Updated Edition!
I am delighted to report that my invitation to contribute AT FAPs was successful! Some readers did indeed cotton on and submitted their funny satire and bizarre absurdities – oddly enough, they are all homeopathic by nature. If you like to know more about the idea of AT FAPs, please see here. And do not forget: if you want me to continue with this feature, keep your alt med satire coming!
AT FAP No 4 (sent in by an anonymous reader)
You’ve heard or Gerson but now we can reveal Dyson therapy!
The well established and long-proven facts of homeopathy – that like cures like, ultra diluted solutions of nothing are incredibly potent medicines, Hahnemann can’t be wrong etc. have, of course revolutionised our world view. Nothing substantial had changed in homeopathy for 200 years, until now! Vacuous homeopaths have now discovered an amazing breakthrough- Dyson therapy. After extensive research one afternoon, they have made a breakthrough that will rock the world and clean your carpet.
Some homeopaths believe that ultra diluted water contains silica that is remarkably similar to that found in the glass vessels it is prepared in. Vacuous homeopaths have found a way to reduce the content of the water still further, indeed eliminate it completely!
Using the principle of like cures like, a material is chosen for its powerful homeopathic effects, and ground up in a small amount of water and/or alcohol until it turns into a paste or solution. Now here’s the science bit- it is then smeared on the floor. After being allowed to dry for precisely 3.4 minutes (trust us) it is then vacuumed up! This amazing breakthrough allows the nano-bollock essence of the material to be firmly trapped within the vacuum cleaner, but here is the genius part-as air is drawn over it the nano-bollock material is infinitely diluted. No need for complicated machines you can do this yourself at home. Vacuous homeopaths have found that the vacuum cleaner has to be tapped on the floor during the process, or for a far more potent effect on the head of a sceptic (we call this concussion). It has to be tapped a precise number of times, the number is decided by the current cost in pence of a avocado pear, this in scientific terms is known as the avocado number -trust us it works!
We now have a homeopathic remedy inside the cleaner. The patient takes a tube from the cleaner applies it to their mouth * and vacuums out all those nasty miasmas whilst simultaneously increasing the potency of the homeopathic preparation by yet further dilution. But that’s not all! Dyson therapy removes harmful mercury vapour from your fillings, this is truly miraculous.
Until now vacuous homeopaths have argued that homeopathy has no side effects effects. Sceptics have argued this is because it contains nothing does nothing and is worth nothing. Vacuous homeopaths have now found side effects, after all when you prepare the ultimate vacuum potencies we are dealing with the strongest medicine in the universe. Side effects include blisters of the lips and mouth, ruptured lungs and feelings of intense stupidity.
* Some experiments with Dyson therapy have been abandoned due to penile injury, but an exciting new avenue of research – anal Dyson therapy is being intensively studied, this combined with coffee enemas is an exciting new wake up call for homepathy. So far results have shown that homeopaths are full of shit.
Disclaimer: I do not own shares in Dyson, and am in no way associated with the company – Big Pharma wouldn’t let me. Other brands of vacuum cleaner are available.
AT FAP No5 (sent in by Norbert Aust)
German scientist succeeded in creating the ultimate homeopathic remedy: Vinum Christi C200! This remedy combines strong beliefs and ancient wisdom from christianity with the more recent scientific achievements of current homeopathy.
Details on the procedure are not clear yet, but the scientist (name known to the edotor) succeeded in building an entanglement with the the molecules of Our Lord’s last goblet of wine that today can be found in any glass of water. By banging his head on the wall he could successfully succuss just these molecules and could build a very powerful mother tincture. Further potentization yielded a very strong remedy, much more powerful than any of the current homeopathic alcoholic dilutions. It took only one tiny drop of this solution to turn a bottle of Scotch whisky into a very efficacious tincture outperforming any of our Lord’s wines or what you would expect of todays wines. In fact, the proving got a little out of control, but the effects could be witnessed nevertheless. It seems a perfect medicine for headaches, vertigo, nausea, general pain and feeling of being sick, difficulties in eye focus and speech, turns of general love and hate of the world in total. Many more symptoms expected to be found in further provings.
The scientist – after he recovered fronm the proving – made it a point, that the preparation of the mother tincture requires much experience and personality. The beginner might well end up entangled with the wrong molecules in his glass of water (like the donkey’s first pee after he carried our Lord to Jerusalem), which may lead to unpredictable results when proving the final compound.
Adress any inquiries for marketing of this medicine to the editor who will forward it to the scientist.
According to a recent comment by Dr Larry Dossey, sceptics are afflicted by “randomania,” “statisticalitis,” “coincidentitis,” or “ODD” (Obsessive Debunking Disorder). I thought his opinion was hilariously funny; it shows that this prominent apologist of alternative medicine who claims that he is deeply rooted in the scientific world has, in fact, understood next to nothing about the scientific method. Like all quacks who have run out of rational arguments, he resorts to primitive ad hominem attacks in order to defend his bizarre notions. It also suggests that he could do with a little scepticism himself, perhaps.
In case anyone wonders how the long-obsolete notions of vitalism, which Dossey promotes, not just survive but are becoming again wide-spread, they only need to look into the best-selling books of Dossey and other vitalists. And it is not just lay people, the target audience of such books, who are taken by such nonsense. Health care professionals are by no means immune to these remnants from the prescientific era.
A recent survey is a good case in point. It was aimed at exploring US student pharmacists’ attitudes toward complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) and examine factors shaping students’ attitudes. In total, 887 student pharmacists in 10 U.S. colleges/schools of pharmacy took part. Student pharmacists’ attitudes regarding CAM were quantified using the attitudes toward CAM scale (15 items), attitudes toward specific CAM therapies (13 items), influence of factors (e.g., coursework, personal experience) on attitudes (18 items), and demographic characteristics (15 items).
The results show a mean (±SD) score on the attitudes toward CAM scale of 52.57 ± 7.65 (of a possible 75; higher score indicated more favorable attitudes). There were strong indications that students agreed with the concepts of vitalism. When asked about specific CAMs, many students revealed positive views even on the least plausible and least evidence-based modalities like homeopathy or Reiki.
Unsurprisingly, students agreed that a patient’s health beliefs should be integrated in the patient care process and that knowledge about CAM would be required in future pharmacy practice. Scores on the attitudes toward CAM scale varied by gender, race/ethnicity, type of institution, previous CAM coursework, and previous CAM use. Personal experience, pharmacy education, and family background were important factors shaping students’ attitudes.
The authors concluded: Student pharmacists hold generally favorable views of CAM, and both personal and educational factors shape their views. These results provide insight into factors shaping future pharmacists’ perceptions of CAM. Additional research is needed to examine how attitudes influence future pharmacists’ confidence and willingness to talk to patients about CAM.
I find the overwhelmingly positive views of pharmacists on even over quackery quite troubling. One of the few critical pharmacists shares my worries and commented that this survey on CAM attitudes paints a concerning portrait of American pharmacy students. However, limitations in the survey process may have created biases that could have exaggerated the overall perspective presented. More concerning than the results themselves are the researchers’ interpretation of this data: Critical and negative perspectives on CAM seem to be viewed as problematic, rather than positive examples of good critical thinking.
One lesson from surveys like these is they illustrate the educational goals of CAM proponents. Just like “integrative” medicine that is making its ways into academic hospital settings, CAM education on campus is another tactic that is being used by proponents to shape health professional attitudes and perspectives early in their careers. The objective is obvious: normalize pseudoscience with students, and watch it become embedded into pharmacy practice.
Is this going to change? Unless there is a deliberate and explicit attempt to call out and push back against the degradation of academic and scientific standards created by existing forms of CAM education and “integrative medicine” programs, we should expect to see a growing normalizing of pseudoscience in health professions like pharmacy.
I have criticised pharmacists’ attitude and behaviour towards alternative medicine more often than I care to remember. I even contributed an entire series of articles (around 10; I forgot the precise number) to THE PHARMACEUTICAL JOURNAL in an attempt to stimulate their abilities to think critically about alternative medicine. Pharmacists could certainly do with a high dose of “randomania,” “statisticalitis,” “coincidentitis,” or “ODD” (Obsessive Debunking Disorder). In particular, pharmacists who sell bogus remedies, i.e. virtually all retail pharmacists, need to remember that
- they are breaking their own ethical code
- they are putting profit before responsible health care
- by selling bogus products, they give credibility to quackery
- they are risking their reputation as professionals who provide evidence-based advice to the public
- they might seriously endanger the health of many of their customers
In discussions about these issues, pharmacists usually defend themselves and argue that
- those working in retail chains cannot do anything about this situation; head office decides what is sold on their premises and what not
- many medicinal products we sell are as bogus as the alternative medicines in question
- other health care professions are also not perfect, blameless or free of fault and error
- many pharmacists, particularly those not working in retail, are aware of this lamentable situation but cannot do anything about it
- retail pharmacists are both shopkeepers and health care professionals and are trying their very best to cope with this difficult dual role
- we usually appreciate your work and critical comments but, in this case, you are talking nonsense
I do not agree with any of these arguments. Of course, each single individual pharmacist is fairly powerless when it comes to changing the system (but nobody forces anyone to work in a chain that breaks the ethical code of their profession). Yet pharmacists have their professional organisations, and it is up to each individual pharmacist to exert influence, if necessary pressure, via their professional bodies and representatives, such that eventually the system changes. In all this distasteful mess, only one thing seems certain: without a groundswell of opinion from pharmacists, nothing will happen simply because too many pharmacists are doing very nicely with fooling their customers into buying expensive rubbish.
And when eventually something does happen, it will almost certainly be a slow and long process until quackery has been fully expelled from retail pharmacies. My big concern is not so much the slowness of the process but the fact that, currently, I see virtually no groundswell of opinion that might produce anything. For the foreseeable future pharmacists seem to have decided to be content with a role as shopkeepers who do not sufficiently care about healthcare-ethics to change the status quo.
I woke up the other morning and thought that this blog might be in need of a bit of interactive fun. All these long discussions about evidence, science claims and counter-claims are important, of course, but they can be a bit tedious at times. Often the quality of the evidence, the audacity of the bogus claims and the idiocy of the discussions are such that spontaneously I don’t know whether to laugh or to cry. On reflection, however, it must be better to laugh and to make fun. Therefore I have decided to try out this new feature and, with my readers’ help, it might become a regular distraction.
The only thing you can do wrong with ‘ALTERNATIVE TRUTHS FROM ANOTHER PLANET’ is to take them seriously. Nothing that I intend to publish here has all that much to do with reality (just like alternative medicine, you might say).
My hope is that readers of this blog cotton on to the idea and send me their own AT FAPs via email. I will consider publishing anything that is short, funny, inoffensive and somehow related to alternative medicine. Please do send me your bizarre ideas, odd dreams, worst nightmares, absurd pranks, childish hoaxes etc. To get the ball rolling, I try three little AT FAPs below.
AT FAP No 1
DUTCHY ORIGINALS SET TO BECOME MAJOR PLAYER IN THE CAR INDUSTRY
Prince Charles has announced today that his firm ‘Dutchy Originals’ is venturing into the automobile industry. Engineers from his ‘Foundation for Integrated Technology’ have succeeded in developing a car that works entirely on homeopathic principles. “It is all very simple” the Prince explained “normal petrol gets diluted and succussed until it has reached the right potency. Our modified combustion engine has been adapted such that it runs on the homeopathic petrol”. The Dutchy Originals Homeobil 1 (DOH1), as the first model is to be called, will be available for sale later this year. Experts expect it will be a worldwide success, not least because it will do ~1000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 to one millionth of a gallon of petrol. “It’ll be good for the planet” Clarence House stated.
AT FAP No 2
ALTERNATIVE PRACTITIONER FOUND GUILTY OF MURDER
The jury did not have to deliberate for longer than an hour; the case could not have been more clear-cut, even though the defendant, Martin W., never actually admitted his guilt. He did, however, state disliking his mother in law and threatening her on numerous occasions. The court heard how Martin W. had trained as a Feng Shui expert and, once he had mastered the skill of furniture-rearranging to a sufficiently high degree of sophistication, had deliberately moved several items of furniture in her Clapham flat. As a consequence, her chi-energy had violently collided with the dimensions more powerful cosmic chi. Apparently the mother in law’s death was instantaneous. In his defence, Martin W. had claimed that he had moved the couch and the mirror simply on aesthetic grounds. But the prosecutions’ expert witness and president of the ‘International Association of Feng Shui and Chi Consultants’ supplied scientific evidence showing that the furniture arrangement was a classic case of death by an excess of kidney-chi. Martin W. is expected to receive a life-sentence.
AT FAP No 3
BREAKTHROUGH IN ACUPUNCTURE RESEARCH
Chinese researchers from the ‘Institute for Advanced Meridian Studies’ in Beijing have solved a puzzle that had baffled TCM-researchers and hindered progress for centuries. Acupuncturists believe life-energy runs in minute channels throughout the body; they call them MERIDIANS. But there was a significant problem: nobody had ever shown that MERIDIANS actually exist and where exactly they are located. Now Prof X Chen et al have published a paper in the highly reputed science journal ‘Advances in Meridian Studies’ (Editor in chief: Prof X Chen) which seems to solve this problem once and for all. In the lengthy article, the researchers describe their recent visit to the US which took them through Alabama and Mississippi. “And there it was”, they write, “right in front of our eyes”. It turns out that MERIDIAN is a city of eastern Mississippi near the Alabama border, east of Jackson. “Of course, this is only one and we need more”, said the exited Chen to our reporter, “but this was just a ‘proof of principle study’, and we very much expect to find further MERIDIANS in a parallel universe.
A recent article by a South African homeopath promoted the concept of homeopaths taking over the role of primary care practitioners. His argument essentially was that, in South Africa, homeopaths are well trained and thus adequately equipped to do this job responsibly. Responsibly, really? You find that hard to believe? Here are the essentials of his arguments including all his references in full. I think they are worth reading.
Currently, the Durban University of Technology (DUT) and the University of Johannesburg (UJ) offer degree’s in homoeopathy. This involves a 5-year full-time theoretical and practical training course, followed by a Master’s level research project. After fulfilment of these criteria, a Master’s Degree in Technology (Homoeopathy) is awarded. The course comprises of a strong core of medical subjects, such as the basic sciences of Anatomy, Physiology, Medical Microbiology, Biochemistry and Epidemiology, and the clinical sciences of Pathology and Diagnostics. This is complemented with subjects in Classical, Clinical and Modern Homoeopathy and Homoeopharmaceutics4,5…
By law, any person practicing homoeopathy in South Africa must be registered with the Allied Health Professions Council of South Africa (AHPCSA). This is essential, as the Council ensures both medical and homoeopathic competency of practitioners, and that the activities of registered practitioners are closely monitored by the Professional Board. The purpose of the AHPCSA is to ensure that only those with legitimate qualifications of a high enough standard are registered and allowed to practice in South Africa, thus protecting the public against any fraudulent behaviour and illegal practitioners. Therefore, in order to ensure effective homoeopathic treatment, it is essential that any person wishing to prescribe homoeopathic medicine or practice homoeopathy in South Africa must be registered as a Homoeopathic Practitioner with the Allied Health Professions Council of South Africa. This includes conventional Medical Practitioners (dual registration is allowed for Medical Practitioners with both the Health Professions Council and AHPCSA)6, as homoeopathy requires several years of training in order to apply effectively in clinical practice…
Registration with the Council affords medico-legal rights similar to those of a medical professional, where treatment is limited to the scope of homoeopathic practice. Thus a homoeopath is firstly a trained diagnostician, and with successful registration with the Council, obtains the title Doctor. A homoeopath is trained and legally obliged to conduct a full medical history, a comprehensive clinical examination, and request further medical investigations, such as blood tests and X-rays, in order to fully assess patients. This is coupled with the ability to consult with specialist pathologists and other medical specialists when necessary, and refer a patient to the appropriate practitioner if the condition falls outside the scope of homoeopathic practice. A homoeopath may also legally issue a certificate of dispensation (‘Doctor’s note’) with appropriate evidence and within reason, and is deemed responsible for the diagnosis and treatment of patients under their care6. A homoeopath is not trained or licensed in any form of surgery, specialist diagnostics (e.g. colonoscopy or angiograms), cannot prescribe prescription medication and is not lawfully allowed to conduct intra-venous treatment of any kind. However, a registered homoeopath is licensed to use intra-muscular homoeopathic injectables in the treatment of various local or systemic complaints when necessary.
Conventional (allopathic) medicine generally targets specific biochemical processes with mostly chemically synthesised medication, in an attempt to suppress a symptom. However, in doing so, this usually negatively affects other biochemical reactions which results in an imbalance within the system. Homoeopathy, by contrast, seeks to re-establish a balance within the natural functioning of the body, restore proper function and results in the reduction or cessation of symptoms. Homoeopathy therefore enables the body to self-regulate and self-heal, a process known as homeostasis that is intrinsic to every living organism.
Conventional medical treatment is by no means risk free. Iatrogenic (medically induced) deaths in the United States are estimated at 786 000 per year, deaths which are considered avoidable by medical doctors7,8. These figures put annual iatrogenic death in the American medical system above that of cardiovascular disease and cancer as the leading cause of death in that country9, a fact that is not widely reported! South African figures are not easily available, but it is likely that we have similar rates. Although conventional medications have a vital role, are sometimes necessary and can of-course be life-saving, all too often too many patients are put on chronic medication when there are numerous effective, natural, safe and scientifically substantiated options available….
According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), homeopathy is the second largest system of medicine in the world, and world-wide use continues to grow in developed and developing nations10. Homoeopathy is widely considered to be safe and effective, with both clinical and laboratory research providing evidence for the efficacy of homoeopathy11. As the range of potential conditions that homoeopathy can treat is almost limitless, and that treatment is not associated with adverse reactions, homoeopathy should be considered a first-line therapy for all ages. As homoeopaths in South Africa are considered primary health care practitioners, if a conventional approach is deemed necessary, and further diagnostics are required, your practitioner will not hesitate to refer you to the appropriate health care practitioner. Homeopathy is also used alongside conventional medicine and any other form of therapy, and should be seen as ‘complementary’ medicine and not ‘alternative’ medicine.
Conclusion
Homoeopathy is an approach that is widely considered to be safe, and when utilised correctly, can be effective for a wide range of conditions. As a primary health care practitioner, a homoeopath is able to handle all aspects of general practice and family health care, including diagnostics, case management and referral to other practitioners or medical specialists. A registered homoeopath is legally responsible to ensure the adequate treatment of their patients, and is accountable for all clinical decisions and advice. A registered homoeopath understands the role of conventional medicine, and will refer to the appropriate specialist in cases that fall outside the legal scope of practice.
References
1. http://homeopathyresource.wordpress.com/what-is-homeopathy (accessed 31 March 2010)
2. Bloch R, Lewis B. Homoeopathy for the home. Cape Town, South Africa: Struik Publishers: 2003
3. http://www.dut.ac.za/site/awdep.asp?depnum=22609 (accessed 1 April 2010)
4. http://dutweb.dut.ac.za/handbooks/HEALTH%20Homoeopathy.pdf (accessed 1 April 2010)
5. http://www.uj.ac.za/EN/Faculties/health/departments/homeopathy/coursesandprogrammes/undergraduate/Pages/default.aspx (accessed 1 April 2010)
6. http://www.ahpcsa.co.za/pb_pbhnp_homoeopathy.htm (accessed 6 April 2010)
7. Starfield, B. Is US Health Really the Best in the World? JAMA 2000; 284(4).
8. Null G, Dean C, et al. Death by Medicine. Nutrition Institute of America 2003. 9. http://www4.dr-rath-foundation.org/features/death_by_medicine.html (accessed 7 April 2010)
10. http://ukiahcommunityblog.wordpress.com/2010/03/04/worldwide-popularity-grows-for-homeopathy-alternative-medicine/#comments (accessed 7 April 2010)
11. http://liga.iwmh.net/dokumente/upload/556c7_SCIEN_FRA_2009_final_approved.pdf (accessed 7 April 2010)
I found this article extremely revealing and scary. It gives us an important glimpse into the way some or perhaps even most homeopaths think. They clearly believe that:
1) Their training is sufficient for them to become competent primary care professionals, i.e. clinicians who are the first port of call for sick people to be diagnosed and treated effectively.
2) Homeopathy is scientifically proven to be efficacious for an ‘almost limitless’ range of conditions. Interestingly, not a single reference is provided to support this claim. Nevertheless, homeopath believe it, and that seems to be enough.
3) Homeopaths seem convinced that they perfectly understand real medicine; yet all they really do is to denounce it as one of the biggest killer of mankind.
4) The fact that homeopaths cannot prescribe real medicine is not seen as a hindrance to their role as primary care practitioner; if anything, homeopaths consider this to be an advantage.
5) Homeopaths view registration with some sort of governing body as the ultimate legitimation of their trade. Once such regulatory measures are in place, the need to support any of their claims with evidence is nil and void.
This article did remind me of the wry statement that ‘HOMEOPATHY IS TO MEDICINE WHAT THE CARPET INDUSTRY IS TO AVIATION’. Homeopaths truly live on a different planet, a planet where belief is everything and responsibility is an alien concept. I certainly hope that they will not take over planet earth in a hurry. If I imagine a world where homeopaths dominate primary care in the way it is suggested in this article, I start having nightmares. It seems to me that people who harbour ideas of this type are not just deluded to the point of madness but they are a danger to public health.
This post will probably work best, if you have read the previous one describing how the parallel universe of acupuncture research insists on going in circles in order to avoid admitting that their treatment might not be as effective as they pretend. The way they achieve this is fairly simple: they conduct trials that are designed in such a way that they cannot possibly produce a negative result.
A brand-new investigation which was recently vociferously touted via press releases etc. as a major advance in proving the effectiveness of acupuncture is an excellent case in point. According to its authors, the aim of this study was to evaluate acupuncture versus usual care and counselling versus usual care for patients who continue to experience depression in primary care. This sounds alright, but wait!
755 patients with depression were randomised to one of three arms to 1)acupuncture, 2)counselling, and 3)usual care alone. The primary outcome was the difference in mean Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ-9) scores at 3 months with secondary analyses over 12 months follow-up. Analysis was by intention-to-treat. PHQ-9 data were available for 614 patients at 3 months and 572 patients at 12 months. Patients attended a mean of 10 sessions for acupuncture and 9 sessions for counselling. Compared to usual care, there was a statistically significant reduction in mean PHQ-9 depression scores at 3 and 12 months for acupuncture and counselling.
From this, the authors conclude that both interventions were associated with significantly reduced depression at 3 months when compared to usual care alone.
Acupuncture for depression? Really? Our own systematic review with co-authors who are the most ardent apologists of acupuncture I have come across showed that the evidence is inconsistent on whether manual acupuncture is superior to sham… Therefore, I thought it might be a good idea to have a closer look at this new study.
One needs to search this article very closely indeed to find out that the authors did not actually evaluate acupuncture versus usual care and counselling versus usual care at all, and that comparisons were not made between acupuncture, counselling, and usual care (hints like the use of the word “alone” are all we get to guess that the authors’ text is outrageously misleading). Not even the methods section informs us what really happened in this trial. You find this hard to believe? Here is the unabbreviated part of the article that describes the interventions applied:
Patients allocated to the acupuncture and counselling groups were offered up to 12 sessions usually on a weekly basis. Participating acupuncturists were registered with the British Acupuncture Council with at least 3 years post-qualification experience. An acupuncture treatment protocol was developed and subsequently refined in consultation with participating acupuncturists. It allowed for customised treatments within a standardised theory-driven framework. Counselling was provided by members of the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy who were accredited or were eligible for accreditation having completed 400 supervised hours post-qualification. A manualised protocol, using a humanistic approach, was based on competences independently developed for Skills for Health. Practitioners recorded in logbooks the number and length of sessions, treatment provided, and adverse events. Further details of the two interventions are presented in Tables S2 and S3. Usual care, both NHS and private, was available according to need and monitored for all patients in all three groups for the purposes of comparison.
It is only in the results tables that we can determine what treatments were actually given; and these were:
1) Acupuncture PLUS usual care (i.e. medication)
2) Counselling PLUS usual care
3) Usual care
Its almost a ‘no-brainer’ that, if you compare A+B to B (or in this three-armed study A+B vs C+B vs B), you find that the former is more than the latter – unless A is a negative, of course. As acupuncture has significant placebo-effects, it never can be a negative, and thus this trial is an entirely foregone conclusion. As, in alternative medicine, one seems to need experimental proof even for ‘no-brainers’, we have some time ago demonstrated that this common sense theory is correct by conducting a systematic review of all acupuncture trials with such a design. We concluded that the ‘A + B versus B’ design is prone to false positive results…What makes this whole thing even worse is the fact that I once presented our review in a lecture where the lead author of the new trial was in the audience; so there can be no excuse of not being aware of the ‘no-brainer’.
Some might argue that this is a pragmatic trial, that it would have been unethical to not give anti-depressants to depressed patients and that therefore it was not possible to design this study differently. However, none of these arguments are convincing, if you analyse them closely (I might leave that to the comment section, if there is interest in such aspects). At the very minimum, the authors should have explained in full detail what interventions were given; and that means disclosing these essentials even in the abstract (and press release) – the part of the publication that is most widely read and quoted.
It is arguably unethical to ask patients’ co-operation, use research funds etc. for a study, the results of which were known even before the first patient had been recruited. And it is surely dishonest to hide the true nature of the design so very sneakily in the final report.
In my view, this trial begs at least 5 questions:
1) How on earth did it pass the peer review process of one of the most highly reputed medical journals?
2) How did the protocol get ethics approval?
3) How did it get funding?
4) Does the scientific community really allow itself to be fooled by such pseudo-research?
5) What do I do to not get depressed by studies of acupuncture for depression?
Has it ever occurred to you that much of the discussion about cause and effect in alternative medicine goes in circles without ever making progress? I have come to the conclusion that it does. Here I try to illustrate this point using the example of acupuncture, more precisely the endless discussion about how to best test acupuncture for efficacy. For those readers who like to misunderstand me I should explain that the sceptics’ view is in capital letters.
At the beginning there was the experience. Unaware of anatomy, physiology, pathology etc., people started sticking needles in other people’s skin, some 2000 years ago, and observed that they experienced relief of all sorts of symptoms.When an American journalist reported about this phenomenon in the 1970s, acupuncture became all the rage in the West. Acupuncture-fans then claimed that a 2000-year history is ample proof that acupuncture does work.
BUT ANECDOTES ARE NOTORIOUSLY UNRELIABLE!
Even the most enthusiastic advocates conceded that this is probably true. So they documented detailed case-series of lots of patients, calculated the average difference between the pre- and post-treatment severity of symptoms, submitted it to statistical tests, and published the notion that the effects of acupuncture are not just anecdotal; in fact, they are statistically significant, they said.
BUT THIS EFFECT COULD BE DUE TO THE NATURAL HISTORY OF THE CONDITION!
“True enough”, grumbled the acupuncture-fans and conducted the very first controlled clinical trials. Essentially they treated one group of patients with acupuncture while another group received conventional treatments as usual. When they analysed the results, they found that the acupuncture group had improved significantly more. “Now do you believe us?”, they asked triumphantly, “acupuncture is clearly effective”.
NO! THIS OUTCOME MIGHT BE DUE TO SELECTION BIAS. SUCH A STUDY-DESIGN CANNOT ESTABLISH CAUSE AND EFFECT.
The acupuncturists felt slightly embarrassed because they had not thought of that. They had allocated their patients to the treatment according to patients’ choice. Thus the expectation of the patients (or the clinician) to get relief from acupuncture might have been the reason for the difference in outcome. So they consulted an expert in trial-design and were advised to allocate not by choice but by chance. In other words, they repeated the previous study but randomised patients to the two groups. Amazingly, their RCT still found a significant difference favouring acupuncture over treatment as usual.
BUT THIS DIFFERENCE COULD BE CAUSED BY A PLACEBO-EFFECT!
Now the acupuncturists were in a bit of a pickle; as far as they could see, there was no good placebo for acupuncture! Eventually some methodologist-chap came up with the idea that, in order to mimic a placebo, they could simply stick needles into non-acupuncture points. When the acupuncturists tried that method, they found that there were improvements in both groups but the difference between real acupuncture and placebo was tiny and usually neither statistically significant nor clinically relevant.
NOW DO YOU CONCEDE THAT ACUPUNCTURE IS NOT AN EFFECTIVE TREATMENT?
Absolutely not! The results merely show that needling non-acupuncture points is not an adequate placebo. Obviously this intervention also sends a powerful signal to the brain which clearly makes it an effective intervention. What do you expect when you compare two effective treatments?
IF YOU REALLY THINK SO, YOU NEED TO PROVE IT AND DESIGN A PLACEBO THAT IS INERT.
At that stage, the acupuncturists came up with a placebo-needle that did not actually penetrate the skin; it worked like a mini stage dagger that telescopes into itself while giving the impression that it penetrated the skin just like the real thing. Surely this was an adequate placebo! The acupuncturists repeated their studies but, to their utter dismay, they found again that both groups improved and the difference in outcome between their new placebo and true acupuncture was minimal.
WE TOLD YOU THAT ACUPUNCTURE WAS NOT EFFECTIVE! DO YOU FINALLY AGREE?
Certainly not, they replied. We have thought long and hard about these intriguing findings and believe that they can be explained just like the last set of results: the non-penetrating needles touch the skin; this touch provides a stimulus powerful enough to have an effect on the brain; the non-penetrating placebo-needles are not inert and therefore the results merely depict a comparison of two effective treatments.
YOU MUST BE JOKING! HOW ARE YOU GOING TO PROVE THAT BIZARRE HYPOTHESIS?
We had many discussions and consensus meeting amongst the most brilliant brains in acupuncture about this issue and have arrived at the conclusion that your obsession with placebo, cause and effect etc. is ridiculous and entirely misplaced. In real life, we don’t use placebos. So, let’s instead address the ‘real life’ question: is acupuncture better than usual treatment? We have conducted pragmatic studies where one group of patients gets treatment as usual and the other group receives acupuncture in addition. These studies show that acupuncture is effective. This is all the evidence we need. Why can you not believe us?
NOW WE HAVE ARRIVED EXACTLY AT THE POINT WHERE WE HAVE BEEN A LONG TIME AGO. SUCH A STUDY-DESIGN CANNOT ESTABLISH CAUSE AND EFFECT. YOU OBVIOUSLY CANNOT DEMONSTRATE THAT ACUPUNCTURE CAUSES CLINICAL IMPROVEMENT. THEREFORE YOU OPT TO PRETEND THAT CAUSE AND EFFECT ARE IRRELEVANT. YOU USE SOME IMITATION OF SCIENCE TO ‘PROVE’ THAT YOUR PRECONCEIVED IDEAS ARE CORRECT. YOU DO NOT SEEM TO BE INTERESTED IN THE TRUTH ABOUT ACUPUNCTURE AT ALL.
Herbal medicine is popular. Consumers seem to be attracted by the notion that they are natural – and if it’s natural, it must be safe!!! But do we really know what is in the product that we might be buying? A recently published analytical study aimed to investigate herbal product integrity and authenticity with the goal of protecting consumers from health risks associated with product substitution and contamination.
The researchers used DNA barcoding to conduct a blind test of the authenticity for (i) 44 herbal products representing 12 companies and 30 different species of herbs, and (ii) 50 leaf samples collected from 42 herbal species. They also assembled the first standard reference material (SRM) herbal barcode library from 100 herbal species of known provenance that were used to identify the unknown herbal products and leaf samples.
DNA barcodes from 91% of the herbal products and all leaf samples could be recovered. 59% of the products tested contained DNA barcodes from plant species not listed on the labels. 48% of the products could be authenticated but one-third of these also contained contaminants and or fillers not listed on the label. Product substitution occurred in 30 of the 44 products tested and only 2 of the 12 companies sold products without any substitution, contamination or fillers. Some of the contaminants we found pose serious health risks to consumers.
Based on these findings, the authors drew the following conclusions: Most of the herbal products tested were of poor quality, including considerable product substitution, contamination and use of fillers. These activities dilute the effectiveness of otherwise useful remedies, lowering the perceived value of all related products because of a lack of consumer confidence in them. We suggest that the herbal industry should embrace DNA barcoding for authenticating herbal products through testing of raw materials used in manufacturing products. The use of an SRM DNA herbal barcode library for testing bulk materials could provide a method for ‘best practices’ in the manufacturing of herbal products. This would provide consumers with safe, high quality herbal products.
These findings are fairly alarming. I have previously blogged about the fact that herbal products are far to often adulterated or contaminated. Now it seems that we have to add to this list of dangers the substitution of the herbal ingredient with a presumably less expensive but potentially toxic herb that should not legally be there at all.
Many reader of this blog will remember the libel case of the British Chiropractic Association (BCA) against Simon Singh. Simon had disclosed in a Guardian comment that the BCA was happily promoting bogus chiropractic treatments for 6 paediatric conditions, including infant colic. The BCA not only lost the case but the affair almost destroyed this strange organisation and resulted in an enormous reputational damage of chiropractors worldwide. In an article entitled AFTER THE STORM, the then-president of the BCA later described the defeat in his own words: “in 2009, events in the UK took a turn which was to consume the British Chiropractic Association (BCA) for two years and force the wider profession to confront key issues that for decades had kept it distanced from its medical counterparts and attracting ridicule from its critics…the BCA began one of the darkest periods in its history; one that was ultimately to cost it financially, reputationally and politically…The GCC itself was in an unprecedented situation. Faced with a 1500% rise in complaints, Investigating Committees were assembled to determine whether there was a case to answer…The events of the past two years have exposed a blind adherence to outdated principles amongst a small but significant minority of the profession. Mindful of the adage that it’s the squeaky wheel that gets the grease, the vocalism of this group has ensured that chiropractic is characterised by its critics as unscientific, unsafe and slightly wacky. Claims that the vertebral subluxation complex is the cause of illness and disease have persisted despite the three UK educational establishments advising the GCC that no evidence of acceptable quality exists to support such claims.”
Only a few years AFTER THE STORM, this story seems to have changed beyond recognition. Harald Walach, who is known to readers of this blog because I reported that he was elected ‘pseudo-scientist of the year’ in 2012, recently published a comment on the proceedings of the European Congress of Integrated Medicine where we find the following intriguing version of the libel case:
Mein Freund und Kollege George Lewith aus Southampton hatte einen Hauptvortrag über seine Überblicksarbeit über chiropraktische Interventionen für kleinkindliche Koliken vorgelegt. Sie ist ausgelöst worden durch die Behauptung, die Singh und Ernst vor einigen Jahren erhoben hatten, dass Chiropraktik gefährlich ist, dass es keine Daten dafür gäbe, dass sie wirksam sei und dass sie gefährliche Nebenwirkungen habe, speziell wenn sie bei Kindern angewendet würde. Die Chiropraktiker hatten den Wissenschaftsjournalisten Singh damals wegen Verleumdung verklagt und recht erhalten. George Lewith hatte dem Gericht die Expertise geliefert und nun seine Analyse auf Kinder ausgedehnt.
Kurz gefasst: Die Intervention wirkt sogar ziemlich stark, etwa eine Standardabweichung war der Effekt groß. Die Kinder schreien kürzer und weniger. Und die Durchforstung der Literatur nach gefährlichen Nebenwirkungen hatte keinen, wortwörtlich: nicht einen, Fall zu Tage gefördert, der von Nebenwirkungen, geschweige denn gefährlichen, berichtet hätte. Die Aufregung war seinerzeit dadurch entstanden, dass eine unqualifizierte Person einer zart gebauten Frau über den Rücken gelaufen ist und ihr dabei das Genick gebrochen hat. Die Presse hatte das ganze dann zu „tödlicher Nebenwirkung chiropraktischer Intervention“ aufgebauscht.
Oh, I almost forgot, you don’t read German? Here is my translation of this revealing text:
“My friend and colleague Geoorge Lewith from Southampton gave a keynote lecture on his review of chiropractic interventions for infant colic. This was prompted by the claim, made by Singh and Ernst a few years ago, that chiropractic was dangerous, that no data existed showing its effectiveness, and that it had dangerous side-effects, particularly for children. The chiropractors had sued the science journalist Singh for libel and won the case. George Lewith had provided the expert report for the court and has now extended his analysis on children.
To put it briefly: the intervention is even very effective; the effect-size is about one standard deviation. The children cry less long and more rarely. And the search of the literature for dangerous side-effects resulted in no – literally: not one – case of side-effects, not to mention dangerous ones. The fuzz had started back then because an unqualified person had walked over the back of a thin woman and had thus broken her neck. The press had subsequently hyped the whole thing to a “deadly side-effect of a chiropractic intervention”. (I am sorry for the clumsy language but the original is even worse.)
Now, isn’t that remarkable? Not only has the truth about the libel case been turned upside down, but also the evidence on chiropractic as a treatment for infant colic seems mysteriously improved; other reviews which might just be a bit more independent and objective come to the following conclusions:
And what should we make of all this? I don’t know about you, but I conclude that, for some apologists of alternative medicine, the truth is a rather flexible commodity.
Nobody really likes criticism, I suppose. Yet everyone with a functional brain agrees that criticism is a precondition to making progress. So most of us do listen to it, introspect and try to learn a lesson.
Not so in alternative medicine! The last post by Preston Long was a summary of constructive criticism of his own profession; it brought that message home to me much clearer than previous discussions on this blog (probably because it did not directly concern me) and, after some reflection, I realised that apologists of alternative medicine have developed five distinct strategies to avoid progress that otherwise might develop from criticism (alright, these strategies do exist in other fields too, but I think that many of the comments on this blog demonstrate that they are particularly evident in alternative medicine).
IGNORE
We could also call this method ‘The Prince of Wales Technique of Avoiding Progress’ because HRH is famous for making statements ‘ex cathedra’ without ever defending them or facing his critics or allowing others to directly challenge him. When he advocated the Gerson diet for cancer, for instance, Prof Baum challenged him in an open letter asking him to use his influence more wisely. Like with all other criticism directed to him, he decided to ignore it. This strategy is a safe bet for stalling progress and it has the added advantage that it does not require anything other than ignorance.
BLUFF
As it requires some basic understanding of the issues at hand, this method is a little more demanding. You need to look closely at the criticism and subsequently shoot holes in it. If you cannot find any, invent some. For instance, you might state that your critic misquoted the evidence. Very few people will bother to read up the original data, and you are likely to get away even with fairly obvious lies. To beef your response up a bit, pretend that there is plenty of good evidence demonstrating exactly the opposite of what your critic has said. If asked to provide actual references or sources for your claims, don’t listen. An extreme example of the bluff-method is to sue your critic for libel – but be careful, this can backfire in a major way!
INVALIDATE
A very popular method is to claim that the critic is not actually competent to criticise. The discussion of Long’s post demonstrated that technique in a classic fashion. His detractors argued that he was a failed chiropractor who had an axe to grind and thus had no right to criticise chiropractic (“Preston H Long you are a disgrace to the chiropractic profession…take off your chiropractic hat, you dont deserve to wear it. YOU sir are a shame and a folly!!”). Of course, you need to be a bit simple in order to agree with this type of logic, but lots of people seem to be just that!
BLAME
Even more popular is the blame-game. It involves arguing that, ok not all is rosy on your side of the fence, but the other side is so, so much worse. Before they dare to challenge you, they should look at their own mess; and while it is not sorted, they must simply shut up. For instance, if the criticism is that chiropractors have put hundreds of their patients into wheelchairs with their neck-manipulations, you must point out that doctors with their nasty drugs are much, much worse (“Long discounts the multitudes that chiropractic has… saved from dangerous drugs and surgery. As far as risks of injury from seeing a chiropractor vs. medicine, all one needs to do is compare malpractice insurance rates to see that insurance carriers rate medicine as an exponentially more dangerous undertaking”). Few people will realise that this is a fallacy and that the risks of any therapy must be seen in relation to its potential benefits.
ATTACK
When criticised, you are understandably annoyed; most people will therefore forgive you calling your critic names which are not normally used in polite circles (“who is this idiot, who wouldnt know the first thing about chiropractic”). Ad hominem attacks are the last resort of apologists of alternative medicine which emerges with depressing regularity when they have run out of rational arguments; they are signs of victories of reason over unreason. In the case of those chiropractors who were unable to stomach Long’s critique, the insults were coming thick and fast. The reason for only very few being visible is quite simple: I often delete the worst excesses of such primitive reactions.
The following is a guest post by Preston H. Long. It is an excerpt from his new book entitled ‘Chiropractic Abuse—A Chiropractor’s Lament’. Preston H. Long is a licensed chiropractor from Arizona. His professional career has spanned nearly 30 years. In addition to treating patients, he has testified at about 200 trials, performed more than 10,000 chiropractic case evaluations, and served as a consultant to several law enforcement agencies. He is also an associate professor at Bryan University, where he teaches in the master’s program in applied health informatics. His new book is one of the very few that provides an inside criticism of chiropractic. It is well worth reading, in my view.
Have you ever consulted a chiropractor? Are you thinking about seeing one? Do you care whether your tax and health-care dollars are spent on worthless treatment? If your answer to any of these questions is yes, there are certain things you should know.
1. Chiropractic theory and practice are not based on the body of knowledge related to health, disease, and health care that has been widely accepted by the scientific community.
Most chiropractors believe that spinal problems, which they call “subluxations,” cause ill health and that fixing them by “adjusting” the spine will promote and restore health. The extent of this belief varies from chiropractor to chiropractor. Some believe that subluxations are the primary cause of ill health; others consider them an underlying cause. Only a small percentage (including me) reject these notions and align their beliefs and practices with those of the science-based medical community. The ramifications and consequences of subluxation theory will be discussed in detail throughout this book.
2. Many chiropractors promise too much.
The most common forms of treatment administered by chiropractors are spinal manipulation and passive physiotherapy measures such as heat, ultrasound, massage, and electrical muscle stimulation. These modalities can be useful in managing certain problems of muscles and bones, but they have little, if any, use against the vast majority of diseases. But chiropractors who believe that “subluxations” cause ill health claim that spinal adjustments promote general health and enable patients to recover from a wide range of diseases. The illustrations below reflect these beliefs. The one to the left is part of a poster that promotes the notion that periodic spinal “adjustments” are a cornerstone of good health. The other is a patient handout that improperly relates “subluxations” to a wide range of ailments that spinal adjustments supposedly can help. Some charts of this type have listed more than 100 diseases and conditions, including allergies, appendicitis, anemia, crossed eyes, deafness, gallbladder problems, hernias, and pneumonia.
A 2008 survey found that exaggeration is common among chiropractic Web sites. The researchers looked at the Web sites of 200 chiropractors and 9 chiropractic associations in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Each site was examined for claims suggesting that chiropractic treatment was appropriate for asthma, colic, ear infection/earache/otitis media, neck pain, whiplash, headache/migraine, and lower back pain. The study found that 95% of the surveyed sites made unsubstantiated claims for at least one of these conditions and 38% made unsubstantiated claims for all of them.1 False promises can have dire consequences to the unsuspecting.
3. Our education is vastly inferior to that of medical doctors.
I rarely encountered sick patients in my school clinic. Most of my “patients” were friends, students, and an occasional person who presented to the student clinic for inexpensive chiropractic care. Most had nothing really wrong with them. In order to graduate, chiropractic college students are required to treat a minimum number of people. To reach their number, some resort to paying people (including prostitutes) to visit them at the college’s clinic.2
Students also encounter a very narrow range of conditions, most related to aches and pains. Real medical education involves contact with thousands of patients with a wide variety of problems, including many severe enough to require hospitalization. Most chiropractic students see patients during two clinical years in chiropractic college. Medical students also average two clinical years, but they see many more patients and nearly all medical doctors have an additional three to five years of specialty training before they enter practice.
Chiropractic’s minimum educational standards are quite low. In 2007, chiropractic students were required to evaluate and manage only 15 patients in order to graduate. Chiropractic’s accreditation agency ordered this number to increase to 35 by the fall of 2011. However, only 10 of the 35 must be live patients (eight of whom are not students or their family members)! For the remaining cases, students are permitted to “assist, observe, or participate in live, paper-based, computer-based, distance learning, or other reasonable alternative.”3 In contrast, medical students see thousands of patients.
Former National Council Against Health Fraud President William T. Jarvis, Ph.D., has noted that chiropractic school prepares its students to practice “conversational medicine”—where they glibly use medical words but lack the knowledge or experience to deal appropriately with the vast majority of health problems.4 Dr. Stephen Barrett reported a fascinating example of this which occurred when he visited a chiropractor for research purposes. When Barrett mentioned that he was recovering from an attack of vertigo (dizziness), the chiropractor quickly rattled off a textbook-like list of all the possible causes. But instead of obtaining a proper history and conducting tests to pinpoint a diagnosis, he x-rayed Dr. Barrett’s neck and recommended a one-year course of manipulations to make his neck more curved. The medical diagnosis, which had been appropriately made elsewhere, was a viral infection that cleared up spontaneously in about ten days.5
4. Our legitimate scope is actually very narrow.
Appropriate chiropractic treatment is relevant only to a narrow range of ailments, nearly all related to musculoskeletal problems. But some chiropractors assert that they can influence the course of nearly everything. Some even offer adjustments to farm animals and family pets.
5. Very little of what chiropractors do has been studied.
Although chiropractic has been around since 1895, little of what we do meets the scientific standard through solid research. Chiropractic apologists try to sound scientific to counter their detractors, but very little research actually supports what chiropractors do.
6. Unless your diagnosis is obvious, it’s best to get diagnosed elsewhere.
During my work as an independent examiner, I have encountered many patients whose chiropractor missed readily apparent diagnoses and rendered inappropriate treatment for long periods of time. Chiropractors lack the depth of training available to medical doctors. For that reason, except for minor injuries, it is usually better to seek medical diagnosis first.
7. We offer lots of unnecessary services.
Many chiropractors, particularly those who find “subluxations” in everyone, routinely advise patients to come for many months, years, and even for their lifetime. Practice-builders teach how to persuade people they need “maintenance care” long after their original problem has resolved. In line with this, many chiropractors offer “discounts” to patients who pay in advance and sign a contract committing them for 50 to 100 treatments. And “chiropractic pediatric specialists” advise periodic examinations and spinal adjustments from early infancy onward. (This has been aptly described as “womb to tomb” care.) Greed is not the only factor involved in overtreatment. Many who advise periodic adjustments are “true believers.” In chiropractic school, one of my classmates actually adjusted his newborn son while the umbilical cord was still attached. Another student had the school radiology department take seven x-rays of his son’s neck to look for “subluxations” presumably acquired during the birth process. The topic of unnecessary care is discussed further in Chapter 8.
8. “Cracking” of the spine doesn’t mean much.
Spinal manipulation usually produces a “popping” or “cracking” sound similar to what occurs when you crack your knuckles. Both are due to a phenomenon called cavitation, which occurs when there is a sudden decrease in joint pressure brought on by the manipulation. That allows dissolved gasses in the joint fluid to be released into the joint itself. Chiropractors sometimes state that the noise means that something therapeutic has taken place. However, the noise has no health-related significance and does not indicate that anything has been realigned. It simply means that gas was allowed to escape under less pressure than normal. Knuckles do not “go back into place” when you crack them, and neither do spinal bones.
9. If the first few visits don’t help you, more treatment probably won’t help.
I used to tell my patients “three and through.” If we did not see significant objective improvement in three visits, it was time to move on.
10. We take too many x-rays.
No test should be done unless it is likely to provide information that will influence clinical management of the patient. X-ray examinations are appropriate when a fracture, tumor, infection, or neurological defect is suspected. But they are not needed for evaluating simple mechanical-type strains, such as back or neck pain that develops after lifting a heavy object.
The average number of x-rays taken during the first visit by chiropractors whose records I have been asked to review has been about eleven. Those records were sent to me because an insurance company had flagged them for investigation into excessive billing, so this number of x-rays is much higher than average. But many chiropractors take at least a few x-rays of everyone who walks through their door.
There are two main reasons why chiropractors take more x-rays than are medically necessary. One is easy money. It costs about 35¢ to buy an 8- x 10-inch film, for which they typically charge $40. In chiropractic, the spine encompasses five areas: the neck, mid-back, low-back, pelvic, and sacral regions. That means five separate regions to bill for—typically three to seven views of the neck, two to six for the low back, and two for each of the rest. So eleven x-ray films would net the chiropractor over $400 for just few minutes of work. In many accident cases I have reviewed, the fact that patients had adequate x-ray examinations in a hospital emergency department to rule out fractures did not deter the chiropractor from unnecessarily repeating these exams.
Chiropractors also use x-ray examinations inappropriately for marketing purposes. Chiropractors who do this point to various things on the films that they interpret as (a) subluxations, (b) not enough spinal curvature, (c) too much spinal curvature, and/or (d) “spinal decay,” all of which supposedly call for long courses of adjustments with periodic x-ray re-checks to supposedly assess progress. In addition to wasting money, unnecessary x-rays entail unnecessary exposure to the risks of ionizing radiation.
11. Research on spinal manipulation does not reflect what takes place in most chiropractic offices.
Research studies that look at spinal manipulation are generally done under strict protocols that protect patients from harm. The results reflect what happens when manipulation is done on patients who are appropriately screened—usually by medical teams that exclude people with conditions that would make manipulation dangerous. The results do not reflect what typically happens when patients select chiropractors on their own. The chiropractic marketplace is a mess because most chiropractors ignore research findings and subject their patients to procedures that are unnecessary and/or senseless.
12. Neck manipulation is potentially dangerous.
Certain types of chiropractic neck manipulation can damage neck arteries and cause a stroke. Chiropractors claim that the risk is trivial, but they have made no systematic effort to actually measure it. Chapter 9 covers this topic in detail.
13. Most chiropractors don’t know much about nutrition.
Chiropractors learn little about clinical nutrition during their schooling. Many offer what they describe as “nutrition counseling.” But this typically consists of superficial advice about eating less fat and various schemes to sell you supplements that are high-priced and unnecessary.
14. Chiropractors who sell vitamins charge much more than it costs them.
Chiropractors who sell vitamins typically recommend them unnecessarily and charge two to three times what they pay for them. Some chiropractors center their practice around selling vitamins to patients. Their recommendations are based on hair analysis, live blood analysis, applied kinesiology muscle-testing or other quack tests that will be discussed later in this book. Patients who are victimized this way typically pay several dollars a day and are encouraged to stay on the products indefinitely. In one case I investigated, an Arizona chiropractor advised an 80+-year-old grandma to charge more than $10,000 for vitamins to her credit cards to avoid an impending stroke that he had diagnosed by testing a sample of her pubic hair. No hair test can determine that a stroke is imminent or show that dietary supplements are needed. Doctors who evaluated the woman at the Mayo Clinic found no evidence to support the chiropractor’s assessment.
15. Chiropractors have no business treating young children.
The pediatric training chiropractors receive during their schooling is skimpy and based mainly on reading. Students see few children and get little or no experience in diagnosing or following the course of the vast majority of childhood ailments. Moreover, spinal adjustment has no proven effectiveness against childhood diseases. Some adolescents with spinal stiffness might benefit from manipulation, but most will recover without treatment. Chiropractors who claim to practice “chiropractic pediatrics” typically aim to adjust spines from birth onward and are likely to oppose immunization. Some chiropractors claim they can reverse or lessen the spinal curvature of scoliosis, but there is no scientific evidence that spinal manipulation can do this.6
16. The fact that patients swear by us does not mean we are actually helping them.
Satisfaction is not the same thing as effectiveness. Many people who believe they have been helped had conditions that would have resolved without treatment. Some have had treatment for dangers that did not exist but were said by the chiropractor to be imminent. Many chiropractors actually take courses on how to trick patients to believe in them. (See Chapter 8)
17. Insurance companies don’t want to pay for chiropractic care.
Chiropractors love to brag that their services are covered by Medicare and most insurance companies. However, this coverage has been achieved though political action rather than scientific merit. I have never encountered an insurance company that would reimburse for chiropractic if not forced to do so by state laws. The political pressure to mandate chiropractic coverage comes from chiropractors, of course, but it also comes from the patients whom they have brainwashed.
18. Lots of chiropractors do really strange things.
The chiropractic profession seems to attract people who are prone to believe in strange things. One I know of does “aura adjustments” to treat people’s “bruised karma.” Another rents out a large crystal to other chiropractors so they can “recharge” their own (smaller) crystals. Another claims to get advice by “channeling” a 15th Century Scottish physician. Another claimed to “balance a woman’s harmonics” by inserting his thumb into her vagina and his index finger into her anus. Another treated cancer with an orange light that was mounted in a wooden box. Another did rectal exams on all his female patients. Even though such exams are outside the legitimate scope of chiropractic, he also videotaped them so that if his bills for this service were questioned, he could prove that he had actually performed what he billed for.
19. Don’t expect our licensing boards to protect you.
Many chiropractors who serve on chiropractic licensing boards harbor the same misbeliefs that are rampant among their colleagues. This means, for example, that most boards are unlikely to discipline chiropractors for diagnosing and treating imaginary “subluxations.”
20. The media rarely look at what we do wrong.
The media rarely if ever address chiropractic nonsense. Reporting on chiropractic is complicated because chiropractors vary so much in what they do. (In fact, a very astute observer once wrote that “for every chiropractor, there is an equal and opposite chiropractor.”) Consumer Reports published superb exposés in 1975 and 1994, but no other print outlet has done so in the past 35 years. This lack of information is the main reason I have written this book.
References
1. Ernst E, Gilbey A. Chiropractic claims in the English-speaking world. New Zealand Medical Journal 123:36–44, 2010.
2. Bernet J. Affidavit, April 12, 1996. Posted to Chirobase Web site.
3. Standards for Doctor of Chiropractic Programs and Requirements for Institutional Status. Council on Chiropractic Education, Scottsdale, Arizona, Jan 2007.
4. Jarvis WT. Why becoming a chiropractor may be risky. Chirobase Web site, October 5, 1999.
5. Barrett S. My visit to a “straight” chiropractor. Quackwatch Web site, Oct 10, 2002.
6. Romano M, Negrini S. Manual therapy as a conservative treatment for idiopathic scoliosis: A review. Scoliosis 3:2, 2008.
