might look counter-intuitive to notoriously short-sighted medics but from a more realistic perspective, they do make a lot of sense: patients deserve to be given a choice; if many to the most desperately ill diabetics die early as a consequence, it might even be humane to let them end their suffering quickly and with dignity – and from a societal point of view, early fatalities mean significant cost-savings which will certainly free funds to improve the health of the rest of the nation. “I am sure that this innovation will win us votes”, one Tory health politician was quoted saying. A white paper was drawn up which suggests the nationwide implementation of these progressive concepts, and well-informed circles at Westminster indicate that David Cameron views the new ‘Vote-Based Medicine’ (VBM) as a possible solution to steer the NHS out of its current crisis.

AT FAP No 9 (by Edzard Ernst)

A bitter row has broken out in the US-based ‘Palmer Institute of Straight Chiropractic’ (PISC) over the interpretation of the results generated by the largest long-term study of chiropractic that has ever been initiated. The study in question, which had been funded by the NIH and several chiropractic bodies across the world, started recruiting in the 1970. Its was aimed at testing the effects of chiropractic maintenance treatment. Based on D D Palmer’s , the father of chiropractic, axiom that all diseases are caused by ‘subluxations of the spine’, chiropractic maintenance care is a method of regularly adjusting subluxations of healthy people before they can do any significant damage to health and well-being. Top officials of PICS had therefore concluded that regular adjustments would prevent illness and prolong life. The project was thus to administer maintenance care to 1000 volunteers for their entire life time and compare the mortality and morbidity of this cohort with the data from the US population at large.

So far, the findings of this study had been kept under tight wraps; the protocol foresaw that the first analysis should only be at the 40-year follow-up. Last months, however, the first preliminary analysis emerged at a closed meeting of the PISC in Devonport, US. A leaked note shows that, despite the large sample size and the sizable number of morbidity and mortality outcomes in the study cohort, the comparison with the general population did not demonstrate any significant differences; if anything, the incidence of neurological problems, e.g. stroke, in the experimental group seems unusually high.

As soon as the results were known to the PISC-officials, dramatically different interpretations of these findings emerged, our reporter was told:

• One group of chiropractors claimed the results were obviously rigged; some were sure that BIG PHARMA had bribed the researchers/statisticians to produce false negative findings. “It stands to reason”, one chiropractor from this camp was quoted saying, “just imagine what would happen, if the effectiveness of chiropractic maintenance care would become general knowledge; nobody would need the pharma-industry any more. It is therefore clear that they did everything in their power to supress the truth”
•  The other group of chiropractors claimed that the maintenance treatment implemented in the study was not intensive enough to be effective. On average, every study participant had 1.6 sessions of spinal manipulation per week (the costs of these treatments were estimated at US$ 60 million across the study period). But these chiropractors argued that “subluxations occur much more frequently and need to be treated more regularly; we advocate daily sessions to be on the safe side – besides, this would be ever so good for the profession as a whole.”

So far none of the chiropractors who have commented on the results of this study considered that their original hypothesis was false, i.e. that subluxations might not be the cause of all human disease. When our reporter put this possibility to the president of PISC, the answer was prompt and abrupt: ” You must be kidding! That would mean that D D Plamer was wrong. This is not a realistic possibility at all. Chiropractors are foremost manipulators; we will now manipulate the data until they confirm Palmer’s theory.”