Science-Based Medicine

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 favor science-based medicine, although you are in the awkward position of having to appear ‘open-minded’ about nonsense.

More about that below, but first let me address the principal reason for this letter: it is disturbing that you will shortly appear at the 25th Anniversary Convention of the American Association of Naturopathic Physicians (AANP). It is disturbing for two reasons: first, it suggests that you know little about the tenets and methods of the group that you’ll be addressing; second, your presence will be interpreted as an endorsement of those methods and of that group—whether or not that is your intention. If you read nothing more of this letter or its links, please read the following articles (they’re “part of your education,” as my 91 y.o. mother used to say to me):

Naturopathy: A Critical Appraisal

Naturopathy, Pseudoscience, and Medicine: Myths and Fallacies vs Truth

The first article is an introduction to the group to which you will be speaking; the second is my response to complaints, from that group and a few of its apologists, about the first article. It was a surprise to me that the editor, George Lundberg, preferred that I make my response a comprehensive one.

Thus the second article inevitably became the crash course—call it CAM for Smarties—that your predecessors never offered you, replete with examples of useless and dangerous pseudoscientific methods, real science being brought to bear in evaluating such methods, proponents’ inaccurate or cherry-picked citations of biomedical literature, bits of pertinent but little-known history, the standard logical fallacies, embarrassing socio-political machinations, wasteful and dangerous ‘research’ (funded—unwittingly, I’m sure—by the NCCAM), bait-and-switch labeling of rational methods as “CAM,” vacuous assertions about ‘toxins’ and ”curing the underlying cause, not just suppressing the symptoms,” anti-vaccination hysteria, misleading language, the obligatory recycling of psychokinesis claims, and more.

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EDITOR’S NOTICE: NOTE THE DISCLAIMER.

On “wholistic” medicine

If there’s one aspect of so-called “alternative medicine” and “complementary and alternative medicine” (CAM) is that its practitioners tout as being a huge advantage over what they often refer to sneeringly as “conventional” or “scientific” medicine is that — or so its practitioners claim — alt-med treats the “whole patient,” that it’s “wholistic” in a way that the evil reductionist “Western” science-based medicine can’t be. Supposedly, we reductionistic, unimaginative physicians only focus on disease and ignore the “whole patient.” Of course, to me this claim is belied by the hectoring to which my own primary care physician has subjected me about my horrible diet and lack of exercise on pretty much every visit I’ve had with her, but then maybe she’s an anomaly, along with Dr. Lipson on this very blog and pretty much every other primary care doctor I’ve ever dealt with. Anecdotal experience, I know, but since alt-med mavens appear to value anecdotal evidence above pretty much all else I thought it appropriate to mention here. Also belying the claim of alt-med practitioners that they “individualize” treatments to their patients in a way that science-based medicine does not is the maddening tendency of various alt-med modalities to settle on just One True Cause of All Disease, be it liver flukes as the One True Cause of Cancer, heavy metal toxicity as the One True Cause of cancer, autism, and various other diseases, or “allergies,” acid, or obstruction of the flow of qi as the One True Cause of All Disease.

Given the claim of “wholism” that is such an advertising gimmick among many of the varieties of woo, I’m always interested when I see evidence that alt-med is imitating its envied and disliked reductionistic competition. True, this is nothing new, given how alt-med has tried to seek legitimacy by taking on the mantle of science-based medicine wherever it can. Examples include the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM), various organizations that try to confer legitimacy to pseudoscience by providing “certification” in various flavors of woo, and moves to push state medical boards to go further than that and confer legally protected status to practitioners by actually licensing them. This latter tactic has been very successful in that many states now license acupuncturists, while some states even license naturopaths and “homeopathic physicians,” the latter of which I find quite amusing because the term perfectly encapsulates what must remain of such a physician’s medical training after being diluted to 30C with woo. The only difference is that, unlike what is claimed with homeopathy, diluting MD medical knowledge with woo does not make it stronger. In terms of naturopathy, though, one of the most alarming aspects of the infiltration of naturopaths into the health care system is that some states in the U.S. and provinces in Canada are seriously considering allowing them to prescribe real pharmaceutical medications, even though they lack the training and knowledge to use such drugs safely.

Imagine my combination of bemusement and alarm, then, when I learned of a new specialty of pseudoscience, namely the field of naturopathic oncology.

Be afraid. Be very afraid. (I know I was when I first encountered this specialty.)
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Several years ago I stumbled upon disturbing information regarding my alma mater, the Harvard Medical School (HMS).† Its professed commitment to investigate implausible medical claims had somehow metamorphosed into the advocacy of such claims. I’ve previously mentioned some of this on SBM (here and here). A couple of pertinent essays appeared in the public domain in 2002 and 2003, but the full story was much more involved than those pieces revealed. In the wake of recent posts on SBM about medical schools exposing students to uncritical portrayals of pseudomedicine, it seems appropriate to tell more of it. I’ve also decided to name names, which is something that I would have been reticent to do a few years ago. The basis for that decision will become clear over the next few posts, I trust. This topic will require at least three posts.

My discovery that HMS had begun promoting pseudoscientific medical claims was occasioned by my experience on the Massachusetts Special Commission on Complementary and Alternative Medical Practitioners, which met from the fall of 2001 to the winter of 2003. Another member of that commission was David Eisenberg, the Director of the Harvard Medical School Center for Alternative Medicine Research and Education (CAMRE) and of the new Osher Center for Complementary and Integrative Medical Therapies. Dr. Eisenberg is best known for his 1993 article reporting the use of ‘unconventional therapies’ by Americans. He had been appointed to the commission by the MA Commissioner of Public Health at the time, Dr. Howard Koh–whom President Obama has recently nominated to be Assistant Secretary of HHS. I assumed then, and still do, that Dr. Koh presumed Dr. Eisenberg to be an objective expert on “CAM,” since that was the persona presented by HMS and by Dr. Eisenberg himself. I had my doubts, but before then I’d not bothered to look into the matter.

It was during commission meetings, when I had the opportunity to hear what Dr. Eisenberg and his surrogate had to say or not to say and when I examined some of their writings and funding sources, that I began to realize how far his project was deviating from what I imagined to be the agenda of HMS. Some of what I saw amounted to frank dishonesty: failure to disclose obvious conflicts of interest to the Commission, for example. I also discovered public promotions of dubious “CAM” practices and practitioners by the CAMRE, in spite of its formal purpose being that of investigating “CAM” practices in an attempt to find out if any might be useful. I was concerned enough to look at other “CAM” information offered in the name of Harvard, and I found more worrisome examples.

I also attended the Feb., 2001 Harvard Complementary and Integrative Medicine Course, directed by Dr. Eisenberg (here is a link to the similar 2002 course brochure). A few of the talks were reasonable, if banal. I did my best to give them the benefit of the doubt, because I still could not accept that HMS would seriously consider homeopathy, ‘life-force,’ and ’subluxations’ as being worthy of study, much less advocacy. After attending a semi-rigorous talk on raw herbs as medicines (the presenter discussed some studies but not the looming question of why whole herbs might be preferable to purified molecules), I ran into Eisenberg and did my best to be polite and encouraging. I shouldn’t have, because most of the content of the course was misleading and pseudoscientific. Overall, its tone was more like a political rally or a religious revival than a scientific conference.

At that course I ran into Russell Phillips, who had been in my group of interns at the Beth Israel Hospital (Boston) in 1979. I’d seen him around from time to time over the years, and I’d known that he’d stayed on at the BI after his residency. I was surprised, however, to learn that he was now the Director of the Harvard CAMRE Fellowship program. I was even more surprised to learn, during a short conversation with him, that he was innocent of the chiropractic ’subluxation theory’ and that he’d never heard of Quackwatch. It seemed to me that there was either a surprising naivete among this crowd or an attempt by some to shun unpleasant information.

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Yesterday’s post by Wally Sampson and an offline discussion with David Gorski have moved me to post something that I wrote in 2001. At the time, I was a member of the Massachusetts Special Commission on Complementary and Alternative Medical Practitioners. I’ve previously mentioned that experience here.

During that tenure I wrote a treatise on the tenets and practices of ‘naturopathic medicine,’* hoping to change the opinions of several others on the Commission (no such luck). In an early draft I included a section titled “The Political Philosophy of Naturopathy.” My ally on the panel, emeritus New England Journal of Medicine Editor Arnold “Bud” Relman, advised me to remove it, citing its tangential relevance and the possibility of it irritating rather than persuading. He was right, of course, but it now seems reasonable to hall it out of the mothballs. Here it is, with minor revisions and, I hope, a provocative postscript.

…………………

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This week we’ll take a break from lambasting the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine, as worthy as that task is, in order to confront some of the latest events involving the pseudomedical cult that calls itself “naturopathic medicine.”* Intrepid nurse and anti-healthfraud activist Linda Rosa reports that Colorado is dangerously close to becoming the next state to endorse ”NDs” as health care practitioners, and Scott Gavura of Science-Based Pharmacy called my attention to a report that British Columbia is considering enlarging the scope of practice for NDs, who are already licensed there, and that Alberta is on the verge of licensing them. In each case, those whom the public trusts to make wise decisions have betrayed their ignorance of both pseudomedicine and the realities of governmental regulation.

To explain why, it will first be necessary to make a few assertions, which are linked to developed arguments where necessary:

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The “Science” and Ethics of “Natural Medicines” (and Nutrition) cont.

This is the continuation of a discussion concerning the explicit claim of “naturopathic physicians”* to being experts in the use of “natural medicines,” defined as “medicines of mineral, animal and botanical origin.” Last week’s post established that the cult has chosen to profit from the “retail selling of medications,” as evidenced by the relevant Position Paper of the American Association of Naturopathic Physicians (AANP) and by that organization’s having made a deal with a drug company to make profits for both itself and its members.

The Position Paper observes that such selling “could be construed as a conflict of interest on the part of the physician.” That is true, if embarrassingly understated: anyone representing himself as a physician, who both recommends and sells the same medications for a profit, has conflicting interests. The conflict undermines his claim to offering responsible advice regarding those medications, and as such is a breach of medical ethics.

The AANP’s deal with MotherNature.com was even worse: by promoting such peddling in a formal, institutional fashion, NDs and their national organization went beyond the already widespread problem of practitioners hawking drugs. It is unclear whether the deal still exists, by the way: MotherNature.com was a victim of the “dot com” bust of a few years ago. It has since been resurrected, but a quick perusal of its new website fails to reveal the old AANP relationship. Nevertheless, I have seen no evidence to suggest that the AANP has changed its view of that sort of deal.

Are NDs Truly “Learned Intermediaries” in the Use of “Natural Medicines?”

This entry discusses the other part of the claim of expertise: that, aside from their conflicting interests, NDs have real knowledge of “natural medicines.” It will become clear during the discussion that the purported naturopathic expertise in nutrition—another standard claim—is also under review. I will include or cite abundant evidence for my assertions, because I’ve found that a predictable response of representatives of the highest levels of “naturopathic medicine” is to flatly deny them. I apologize again for including excerpts from previously published material.

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The “Science” and Ethics of “Natural Medicines”

This and the next entry in the current “Naturopathic Medicine” series* deal with the cult’s claim of expertise in “natural medicines” or “natural remedies.” These include herbs (“botanicals”), glandular extracts, vitamins, and minerals. A large fraction of the Textbook of Natural Medicine (TNM), “the most thoroughly researched and carefully referenced text on natural medicine,” is devoted to these agents.[1] They are keys to the practice of naturopathy and to a core claim of “naturopathic physicians” that legislators tend to swallow: that NDs offer something that most MDs do not.

During the deliberations of the Massachusetts Special Commission, NDs produced Dr. Alan Trachtenberg, a fresh-faced ingenue who had briefly been Acting Director of the federal Office of Alternative Medicine, to testify on their behalf. He suggested to the Commission that naturopaths could be the “learned intermediaries” that the public needed to help make sense of the myriad “natural remedies” that became freely available in the wake of the Dietary and Supplement Health and Education Act of 1994 (DSHEA). This is from his written testimony:

Another advantage of state licensure, is that the holder of a professional license who provides or recommends a product, then becomes responsible for the quality and safety of a product. In an unregulated marketplace, such a learned intermediary can be invaluable to the consumer. Since naturopaths do often provide dietary supplements and herbal products directly to their patients, it is vital that they have an enforceable code of professional ethics. Such a code of ethics becomes enforceable with State licensure.

It is also beneficial for the patient to have a practitioner who knows enough about biochemistry, physiology, pharmacology, and physical diagnosis to adequately assess a patient’s clinical response to a product. These products are essentially complicated but unregulated drug mixtures. My understanding is that licensable naturopathic doctors have all taken these courses during their four years of training and passed standardized exams that test their mastery. There is no such quality assurance for the other kind of naturopathic practitioner.

Instead of relying on Dr. Trachtenberg’s “understanding,” let’s submit his two assertions—that of a “code of ethics” and that of “mastery” of the topic of “natural medicines”—to real scrutiny. In doing so I confess that I have plagiarized, to some extent, pieces that I’ve written elsewhere.

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The “Safety of Naturopathic Treatment”

In their nationwide effort to convince lawmakers to pronounce them primary care physicians, “educated” naturopaths have repeatedly claimed that their “natural” treatments are “safer and gentler” than those offered by medical doctors. The Alliance Legislative Workbook, a website that for several years provided strategies and “talking points” for ND-activists seeking state licensure, made this assertion in 2001:

Malpractice insurance rates [for licensed NDs] are generally less than $4000.00 per year, indicating the safety of naturopathic treatment as assessed by insurance companies. Master Insurance Trust reports that of the naturopathic physicians for whom MIT provides liability insurance, there have been only four incidents reported to the company for follow-up. However, nothing has been paid in either settlements or judgements on any of these items. “While this pooling of physicians is much too small to base actuarial considerations, this claims experience is clearly superior.” (Jeffrey D. Brunken, Program Manager, MIT, Letter dated May 21, 1990.)

Jury Verdicts Northwest, a legal database which records court cases in Washington and Oregon, the area of the country with the largest number of naturopathic physicians, shows no judgments for malpractice against N.D.s since the database was started in 1983. One in five M.D.s is sued each year in the US (AMA).

Why is malpractice so much lower among naturopathic physicians?

Naturopathic methods are less likely to cause injury than orthodox methods. Prudent dietary and lifestyle changes, for instance, are unlikely to cause harm. Naturopathic physicians by philosophy and training use the least invasive means to treat and prevent disease. This results in less injury to patients. Naturopathic physicians also have excellent diagnostic and referral skills. There is no significant history of complaints against naturopathic physicians resulting from a missed diagnoses, the most common cause for suits in a general practice. From insurance data, it appears that naturopathic physicians as a group know the limits of their methods and refer patients to other practitioners or specialists when appropriate.

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Minnesota has recently become the 15th state in the U.S. to formally endorse the claims of a tiny group of naturopaths who portray themselves as physicians.* The bill , like the popular-media “CAM” reports that Steve Novella criticized on Wednesday, merely parrots what these naturopaths claim about themselves. It reveals no attempt to investigate or to judge the tenets of the field. The following excerpts present false assertions as though they were facts. I’ve underlined some of the more obvious examples:

“Naturopathic medicine” means a system of primary health care for the prevention, assessment, and treatment of human health conditions, injuries, and diseases…

“Naturopathic physical medicine” includes, but is not limited to, the therapeutic use of the physical agents of air, water, heat, cold, sound, light, and electromagnetic nonionizing radiation and the physical modalities of electrotherapy, diathermy, ultraviolet light, hydrotherapy, massage, stretching, colon hydrotherapy, frequency specific microcurrent, electrical muscle stimulation, transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation, and therapeutic exercise.

The practice of naturopathic medicine includes, but is not limited to, the following services: (1) ordering, administering, prescribing, or dispensing for preventive and therapeutic purposes: food, extracts of food, nutraceuticals, vitamins, minerals, amino acids, enzymes, botanicals and their extracts, botanical medicines, herbal remedies, homeopathic medicines, dietary supplements and nonprescription drugs as defined by the federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act, glandulars, protomorphogens, lifestyle counseling, hypnotherapy, biofeedback, dietary therapy, electrotherapy, galvanic therapy, oxygen, therapeutic devices, barrier devices for contraception, and minor office procedures, including obtaining specimens to assess and treat disease…

Unlike the Minnesota leglislators, I have substantial knowledge of the tenets and practices of “naturopathic physicians,” and I am capable of judging those tenets according to standards of reason, science, and modern, science-based medicine. Beginning with my stint on the Massachusetts Special Commission on Complementary and Alternative Medical Practitioners 6-8 years ago, I have spent years listening to “NDs,” reading their literature, and writing about them. I described a bit of my experience on that Commission in a post on Science-Based Medicine several weeks ago. I have continued to observe NDs’ cult-like behavior since then, and have seen no indication that they have begun to awaken from their collective, pseudoscientific stupor.

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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 start of deliberations two things became apparent: first, the Commission would concern itself almost exclusively with the petition of “naturopathic physicians” to become licensed health care practitioners in the Commonwealth*; second, there were only two recognizable, medically-sophisticated skeptics among the members. They were Arnold “Bud” Relman, the emeritus editor of the New England Journal of Medicine (appointed by the Massachusetts Board of Registration in Medicine), and I (appointed by the Mass. Medical Society). We expected a third, an MD soon to be appointed by the Commissioner of Public Health, Dr. Howard Koh.

Within a few weeks it became clear that the third MD would not be a skeptic. Dr. Koh, apparently thinking he had found an expert, appointed as his representative David Eisenberg, Director of the Harvard Medical School (HMS) Division for Research and Education in Complementary and Integrative Medical Therapies. Dr. Koh must not have known that in 1997 Dr. Eisenberg had called for

A national listing of licensed alternative medical providers (e.g., chiropractors, acupuncturists, massage therapists, naturopaths, and homeopaths) in each of the 50 states as well as a uniform credentialing process.

Commissioner Koh also must not have known that Dr. Eisenberg had received or was currently receiving funds from several sources committed to furthering the ambitions of ”CAM” practitioners in general or of “naturopathic physicians” in particular: the NCCAM, the Fetzer Institute, the New York Chiropractic College, Cambridge Muscular Therapy Institute, New England School of Acupuncture, American Specialty Health Plan, and the Southwest College of Naturopathic Medicine.

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