doctors
In recent weeks, I have been thinking a lot about ‘INTEGRATIVE MEDICINE‘. Skeptics mostly see it as a way of smuggling quackery into conventional healthcare. This is undoubtedly true and important. But it occurred to me that there also is a somewhat different perspective that has so far been neglected. Let me try to explain by recounting a story. It is fictive, of course, but the fiction is based on the observation of many cases during previous decades.
The story is about a doctor – let’s call him George – who, to be frank, is not the most gifted of his colleagues. Already at medical school, he was not as dedicated as his teachers would have hoped. In fact, medicine had not been his first choice at all. Yet he ended up as a general practitioner and eventually became a partner in a practice with 5 GPs.
Over the years, it became clear that George lacked something to be a good doctor. He knew his stuff, alright, got most of the diagnoses correct, and made not too many mistakes. But something was not quite right. One could say that, relative to his colleagues, he lacked kindness, dedication, compassion, and empathy. He often found it unnecessary to respect his patients. Sometimes, he even joked about them and about what he perceived as their stupidity.
If we view medicine as being both a science and an art, one might conclude that George was just about alright with the science but notably deficient in the art of healthcare. Most of his patients were aware that something was amiss; many even avoided him and tried to consult one of his colleagues instead. On more than one occasion, patients had told George that they were disappointed with his attitude. Some had even told him to the face that he lacked kindness. Such conversations made George think. He had to admit to himself that his colleagues were better at building good relationships with their patients. Eventually, George decided that something ought to change.
As it happened, George’s wife had a friend who was a Reiki healer. One day, he asked the healer – let’s call her Liz – whether she would like to try working alongside the GPs in his practice. Liz was delighted and accepted. George did not believe for a minute that Reiki was more than hocus-pocus, but he knew that Liz was kind and had loads of the compassion that he was so obviously lacking.
Hence force George and Liz formed a team: George looked after his patients the best he could and whenever he felt that more empathy and compassion were required, he would send the patient to Liz. This partnership changed everything. The patients were content, George was happy, and Liz was beaming.
As some patients frowned at the idea of Reiki, George soon recruited an aromatherapist as well. After that, a lay homeopath and a reflexologist were employed. George’s GP partners (who made little use of the alternative practitioners) were sure that none of these therapies had any specific effects (incidentally, a belief not shared by the practitioners in question who felt they were doing wonders). But for George, the therapists clearly did supplement his limited interpersonal skills. Patients were delighted and the GP practice began to thrive. As for George, he became an increasingly outspoken and prominent advocate of INTEGRATED MEDICINE. The fact that there was no evidence to support it did hardly matter to him; what counted was that it rendered his own incompetence less visible.
About a year later, George convinced his slightly bewildered partners to rename their practice ‘THE INTEGRATIVE HEALTH CENTRE’.
End of story
In case you did not get my point, let me make it more bluntly: INTEGRATIVE MEDICINE can be a way for some doctors to delegate the art of medicine to quacks. Good doctors don’t need to do this because they are able to show compassion and treat their patients as whole human beings. Less gifted doctors, however, find INTEGRATIVE MEDICINE a practical solution to their own incompetence.
So, is INTEGRATIVE MEDICINE a good compromise then?
No, certainly not!
The last thing we need in healthcare is for doctors to start delegating the art of medicine to others. It would be a serious mistake, nothing less than abandoning the core values of medicine to charlatans.
But what is the solution?
Obviously, it is to make sure all doctors are competent. We need to select medical students adequately, tell them much more about the importance of kindness, compassion, empathy, holism, etc., and teach them how to show and use these qualities. We need to train doctors to be competent in both the science and the art of medicine. This has to begin in medical school and must continue throughout their professional career. We need to make sure that doctors like George understand the message; if they prove to be unable to do so, we should direct them to professions where compassion is not essential.
The worst solution we can possibly envisage is to allow charlatans to cover up the incompetence of people like George and call it INTEGRATED MEDICINE.
Camilla spent ten days at the end of October in a sophisticated meditation and fitness center in southern India. Life has recently been hectic for the Queen Consort: at 75, she has been in a non-stop succession of various ceremonies for the funeral of Elizabeth II, always one step behind her husband, not to mention her new status as sovereign… Enough to block her chakras in no time.
She came to the resort with her bodyguards and a handful of friends and was able to take advantage of the tailor-made treatments concocted for her by the master of the house, Dr Issac Mathai, who created this high-end holistic centre on a dozen hectares of scented gardens near Bangalore. The program includes massages, herbal steam baths, yoga, naturopathy, homeopathy, meditation, and Ayurvedic treatments to “cleanse, de-stress, soothe and revitalize the mind, body and soul”, as the establishment’s website states.
Guests are required to follow an individualized, meat-free diet, with organic food from the resort’s vegetable gardens, based on lots of salads or soups – Camilla is said to be a fan of sweet corn soup with spinach. Cigarettes and mobile phones are not allowed, although it is assumed that Camilla must have some privileges due to her status… and the basic rate for the suites, which starts at $950 a night – the price of the rooms varies between $260 and $760, the rate including a consultation with the doctors.
Charles and Camilla have been fans of the Soukya Centre in India for a decade. The place corresponds in every way to their deep-rooted convictions about health. Like her husband, Camilla is a follower of organic food, she also practices yoga and treats her face with creams made from nettle and bee venom. For his part, Charles has long been an advocate of alternative medicine, homeopathy, acupuncture, aromatherapy, and also hypnosis… He even set up a foundation to support complementary medicine by lobbying the British health service to include it in complementary therapies for certain patients, which caused an uproar among the pundits of traditional medicine.
________________________
If you suspected I was (yet again) sarcastic about the royal couple, you are mistaken. The text above is only my (slightly shortened) translation of an article published in the French magazine LE POINT (even the title is theirs). I found the article amusing and interesting; so, I looked up the Indian health center. Here are some of the things I found:
The 1st impression is that they are not shy about promotion calling themselves THE WORLD’S BEST AYURVEDA TREATMENT CENTER. The doctor in charge was once a ‘Consultant Physician’ at the Hale Clinic in London, where he treated a number of high-profile people. As his professional background, he offers this:
M.D. (Homeopathy); Hahnemann Post-Graduate Institute of Homeopathy, London M.R.C.H, London; Chinese Pulse Diagnosis and Acupuncture, WHO Institute of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Nanjing, China; Trained (Mind-Body Medicine Programme) at Harvard Medical School, USA
The approach of the center is described as follows:
The fundamental principle underlying Holistic Treatment is that the natural defense and immune system of an individual when strengthened, has the potential to heal and prevent diseases. In the age of super-specialisation where human beings are often viewed as a conglomeration of organs, it is crucial to understand ourselves as multi-dimensional beings with a body, mind and spirit. These interconnected dimensions need to be in perfect harmony to ensure real well-being.
And about homeopathy, they claim this:
Homeopathy originated in 1796 in Germany, and was discovered by Dr. Samuel Hahnemann, a German scientist. Homeopathy is popular today as a non-intrusive, holistic system of medicine. Instead of different medicines for different parts of the body, one single constitutional remedy is prescribed. As a system of medicine, Homeopathy is highly scientific, safe, logical and an extremely effective method of healing. For over 200 years people have used Homeopathy to maintain their good health, and also to treat and cure a wide range of illnesses like allergies, metabolic disorders, atopic dermatitis, Rheumatoid arthritis, Auto-immune disorders.
At this stage, I felt I had seen enough. Yes, you are right, we did not learn a lot from this little exploration. No, hold on! We did learn that homeopathy is highly scientific, safe, logical, and extremely effective!
The question, however, is should we believe it?
Guest post by Norbert Aust and Viktor Weisshäupl
Readers of this blog may remember the recent study of Frass et al. about the adjunct homeopathic treatment of patients suffering from non-small cell lung cancer (here). It was published in 2020 by the ‘Oncologist’, a respectable journal, and came to stunning results about to the effectiveness of homeopathy.
In our analysis, however, we found strong indications for duplicity: important study parameters like exclusion criteria or observation time were modified post hoc, and data showed characteristics that occur when unwanted data sets get removed.
We, that is the German Informationsnetzwerk Homöopathie and the Austrian ‘Initiative für wissenschaftliche Medizin’, had informed the Medical University Vienna about our findings – and the research director then asked the Austrian Agency for Scientific Integrity (OeAWI) to review the paper. The analysis took some time and included not only the paper and publicly available information but also the original data. In the end, OeAWI corroborated our findings: The results are not based on sound research but on modified or falsified data.
Here is their conclusion in full:
The committee concludes that there are numerous breaches of scientific integrity in the Study, as reported in the Publication. Several of the results can only be explained by data manipulation or falsification. The Publication is not a fair representation of the Study. The committee cannot for all the findings attribute the wrongdoings and incorrect representation to a single individual. However following our experience it is highly unlikely that the principal investigator and lead author, but also the co-authors were unaware of the discrepancies between the protocols and the Publication, for which they bear responsibility. (original English wording)
Profil, the leading news magazine of Austria reported in its issue of October 24, 2022, pp 58-61 (in German). There the lead author, Prof. M. Frass, a member of Edzard’s alternative medicine hall of fame, was asked for his comments. Here is his concluding statement:
All the allegations are known to us and completely incomprehensible, we can refute all of them. Our work was performed observing all scientific standards. The allegation of breaching scientific integrity is completely unwarranted. To us, it is evident that not all documents were included in the analysis of our study. Therefore we requested insight into the records to learn about the basis for the final statement.
(Die Vorwürfe sind uns alle bekannt und absolut unverständlich, alle können wir entkräften. Unsere Arbeit wurde unter Einhaltung aller wissenschaftlichen Standards durchgeführt. Der Vorhalt von Verstößen gegen die wissenschaftliche Intergrität enbehrt jeder Grundlage. Für uns zeigt sich offenkundig, dass bei der Begutachtung unserer Studie nicht alle Unterlagen miteinbezogen wurden. Aus diesem Grunde haben wir um Akteneinsicht gebeten, um die Grundlagen für das Final Statment kennenzulernen.)
The OeAWI together with the Medical University Vienna asked the ‘Oncologist’ for a retraction of this paper – which has not occurred as yet.
One of my recent posts prompted the following comment from a chiropractor: “… please don’t let me stop you…while we actually treat patients“. It was given in the context of a debate about the evidence for or against chiropractic spinal manipulations as a treatment of whiplash injuries. My position was that there is no convincing evidence, while the chiropractor argued that he has been using manipulations for this indication with good results. Here I do not want to re-visit the pros and cons of that particular debate. Since similar objections have been put to me so many times, I want rather to raise several more principal points.
Before I do this, I need to quickly get the personal stuff out of the way: the comment implies that I don’t really know what I am talking about because I don’t see patients and thus don’t understand their needs. The truth is that I started my professional life as a clinician, then I went into basic science, then I went back into clinical medicine (while also doing research), and eventually, I became a full-time clinical researcher. I have thus seen plenty of patients, certainly enough to empathize with both the needs of patients and the reasoning of clinicians. In fact, these provided the motives for my clinical research during the last decades of my professional career (more details here).
Now about the real issue that is at stake here. When offered by a clinician to a scientist, the comment “… please don’t let me stop you…while we actually treat patients” is an expression of an arrogant feeling of superiority that clinicians often harbor vis a vis professionals who are not at the ‘coal face’ of healthcare. Stripped down to its core, the argument implies that science is fairly useless because the only knowledge worth having stems from dealing with patients. In other words, it is about the tension that so often exists between clinical experience and scientific evidence.
Many clinicians feel that experience is the best guide to correct decision-making.
Many scientists feel that experience is fraught with errors, and only science can lead us towards optimal decisions.
Such arguments emerge regularly on this blog and are constant company to almost any type of healthcare. The question is, who is right and who is wrong?
As I indicated, I can empathize with both positions. I can see that, in the context of making therapeutic decisions in a busy clinic, for instance, the clinician’s argument weighs heavily and can make sense, particularly in areas where the evidence is mixed, weak, or uncertain.
However, in the context of this blog and other discussions focused on critical evaluation of the science, I am strongly on the side of the scientist. In fact, in this context, the argument “… please don’t let me stop you…while we actually treat patients” seems ridiculous and resembles an embarrassing admission of having no rational argument left for defending one’s own position.
To put my view of this in a nutshell: it is not a question of either or; for optimal healthcare, we obviously need both clinical experience AND scientific evidence (an insight that is not in the slightest original, since it is even part of Sackett’s definition of EBM).
It has been reported that the US Insurer ‘State Farm’ is fighting a fraudulent scheme that has been exploiting New Jersey’s personal injury protection (PIP) benefits law since 2014. The insurer is seeking to recover $2.6 million in what it claims are fraudulent auto injury claims and a declaratory judgment that it need not pay any further claims submitted by the providers involved in the alleged scheme.
State Farm’s suit accuses 12 chiropractic and spine clinics and doctors of fraud, unjust enrichment, and violations of the New Jersey Insurance Fraud Prevention Act. The insurer alleges these providers used a “predetermined protocol” for all patients and a patient referral system for services that were either not performed or were not medically necessary for the individual patients. Instead, the services were carried out to enrich the defendants by exploiting the patients’ eligibility for PIP benefits, according to the complaint.
The suit accuses the providers of failing to legitimately evaluate patients to determine the true nature of their injuries and of reporting the same or similar findings for all patients to justify a predetermined course of treatment that was substantially the same for all patients. Part of the “predetermined protocol” for patients with soft-tissue injuries of the neck and back consisted of
- hot and cold packs,
- chiropractic manipulations,
- massage,
- mechanical traction,
- physical medicine and rehabilitation,
- and manual therapy.
These treatments were administered to almost every patient on almost every visit, regardless of each patient’s unique circumstances and needs, according to the complaint. The chiropractors are also accused of referring patients to diagnostic clinics, some allegedly illegally owned by the chiropractors, for an “unnecessary and predetermined course of pain management and invasive treatments” including injections. State Farm says they would submit false documentation for each case representing that the treatments were legitimately performed and medically necessary.
The 80-page complaint details case after case where the patient’s responses to questions and tests were the same or similar, allegedly serving as a “pretext to justify” the chiropractors’ wide range of treatments. The defendants in the complaint filed in U.S. District Court for New Jersey are:
- Tri-County Chiropractic and Rehabilitation Center,
- Robert Matturro, D.C.,
- Advanced Spine and Pain Management,
- Varinder Dhillon, M.D.,
- Nicholas Rosania, D.C.,
- Bloomfield UAI,
- Dov Rand, M.D.,
- Primary Medical Services,
- Louis J. Citarelli, M.D.,
- Chiro Health Center P.C.,
- Marc Matturro, D.C.
- Marco Tartaglia, M.D.
_____________________________
This story made me wonder: which of the listed treatments
- hot and cold packs,
- chiropractic manipulations,
- massage,
- mechanical traction,
- physical medicine and rehabilitation,
- and manual therapy
would ever be indicated for patients with soft-tissue injuries of the neck and back? Or more specifically, are chiropractic manipulations indicated or contra-indicated for such problems following a car accident? I fail to see any sound evidence that they are effective. If I am correct, should insurance companies not sue all chiropractors who routinely use manipulations for such cases? If the answer is YES, the sum of 2.6 million might need to be increased by several orders of magnitude.
Le Figaro reported that France’s medical appointment booking service ‘Doctolib’ is being accused of promoting so-called alternative medicine (SCAM) on its platform. “Measures will be taken soon. Several options are on the table, we do not exclude anything,” announced Doctolib after declaring during the day on its Twitter account the immediate suspension of some profiles.
Health professionals and patients have been criticizing the platform for allowing its users to make appointments with practitioners claiming to be naturopaths and some offering dangerous quackery. Naturopathy is not recognized in France and is sometimes considered to be linked to charlatanism.
A member of the office for the control of conspiracies, Tristan Mendès France, had found a practitioner promoting urine therapy via Doctolib. “The presence of these individuals on a service that puts patients and health professionals in touch with each other gives them totally unjustified credit and endorsement,” stated a Twitter account aimed at informing “about the dangers of certain pseudo-alternatives in terms of health and nutrition”.
Amongst the questioned profiles were the naturopaths Thierry Casasnovas and Irène Grosjean, two influential personalities in the naturopathic world who are discredited in the health world. “We would like to point out that it is impossible for a patient to make an [appointment] on Doctolib in a practitioner not referenced by the Ministry of Health, without having expressly sought to do so,” Doctolib defended its position stating that it would proceed to checks on practitioners “whose actions would be dangerous or condemnable by law” and who would have been the subject of complaints on social media.
97%” of practitioners signed up with Doctolib are registered with the Ministry of Health,” the company claimed. According to Doctolib, only 3% of its practitioners are therefore from the realm of SCAM: sophrologists, hypnotherapists, naturopaths. In France, these practitioners are not regulated and do not have the status of health professional, but they are nevertheless legal. The appointments made on Doctolib with such practitioners represent “0.3% of the totality” of the volume recorded on the platform.
The CEO of Doctolib, Stanislas Niox-Chateau, said that he was responding to a request from patients and refused to position his site as a simple directory of the Ministry of Health: “The demand is there. It is not up to us to say whether these activities are effective or useful. They are legal, so we have no reason to prevent practitioners from being listed on our site.”
As so often in the realm of SCAM, the dispute seems to be one between ethical/moral responsibilities and commercial interests of the parties involved.
In Austria, even some of the most blatant quackery continues to be supported by the country’s medical association. This has been notorious for a very long time, and many rational doctors have opposed this nonsense. Now my friends and colleagues have courageously sent an open letter to the President of the Austrian Medical Association. In order to support their efforts, I have taken the liberty of translating it:
Dr. Johannes Steinhart
President of the Austrian Medical Association
Weihburggasse 10-12
1010 Vienna
Dear President Steinhart,
In 2014 we founded the “Initiative for Scientific Medicine” with the aim of counteracting the support of pseudo-medicine by medical associations and the Ministry of Health.
We (www.initiative-wissenschaftliche-medizin.at) have been demanding for years that the Austrian Medical Association distance itself from irrational, predominantly esoteric pseudo-medicine and refrain from awarding diplomas in them. We also made these demands on behalf of the supporters of the initiative (currently 1142 supporters, of which 495 are female doctors and 230 natural scientists) during a discussion with the former president Wechselberger in 2015 (unfortunately unsuccessful at the time).
We would like to draw your attention to a resolution of the German Medical Congress 2022 on homeopathy and a court ruling in the first instance in Germany on the subject of bioresonance, which show that our neighbours have obviously begun to treat pseudomedicine for what it is, namely sham medicine.
The 126th German Medical Congress 2022 in Bremen has, among other things, passed a long overdue resolution. The additional title “homeopathy” was deleted from the (model) further training regulations. Prior to this decision, 12 of 17 state medical associations had already taken this decision themselves.
In May 2022 in Reutlingen, two managing directors of a company producing and selling bioresonance devices were sentenced to 2 and 3 years in prison and a fine of 2.5 million euros, and the former sales director to 90 days’ imprisonment for commercial fraud and violation of the Therapeutic Products Advertising Act. The verdict is not yet legally binding. Unfortunately, many Austrian doctors also practice this pseudo-medicine method.
The fact that many colleagues offer esoteric, pseudo-medical “therapies” without proven benefits to their patients and can refer to diplomas and accredited further training courses of the Medical Association/Academy of Physicians is difficult for us to understand, especially in view of the fact that the majority of the accredited further training courses are of high scientific quality. A medical association that argues that such pseudo-medical practices “should better remain in the hands of doctors (as “healers”)” contradicts the principles of evidence-based medicine to which the medical association always refers. The corona pandemic has shown us all the damage potential of science denial.
We believe that the time has also come for the Austrian Medical Association to come clean. We call on the Austrian Medical Association to unreservedly declare its support for scientific medicine, to clearly distance itself from pseudo-medicine, to suspend the awarding of diplomas in pseudo-medicine methods that are far removed from science, and to end the accreditation of pseudo-medicine training courses by the Medical Academy.
We are publishing this open letter on our website and will also publish your reply if you so wish.
With collegial greetings
Dr. Theodor Much, Specialist in Dermatology and Venereology, Baden near Vienna
DDr. Viktor Weisshäupl, retired specialist in anaesthesiology and intensive care medicine, Vienna
In a previous post, I reported about the ‘biggest ever’, ‘history-making’ conference on integrative medicine. It turns out that it was opened by none other than Prince Charles. Here is what the EXPRESS reported about his opening speech:
Opening the conference, Charles said:
“I know a few people have seen this integrated approach as being in some way opposed to modern medicine. It isn’t. But we need to combine this with a personal approach that also takes account of our beliefs, hopes, culture and history. It builds upon the abilities of our minds and bodies to heal, and to live healthy lives by improving diet and lifestyle.”
Dr. Michael Dixon, Chair of the College of Medicine, said:
“Medicine, as we know it, is no longer affordable or sustainable. Nor is it able to curb the increase in obesity, mental health problems and most long-term diseases. A new medical mindset is needed, which goes to the heart of true healthcare. The advantages and possibilities of social prescription are limitless. An adjustment to the system now will provide a long-term, sustainable solution for the NHS to meet the ever-increasing demand for funding and healthcare professionals.”
_______________________
Charles very kindly acknowledges that not everyone is convinced about his concept of integrated/integrative medicine. Good point your royal highness! But I fear Charles did not quite understand our objections. In a nutshell: it is not possible to cure the many ills of conventional medicine by adding unproven and disproven therapies to it. In fact, it distracts from our duty to constantly improve conventional medicine. And pretending it is all about diet and lifestyle is simply not true (see below). Moreover, it is disingenuous to pretend that diet and lifestyle do not belong to conventional healthcare.
Dr. Dixon’s concern about the affordability of medicine is, of course, justified. But the notion that “the advantages and possibilities of social prescription are limitless” is a case of severe proctophasia, and so is Dixon’s platitude about ‘adjusting the system’. His promotion of treatments like Acupuncture, Alexander Technique, Aromatherapy, Herbal Medicine, Homeopathy, Hypnotherapy, Massage, Naturopathy, Reflexology, Reiki, Tai Chi, Yoga Therapy will not adjust anything, it will only make healthcare less efficient.
I do not doubt for a minute that doctors are prescribing too many drugs and that we could save huge amounts by reminding patients that they are responsible for their own health while teaching them how to improve it without pills. This is what we learn in medical school! All we need to do is remind everyone concerned. In fact, Charles and his advisor, Michael, could be most helpful in achieving this – but not by promoting a weird branch of healthcare (integrative/integrated medicine or whatever other names they choose to give it) that can only distract from the important task at hand.
Today, a 3-day conference is starting on ‘INTEGRATIVE MEDICINE’ (IM) in London. Dr. Michael Dixon, claims that it is going to be the biggest such conference ever and said that it ‘will make history’. Dixon is an advisor to Prince Charles, chair of the College of Medicine and Integrated Health (CoMIH, of which Charles is a patron), and joint-chair of the congress. The other co-chair is Elizabeth Thompson. Both have been the subject of several previous posts on this blog.
Dixon advertised the conference by commenting: “I am seeing amongst by younger colleagues, the newly trained GPs, that they have a new attitude towards healthcare. They are not interested in whether something is viewed as conventional, complementary, functional or lifestyle, they are just looking at what works for their patients. Through this conference, we aim to capture that sense of hope, open-mindedness, and patient-centred care”. I believe that this ‘history-making’ event is a good occasion to yet again review the concept of IM.
The term IM sounds appealing, yet it is also confusing and misleading. The confusion starts with the fact that our American friends call it integrative medicine, while we in the UK normally call it integrated medicine, and it ends with different people understanding different things by IM. In conventional healthcare, for instance, people use the term to mean the integration of social and medical care. In the bizarre world of alternative medicine, IM is currently used to signify the parallel use of alternative and conventional therapies on an equal footing.
Today, there are many different definitions of the latter version of IM. Prince Charles, one of the world’s most ardent supporter of IM, used to simply call it ‘the best of both worlds’. A recent, more detailed definition is a ‘healing-oriented medicine that takes account of the whole person, including all aspects of lifestyle. It emphasizes the therapeutic relationship between practitioner and patient, is informed by evidence, and makes use of all appropriate therapies’. This seems to imply that conventional medicine is not healing-orientated, does not account for the whole person, excludes aspects of lifestyle, neglects the therapeutic relationship, is not informed by evidence, and does not employ all appropriate therapies. This, I would argue is a bonanza of strawman fallacies, i.e. the misrepresentation of an opponent’s qualities with a view of defeating him more easily and making one’s own position look superior. Perhaps this is unsurprising – after all, Dixon has been once named ‘a pyromaniac in a field of (integrative) strawmen’.
Perhaps definitions are too theoretical and it is more productive to look at what IM stands for in real life. If you surf the Internet, you can find thousands of clinics that carry the name IM. It will take you just minutes to discover that there is not a single alternative therapy, however ridiculous, that they don’t offer. What is more, there is evidence to show that doctors who are into IM are also often against public health measures such as vaccinations.
The UK ‘Integrated Medicine Alliance’, a grouping within the CoMIH, offers information sheets on all of the following treatments: Acupuncture, Alexander Technique, Aromatherapy, Herbal Medicine, Homeopathy, Hypnotherapy, Massage, ,Naturopathy, Reflexology, Reiki, Tai Chi, Yoga Therapy. The one on homeopathy, for example, tells us that “homeopathy … can be used for almost any condition either alone or in a complementary manner.” Compare this to what the NHS says about it: “homeopathic remedies perform no better than placebos (dummy treatments)”.
This evidently grates with the politically correct definition above: IM is not well-informed about the evidence, and it does use inappropriate treatments. In fact, it is little more than a clumsy attempt to smuggle unproven and disproven alternative therapies into the mainstream of healthcare. It does render medicine not better but will inevitably make it worse, and this is surely not in the best interest of vulnerable patients who, I would argue, have a right to be treated with the most effective therapies currently available.
The conference can perhaps be characterized best by having a look at its sponsors. ‘Gold sponsor’ is WELEDA, and amongst the many further funders of the meeting are several other manufacturers of mistletoe medications for cancer. I just hope that the speakers at this meeting – Dixon has managed to persuade several reputable UK contributors – do not feel too embarrassed when they pass their exhibitions.
I came across an interesting case report recently published in an Austrian magazine. Here is my translation for non-German speakers:
A 42-year-old woman from Vienna has suffered from endometriosis since the age of 13. But it was only 8 years later that she found out what made the first two days of her menstruation so unbearable. She was not allowed to take painkillers to help herself during all that time. Her parents listened to medical “gurus” who distrusted conventional medicine.
“I grew up in a household where almost all illnesses were treated with homeopathy,” she wrote on Twitter. That’s exactly what became the IT expert’s undoing. In a recent interview, she looked back bitterly: “All infections and illnesses were treated with Bach flower remedies or homeopathics. Only in case of accidents or broken bones did my parents drive me to the hospital.” Her father suffered from an auto-immune disease. Because conventional medicine could not help him, he tried alternative approaches. “My parents slowly drifted more and more into this scene. At some point, they stopped listening to ‘normal’ doctors. It went downhill from there.”
As a girl, the Viennese had little chance of standing up to her parents’ “whisperers,” as she calls their esoteric advice. “When I got my period, I was in the worst pain. I fainted every month, even falling off my chair when I did it, once even at school. I vomited until I was so exhausted that I fell asleep.”
She begged her family to finally be allowed to consult a gynecologist. But he didn’t take the teenager seriously at the time and simply wanted to prescribe her the pill without a thorough examination. “I then went to my parents’ homeopathic ‘pill pusher’, who gave me homeopathics against my complaints. I wasn’t allowed to take painkillers because they ‘damage the liver’.” The guru persuaded the young woman that her health problems were her fault. “He said I just didn’t accept myself as a woman and that’s why I was in pain. I thought for a long time that I was just not strong and good enough.”
It wasn’t until she was already in her early 20s that her then-boyfriend took her to a gynecologist who finally took her condition seriously. “The ultrasound showed that I had quite a few cysts in my abdomen.” The diagnosis was also finally certain: she was now officially suffering from endometriosis. She was given the right medicine, and most of the endometriotic growths regressed. But a cyst had wrapped itself tightly around her right ovary, damaging it irrevocably over the years. It had died. “Homeopathy cost me my ovary,” the Viennese woman laments.
The fact that she nevertheless was able to become the mother of two children is thanks to her other ovary, which fortunately remained intact. But the feeling of having been treated wrongly, or not treated at all, for such a long time makes her angry. “I don’t blame my parents today. They have apologized and found their own way out of the gurus’ world of thought and out of the scene,” she emphasizes. “But I blame the people who pretend to be able to cure the majority of all diseases with homeopathy. Yet most of the time they can’t even find the right diagnosis and just give patients some stuff that has no side effects.” She now calls for an end to homeopathy.
_________________________
How many times have I said it?
His remedy might be risk-free, but the homeopath certainly isn’t!
