QUACK MEDICINE
WHAT HARM DOES IT DO?
By Bill Broderick
“All of our science, measured against reality, is primitive and childlike–and yet it is the most precious thing we have.”
ALBERT EINSTEIN (1879-1955)
A School Girl Performs an Experiment
In 1996 a young Colorado school-girl named Emily Rosa did something extraordinary. What she did challenged the validity of an “alternative healing procedure” that had come to be regarded as almost mainstream medicine. The procedure was one invented by a professor of nursing Dolores Krieger and Theosophist Dora Kunz some 30 years before, and called “therapeutic touch” and what Emily Rosa did was to perform a simple experiment that exposed the quackery behind the procedure and thoroughly discredited it.
The experiment that she performed was part of her school science fair project and showed conclusively that TT practitioners could not do the one thing that they claimed they could and did do routinely–detect the “human energy field.” Detection of this field is paramount to the practitioner’s ability to do therapeutic touch.
According to TT theory, the TT practitioner detects “imbalances” in the putative “energy field” by moving her hands within the field in certain ways, then through the exercise of intention and hand movement brings about proper balance and thereby the healing of illness.
Therapeutic touch is a variant of the much more ancient “laying on of hands.” It found its niche within the nursing profession with tens of thousands of nurses learning the technique and eagerly putting it into practice at every opportunity. Many hospitals recognized TT as a genuine healing modality and even established courses in TT for their student and trained nurses. “Energy-based” healing became a major player in at least one branch of modern medicine. Even though there is not a scrap of evidence that the “human energy field” exists, modern trained nurses began prattling about “prana,” “chi,” “qui,” “vital life force,” “chakras” and other Eastern mystical terms.
Emily Rosa’s experiment consisted of a simple cardboard screen to separate experimenter and subject. The subject put her hands through holes in the bottom of the screen with a towel or cloth draped over her arms to prevent peeking and Emily hovered her hand over one of theirs as determined by a coin toss. Each practitioner was given 10 trials. Any who scored significantly above chance, 5, during the first 10 trials were tested a second time. Twenty-one practitioners were tested for a total of 280 trials. In only 123 instances (44 percent) did they identify correctly which of their hands was in closest proximity to Emily’s hand. If they had really been able to detect Emily’s energy field, the scoring should have been close to 280. After all, if you can see, you don’t see 44 percent of the time, you see 100 percent of the time.
The experiment was subsequently written up in a paper titled A Close Look at Therapeutic Touch by Linda Rosa, RN and Larry Sarner, Emily’s mother and stepfather, with Dr. Stephen Barrett, MD (of Quackwatch.com) and the paper published in The Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) for April 1, 1998. Emily became the youngest person ever to be featured in this prestigious publication and the JAMA article received national and international media attention. Although therapeutic touch is still being practiced by thousands of nurses and others who have been trained in it, Nurse Krieger’s invention received a blow from which it has never completely recovered.
Please don’t misinterpret what I’m saying here. Nurses are the heart of health care and the work they do is indispensable. They are professionals. They entered the profession, in most cases, due to a desire to help, to make a difference, to do their best for those who need care. They are all too often overworked, underappreciated–and underpaid. As, professionals, they had every reason to believe that their leaders would not mislead them. And they had every reason to believe that therapeutic touch would assist them in bringing help and healing to those they served. But bluff and bluster on the part of those who profited from TT could carry it only so far. When it came time to produce “the proof of the pudding,” it just wasn’t there. In the opinion of many both inside and outside of the profession, they were betrayed by those they trusted most.
Even in scrupulously honest people, it has been shown time and again that the human mind is capable of fantastic feats of self-deception. Once people have formed an opinion, they will go to incredible lengths to defend it. Reason and logic, even concrete evidence, is discarded in favour of the erroneous conclusion.
Thus we tend to see what we want to see and close our eyes and minds to everything else. This is an aspect of human nature that is responsible for the persistence of cults, dangerous politics, and much else that continues to trouble our world today. This is one of the very good reasons why we should not jump too quickly to conclusions and why seeking a second (and even a third) opinion is often a very wise idea.
1. Lack of, or inability to produce, positive, objective, evidence of efficacy is a hallmark of quack medicine.
The latter years of the twentieth century were especially fruitful for the spawning of new and questionable health-care practices and the coming into respectability of old ones. Some, such as chiropractic, homeopathy and naturopathy, put on the trappings of science and practitioners began calling themselves doctors–whether they were or not. The institutions where they studied conferred degrees which often carried no recognition outside of the “institutions” in which they were granted. In some cases the schools and colleges became accredited and able to grant degrees that were recognized in a limited sense in society at large
The names of many of these practices became almost household words: acupuncture, magnet therapy, reiki, reflexology, herbal remedies (Chinese and others), aromatherapy, etc. Anything with a “New Age” slant, or with spiritual or mystical connotations, was particularly attractive. Also, anything that claimed to be more “natural” than mainstream or traditional medicine, which was virtually all of them.
One particularly far-out procedure was the imbibing of shark-cartilage for the prevention and treatment of cancer, promoted in two books, Sharks Don’t Get Cancer and Sharks Still Don’t Get Cancer, by Dr. I. William Lane and Linda Comac in the early 1990s. Although it is more than 10 years since the publication of these books, the world is still not beating a path to Dr. Lane’s door.
Lane, by the way, is not an MD (Doctor of Medicine) but rather, according to the biographic blurb on his books, holds a PhD in Agricultural Biochemistry and Nutrition from Rutgers University. The inclusion of “Dr.” before his name may mislead the average reader.
All discussion and argument aside, how effective are these new and not-so-new health-care procedures? Are they effective at all? Do they do any good? Do they do any harm? What do we know about them anyway?
The Need for Scientific Testing
The efficacy (effectiveness) of any medicine or healing procedure is established through clinical testing which usually involves a battery of double-blind tests designed to prevent subjective factors from influencing evaluation of the results. Neither the patients nor their doctors know who receives the real medicine or treatment and who the sham (or false) treatment. Accordingly, if there is a placebo effect, those receiving the sham treatment will likely do as well as those receiving the real treatment. On the other hand, if the real treatment really is effective, a larger proportion of patients who receive it will get better compared to those receiving the placebo treatment. Clinical tests usually take place over a number of years in order for all aspects of the treatment to be properly evaluated.
Clinical studies also test for harmful side-effects. The objective is to determine the level of treatment required to effectively treat the disease while doing the least harm (if any) to the patient. Cancer treatments such as chemotherapy and radiation, for example, may result in hair loss, fatigue, organ damage, even loss of sexual function and other side effects. The goal is to find a middle path that balances the good against the harm with a net benefit to the patient.
The worst medical tragedy of the twentieth century was the discovery in 1961 that a drug taken by women to help them sleep and to overcome the effects of morning sickness, also stunted the arms and legs of unborn infants. The drug was thalidomide. Many thousands of children were born with birth defects before the problem was traced to the prescription drug that their mothers had taken. This aspect of thalidomide use was not discovered during the original clinical trials of the drug, a fact which highlights the importance of testing for as many contingencies as can conceivably be applicable.
In the case of unconventional or alternative medicine and treatments, there is usually no prior clinical testing of such treatments. Most alt-med treatments do not involve the ingesting of a substance or medication, the main exception being homeopathy–which managed with the help of a U.S. senator (who was also a homeopathic practitioner) early in the twentieth century, to avoid being regulated by the U.S. Food and Drug Agency. And so, since such treatments are not considered foods or drugs, they can be brought to you courtesy of your friendly “certified health care professional” without any regulation or oversight on the part of anyone or anything. You can even buy them without a prescription.
Preposterous Solutions
A homeopathic “remedy” is a perfect example of a placebo–a perfectly harmless, ineffective, neutral substance–water–being marketed as a medicine and charged for accordingly. If you take such a “medicine,” you can do so with virtual certainty that the substance is safe. You can do so because it is nothing but plain water or maybe water with a little alcohol or food colouring. Such remedies are so diluted that there is no chance of there being a single molecule of the active ingredient whatsoever–whatever it’s supposed to be–being present.
How diluted is that?
In his Quackwatch.com article “Homeopathy: The Ultimate Fake,” Stephen Barrett, MD describes how homeopathic products are prepared. “If the original substance is soluble, one part is diluted with either nine or 99 parts of distilled water and/or alcohol and shaken vigorously (succussed); if insoluble, it is finely ground and pulverized in similar proportions with powdered lactose (milk sugar). One part of the diluted medicine is them further diluted, and the process is repeated until the desired concentration is reached. Dilutions of 1 to 10 are designated by the Roman numeral X (X = 1/10, 3X = 1/1000, 6X = 1/1,000,000). Similarly, dilutions of 1 to 100 are designated by the Roman numeral C (1C - 1/100, 3C = 1/1,000,000, and so on.) Most remedies today range from 6X to 30X, but products of 30C or more are marketed.”
He goes on to say: “A 30X dilution means that the original substance has been diluted 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 times. Assuming that a cubic centimeter of water contains 15 drops, this number is greater than the number of drops of water that would fill a container more than 50 times the size of the Earth.”
In other words, a 30X dilution requires a sphere of water 50 times the size of the Earth to contain just one molecule of the active ingredient. But when you buy the medicine, you don’t get a container of water 50 times the size of the Earth, you get only a small vial containing maybe 10 or 20 ml. It has to be pure water and whatever flavoring or food colouring they’ve added. That’s how diluted it is!
Higher dilutions, of course, are even more preposterous! Barrett explains: “Robert L. Park, PhD, a prominent physicist who is executive director of The American Physical Society, has noted that since the least amount of a substance in a solution is one molecule, a 30C solution would have to have at least one molecule of the original substance dissolved in a minimum of 1,000,000,000, 000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 molecules of water. This would require a container more than 30,000,000,000 times the size of the Earth.
In fact, such a container would be 30,000 times larger than the Sun–which is already a million times larger than the Earth.
How do homeopathic practitioners achieve such dilutions? The answer is simple: by diluting, diluting and diluting. It doesn’t take a whole lot of 1/10 dilutions to pass the point where you lose any trace of the supposedly active ingredient. About 30 will do it. If you dilute 1/100, you’ll pass that point in about 10 dilutions.
Basically, when you buy a homeopathic preparation, what you’re paying for is someone to pour water from small containers to large containers and back again. And of course, put labels on the bottles after the final dilutions.
Chemically, it is impossible to distinguish between different homeopathic solutions, say, a solution of iron and one of gold. But according to homeopathy’s founder Samuel Hahnemann (1755-1843), the more diluted a solution is, the more powerful and therefore more effective it is. This is homeopathy’s “law of infinitesimals.” It’s an idea that goes against everything we know about chemistry and physics. To believe it is to believe in alchemy and magic.
The theory is, every drop of water coming into contact with the homeopathic water somehow “remembers” the properties of that special water. Merlin the Magician would have been fascinated.
A more modern magician and another critic of homeopathy–and skeptic and debunker extraordinaire–James Randi, asked in an address given at the inaugeral session of the Caltech lecture series of the Skeptic Society on April 12, 1992: “Since water has been around for billions and billions of years, in this process it must have come into contact with every organic and inorganic molecule on Earth. That being the case, why not just give the patient ordinary tap water?” Good question!
Randi is, of course, director of the James Randi Educational Foundation (JREF) based in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, which since 1997 has offered a prize of one million dollars to anyone who can actually prove or demonstrate a paranormal feat or phenomenon. Although many have tried, it appears to be in no danger of being won any time soon.
As an aside, a California TT practitioner bravely tried for the prize in 1996. Tested for her ability for the JREF by the Philadelphia Association for Critical Thinking (PhACT), she was unable, when she could not see the patients, to tell the difference between a woman with chronic right wrist pain and a man without any pains or medical problems in his arms. Again, so much for the ability of people trained in TT to detect the “human energy field.”
It was actually the “harmlessness” of homeopathy that appears to have been an improvement over the conventional medicine of its day–early nineteenth century. In an article that originally appeared in JAMA on November 11, 1998 and subsequently published in Michael Shermer’s The Skeptic Encyclopedia of Pseudoscience (2003) under the title “Alternative Medicine v. Scientific Medicine,” Harry K. Ziel, MD, wrote: “Snake oil, cupping, bleeding, leeches, purges, nostrums and potions (some poisonous) constituted the early physician’s formulary. Since 85 percent of our maladies are self-limiting and are cured by nothing more than tincture of time, the less the patient saw the doctor, the better his chance of recovery. Simply put, early physicians were capable of doing more harm than good. Only the very fittest survived the ministrations of these early physicians.”
A point to be noted from the foregoing paragraph is that 85 percent of our ailments are self-limiting. If we just do nothing, our immune systems will very likely move in and do what has to be done to bring us back to health. Therefore, testimonials to the effect that “I took Dr. Wunder’s ‘Wonder Pills’ for 10 days and my condition cleared up completely” are not to be accepted as proof that the “doctor’s” pills are all they are claimed to be. Maybe they are, but where are the clinical tests that say so? And why isn’t the world beating a path to “Dr. Wunder’s” door? And how do we know he/she is even a real doctor?
Questions, questions, it pays to ask questions!
John’s Story
So, does the foregoing mean that homeopathy is harmless? Let’s consider a story by a person whom I know only by e-mail. We’ll call him John (not his real name). The following is from a message he put out on one of the e-mail discussion groups I belong to and is printed with his permission.
“I had read a fairly detailed book about the theory and practice of classical homeopathy. It was made clear in the book that conventional (and herbal) methods of treating disease, did the body more overall harm than good. I was easily convinced of this because I have always been
apprehensive about using conventional medicine (or herbs) to treat anything but the most serious of ailments. Although not very serious, I had (have) a skin condition (seborrheic dermatitis) that,
for self-esteem reasons, I wanted cleared up. At the time, I was treating it very successfully with a sulphur and salicylic acid containing soap. But, after reading the book, I became paranoid that by using these ingredients to suppress the dermatitis (considered to be a relatively mild expression of a more generalized diseased state), I was forcing my body to express a more severe symptom. I soon stopped using the soap, and the red, flaky lesions returned with a vengeance. I visited a homeopathic practitioner, and after being interviewed for more than an hour, I went home and anxiously waited for my prescribed remedy to come in the mail (it is apparently usual for the practitioner to take hours studying the client's symptom information before determining the type of remedy and dosage -- thus the delay). I received three tiny pills a few days later, and with them, came a set of instructions. From these instructions, and from the book, I learned that many precautions have to be followed both in the commercial preparation, and in the final
administering of these remedies. If any of them are not followed, there is a good chance that they will be rendered ineffective (i.e. if the remedy doesn't work, it is not likely the fault of the practitioner!). Anyway, not to drag this out much further, neither the first remedy, nor
the second (I had to commit to visiting her office for a followup interview) did anything to clear up my condition. I think I paid $140 for the two visits -- too expensive for me. Shortly afterward, I resumed the sulfur and salicylic acid treatment (I now mix up the ingredients at home), and my skin is as clear as a baby's bum -- with diaper rash (not really). After many years of using this treatment, I have not become aware of any other condition that might indicate a consequence to repressing the original symptom; I am not surprised.”
Did you spot some of the harmful aspects of homeopathy in the foregoing story? First off, how about the negative remarks in the book about other healing systems, particularly conventional medicine? And the reinforcement of John’s apprehensions about conventional medication? And how about the “prescribed remedy?.” Knowing what we now know from the information a few paragraphs back, what is there to distinguish between pill A containing distilled water and whatever (probably food coloring and flavoring) and pill B containing distilled water and something else (maybe another food coloring and flavoring)? And those “special instructions.” If not followed to the letter, the pills won’t work–meaning it’s the patient’s, not the practitioner’s, fault. And John paid $140 for the two visits. What benefit did he have to show for it–besides being a little wiser, that is?
As an another example of the harm that misinformation can do, I recall browsing in a bookstore some years ago and came upon a book with instructions on how to make a device that purportedly would prevent or cure many diseases–including cancer. I forget the title and author (it was a woman) but I remember one particular paragraph in good detail. The paragraph warned against allowing alcohol (rubbing alcohol or any kind of alcohol) to touch the skin. It seems that alcohol would be absorbed by the skin, would go into the body and there nourish a kind of worm that causes cancer.
Although I knew far less about quack medicine then than I do now, that paragraph haunted me whenever I had to have a dab of alcohol for an injection or anything. I can imagine that a more impressionable person than myself might have been thoroughly frightened by the misinformation it contained. The whole book was a prime example of quackery and absolutely false information and raised all kinds of warning bells. I don’t know how such a book could ever be printed by a reputable publisher, but there it was.
2. Misinformation and false information is another hallmark of quack medicine.
Chiropractic is much more controversial than homeopathy, because there is potential there for real harm. Chiropractors perform various kinds of spinal and neck manipulations which they claim are beneficial to their patients. In theory, bodily and even mental illnesses are caused by misplaced spinal and/or neck-bones pressing on nerves. These misplaced bones are called “subluxations.” When pressed or manipulated back into place, Viola! the patient is cured.
The above is a no-doubt overly simplified explanation of chiropractic. But before we get too far, let’s consider something that took place in the U.S. back in 1964. The incident involved the American letter carrier’s health care plan and the chiropractic industry–I balk at calling it a profession–and was reported by Paul Benedetti and Wayne MacPhail in an article titled “Subluxations not backed up by proof” on the CANOE website. Chiropractors were asked to justify their treatment claims against the plan, which included treatment for heart disease, cancer, mumps, and mental retardation, by submitting x-rays. Hundreds of x-rays were submitted, all of which purported to show subluxations. When chiropractic officials were assembled to review them, they were not able to successfully identify a single subluxation. Following this incident the plan stopped covering chiropractic services.
Another report on CANOE by the same authors discusses “The Birth of Chiropractic.” It seems that back in 1895 a certain Daniel David (D.D.) Palmer “claimed to have restored the hearing of a deaf man named Harvey Lillard, a janitor. Palmer wrote that Lillard was so deaf that ‘he could not hear the racket of a wagon on the street or the ticking of a watch.’ Palmer chatted with the janitor, examined him, found a vertebra out of whack, racked it into position and the man’s deafness disappeared. (He) then announced that all diseases were caused by misaligned vertebrae. More than one chiropractic historian has wondered how Palmer could have had a conversation with a deaf man.”
Again, we may note here the jumping-to-conclusion that characterizes much pseudoscience. How could Palmer–or anyone–know from one incident that “all diseases are caused by misaligned vertebrae”? And how do we know that the man’s hearing was restored? Palmer was apparently able to talk to him both before restoration and after.
The reporters also mention that prior to Lillard, Palmer had “worked as a magnetic healer in Burlington, Iowa. Magnetic healers claim to be able to cure disease by transferring healing energy while touching or passing their hands over a patient. Palmer also dabbled in phrenology. Phrenologists believe there is a relationship between skull shape and both personality and intelligence.” They go on to mention that he was “also influenced by vitalism, Mesmerism and spiritualism, as were many 19th century scientists. Vitalism, popular at the turn of the century in America, held that a vital force, distinct from the forces normally recognized by science, powered living organisms.
Benedetti and MacPhail go on to say that Palmer came to believe that a force, which he called “Innate Intelligence, or just “Innate,” flowed through the spine and what he called sympathetic nerves and that “human disease was the result of interference with the flow of ‘Innate Intelligence caused by subluxations, or misalignments of vertebra. It was known as the ‘Bone Out Of Place’ theory.”
D.D. Palmer and his son Bartlett Joshua (B.J.) Palmer set up a school to teach chiropractic. According to B.J., “Our school is on a business, not a professional basis ... We manufacture chiropractors... Give me a simple mind that thinks along single tracks, give me 30 days to instruct him, and that individual can go forth on the highways and byways and get more sick people well than the best, most complete, all around, unlimited medical education of any medical man who ever lived.”
Somehow, I think that must have been a bit of an overstatement even in the closing years of the nineteenth century.
In their closing words, Benedetti and MacPhail write: “While medical science advanced beyond leeching, humours and phrenology in the early part of (the twentieth) century, and then made breakthrough after breakthrough (vaccines, antibiotics, nuclear medicine, hormone therapy), the Palmers and chiropractors held fast to 19th century ideas and mysticism more in tune with a world before electric lights and motorcars.”
Today chiropractic is a thriving business, drawing in hundreds of millions of dollars each year. It calls itself a profession, students attend colleges of chiropractic such as Canadian Memorial Chiropractic College (CMCC) in Toronto, and graduates are licensed as professionals under the supervision of their own provincial colleges of chiropractic in each province. Under the Regulated Health Professionals Act (1991), they diagnose illnesses and use the term doctor.
It’s one thing for an adult to go to a chiropractor for back pain or other problems. But what about children? It seems to be common policy in chiropractic circles to target children and even babies for chiropractic treatment. A series of CANOE articles under the title “Manipulating Children” in the spring of 1991 by Benedetti and MacPhail showed that chiropractors across Canada are treating infants and children, even using illegal and unlicensed devices to diagnose and treat a variety of childhood illnesses, such as ear infections, Attention Deficit Disorder and learning difficulties, which would appear to be beyond their legislated scope of practice. And being paid to the tune of “tens of millions of dollars” of taxpayers’ money for doing so.
Chiropractors claim that children should have their spines checked and treated to remove tiny misalignments ... that may contribute to serious health problems. But doctors and even some chiropractors disagree. For example, the Canadian Chiefs of Pediatrics state that “Chiropractic spinal adjustment is NOT required as preventive therapy to maintain a child’s health.” And even chiropractor Samuel Homola, who is the author of the book Inside Chiropractic: A Patient’s Guide, now retired after a 40-year practice limited to musculoskeletal treatment, says: “A small child and a young baby doesn’t have the musculoskeletal problems that an adult has. I don’t know of any musculoskeletal problems that they could treat babies for. And how would they even determine that they had a problem?”
Montreal pediatrician Dr. Murray Katz states flatly that there is nothing in a child that young that can be treated by chiropractors. “It’s a scam,” he says.
And Dr. Stephen Barrett of Quackwatch.com goes even further: “They are not only wasting money, but I think it is mentally harmful to a child to grow up thinking that having your spine examined is a normal part of life and that there is something wrong with you that the chiropractor needs to fix once a week or once a month.”
In doing the research for their articles, an 11-year old Toronto girl identified as Judy Matthews (a pseudonym) was taken around to several chiropractors, following certification by Dr. John Wedge, Chief of Surgery for Toronto’s Hospital for Sick Children, that she was in perfectly good health.
Four out of the five chiropractors to whom Judy was taken, and who advertised that they treated children, stated otherwise. The verdict of one was: early osteo-arthritis, mild scoliosis or curvature of the spine, pronounced asymmetry, and multiple “subluxations” that were causing what could become serious health problems.
“It is not advanced,” said the chiropractor. “But it has got to be handled. All the symptoms she is experiencing now are the result of subluxations she has in her spine since, probably, birth.”
The approximate cost of the therapy, if undertaken, would come to about $5,000.
What is particularly interesting about this case is that four different chiropractors found different things wrong with Judy–their diagnoses did not agree with each other. Three even wanted to take x-rays and when Judy’s uncle (a reporter), who had accompanied her to the visits, refused in order to protect her from unnecessary radiation, her mother was phoned, she gave her permission and an x-ray was taken. Out of the five, one chiropractor found nothing at all wrong and recommended no treatment.
Which begs the question: Which of these practitioners was competent? And which ones weren’t?
3. Incompetence is still another hallmark of quack medicine.
Besides treating children and babies for non-existent maladies at great cost to parents and society in terms of worry, anxiety and fear–not to mention money–the chiropractic community, along with some other pseudoscientific health practitioners, has taken it upon itself to warn parents against immunization of children. This in spite of the fact that modern immunization programs have virtually eradicated a plethora of childhood diseases that once caused so much pain, suffering, marking for life, crippling and death, among children, such as measles, mumps, diphtheria, polio, whooping cough
Columnist Margaret Wente, who writes for The Globe and Mail, slammed the quack health practitioners in an article which appeared in the paper for December 19, 2000, titled “Voodoo medicine lives.” For her article, she interviewed Dr. Patricia Marchuk, who runs a family practice in a small Ontario town. Just a few days before she had seen a new mother who had brought her three-month-old baby in for a routine checkup. “The baby was already late for her first set of shots. I’m not going to give them to her,’ proclaimed the mom. ‘I’m terrified of them.” She had it on good authority that immunizations are dangerous and can cause crib death, allergies, asthma, even autism and juvenile delinquency.”
Wente wrote: “If you’re over 45, you may dimly remember the last days of polio. Maybe you knew a kid or two with withered legs and walkers. Those kids are past middle age now, and there are no more crippled kids around to bear witness to the vaccination revolution. ‘Parents in their 20s and 30s have never seen these diseases,’ says Dr. Marchuk. ‘They haven’t seen measles deaths or pertussis whooping cough in an infant. People have forgotten what infectious disease is’.”
Dr. Marchuk didn’t blame the parents. “They’re being duped by pseudoscience.... These people are neither stupid nor ignorant. On the contrary, most of them are well-educated and determined to make the wisest possible health choices for their children.”
The problem, as made plain in the article, is the growth of pseudoscience, the boom in alternative medicine, the Internet, “and the thousands of “so-called doctors” who argue that vaccines are risky and possibly unnecessary.” She goes on to say, “You can also blame the astonishing success of mass immunization programs, which have nearly wiped out our institutional memory of what polio, diphtheria and whooping cough used to be like.”
(AUTHOR’S NOTE: During some of the limited time that I personally have spent in chiropractors’ offices, having accompanied my wife on occasion, I have noticed, myself, that chiropractors, through signs and posters in their offices, try to steer parents in the direction of chiropractic treatment for their children rather than toward conventional medicine.)
Wente states that a wide variety of chiropractors’ web-sites contain false and misleading anti-immunization information, as do also pamphlets like “The Dark Side of Flu Shots,” which “warn that flue shots contain formaldehyde and neurotoxins and might cause cancer or brain damage. Or they can visit their friendly chiropractor or naturopath, who might tell them that spinal manipulation and naturopathic remedies are much better for their babies than vaccination is.”
Dr. Marchuk explained that parents “cannot possibly filter their way through the material. Instead of telling them that the doctor knows best, she takes the time to walk them through the evidence and fight myth with fact. Also, she has her own anti-quack crusade: when one chiropractor ran a series of ads in the local newspaper claiming that vaccination “is breaking the chain of natural passive immunity” (upholding the myth that “infectious diseases are good for you because they toughen the immune system”), she advertised back.
4. Spreading rumour and fear–another hallmark of quack medicine.
For most of the last century chiropractic has sought scientific and academic legitimacy by becoming a part of a recognized university and research centre, so far without success. The latest foray in this regard was by the Canadian Memorial Chiropractic College (CMCC) in Toronto which approached York University in 1995.
Right from the start certain members of York’s administration were warm to the idea of bringing a chiropractic college into the university fold. For one thing, York, did not have a medical or health department, for another CMCC would bring with them twenty five million dollars. However, the scientific faculty was strongly opposed to the merger on the basis of upholding “academic, scientific and ethical integrity.” When it seemed that a merger might actually take place following the university senate’s “approval in principle” in 1998, four faculty members mounted their own campaign to stop it. As a result the Faculty of Pure and Applied Sciences rejected the proposal. CMCC then applied for inclusion in Atkinson College with its professional and health studies programs. Again the “gang of four” as they were dubbed went into action and the result was finally reversal of the approval in principle in March 2001.
Michael de Robertis, a Professor of Astronomy at York and one of the four faculty members who figured so prominently in opposing the merger, wrote in an article published in The Ontario Skeptic (summer 1991) and subsequently in Skeptical Inquirer magazine, “Finally, it is important to note that while this marks the end of the York chiropractic campaign, a much larger and more important battle lies ahead.... Can there be any doubt that cash-strapped, post-secondary institutions will be wooed in the near future by major alternative medicine colleges–homeopathic, naturopathic, acupuncture, holistic, shiatsu, and chiropractic? “Have money, seek legitimacy. Are you for sale?” And the moment the first university succumbs to this temptation, society will have taken a fork in the road that leads away from enlightenment.”
5. Desperately seeking legitimacy– yet another hallmark of quack medicine.
A World About Sincerity
It is recognized that many people go into a branch of alternative medicine for the same reason they become doctors and nurses, because they want to help, because the idea of doing something to alleviate another person’s suffering somehow appeals to them. They want to make a difference in the lives of other people. Also, all of these alternative healing “professions” require far less “work” than becoming a doctor or a nurse. You can learn to do reflexology or iridology or foot massage or Reiki or therapeutic touch in just a few easy lessons. You can learn homeopathy out of a book. You can become a practicing chiropractor in four to six years.
The point is not necessarily how long it takes to become a “health practitioner” in one or another of the alt-med practices but the quality of knowledge that the student receives. Ordinary people are all too often not scientifically knowledgeable enough to know if the subject matter they study is valid or not. So even though a person may go into a study with the best intentions in the world, the “working information” they receive may be flawed, incomplete, inaccurate, and just plain wrong.
How about mainstream medicine? Mainstream medicine can be wrong too. The difference is that science is a self-correcting process and is constantly striving to improve our state of knowledge. The progress that medicine and other scientific disciplines made through the twentieth century and continues to make proves the open-endedness of real science as opposed to the limited “stuck-in-the-groove” propensity of the pseudosciences which put their founders on pedestals and raise their writings to the level of “holy writ.”
In other words, all the sincerity in the world is no substitute for knowing what the heck you are doing within the framework of the best knowledge currently available.
Conclusion
To recap, here are the hallmarks of quack medicine so far presented:
1. Lack of, or inability to produce, positive, objective, evidence of efficacy is a hallmark of quack medicine.
2. Misinformation and false information is another hallmark of quack medicine.
3. Incompetence is still another hallmark of quack medicine.
4. Spreading rumour and fear–another hallmark of quack medicine.
5. Desperately seeking legitimacy–yet another hallmark of quack medicine.
Although individual procedures may be harmless in some cases–homeopathy being a good example–quack medicine contributes to the general “culture of ignorance” that pervades modern society. As well, it side-tracks people from seeking real knowledge–and real cures or medical help for their health problems. And of course, billions of dollars are spent on ineffective and useless treatments, in many cases coming out of already overburdened health-care funds. Quack medicine is far from harmless both to the individual and to society at large.
We can include quack medicine in the much larger overall category of pseudoscience and paranormalism, much of which involves mysticism, weird metaphysics and strange happenings.
Remember:
* Popularity is not proof of validity.
* Glowing testimonials are not proof of validity.
* Cogent arguments are not proof of validity.
* Scientific evidence, scientifically obtained, is the best indication of validity.
END
Words: 6328
Completed: May 21, 2003
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