evidence
I have argued since many years that pharmacists should not be selling or promoting homeopathic and other remedies for which there is no proof of efficacy – the last time I published my view on this matter is even less than a week ago: Personally, I would go another step further and remind pharmacists who sell homeopathic remedies to the unsuspecting public that it is unethical to pretend they are more than placebos.
Despite my insistence and despite the fact that many agree with me (at least privately), there are precious few pharmacists who actually do something meaningful about the current situation. And there is very little visible change: in the UK, it is currently hard to find a pharmacy where homeopathic remedies are not on the shelves, and certainly all the major chains seem to put money before health care ethics.
I am, of course, speaking about the situation in the UK, France, Germany and some other European countries. Perhaps elsewhere things are different?
A NZ website seems to indicate that ‘down under’ the pharmacists are getting more active. Some strongly argue against unproven or disproven remedies in pharmacies:
Firstly, …it’s not a case that “pharmacists ‘should’ only be selling health products for which there is credible evidence of efficacy” (alterations mine, emboldened) but that they are obliged to—but choose not to. Their ethical guidelines state –
[PHARMACISTS] MUST:… Only purchase, supply or promote any medicine, complementary therapy, herbal remedy or other healthcare product where there is no reason to doubt its quality or safety and when there is credible evidence of efficacy.
…Secondly, the argument that ‘other businesses sell junk remedies therefore we shall’ is unsound. One of the key points about the ethical regulations for pharmacies is that customers should be able to walk into a store and have an expectation that the remedies within the store are basically sound. If other businesses elect to be unsound, that’s poor health practice, but no justification to do likewise. On the face of it, it would seem that the profit motive is ruling over sound and ethical practice.
Thirdly, that some GPs subscribe placebos should have no standing in this. There is some arguments for GPs to prescribe placebo remedies in some cases; others would argue that education is a better response in most cases. Either way—and just my opinion—it seems to me that GPs prescribing homeopathic remedies encourages people to think these have real remedial effects. I don’t work within the industry, but I am sure are ways of offering placebos that avoid using off-the-shelf commercial products. One might be that patients only get placebo ‘treatments’ via prescription.
…Fourthly, Pharmacy Today encourages that “pharmacies need to reconsider their stance in the light of this report”***. While this is an excellent idea, and one I thoroughly support, I suspect the underlying driver isn’t the report, but media presence on the topic. There is a long trail of evidence over many years showing that homeopathic remedies are not effective for anything.
The Australian study*** that prompted the latest round of interest drew this statement,
Based on the assessment of the evidence of effectiveness of homeopathy, NHMRC concludes that there are no health conditions for which there is reliable evidence that homeopathy is effective.
Homeopathy should not be used to treat health conditions that are chronic, serious, or could become serious. People who choose homeopathy may put their health at risk if they reject or delay treatments for which there is good evidence for safety and effectiveness. People who are considering whether to use homeopathy should first get advice from a registered health practitioner.* Those who use homeopathy should tell their health practitioner and should keep taking any prescribed treatments.
The National Health and Medical Research Council expects that the Australian public will be offered treatments and therapies based on the best available evidence.
…Why were the relevant professional bodies not onto this evidence sooner?…
GOOD QUESTION!
I might add another one: why are the European professional bodies of pharmacy doing so little about this ongoing breach of their own ethical codes?
(*** the report that the author refers to is the one by the Australian National Health and Medical Research Council we discussed on this blog a few days ago.)
I reported previously on this blog that the Australian National Health and Medical Research Council (NH&MRC) has made the most thorough and independent assessment of homeopathy in the history of this form of alternative therapy. The report published at the time was preliminary, and further evidence from parties that were critical of it needed to be taken into account.
Today (11/3/2015), the NH&MRC has released its final report on homeopathy. In essence, it concluded that there is no scientific basis for homeopathy and no quality evidence of its efficacy.
The report is similar in its conclusions to the UK Government Science and Technology 2010 Report on Homeopathy.
The summary of the report sates the following:
Homeopathy should not be used to treat health conditions that are chronic, serious, or could become serious. People who choose homeopathy may put their health at risk if they reject or delay treatments for which there is good evidence for safety and effectiveness. People who are considering whether to use homeopathy should first get advice from a registered health practitioner. Those who use homeopathy should tell their health practitioner and should keep taking any prescribed treatments.
Professor Warwick Anderson, CEO of the Council, commented: “All medical treatments and interventions should be underpinned by reliable evidence. NH&MRC’s review shows that there is no good quality evidence to support the claim that homeopathy works better than a placebo.”
The report confirms what many scientific and public health experts have maintained since about 200 years, that not only does homeopathy not work, if it did, chemistry, physics and physiology could not.
“In short, the continued promotion of homeopathy would represent a commercial scam preying on the gullible,” said Professor John Dwyer AO, President of Friends of Science in Medicine (FSM), a non-industry aligned advocacy group for quality evidence in health. “Worse still, as a placebo therapy, harm may occur when it replaces effective therapies, as those given homeopathic treatments may wrongly think that they and their children are protected from serious infections,” he added.
The report emphasises that ‘People who choose homeopathy may put their health at risk, if they reject or delay treatments for which there is good evidence for safety and effectiveness’.
“With so many pressures on the Australian health dollar the Government must stop subsidising unproven alternative therapies such as homeopathy through student loans for homeopathy and similar courses,” said Professor Rob Morrison OAM, Co-Vice President of FSM, “The government should also not subsidise health funds offering cover for pseudoscientific electives of this kind,” said Professor Morrison. “The government should at least mandate that health funds offer a cheaper option that does not include ‘belief based’ therapies,” he said.
“It is completely unprofessional and unethical now for pharmacies to sell homeopathic products,” said Emeritus Professor Alastair MacLennan AO, Co-Vice President of FSM, “These products should now be removed from pharmacies and retail outlets”.
Few alternative remedies are more popular than colloidal silver, i.e. tiny particles of silver suspended in a liquid, and few represent more irresponsible quackery. It is widely promoted as a veritable panacea. Take this website (one of thousands), for instance; it advertises colloidal silver in the most glowing terms:
Here are some of the diseases against which Colloidal Silver has been used successfully Acne, Allergies, Appendicitis, Arthritis, Blood parasites, Bubonic plague, Burns (colloidal silver is one of the few treatments that can keep severe burn patients alive), Cancer, Cholera, Conjunctivitis, Diabetes, Gonorrhoea, Hay Fever, Herpes, Leprosy, Leukaemia, Malaria, Meningitis, Parasitic Infections both viral and fungal, Pneumonia, Rheumatism, Ringworm, Scarlet Fever, Septic conditions of eyes, ears, mouth, throat, Shingles, Skin Cancer, Syphilis, all viruses, warts and stomach ulcer.In addition it also has veterinary uses, such as for canine Parvo virus. You’ll also find Colloidal Silver very handy in the garden since it can be used against bacterial, fungal / viral attacks on plants.It would also appear highly unlikely that any germ warfare agents could survive an encounter with CS, as viruses such as E Bola and Hanta are in the end merely viruses and bacteria.Colloidal Silver is non-toxic, making it safe for both children, adults and pets. Colloidal Silver is in fact a pre 1938 healing modality, making it exempt from FDA jurisdiction.
So why haven’t you heard of it? It’s suspected that the user friendly economics of Colloidal Silver may have something to do with its low profile in the media. Colloidal Silver shines a spotlight on the over expensive and deadly nature of the pharmaceutical industry, who are larger than the Pentagon economically.
That’s right, plenty of bogus claims (it goes without saying that there is no good evidence to support any of them) and, for good measure, some conspiracy theory as well – the perfect mix for making a fast buck!
But sometimes things do not work out as planned. The following text was recently published on the website of Essex County Council:
A man claiming to sell a cure for cancer has been fined £750 following an investigation by Essex Trading Standards. Steven Cook, 54, of East Road, West Mersea, was charged with an offence under the Cancer Act after suggesting Colloidal Silver was a treatment for cancer.
Mr Cook pleaded guilty at Colchester Magistrates’ Court on Friday 12 September. Magistrates imposed a fine of £750 and ordered him to pay £1,500 costs. Cllr Roger Hirst, Essex County Council’s cabinet member for Trading Standards, said: “Trading Standards’ advice to people who are considering whether to take any substance not prescribed for a medical purpose, either preventative or as a treatment, is to consult their doctor first.
“I hope the public feel safer knowing that Essex Trading Standards will take action where traders are trying to sell products which are neither medically proven nor safe.”
Mr Cook runs a website, www.colloidalsilveruk.com, selling various products containing silver. One of the products on sale was “Ultimate Colloidal Silver”, a liquid containing silver that Mr Cook made in his own home. Trading Standards said the website implied that the product can cure cancer – and this is an offence under the Cancer Act. Mr Cook has now updated the website and removed any claims that colloidal silver can cure some cancers.
So, there is some hope! Occasionally, fraudsters are being found out and punished. But the bad news, of course, is that this sort of thing occurs far too rarely and when it does happen, the punishment is far too lenient. Consequently, the public’s protection from fraudsters exploiting the most vulnerable patients is woefully insufficient.
A recent article from THE CHIROPRACTIC REPORT entitled ‘Media Criticism – Whether and How to Respond’ has caught my attention. It provides detailed and, in my view, quite remarkable advice to chiropractors as to how they should react to criticism. Here is an excerpt:
…the easiest media comment to challenge is one that makes an absolute claim – for example Salzberg’s claim that the practice of chiropractic is “highly dubious.” It also means that an effective response should usually not be absolute – claiming for example that chiropractic care can cure, or a specific chiropractic treatment is proven effective for, a specific condition.
Let’s explore this with an example. In 2008 a British journalist, Simon Singh, while promoting a new book he had co-authored that was heavily critical of chiropractic and complementary and alternative medicine in general, wrote an article in the Guardian newspaper in which he claimed that “there is not a jot of evidence” that chiropractic treatment can help children with “colic, sleeping and feeding problems . . . and prolonged crying.” In other words, a black and white claim.
There was and is evidence. Singh was wrong. How might you respond to this? Here are your options for reply, from the outspoken to the restrained:
a. Chiropractic is proven effective for the cure of infantile colic.
b. Spinal manipulation is proven effective for the cure of infantile colic
c. Manual treatments are proven effective for the cure of infantile colic
d. Chiropractic/spinal manipulation/ manual therapies may be effective in reducing the symptoms of infantile colic.
e. Where spinal joint dysfunction/subluxation is found, chiropractic/spinal manipulation/manual therapies may be effective in reducing abnormal and incessant crying in infants medically diagnosed as having infantile colic
f. Chiropractic care has a central focus of assessing and correcting spinal joint dysfunction/subluxation and its biomechanical and physiological effects, and where these are addressed many symptoms may be reduced including those associated with infantile colic.
The first three options are as black and white as Singh’s statement, and are not supported by the evidence. Some studies say yes, some no. All the other options, which have appropriate qualifiers and shades of gray, are supported by sound evidence.
Much of that evidence is referred to and referenced in the March 2010 issue of this Report, available online at www.chiropracticreport.com/pastissues. To answer Singh effectively one only has to produce some of the good quality research and question how he can be credible when he says “there is not a jot of evidence”.
With respect to evidence, in this context that means evidence published in peer-reviewed scientific journals. You may decide to comment on one or more anecdotal case reports from your practice to give your response greater human interest, but this will mean nothing unless supported by higher levels of published evidence.
Am I the only one to find this remarkable?
Am I wrong in interpreting this as detailed instructions to mislead the public?
Are these instructions not merely advice to defend chiropractic commercial interests at the expense of public health?
How can this be ethical?
In the past, I have been involved in several court cases where patients had complained about mistreatment by charlatans. Similarly I have acted as an expert witness for the General Medical Council in similar circumstances.
So, it is true, quacks are sometimes being held to account by their victims. But, generally speaking, patients seem to complain very rarely when they fall in the hands of even the most incompetent of quacks.
Here is one telling reminder showing how long it can take until a complaint is finally filed.
Dr Julian Kenyon is, according to his website, an integrated medicine physician and Medical Director of the Dove Clinic for Integrated Medicine, Winchester and London. Dr Julian Kenyon is Founder-Chairman of the British Medical Acupuncture Society in 1980 and Co-Founder of the Centre for the Study of Complementary Medicine in Southampton and London where he worked for many years before starting The Dove Clinic in 2000. He is also Founder/President of the British Society for Integrated Medicine and is an established authority in the field of complementary treatment approaches for a wide range of medical conditions. He has written approximately 20 books and has had many academic papers published in peer review journals* and has several patents to his name. He graduated from the University of Liverpool with a Bachelor of Medicine and Surgery and subsequently with a research degree, Doctor of Medicine. In 1972, he was appointed a Primary Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons, Edinburgh.
*[I found only 4 on Medline]
Kenyon has been on sceptics’ radar for a very long time. For instance, he is one of the few UK doctors who use ‘LIVE BLOOD ANALYSIS’, a bogus diagnostic method that can harm patients through false-negative or false-positive diagnoses. A 2003 undercover investigation for BBC 1 South’s ‘Inside Out’ accused Dr Julian Kenyon of using yet another spurious diagnostic test at his clinic near Winchester. Kenyon has, for many years, been working together with George Lewith, another of the country’s ‘leading’ complementary doctors. In 1994, the two published an article about their co-operation; here is its abstract:
This paper outlines the main research effort that has taken place within the Centre for the Study of Complementary Medicine over the last 10 years. It demonstrates the Centre’s expertise and interest in a whole variety of areas, including the social implications and development of complementary medicine, clinical trial methodology, the evaluation of complementary medical machinery, the effects of electromagnetic fields on health and the investigation of the subtle energetic processes involved in complementary medicine. Our future plans are outlined.
Lewith and Kenyon have been using a technique called electrodermal testing for more than 20 years. Considering the fact that the two doctors authored a BMJ paper which concluded that electrodermal machines couldn’t detect environmental allergies, this seems more than a little surprising.
Using secret filming, ‘Inside Out’ showed Dr Kenyon testing a six-year-old boy and then deciding that he is sensitive to dust mites. Later, Dr Kenyon insists that he made his diagnosis purely on the boy’s symptoms and that he didn’t use the machine to test for dust mites. The BBC then took the boy for a conventional skin prick test, which suggested he didn’t have any allergies at all. But Dr Kenyon then says the conventional test may not be accurate: “He may be one of the 10% who actually are negative to the skin tests but benefit from measures to reduce dust mite exposure.”
Despite this very public disclosure, Kenyon was able to practice unrestrictedly for many years.
In December 2014, it was reported in the Hampshire Chronicle that Dr Kenyon eventually did, after a complaint from a patient, end up in front of the General Medical Council’s conduct tribunal. The panel heard that, after a 20-minute consultation, which cost £300, Dr Kenyon told one terminally-ill man with late-stage cancer: “I am not claiming we can cure you, but there is a strong possibility that we would be able to increase your median survival time with the relatively low-risk approaches described here.” He also made bold statements about the treatment’s supposed benefits to an undercover reporter who posed as the husband of a woman with breast cancer.
After considering the full details of the case, Ben Fitzgerald, for the General Medical Council, had called for Dr Kenyon to be suspended, but the panel’s chairman Dr Surendra Kumar said Dr Kenyon’s misconduct was not serious enough to warrant a ban. The panel eventually imposed restrictions on Kenyon’s licence lasting for 12 months.
I estimate that patients are exposed to quackery from doctors and alternative practitioners thousands of times every day. Why then, I ask myself, do so few of them complain? Here are some of the possible answers to this important question:
- They do not dare to.
- They feel embarrassed.
- They don’t know how to.
- They cannot be bothered and fear the agro.
- They fail to identify quackery and fall for the nonsense they are being told.
- They even might perceive benefit from treatments which, in fact, are pure quackery.
Whatever the reasons, I think it is regrettable that not far more quacks are held to account – regardless of whether the charlatan in question as studied medicine or not. If you disagree, consider this: not filing a complaint means that many more patients will be put at risk.
Guest post by Louise Lubetkin
(A SCIENTIST IN WONDERLAND: A MEMOIRE OF SEARCHING FOR TRUTH AND FINDING TROUBLE has now been published. An apt opportunity perhaps to post a letter and comment from the person who helped me GREATLY in finishing it.)
People write memoirs for a variety of reasons but perhaps one of the strongest impelling forces is the need to make sense of one’s own experiences. It is not surprising that you, who spent your entire professional career searching for explanations, identifying associations and parsing correlations, found yourself looking at your own life with the same analytical curiosity. Memoir is in many respects a natural choice in this regard.
That you chose to undertake a profoundly personal inventory at this juncture is also understandable in human terms. Retirement, whether anticipated and planned for, or (as in your case) thrust rudely upon you, reorders one’s sense of identity in ways that cannot fail to prompt reflection. It would have been surprising had you not felt an urge to look back and take stock, to trace the narrative arc of your life from its beginnings in post-war Germany all the way to the quiet house in rural Suffolk where you now sit, surrounded by the comfort of books and the accumulated paraphernalia of a life spent digging and delving in search of the building blocks of truth.
Given the contentious circumstances surrounding your departure from academic life, it is quite likely that you will be asked whether your decision to write a memoir was driven, at least in part, by a desire to settle scores. I think you can dismiss such a question unhesitatingly. You have no scores to settle: you came to England after a steady and unbroken ascent to the apex of your professional career, voluntarily leaving behind a position that most people would regard with envy and deference. You were never a supplicant at Exeter’s door; far from it. The fact that things went inexorably downhill over the course of your 20 years’ tenure there, and ended so deplorably, is not a reflection on you, your department, or the quality or quantity of work you turned out. Rather, it is a reflection on the very nature of the work you went there to do – and if there is any message in your memoir, it is this:
Alternative medicine is not, at its heart, a logical enterprise, and its adherents are not committed to – nor even interested in – a rational evaluation of their methods. Rather, alternative medicine is primarily an ideological position, a political credo, a reaction against mainstream medicine. To many of its adherents and impassioned advocates, its appeal lies not in any demonstrable therapeutic efficacy but in its perceived outsider status as the countercultural medicine, the medicine for Everyman, the David to the bullying medical-pharmaceutical Goliath. That your research work would elicit howls of protest was perhaps inevitable, given the threat it posed to the profitable and powerful alternative medicine industry. But it didn’t stop there: astonishingly, your work drew the ire of none less than the meddlesome heir apparent to the British throne. Prince Charles’ attempts to stymie your work call to mind the twelfth century martyr Thomas à Becket, of whom Henry II reputedly cried: “Oh, who will rid me of this turbulent priest?” (Henry’s sycophantic henchmen were quick to oblige, dispatching the hapless cleric on the steps of Canterbury cathedral.)
It’s clear that you were acutely aware, as a young man growing up in Germany, that science was not immune to the corrupting influence of political ideology, and that the German medical profession had entered – enthusiastically – into a Faustian compact with the Nazi regime. You have exhibited a courageous insistence on confronting and examining a national past that has at times felt like an intensely personal burden to you. It is ironic that in going to sleepy Exeter in an earnest, conscious attempt to shake off the constricting, intrigue-ridden atmosphere of academic Vienna, you ultimately found yourself once again mired in a struggle against the influence of ideology and the manipulation of science for political ends.
You went to Exeter strictly as a scientist, a skilled inquirer, a methodical investigator, expecting to be able to bring the rigors of logic and the scientific method to bear on an area of medical practice that had until then not been subjected to any kind of systematic evaluation. Instead, you were caught in a maelstrom of intrigue far worse than that which you had gratefully left behind in Vienna, buffeted and bruised by forces against which a lesser man would surely not have had the fortitude to push back so long and so hard.
On 1/12/2014 I published a post in which I offered to give lectures to students of alternative medicine:
Getting good and experienced lecturers for courses is not easy. Having someone who has done more research than most working in the field and who is internationally known, might therefore be a thrill for students and an image-boosting experience of colleges. In the true Christmas spirit, I am today making the offer of being of assistance to the many struggling educational institutions of alternative medicine .
A few days ago, I tweeted about my willingness to give free lectures to homeopathic colleges (so far without response). Having thought about it a bit, I would now like to extend this offer. I would be happy to give a free lecture to the students of any educational institution of alternative medicine.
I did not think that this would create much interest – and I was right: only the ANGLO-EUROPEAN COLLEGE OF CHIROPRACTIC has so far hoisted me on my own petard and, after some discussion (see comment section of the original post) hosted me for a lecture. Several people seem keen on knowing how this went; so here is a brief report.
I was received, on 14/1/2015, with the utmost kindness by my host David Newell. We has a coffee and a chat and then it was time to start the lecture. The hall was packed with ~150 students and the same number was listening in a second lecture hall to which my talk was being transmitted.
We had agreed on the title CHIROPRACTIC: FALLACIES AND FACTS. So, after telling the audience about my professional background, I elaborated on 7 fallacies:
- Appeal to tradition
- Appeal to authority
- Appeal to popularity
- Subluxation exists
- Spinal manipulation is effective
- Spinal manipulation is safe
- Ad hominem attack
Numbers 3, 5 and 6 were dealt with in more detail than the rest. The organisers had asked me to finish by elaborating on what I perceive as the future challenges of chiropractic; so I did:
- Stop happily promoting bogus treatments
- Denounce obsolete concepts like ‘subluxation’
- Clarify differences between chiros, osteos and physios
- Start a culture of critical thinking
- Take action against charlatans in your ranks
- Stop attacking everyone who voices criticism
I ended by pointing out that the biggest challenge, in my view, was to “demonstrate with rigorous science which chiropractic treatments demonstrably generate more good than harm for which condition”.
We had agreed that my lecture would be followed by half an hour of discussion; this period turned out to be lively and had to be extended to a full hour. Most questions initially came from the tutors rather than the students, and most were polite – I had expected much more aggression.
In his email thanking me for coming to Bournemouth, David Newell wrote about the event: The general feedback from staff and students was one of relief that you possessed only one head, :-). I hope you may have felt the same about us. You came over as someone who had strong views, a fair amount of which we disagreed with, but that presented them in a calm, informative and courteous manner as we did in listening and discussing issues after your talk. I think everyone enjoyed the questions and debate and felt that some of the points you made were indeed fair critique of what the profession may need to do, to secure a more inclusive role in the health care arena.
My own impression of the day is that some of my messages were not really understood, that some of the questions, including some from the tutors, seemed like coming from a different planet, and that people were more out to teach me than to learn from my talk. One overall impression that I took home from that day is that, even in this college which prides itself of being open to scientific evidence and unimpressed by chiropractic fundamentalism, students are strangely different from other health care professionals. The most tangible aspect of this is the openly hostile attitude against drug therapies voiced during the discussion by some students.
The question I always ask myself after having invested a lot of time in preparing and delivering a lecture is: WAS IT WORTH IT? In the case of this lecture, I think the answer is YES. With 300 students present, I am fairly confident that I did manage to stimulate a tiny bit of critical thinking in a tiny percentage of them. The chiropractic profession needs this badly!
According to the ‘General Osteopathic Council’ (GOC), osteopathy is a primary care profession, focusing on the diagnosis, treatment, prevention and rehabilitation of musculoskeletal disorders, and the effects of these conditions on patients’ general health.
Using many of the diagnostic procedures applied in conventional medical assessment, osteopaths seek to restore the optimal functioning of the body, where possible without the use of drugs or surgery. Osteopathy is based on the principle that the body has the ability to heal, and osteopathic care focuses on strengthening the musculoskeletal systems to treat existing conditions and to prevent illness.
Osteopaths’ patient-centred approach to health and well-being means they consider symptoms in the context of the patient’s full medical history, as well as their lifestyle and personal circumstances. This holistic approach ensures that all treatment is tailored to the individual patient.
On a good day, such definitions make me smile; on a bad day, they make me angry. I can think of quite a few professions which would fit this definition just as well or better than osteopathy. What are we supposed to think about a profession that is not even able to provide an adequate definition of itself?
Perhaps I try a different angle: what conditions do osteopaths treat? The GOC informs us that commonly treated conditions include back and neck pain, postural problems, sporting injuries, muscle and joint deterioration, restricted mobility and occupational ill-health.
This statement seems not much better than the previous one. What on earth is ‘muscle and joint deterioration’? It is not a condition that I find in any medical dictionary or textbook. Can anyone think of a broader term than ‘occupational ill health’? This could be anything from tennis elbow to allergies or depression. Do osteopaths treat all of those?
One gets the impression that osteopaths and their GOC are deliberately vague – perhaps because this would diminish the risk of being held to account on any specific issue?
The more one looks into the subject of osteopathy, the more confused one gets. The profession goes back to Andrew Still ((August 6, 1828 – December 12, 1917) Palmer, the founder of chiropractic is said to have been one of Still’s pupils and seems to have ‘borrowed’ most of his concepts from him – even though he always denied this) who defined osteopathy as a science which consists of such exact exhaustive and verifiable knowledge of the structure and functions of the human mechanism, anatomy and physiology & psychology including the chemistry and physics of its known elements as is made discernable certain organic laws and resources within the body itself by which nature under scientific treatment peculiar to osteopathic practice apart from all ordinary methods of extraneous, artificial & medicinal stimulation and in harmonious accord with its own mechanical principles, molecular activities and metabolic processes may recover from displacements, derangements, disorganizations and consequent diseases and regain its normal equilibrium of form and function in health and strength.
This and many other of his statements seem to indicate that the art of using language for obfuscation has a long tradition in osteopathy and goes back directly to its founding father.
What makes the subject of osteopathy particularly confusing is not just the oddity that, in conventional medicine, the term means ‘disease of the bone’ (which renders any literature searches in this area a nightmare) but also the fact that, in different countries, osteopaths are entirely different professionals. In the US, osteopathy has long been fully absorbed by mainstream medicine and there is hardly any difference between MDs and ODs. In the UK, osteopaths are alternative practitioners regulated by statute but are, compared to chiropractors, of minor importance. In Germany, osteopaths are not regulated and fairly ‘low key’, while in France, they are numerous and like to see themselves as primary care physicians.
And what about the evidence base of osteopathy? Well, that’s even more confusing, in my view. Evidence for which treatment? As US osteopaths might use any therapy from drugs to surgery, it could get rather complicated. So let’s just focus on the manual treatment as used by osteopaths outside the US.
Anyone who attempts to critically evaluate the published trial evidence in this area will be struck by at least two phenomena:
- the wide range of conditions treated with osteopathic manual therapy (OMT)
- the fact that there are several groups of researchers that produce one positive result after the next.
The best example is probably the exceedingly productive research team of J. C. Licciardone from the Osteopathic Research Center, University of North Texas. Here are a few conclusions from their clinical studies:
- The large effect size for OMT in providing substantial pain reduction in patients with chronic LBP of high severity was associated with clinically important improvement in back-specific functioning. Thus, OMT may be an attractive option in such patients before proceeding to more invasive and costly treatments.
- The large effect size for short-term efficacy of OMT was driven by stable responders who did not relapse.
- Osteopathic manual treatment has medium to large treatment effects in preventing progressive back-specific dysfunction during the third trimester of pregnancy. The findings are potentially important with respect to direct health care expenditures and indirect costs of work disability during pregnancy.
- Severe somatic dysfunction was present significantly more often in patients with diabetes mellitus than in patients without diabetes mellitus. Patients with diabetes mellitus who received OMT had significant reductions in LBP severity during the 12-week period. Decreased circulating levels of TNF-α may represent a possible mechanism for OMT effects in patients with diabetes mellitus. A larger clinical trial of patients with diabetes mellitus and comorbid chronic LBP is warranted to more definitively assess the efficacy and mechanisms of action of OMT in this population.
- The OMT regimen met or exceeded the Cochrane Back Review Group criterion for a medium effect size in relieving chronic low back pain. It was safe, parsimonious, and well accepted by patients.
- Osteopathic manipulative treatment slows or halts the deterioration of back-specific functioning during the third trimester of pregnancy.
- The only consistent finding in this study was an association between type 2 diabetes mellitus and tissue changes at T11-L2 on the right side. Potential explanations for this finding include reflex viscerosomatic changes directly related to the progression of type 2 diabetes mellitus, a spurious association attributable to confounding visceral diseases, or a chance observation unrelated to type 2 diabetes mellitus. Larger prospective studies are needed to better study osteopathic palpatory findings in type 2 diabetes mellitus.
- OMT significantly reduces low back pain. The level of pain reduction is greater than expected from placebo effects alone and persists for at least three months. Additional research is warranted to elucidate mechanistically how OMT exerts its effects, to determine if OMT benefits are long lasting, and to assess the cost-effectiveness of OMT as a complementary treatment for low back pain.
Based on this brief review of the evidence origination from one of the most active research team, one could be forgiven to think that osteopathy is a panacea. But such an assumption is, of course, nonsensical; a more reasonable conclusion might be the following: osteopathy is one of the most confusing and confused subject under the already confused umbrella of alternative medicine.
Hard to believe but, in the last 35 years, I have written or edited a total of 49 books; about half of them on alternative medicine and the rest on various subjects related to clinical medicine and research. Each time a new one comes out, I am excited, of course, but this one is special:
- I have not written a book for several years.
- I have worked on it much longer than on any book before.
- Never before have I written a book with is so much about myself.
- None of my previous book covered material that is as ‘sensitive’ as this one.
I started on this book shortly after TRICK OR TREATMENT had been published. Its initial working title was ALTERNATIVE MEDICINE: THE INSIDE STORY. My aim was to focus on the extraordinary things which had happened during my time in Exeter, to shed some light on the often not so quaint life in academia, and to show how bizarre the world of alternative medicine truly is. But several people who know about these things and who had glanced at the first draft chapters strongly advised me to radically change this concept. They told me that such a book could only work as a personal memoire.
Yet I was most reluctant to write about myself; I wanted to write about science, research as well as the obstacles which some people manage to put in their way. So, after much discussion and contemplation, I compromised and added the initial chapters which told the reader about my background and my work prior to the Exeter appointment. This brought in subjects like my research on ‘Nazi-medicine’ (which, I believe, is more important than that on alternative medicine) that seemed almost entirely unrelated to alternative medicine, and the whole thing began to look a bit disjointed, in my view. However, my advisers felt this was a step in the right direction and argued that my compromise was not enough; they wanted more about me as a person, my motivations, my background etc. Eventually I (partly) gave in and provided a bit more of what they seemed to want.
But I am clearly not a novelist, most of what I have ever written is medical stuff; my style is too much that of a scientist – dry and boring. In other words, my book seemed to be going nowhere. Just when, after years of hard work, I was about to throw it all in the bin, help came from a totally unexpected corner.
Louise Lubetkin (even today, I have never met her in person) had contributed several posts as ‘guest editor’ to this blog, and I very much liked her way with words. When she offered to have a look at my book, I was thrilled. It is largely thanks to her that my ‘memoire’ ever saw the light of day. She helped enormously with making it readable and with joining up the seemingly separate episodes describes in my book.
Finding a fitting title was far from easy. Nothing seemed to encapsulate its contents, and ‘A SCIENTIST IN WONDERLAND’, the title I eventually chose, is a bit of a compromise; the subtitle does describe it much better, I think: A MEMOIR OF SEARCHING FOR TRUTH AND FINDING TROUBLE.
Now that the book is about to be published, I am anxious as never before on similar occasions. I do, of course, not think for a minute that it will be anything near to a best-seller, but I want people with an interest in alternative medicine, academia or science to read it (get it from a library to save money) and foremost I want them to understand why I wrote it. For me, this is neither about settling scores nor about self-promotion, it is about telling a story which is important in more than one way.
Guest post by Nick Ross
If you’re a fan of Edzard Ernst – and who with a rational mind would not be – then you will be a fan of HealthWatch.
Edzard is a distinguished supporter. Do join us. I can’t promise much in return except that you will be part of a small and noble organisation that campaigns for treatments that work – in other words for evidence based medicine. Oh, and you get a regular Newsletter, which is actually rather good.
HealthWatch was inspired 25 years ago by Professor Michael Baum, the breast cancer surgeon who was incandescent that so many women presented to his clinic late, doomed and with suppurating sores, because they had been persuaded to try ‘alternative treatment’ rather than the real thing.
But like Edzard (and indeed like Michael Baum), HealthWatch keeps an open mind. If there are reliable data to show that an apparently weirdo treatment works, hallelujah. If there is evidence that an orthodox one doesn’t then it deserves a raspberry. HealthWatch has worked to expose quacks and swindlers and to get the Advertising Standards Authority to do its job regulating against false claims and flimflam. It has fought the NHS to have women given fair and balanced advice about the perils of mass screening. It has campaigned with Sense About Science, English Pen and Index to protect whistleblowing scientists from vexatious libel laws, and it has joined the AllTrials battle for transparency in drug trials. It has an annual competition for medical and nursing students to encourage critical analysis of clinical research protocols, and it stages the annual HealthWatch Award and Lecture which has featured Edzard (in 2005) and a galaxy of other champions of scepticism and good evidence including Sir Iain Chalmers, Richard Smith, David Colquhoun, Tim Harford, John Diamond, Richard Doll, Peter Wilmshurst, Ray Tallis, Ben Goldacre, Fiona Godlee and, last year, Simon Singh. We are shortly to sponsor a national debate on Lord Saatchi’s controversial Medical innovation Bill.
But we need new blood. Do please check us out. Be careful, because since we first registered our name a host of brazen copycats have emerged, not least Her Majesty’s Government with ‘Healthwatch England’ which is part of the Care Quality Commission. We have had to put ‘uk’ at the end of our web address to retain our identity. So take the link to http://www.healthwatch-uk.org/, or better still take out a (very modestly priced) subscription.
As Edmund Burke might well have said, all it takes for quackery to flourish is that good men and women do nothing.
