naturopathy
The question that I hear with unfailing regularity when talking about alternative medicine is WHY IS IT SO POPULAR? I always struggle to find a simple answer – mainly because there is no simple answer. The reasons for patients and consumers to use alternative medicine are complex and multiple. They range from dissatisfaction with conventional medicine to clinging to the last straw. However, one factor is very clearly always involved: the often bafflingly uncritical promotion of quackery by the daily papers – and that even includes those with a reputation for being respectable.
Yesterday’s article in THE TELEGRAPH is as good an example as any. In the following section, I quote excerpts from it and add my own comments in bold.
It is perhaps easier to list what the naturopath Katrin Hempel doesn’t offer her clients than what she does. “Bioresonance and live blood analysis, acupuncture, biopuncture, infusion therapy, oxyvenation…”
Katrin Hempel, B.H.Sc.,ND, Dipl.Ac. describes herself on her website as an energetic, enthusiastic and experienced natural therapist with a great passion and commitment to the health and well-being of her patients. She calls herself a ‘naturopathic doctor’. I am not sure what this actually is but I am fairly sure she has not studied medicine. I do not doubt her enthusiasm, but I do doubt that most of the methods listed above are anything else but pure quackery.
“Germany has a long tradition of natural medicine, so it’s more common to find conventional doctors who have also studied natural medicine and use these modalities. Here we are at least 20 years behind.” That is true only, if one regards the integration of quackery as progress.
“Every cell in the body puts out a certain electromagnetic frequency, that can be measured – a healthy stomach cell sounds different to a healthy brain cell – and the machine can put the right resonance back in, to trigger deep healing.”) This is pure pseudoscience; neither live blood analysis nor bioresonance are supported by good evidence (and don’t even ask about ‘biopuncture’).
The article goes on misleading the reader in the most scandalous way by promoting pure nonsense. To provide a flavour, I will merely cite a few quotes from the ‘naturopathic doctor’:
- “If your digestion isn’t working properly there is a malabsorption of nutrients”
- “Bioresonance can pick up a condition before it manifests as a disease.”
- “Bioresonance measures the electromagnetic output of every cell in the body. If there’s any discrepancy with the healthy frequency for that kind of cell that gives a diagnosis.”
- “Whatever the problem, at root it will be an imbalance in the cells.”
At no point in this article is there an attempt to challenge or critically analyse this bonanza in quackery; THE TELEGRAPH promotion of dangerous nonsense ends with the cheerful footnote informing the reader that one hour with the ‘naturopathic doctor’ will cost from £100. THE TELEGRAPH does not even shy away to print an address for booking a consultation with the ‘naturopathic doctor’.
But is it really all quackery? Yes it is! The article promotes so many unproven methods that I find it hard to choose one for demonstrating how irresponsible it really is. Let’s take life blood analysis (LBA), for instance; here is what I published about LBA some time ago:
The principle of LBA is fairly simple: a drop of blood is taken from your fingertip, put on a glass plate and viewed via a microscope on a video screen. Despite the claims made for it, LBA is by no means new; using his lately developed microscope, Antony van Leeuwenhoek observed in 1686 that living blood cells changed shape during circulation. Ever since, doctors, scientists and others have studied blood samples in this and other ways.
What is new, however, is what today’s “holistic practitioners” claim to be able to do with LBA. Proponents believe that the method provides information “about the state of the immune system, possible vitamin deficiencies, amount of toxicity, pH and mineral imbalance, areas of concern and weaknesses, fungus and yeast”, as another website puts it.
Others dare to be much more concrete and claim that they can “spot cancer and other degenerative immune system diseases up to two years before they would otherwise be detectable”; or say they can diagnose “lack of oxygen in the blood, low trace minerals, lack of exercise, too much alcohol or yeast, weak kidneys, bladder or spleen”. All this would amount to a remarkable discovery if it were true. But it’s not.
No credible scientific studies have demonstrated the reliability of LBA for detecting any of the above conditions. In what was, to the best of my knowledge, the first attempt to assess the value of this method, a practitioner with several years of experience in LBA tested the samples of 110 patients. Twelve had cancer and the task was to identify their samples without knowing further details. The results could hardly have been more disconcerting – just three of the 12 with confirmed cancer were detected, and the authors concluded that the method “does not seem to reliably detect cancer. Clinical use of the method can therefore not be recommended.”
And, in case you do not trust me, here is a recent Advertising Standards Authority ruling on LBA:
London Natural Therapies is in breach of the UK Advertising Standards Code for making unproven claims on its website about Live Blood Analysis. The CAP Compliance team has contacted London Natural Therapies several times about removing claims implying that Live Blood Analysis could be beneficial for Gastro Intestinal Tract Disorders, Allergies and Hormonal Imbalances after the ASA previously ruled that Live Blood Analysis was not effective in detecting/diagnosing those conditions. Despite repeated requests to remove the problem claims, London Natural Therapies continues to feature them on its website, www.londonnaturaltherapies.co.uk. Because of London Natural Therapies continued non-compliance we took the decision to place its details on this section of the ASA website on 26 June 2012. These details shall remain in place until such time as London Natural Therapies has removed or appropriately amended the claims on its website to ensure compliance with the CAP Code.
This is but one of many examples of truly shoddy journalism published in a daily paper that most people would call ‘respectable’. If anyone cares to look at the less respectable end to the journalistic spectrum, the picture gets even more horrific. The points I am trying to make are simple and, I think, important:
- Journalists and editors have a responsibility which, in the realm of alternative medicine, they often disregard most scandalously.
- Such poorly researched, unbalanced and uncritical articles can cause very serious harm.
- The promotion of quackery may be good for selling copy, but it can also quickly ruin the reputation of a paper.
The fact that practitioners of alternative medicine frequently advise their patients against immunising their children has been documented repeatedly. In particular, doctors of anthroposophy, chiropractors and homeopaths are implicated in thus endangering public health. Less is known about naturopaths attitude in this respect. Now new data have emerged which confirm some of our worst fears.
This survey aimed at assessing the attitudes, education, and sources of knowledge surrounding childhood vaccinations of 560 students at National College of Natural Medicine in Portland, US. Students were asked about demographics, sources of information about childhood vaccines, differences between mainstream and CAM education on childhood vaccines, alternative vaccine schedules, adverse effects, perceived efficacy, and credibility of information sources.
A total of 109 students provided responses (19.4% response rate). All students surveyed learned about vaccinations in multiple courses and through independent study. The information sources employed had varying levels of credibility. Only 26% of the responding students planned on regularly prescribing or recommending vaccinations for their patients; 82% supported the general concept of vaccinations for prevention of infectious diseases.
The vast majority (96%) of those who might recommend vaccinations reported that they would only recommend a schedule that differed from the standard CDC-ACIP schedule.
Many respondents were concerned about vaccines being given too early (73%), too many vaccines administered simultaneously (70%), too many vaccines overall (59%), and about preservatives and adjuvants in vaccines (72%). About 40% believed that a healthy diet and lifestyle was more important for prevention of infectious diseases than vaccines. 90% admitted that they were more critical of vaccines than mainstream pediatricians, medical doctors, and medical students.
These results speak for themselves and leave me (almost) speechless. The response rate was truly dismal, and it is fair to assume that the non-responding students held even more offensive views on vaccination than their responding colleagues. The findings seem to indicate that naturopaths are systematically trained to become anti-vaxers who believe that their naturopathic treatments offer better protection than vaccines. They are thus depriving many of their patients of arguably the most successful means of disease prevention that exists today. To put it bluntly: naturopaths seem to be brain-washed into becoming a danger to public health.
