Results for: Integrator medicine
The CAM Worldview
Harriet has written some excellent recent posts about how to talk to CAM (complementary and alternative medicine) proponents, and answers to common CAM fallacies. I have written about this myself numerous times – we deal with the same logically-challenged claims so often that it’s useful to publish standard responses. In fact, I often wonder about the seeming uniformity of poor arguments put...
CAM practitioners as primary care providers under the Affordable Care Act: Part 2
In the last post, we took another look at Section 2607 of the Affordable Care Act, which prohibits “discrimination” against licensed CAM practitioners by insurers, and how chiropractors are continuing their PR campaign to rebrand themselves as primary care physicians. This time, we review a recent white paper by the Academic Consortium of Complementary and Alternative Healthcare, an organization that might be seen as CAM’s...
CAM practitioners as primary care providers under the Affordable Care Act: Part 1
Section 2706 (42 U.S.C. Sec. 300gg-5) of the Affordable Care Act (the “ACA” or “Obamacare”) prevents “discrimination” against any health care provider acting within the scope of his or her state license. The provision, supported by the American Chiropractic Association and other CAM practitioners, was inserted, without a hearing, under the leadership of Sen. Tom Harkin. Sec. 2706 is of concern to...
Defining what a “physician” is
It takes more than a stethoscope and a white coat to be a physician. A generous dose of reality and a lot of training are also required.
Open Letter to Dr. Josephine Briggs
Josephine P. Briggs, M.D. Director, National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine Dear Dr. Briggs, As you know, we’ve met twice. The first time was at the Yale “Integrative Medicine” Symposium in March. The second was in April, when Drs. Novella, Gorski and I met with you for an hour at the NCCAM in Bethesda. At the time I concluded that you...
New CMS Chief Donald Berwick: a Trojan Horse for Quackery?
NB: I posted this on Health Care Renewal a couple of days ago, figuring that Dr. Gorski’s post would suffice for the SBM readership (he and I had discussed the topic while at TAM8 last week). But Managing Editor Gorski has asked me to repost it here, which I’m happy to do. I am especially pleased to demonstrate that I am capable...
A homeopathy supporter notices our visit with the director of NCCAM
On April 2, Steve Novella, Kimball Atwood, and I visited the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM) to meet with its director, Dr. Josephine Briggs. I’m not going to rehash what was said because we agreed that Steve would handle that task, and he did so admirably last week. I agree with Steve that it was encouraging that Dr. Briggs...
Harvard Medical School: Veritas for Sale (Part VI)
Loose Ends: Dr. Koh and More After Dr. Federman’s letter and my reply, posted in Part V of this series,† there seemed little point in pursuing the matter further. Although Dr. Federman never answered my reply, he did send, at my request, a copy of Commissioner of Public Health Howard Koh‘s written “construction of the events in the Massachusetts Special Commission.” As you may recall, those events...
Dismantling NCCAM: A How-To Primer
Two of the earliest posts I wrote for Science-Based Medicine were entitled The infiltration of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) and “integrative medicine” into academia and The National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM): Your tax dollars hard at work. Both were intended as a lament over how not only is pseudoscientific quackery, much of it based on a prescientific understanding...
“CAL”: a Medico-Legal Parable
Preamble From the fall of 2000 to the winter of 2002, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts convened a Special Commission on Complementary and Alternative Medical Practitioners. There were 12 members: 6 legislators, 3 MDs, a naturopath, a lawyer who represented the New England School of Acupuncture, and the chairman, who was also the Director of the Massachusetts Division of Professional Licensure. At the...