Category: Traditional Chinese Medicine
Six reasons CAM practitioners should not be licensed
States license “complementary and alternative” (CAM) practitioners (chiropractors, naturopaths, acupuncturists/TCM practitioners and homeopaths) via the magic of “legislative alchemy.” Ironically, licensing statutes are enacted based on the states’ constitutional power to protect the health, safety and welfare of the public. Yet these CAM practice acts actually increase public vulnerability to unsafe and ineffective health care practices. It is, in short, a bad...
People Encouraging Turtle Agony*: Animal Acupuncture
Lest anyone think I am a heartless bastard, I would like it to be known that I do not like to see any creature suffer or die. I am the kind of person who, when finding a spider in the house, is likely to catch it and toss it outside. I always think, “I can’t squish the end result of 6 billion...
Legislative Alchemy: Acupuncture and Homeopathy 2013
Acupuncture, or more broadly, Oriental or Traditional Chinese Medicine, is a weird medley of philosophy, religion, superstition, magic, alchemy, astrology, feng shui, divination, sorcery, demonology and quackery. And via the particular form of magic known as legislative alchemy, acupuncture is a licensed health care profession in 44 states and the District of Columbia. A growing body of evidence demonstrates acupuncture is simply...
SCAMlandia. CAM in Oregon.
I quite like Portlandia. I find it funny and it captures a part of Portland. I recognize large swaths of the city’s culture in the show. Other representations of the city I recognize less. Sunset publishes beautiful photographs of the NW, but when I look at the photos I think, that section of the city never looks that good. It is quite...
Naturopathy Embraces the Four Humors
The ancient Greeks posited a system of health and disease based on the four humors: blood, phlegm, black bile and yellow bile. According to this system, health is defined as a harmony of these four humors and disease is caused by an imbalance among them. Restore the balance, and health is restored. Bleeding is a familiar example of humoral medical treatment based...
Journal of Clinical Oncology editorial: “Compelling” evidence acupuncture “may be” effective for cancer related fatigue
Journal of Clinical Oncology (JCO) is a high impact journal (JIF > 16) that advertises itself as a “must read” for oncologists. Some cutting edge RCTs evaluating chemo and hormonal therapies have appeared there. But a past blog post gave dramatic examples of pseudoscience and plain nonsense to be found in JCO concerning psychoneuroimmunology (PNI) and, increasingly, integrative medicine and even integrations...
I Never Meta Analysis I Really Like
David Gorski recently pointed out that Science Based Medicine is going on five years. Amazing. That there would be so much to write about day after day comes as a surprise to me. Somehow I vaguely thought that ‘controversies’ would be resolved. Pick a SCAM, contrast the SCAM with reality as best we understand it, and, once the SCAM was found wanting,...
Acupuncture: NCCAM Calls California’s Bluff
The [California Department of Consumer Affairs’] use of the term “endorsement” is inaccurate, may confuse the public, and may lead the public to falsely conclude that NIH has made certain efficacy and/or safety conclusions regarding acupuncture. Further, consensus conference reports are not a policy statement of NIH or the Federal Government… NIH asks that you correct these two points of information in...
Acupuncture practice acts: legalized quackery
As Ben Kavoussi observed recently, [o]nce considered archaic and obsolete, Oriental Medicine has greatly benefited from the postmodern attitudes towards science and knowledge. This is because postmodernists consider the ‘truth’ as being relative to one’s viewpoint or stance. They do not see science as a superior process of acquiring knowledge, but as a ‘belief system,’ a ‘language game,’ which does not give...
Testing the “individualization” of CAM treatments
One of the common claims of alternative medicine practitioners is that they individualize their treatment while conventional medicine treats all patients the same. This is nonsense on several levels, but it is also a common excuse for why randomized clinical trials cannot be performed, or cannot be viewed as reliable evidence, in evaluating some alternative therapies. However, some trials have been done...