It was literally at my knees, in the bookcase I use under my laptop. Still, I just picked up Bad Pharma at the library, and have another book to read. So it will be a while.

I have put a library hold for the audio version of Bryson’s book. Thanks.

Of course, I have to find it first. I am presently working on actively reducing stuff, and that includes hundreds of books. When the bookcases are stacked with books sideways, and on top, and in piles on tables… you’ve done something right with your life

Fixed that for you.

They like getting the Easton Press science fiction editions.

And I did manage to buy only five books after getting rid of four boxes of books.

“I am not completely against vaccines. Although they sometimes come with side effects, they’ve certainly saved a lot of lives. There was a time when there was absolutely no question that the risks of not vaccinating were much higher than the risks of choosing to vaccinate. That said, the cost/benefit analysis is no longer quite so cut and dry.”

Yes, side effects like sore arms and not dying.

So what vaccines should we do without, and how do we deal with the resulting resurgence of vaccine-preventable (but no longer prevented) diseases?

Every time someone makes a statement like this, they should be brought to the parents of a child who died of a vaccine-preventable disease and explain why it was OK. Went to the doctor today (it’s a canker on the back of my throat. My doctor prescribed nothing, and said it would get better in a couple days. Said I could pop a couple advil a half hour before eating. Did not sell them to me) and his office was plastered with pro-vaccine posters. He was a brown guy with an accent, I’m wondering if he takes them so seriously because he had seen kids die of the diseases we are ignorant of here in North America.

Anyway, opposition to vaccination is stupid.

Chris, you should really get around to reading Bryson’s book, it’s great. He says, having owned A Dance With Dragons for months now without having read it.

there’s the long-running newspaper column of ND Deville, in the Tuscon Citizen,
wherein she recently stated

(see http://tucsoncitizen.com/natural-medicine-tips/2013/03/01/vaccines-what-to-keep-in-mind/ ):

“I am not completely against vaccines. Although they sometimes come with side effects, they’ve certainly saved a lot of lives. There was a time when there was absolutely no question that the risks of not vaccinating were much higher than the risks of choosing to vaccinate. That said, the cost/benefit analysis is no longer quite so cut and dry.”

We should trust her expertise! I particularly like her homeopathy page

(see http://www.drlaurendeville.com/therapies/homeopathy/ ).

Cost/benefit analysis indeed.

-r.c.

Ever read A brief history of nearly everything by Bill Bryson? Great book. And anything by Simon Winchester, particularly in audiobook form read by the author. So British!

The problem is that I own it, and it is somewhere in this house. If I actually own a book I am less likely to get around reading it as I try to get the books from the library read (desperately trying to finish two before picking Bad Pharma from the library this weekend).

Rats, Calli, you are right. I know I had misremembered a label I had read. Oh, well, I have discovered as my garden grew up and there is more shade, I can’t even grow larkspurs.

Oh, and my UTI story is actually meant to be humorous. I also cringe every time I remember a male co-worker telling me about his UTI.

Incidentally, if nature wants to cure humans, why was malaria found in Africa and Europe while the only effective plant-based treatment (quinine) was found on an unconnected continent? For nature’s sadistic amusement?

Chris:

But as kids got older I did put in delphiniums (belladonna) and daffodils (lycorine) when I knew they would not gnaw on the foliage.

Nitpick: delphiniums are not belladonna. They’re great for attracting butterflies — unlike Atropus belladonna, the deadly nightshade. They are also quite toxic, of course, just with a different toxin than the deadly nightshade.

About UTIs — I wish it was that easy for me to stop having them! I have a urinary diverticulum; only surgery would fix that, and the risks of the surgery far outweigh coping with occasional UTIs. You are correct that men can also get them. My brother was actually hospitalized for one; he’d seen a doctor earlier in the infection, but curiously had a negative urinalysis (UAs rarely give false negatives, but rarely is not never), so it was assumed to be something else. Didn’t help that there was a GI bug going through the family at the time, presenting a big fat red herring. And my grandpa has had several in recent years as his health has declined and he’s had more difficulty staying properly hydrated and getting to the bathroom on his own.

The idea of an ND treating UTIs with antibiotics scares me. Better than untreated UTIs, I suppose, but do they understand drug interactions, which are common with antibiotics? (Many bind to calcium, so you even need to be careful about taking them with food — don’t wash Cipro down with a glass of milk, for instance, or it won’t get absorbed as much as it should be.) Do they understand the risks of causing an upset in the digestive tract, or breeding resistant germs? Can we trust NDs to get the person tested *before* prescribing antibiotics? There are enough conditions mimicking the symptoms of a UTI that no person should be treated without a UA and perhaps a UC — too much risk associated with needless antibiotics.

I’m a seething volcano of typing rage, what can I say?

Especially if they cannot refer an adolescent with a very obvious heart murmur to a cardiologist.

I’m not even close to a doctor, and I thought “left arm pain? Man, that sounds like a heart problem”. Of course, it’s probably just running piglets.

Did DoctorBull present any data, or at least any peer reviewed paper? I included at least a couple in my replies, but all I saw from this person was “argument from assertion.” Do correct me if I am wrong.

You’re not wrong, it looks like the arrogance of youth mixed with the arrogance of ignorance.

What amazes me is that someone is so willing to believe in the fantasies of fake medicine like homeopathy or naturopathy, when the real world is so much more interesting. There are things being discovered through genetics, chemistry, geology, physics and elsewhere that are much more fascinating. It boggles the mind.

The downside to the world is you have to put so much time and effort into learning a whole bunch ‘o basics first before you realize just how fascinating the details are. Nonsense is much more rewarding up front (and comes custom-designed for the human mind to like it).

Ever read A brief history of nearly everything by Bill Bryson? Great book. And anything by Simon Winchester, particularly in audiobook form read by the author. So British!

Sorry, I cannot make the assumption that anyone who has suffered with UTIs is female. It does happen to men! Though while I did suffer through them during my late 20s until my mid-30s I found a solution. It was to toss the *&^%$#! diaphragm away, then get pregnant with my third child. Plus, the most important thing of all, give my darling spouse on only two choices in birth control: abstinence or a vasectomy. He chose the latter, and we have been happily UTI free for almost twenty years. Absolutely no untested magic powders required.

WLU:

You can keep repeating it, but that doesn’t make it true. Naturopaths are not primary care practitioners.

Especially if they cannot refer an adolescent with a very obvious heart murmur to a cardiologist.

There’s a category for it on this website, start there. Read Trick or Treatment, Bad Science, Snake Oil Science and Homeopathy: How it Really Works.

May I add Natual Causes by Dan Hurley?

You can’t mix science with Qi, vitalism or homeopathy.

All of those are in the category known as “magic.”

The reason we reject and belittle your evidence isn’t because we are narrow minded, it’s because we know you are simply wrong and that you can’t prove anything you believe is true.

Did DoctorBull present any data, or at least any peer reviewed paper? I included at least a couple in my replies, but all I saw from this person was “argument from assertion.” Do correct me if I am wrong.

Agreed, seeing as it is not based on reality. Actual biology is devilishly complicated as it is based on evolution – and evolution is expedient, not elegant.

And, oddly enough, on chemistry. It seems DNA, RNA and all of the genetic material create proteins, factors and lots of ‘ases that work on chemical/physics molecular models. It is very complicated, from shapes to attractions and on an on. In other words: it is complicated. But it is much more intersting in the fairy tale explanations put forth by the humors, miasms, and whatever of naturopathy thought. I am presently reading Mutants by Armand Marie Lerol. It is amazing how one genetically created chemical signal can affect the formation of a fetus, and eventually a human being. This make me remember when one of my sons asked why the speech therapist had only one hand. I had to tell him that making a baby is very difficult, and sometimes something goes wrong.

You aren’t more liberal in your thinking, just less sophisticated in your reasoning, less tethered to reality, less aware of the complexities of the human organism. For instance, thinking humans run on magical “energy” rather than an extremely complex series of interacting loops of molecules.

Um, yeah. Why do I have the feeling that DoctorBull did not do very well in high school chemistry? Anyone who passed that course and understands Avogadro’s Number would know why it is nonsense.

I was suggesting that your naturopath might sell d-mannose powder direct from their office, thus incurring a direct profit upon the sale and recommendation, and accordingly have a direct, money-in-their-pocket-with-every-product incentive to convince their customers (not patients, customers) that they might benefit from a little preventive supplementation. Does your naturopath sell vitamins? How about homeopathic products?

My relative who is buried in the cemetary up the street from me did complain about the prices the naturopath charged for the homeopathic remedies that replaced the real medications.

Finally, the following substances are both natural, and dangerous:

Often when those who say “natural” is safe, I offer them foxglove tea. They never take me up on that offer.

I’m a gardener, and I learned that several very lovely plants are very poisonous. This is why there are no foxglove flowers in my yard. But as kids got older I did put in delphiniums (belladonna) and daffodils (lycorine) when I knew they would not gnaw on the foliage. If you look at the link I gave to poison exposure, one the top 25 exposures to children under age five was to “plants.” I had to stuffle an astonished guffah at a landscaping seminar when the slide came up showing the artistry of the leaves in a garden that paired elephant ear (oxalic acid and asparagine) with castor bean (ricin)!

What amazes me is that someone is so willing to believe in the fantasies of fake medicine like homeopathy or naturopathy, when the real world is so much more interesting. There are things being discovered through genetics, chemistry, geology, physics and elsewhere that are much more fascinating. It boggles the mind.

Please know that I have considered this career for many years and you can be sure I am well aware of the challenges ahead, including dealing with extreme opposition like yourself.

You’ve considered it for years, but not once looked into even the most basic criticisms of the discipline? What a curious approach.

The sincere people in this field do it because they have a passion for it and for helping others;

Doctors kinda have that going for themselves too, with the added bonus of actually curing people.

I would have no other justification for leaving my current six-figure job. Money has little bearing, and the field has a very high satisfaction rate.

I bet, considering most of your clients are wealthy, middle- and upper-class white people with vague, self-limiting conditions. It’s nice when your client base is self-selected to be the “worried well”.

I’m well aware of the inserts that come along with prescription medications – how can you miss them when they are 5 pages long?

Yes, the benefits of lengthy and detailed safety testing and post-marketing surveillance. You know, what completely doesn’t exist for naturopathic, homeopathic and herbal remedies. Big Pharma is legislated to have full disclosure (and even then they’re still bastards about it; good thing medicine is self-critical) mean while there are essentially no restraints on the practice of naturopathy. How could there be, how can you decide what is good practice and what is bad when there is no research and no empirical testing?

Few deaths from vitamin overdoses have ever been found (and the conclusions are not so concrete), yet thousands die each year from FDA regulated prescription medications, and at the recommended doses.

Why are you comparing vitamins and drugs? Vitamins are not medicines, they are micronutrients you should get from food. Your statement makes about as much sense as saying “there are few deaths from puppies, yet look how many people are killed in car crashes every year”. Why do you think this is a relevant comparison? This is another false dilemma and CAM talking point spoon-fed to customers and CAM students as if it were meaningful. Yes, vitamins are generally not deadly, but vitamins also don’t treat cancer, acute sepsis, tuberculosis or diabetes. Vitamins treat vitamin deficiencies. Vitamins are not medicine!

Also, Gary Null. You should look up “Gary Null vitamin D”. It’s hilarious.

So I am sorry that I fail to see why you all have such a strong conviction for the regulation of them, other than an argument that it is “not fair”?

This is an example of a market failure, specifically asymmetry of information. Companies know vitamins don’t really do anything but treat deficiency, most customers do not, and without legislation there is tremendous money wasted on expensive urine. I’m personally offended that vitamins can be marketed as treating diseases when they manifestly don’t (or are only trivially true – vitamin A does “promote eye health” in that you’ll go blind if you are deficient; in fact, vitamin A deficiency is the number one cause of childhood blindness in the third world). I don’t see why vitamin pushers get a free pass at lying to their customers.

Incidentally, Big Pharma makes both vitamins and drugs. Vitamins are hugely profitable for them, since they don’t have to put any money into research. It’s pure overhead and materials.

I’d much prefer the already overworked FDA spend time reviewing cancer drugs and other life-saving treatments than use its precious resources on regulating vitamins or other naturally occurring substances that have not yet shown to pose a threat to human lives.

You should read this and try plugging “DSHEA” into the search box to your right. You might find some very good, well-thought-out reasons why the DSHEA is a bad law.

But I agree, the FDA should definitely have more resources.

Also, vitamins are a threat to human life. Try a bite of polar bear liver one day and see how you feel. You might also want to look up “hypervitaminosis”.

Finally, the following substances are both natural, and dangerous:
- Vitamin A
- Cobra venom
- Peanuts (choking hazard and allergen)
- Water (drowning, hyperhydrosis, hyponatremia, hypokalemia, think about that the next time you recommend 8 glasses a day to flush out “toxins”)
- Rocks, both very small and very large
- Puffer fish
- Fava beans (a personal favourite, look up “favism”)
- Cassava
- Potatoes
- Vitamin D
- Belladonna

Nature doesn’t want to save your life, nature doesn’t care if you live or die.

do not choose to uphold my opinion in such a way that I debase others, as so many on this site choose to do.

So you don’t care if you’re wrong or right, just that you don’t change your mind? It sounds like naturopathy might just be the perfect career for you then.

Thank you for the information, Harriet. I learned something today then. However, I don’t find the side effects any more dangerous than that for antibiotics.

If the side effects are occult, like high blood pressure, uncontrolled prediabetes or the onset of kidney damage, you wouldn’t even be aware of them. You weren’t aware of these potential threats before either.

I have yet to be to a doctor who has listed to me all the side effects, known or possible, of the medication he/she is prescribing, so unless that is what you practice on a daily basis, I don’t see the need for your condescending tone.

Unlike the black box warnings that accompany all drugs (and if your doctor didn’t inform you of the major and most common ones, you should sue since that’s probably close to malpractice), d-mannose’ safety profile is still unknown. It’s black box warning is a big question mark. And again, the ethical thing that naturopaths should do (and doctors pretty much have to do) is test it for safety and efficacy before recommending it. You should submit a grant proposal to the NCCAM, they’ve got pots of money, and it would be nice to see it thrown at something with some prior probability for once.

D-mannose powder is available widely. My doctor’s office, like most, does not have items for purchase. What you are inferring, WLU, is no different from the perks doctors may get from pharmaceutical companies to prescribe their drugs.

Uh…very different actually. I was suggesting that your naturopath might sell d-mannose powder direct from their office, thus incurring a direct profit upon the sale and recommendation, and accordingly have a direct, money-in-their-pocket-with-every-product incentive to convince their customers (not patients, customers) that they might benefit from a little preventive supplementation. Does your naturopath sell vitamins? How about homeopathic products? My doctor gives me free stuff if I need it, does not own the pharmacy I get my rare prescriptions from, and my dentist is actually prohibited from selling me anything at a profit.

Geez, and I am really not sure why d-mannose is OK but vaccines are questionable. That’s a truly bizarre double-standard.

Harriet, Chris, etc.: I have never had a desire to attend traditional medical school, but I certainly don’t discredit anyone who does. In my personal opinion, it has become a bit of an overwhelmed, and overcompetitive institution, which is an environment I, personally, don’t want to be in.

I’d much rather a highly competitive system, which ensures a higher standard of care, doctor, knowledge and training.

The curriculum wouldn’t teach me the alternative modalities I am interested in either.

No, because by definition medical school doesn’t teach unproven modalities. Why you think this is a virtue in naturopathy, I’m not sure. And for that matter, a lot o medical schools are now going “integrative”, which is a shame. When you mix apple pie and cow pie, you don’t get better cow pie – you just make the apple pie taste worse.

Naturopathic medicine is not that hard to understand,

Agreed, seeing as it is not based on reality. Actual biology is devilishly complicated as it is based on evolution – and evolution is expedient, not elegant. The non-reality based modes of treatment, like homeopathy, acupuncture and TCM, are much simpler since they’re based on stories the mind can tell itself. They don’t try to take reality into account. They don’t even account for the existence of cells.

Certainly, axiomatic medicine is easier to practice than one based on empirical research. It just tends to be horribly wrong.

but I’m learning there are just those out there who will never “get it”. I can at least “get” all of your concerns

Oh, no, we get it. You prefer pleasant lies and comforting simplifications over reality. We totally get that. You aren’t more liberal in your thinking, just less sophisticated in your reasoning, less tethered to reality, less aware of the complexities of the human organism. For instance, thinking humans run on magical “energy” rather than an extremely complex series of interacting loops of molecules.

but I suppose I am just a bit more liberal in my thinking to understand that naturopathic medicine is not going to undermine conventional medicine. It’s not its goal, either.

There’s being open minded, then there’s being so open minded your brain falls out. It is not a flaw to expect proof, evidence and replicability. In fact, these are the levers by which reality can be controlled to the benefits of humans.

Incidentally, naturopathy and its ilk are already undermining conventional medicine by being introduced into mainstream curriculum. Doctors are being open minded about alternative medicine, but sadly do not do sufficient research into the topic, and most never realize the emperor has no clothes. Again, CAM, including naturopathy is either evidence-based (and thus redundant to real doctors) or evidence-free (and thus dangerous, wasteful and stupid).

So many of you are so obstinate; it is not a way of thinking or acting that I subscribe to, and I have involved myself far too much at this point.

By asking for proof before we pretend your claims have any validity? How is that a flaw? And you’re certainly both obstinate and closed-minded, since you aren’t willing to engage on any specific points. You merely drop an opinion, lecture about things you know little, then flit off without awareness of how dangerous your unfounded opinions may be.

We all have our opinions, and I am happy that I was able to get a few supportive ones on here for naturopathic medicine, amongst the slew of defamations.

Defamation is “a false accusation of an offense or a malicious misrepresentation of someone’s words or actions.” For one thing, the criticisms of naturopathy ventured here are not false (though they might be offensive). For a second, you can’t defame an idea. Only a person. Your supportive opinions came from the “already convinced” camp.

Again, I looked at the evidence and changed my mind. You’re still on step zero. You should read some of the criticisms of the field that you’re about to enter. Doctors do so every day, that’s how medicine gets better and life expectancy keeps climbing. Now if only we could get all the lardasses to put down the chips and start exercising, it might keep going up.

There’s a lot of hate on here. I hope everyone finds time to smile today.

I don’t hate you, I just think you’re naive, and soon to be in training to be dangerous.

Smiled a lot today, I love playing whack-a-mole with SCAMsters and wanna-be scamsters. It’s very easy since they never bring any new arguments.

I appreciate the abundance of armor you have against “alternative therapies”

I don’t have “armor”, I have reason, facts and logic. And citations, if you ever made a specific claim.

and it would take me an exhaustive amount of effort to read through, and attempt to refute, all of your points when I know you wouldn’t be convinced otherwise

Nope, you’d actually fail at it. Unlike you, I know both sides of the argument. I also know that humans are unlikely to face how wrong they are because of cognitive dissonance. You should read Mistakes were Made (but not by me) by Carol Tavris and some other guy. I know why you aren’t even trying to refute anything, it’s because you can’t. But you’re still here, because you want to feel like you’re right.

But happily, if you like pick one point and we can stick with that. I’ll pit my pubmed against whatever you bring.

links to articles on “quackwatch” and similar sites, including this one, do nothing constructive to support your arguments. I am much more apt to consider support from unbiased individuals, which I’m sure you have plenty of.

Quackwatch and SBM are excellent sources, because the authors have done the reading, done the thinking and done the criticizing. If sources are “biased”, show me how. Show me the evidence that supports your points, instead of just asserting them. Quackwatch and SBM use references, lots of them, and also don’t mince words. CAM practitioners hate them because they are blunt and don’t play the journalists’ game of “telling both sides”. There are no “sides” when it comes to homeopathy or vaccines.

I have suffered from recurring UTIs since I have been sexually active. [snip]drinking plenty of fluids, urinating before and after intercourse, and consuming 100% cranberry juice (perhaps you deem this “alternative”, who knows)

There’s another reason why it wasn’t working, turns out cranberry juice does nothing. You know what worked for my wife? Antibiotics.

I thought I’d ask her if there was anything else I could be doing. And you know what? There was. She asked if I had heard of D-mannose powder – never had. Didn’t see it mentioned in a single online search regarding UTIs

You should have looked on pubmed. There’s lots.

Yet because scientists have yet to explore this treatment aggressively, it’s not recommended in most conventional practices.

A science-based way of describing this would be “real doctors wait for evidence before changing prescription habits”. Do you know the long-term consequences of consumption? Is it carcinogenic? Does it cause kidney stones? What are the pharmacokinetics (Scott Gavura has a great post on pharmacokinetics somewhere but I can’t find it right now)? Does it accumulate in tissues?

You might also try reading this by Scott.

D-mannose powder is a naturally occurring component in fruit, including cranberries, and there are no known side-effect to its use.

I’ve added some emphasis there.

Do you think I was treated unethically here?

Yes, for two reasons – one individual and one collective. Individually, you have no idea what the long-term consequences are. It may cause gangrene after years of use. Collectively, if it is effective, by prescribing it without researching it, naturopaths are delaying the amount of time it will take to enter general usage and thus the number of people who could benefit from its use. Real scientists, doctors and researchers will have to do the heavy lifting, and the fact that naturopaths prescribe it before it’s properly tested for safety and efficacy will increase the skepticism it is met with in the medical and research community.

So yes, unethical.

Do you find its recommendation as a preventative treatment for UTIs to be dangerous or harmful because it hasn’t been aggressively studied, or because a study might show that it is no more or less effective than a prophylactic antibiotic?

Dangerous and harmful, I don’t know – but neither do you and neither does your naturopath. Doc Spock casually recommended babies sleeping on their bellies because, at the time, nobody knew if it was better or worse for kids. Turns out he killed something on the order of a couple hundred thousand kids over the years, because of SIDS.

Casual, ignorant and uninfomed recommendations can harm and can kill (for instance, your casual dismissal and ignorance of vaccination as “possibly, maybe, perhaps, in some people, might be bad”). You are mis-applying the precautionary principle here – vaccines, well-studied, few risks, enormous benefits, you are skeptical of. D-mannose, which is unstudied for safety and efficacy in treating UTIs, you casually accept. What’s the difference? Why this grotesque imbalance? Why the double-standard?

Naturopaths like to pretend they’re cutting-edge, but generally they’re actually recommending on shoddy evidence – test tubes, studies in rats, n=30 trials. Doctors wait longer for their knowledge, but at least they’re far more likely to be right.

I am asking because these are the types of alternatives NDs offer to those seeking them, and you can bet there are far more than just my experience here.

The plural of anecdote is not data. It is far too easy for humans to fool themselves.

On a side note, this “experience”, nor any other specific event, is the reason I have chosen to pursue naturopathic medical school. I have always had an innate interest in “natural” and less invasive approaches to treating the body.

You are essentially admitting to a life-long failure to think critically, as well as the fact that you’ve lived most of your life in a first world. There are people in Bangladesh who would happily knife you if it mean just getting the vaccines you’ve had, let alone clean drinking water.

“Natural” is not “better”, it’s often deadly, painful and horrible. I really must learn the name of the worm that burrows into the eyes of children. It’s a very natural way to go blind (as is cataracts).

I believe you asked why NDs would have a need to prescribe medications. Simple, sometimes medication is absolutely necessary for proper treatment.

Plus, you can prescribe real medicines and some herbs, then pretend the herbs did something instead of just being a complete economic sinkhole (except for the fiber).

If I had a patient that walked in with a full blown UTI, you can bet that I would prescribe them an antibiotic.

I hope you never get the chance.

And what about patients that want to get off medication? Stopping certain medications abruptly can be dangerous – NDs need to be able to prescribe lesser doses to gradually, and safely, wean users off them.

I think you mean doctors. Who put in thousands of hours learning about medications, interactions and biochemical processes, including pharmacokinetics and applying them in a supervised setting. Not 370 hours in a lab. Patients who want to get off medication should be very carefully evaluated to determine if this is a good thing or not. Being on medications can keep people alive, their risk to benefit ratio should be carefully evaluated. Again, evolution is only geared to keep you alive long enough to breed, it doesn’t much care past that point. Viz. Huntington’s disease, a gene-dominant lethal disease that lets you live long enough to pass it along to your children.

I don’t think, after 1/4 the training of real doctors, much of it on nonsense and magic, you are in any way equipped to recommend going on, or coming off of medication. Why don’t you try getting into real medical school instead?

I’ll continue to repeat this, but a licensed ND is trained as a PCP, and therefore taught to refer to specialists as needed.

You can keep repeating it, but that doesn’t make it true. Naturopaths are not primary care practitioners. It is a discipline that wholly rests on faulty assumptions, redundancy to real medicine or a lack of evidence. There are even “specialist” naturopaths, like naturopathic oncologist, so you’ve even got your own little walled garden of parasitic specializations to refer to. If you can’t justify your approach through evidence, you have no right to pretend to be a medical professional.

I will be a naturopathic medical student this fall, and am more than happy to share the ins and outs of the curriculum with you and this community. I am approaching school with a healthy amount of skepticism and will be documenting my journey.

No, you’re not. You should spend the time between now and the fall reading up on the vast skeptical literature on naturopathy. There’s a category for it on this website, start there. Read Trick or Treatment, Bad Science, Snake Oil Science and Homeopathy: How it Really Works. These are very easy to read books that step-by-step point out that naturopathy and other forms of complementary and alternative medicine have no evidence base and are in fact antiscientific. Certainly you should at least enter your “profession” honestly and stop pretending it has anything to do with science. You can’t mix science with Qi, vitalism or homeopathy.

I’ll be sure to share the site with you; more material for you to manipulate and misinterpret – get excited. However, I can’t assume that every SBM reader on here is as narrow-minded as you seem to be, and I hope I offer a candid insight at what my “fake” medical school is all about, for those that are willing to listen and respectively come to your conclusions. I’ll be learning along with you.

I’m not narrow minded. My mother believes in auras, takes homeopathic pills, practices therapeutic touch and craniosacral therapy. I used to believe in it. Then I started reading. I’m not narrow minded, I just know what science is, how medical knowledge is accumulated, how the body works, and that the claims made by naturopaths are not only internally contradictory, they are simply wrong. The reason we reject and belittle your evidence isn’t because we are narrow minded, it’s because we know you are simply wrong and that you can’t prove anything you believe is true. I’ve seen the best arguments that can be made for naturopathy, homeopathy, orthomolecular medicine, acupuncture and the like, and they’re terrible.

Feel free to admit you are doing this out of faith, that evidence doesn’t matter, that it’s a “spiritual” thing. I’ll respect that. Just don’t pretend you’ve got an ounce of empirical evidence to support it.

Lastly, the homeopathy argument when it comes to naturopathic medicine is old. Not all ND’s practice it and I have nothing to comment on it until I see, or don’t see, it’s treatment effectively applied first hand. I get it – it seems hokey – but I’m not one to judge yet.

Why not learn about it before you go into school? Why not pick up a copy of Trick or Treatment or Homeopathy: How it Really Works and see what the criticisms are? Why not click on the “homeopathy” category to the right and start reading some of the posts? Then perhaps you will realize that any school, any practitioner that pretends homeopathy works and uses it without irony, immediately loses nearly all credibility.

Vaccines are a touchy subject, even with NDs. I would not say that all NDs are against vaccines, although a large majority of them are.

Why? Why do naturopaths think it is better to treat diseases rather than prevent them through vaccination?

My individual thought is that it is a personal choice.

What about if your unvaccinated child gives my newborn, who can’t be properly vaccinated for several months, whooping cough and I get to watch helplessly while my baby slowly chokes to death? There is no treatment for whooping cough, just the slow, strangling death of a helpless newborn – the kind these parents got to watch. The uninformed, ignorant, overwhelmingly stupid “choice” to not vaccinate kills people. Babies, grandparents, the immune compromised, the portion of people who do not form effective antibodies to their vaccines, and so forth. If you think vaccination is an individual choice and not a vital measure of public health, you are an idiot. An arrogant, terrifying, selfish, ignorant idiot. Uninformed morons who make the “personal choice” to not get vaccinated for serious diseases are responsible for spreading death, disease, morbidity, sterility and other horrors to the world around them.

Yes, there is a duty to protect the broader population, but there are enough studies and literature out there to cast some doubt on their potential for adverse reactions, that I can see the argument against them.

No, there aren’t. There very much aren’t. The only way you arrive at this conclusion is by cherry-picking the evidence and ignoring the massive benefits of vaccines in comparison to their tiny, tiny risk profile.

Just because it has not been explicitly proven that X causes Y, does not mean that the chance does not exist;

Do you know what has been proven? That measles, pertussis, chicken pox, influenza, polio, Hib B and any other disease you can get vaccinated against is in fact lethal. Those deaths are nearly 100% preventable. The risks of vaccination are offset thousandfold by the risks of the diseases they prevent.

perhaps there is an angle that researchers have not looked into yet – what if there is a specific window of time in infant/child development where vaccines could be dangerous, or a genetic component that we just haven’t discovered it yet? I see both sides of the story and support an individual choice – not all NDs would be opposed to a similar thought.

…except there aren’t two sides to the story. Have you read anything by Paul Offit, who actually studies, every day of his life, vaccines and the immune system? You should. The precautionary principle is an absurd thing to invoke when the known risk is a thousand times greater than a potential risk that a century of study and millions of data points have failed to discover.

And I agree, “real medicine” (we’ve bantered back and forth enough – can we cut down on the condescending remarks yet?) does not abandon preventative measures, but it is often not its prerogative as it is with naturopathic medicine. It is the approach to treatment that differs with NDs.

Bull. Shit. Name one thing that naturopathy prevents that real medicine doesn’t. Name one condition that naturopathy treats better than real medicine.

To date you are showing quite clearly that you have learned your talking points quite well – but you still haven’t come up with any positive arguments or proof that validates naturopathy as an approach. You have shown yourself quite willing to put other people’s lives at risk by pretending the debate over vaccination has two sides. If you’ve got a 0.03% chance of dying from measles in the United States, 28% in countries with sub-optimal health care (reference) or 30% if you have HIV (reference), and some parents somewhere think perhaps their living child might have been affected by vaccination in an unproveable way (certainly not autism, that hypothesis has been dead for years), please explain to me how this is debatable. Your health recommendations have consequences, and you being willing to coddle people about antivaccination views have serious health consequences.

Thank you for showing me how little you actually know about today’s field of naturopathic medicine; now I know what little bearing your comments have. Very few people on this website have done the research to understand the education a licensed ND has undertaken.

You might be surprised. And even if correct, I’ve seen the SCNM courseload. Some highlights:

Mind-Body Medicine – 3 quarters about helping people feel better about their symptoms without addressing the problem.
Oriental Medicine – 11 quarters of studying prescientific, unverified beliefs in China, often involving the cruel treatment of endangered animals or contaminated herbal products; why are uncertain doses of uncertain potencies of molecules from plants with uncertain actions better than well-validated, highly purified, tested, standardized and sterilized molecules from centrifuges?
Pharmacology – three courses; why do you need drugs when nature cures so effectively?
Botanical Medicine – 5 quarters, see comments regarding Oriental Medicine. Also, here is how pharmacognosy is actually done in an evidence-based way. Fascinating.
Nutrition – two courses; doctors learn how vitamins and nutrients move throughout the body as part of their premed and med school curriculum. I’m also assuming, based on prejudice, this course will lean heavily on the idea that vitamins and minerals can substitute for medicines (they can’t).
Homeopathy – 4 quarters. Please explain why learning about homeopathy is a good thing, I can’t see any reason to waste over a year of one’s life studying it. Read Jay Shelton’s Homeopathy: How it Really Works instead, it’ll take you less time and be more meaningful.
Emergency Medicine – two courses. I thought the one concession to real medicine naturopaths made was that it was good at acute care. What does naturopathy offer here?

1600 clinical hours, 372 lab hours, 2500 hours spent reading, for a grand total of 4500 hours learning and 372 hours in the lab. How does that compare to the time doctors spend in training? Why do you think this amount of time grants you comparable knowledge and treatment abilities as a genuine primary care physician, who will spend upward of eleven or more years, and 22,000 hours in training and still consider themselves underprepared for independent practice?

And when I speak of licensed ND’s, I speak of those that have attended the four year medical program at one of the 7 accredited institutions — all of which are in North America. An individual that is solely a homeopath, acupuncturist, herbalist, massage therapist, or whatever else you want to throw in there does not make them a naturopathic doctor, or capable of practicing the scope of naturopathic medicine.

You’re still licensing in nonsense and imagination. Again, how do you justify spending any time whatsoever learning about homeopathy? Why are herbs better than drugs? I think if you really examine what drives your devotion to naturopathy, it is rhetoric (Big Pharma is evil!) and assumptions (nature loves me!), not anything rational.

Incidentally, if nature wants to cure humans, why was malaria found in Africa and Europe while the only effective plant-based treatment (quinine) was found on an unconnected continent? For nature’s sadistic amusement?

These school train these students to be primary care physicians, and 17 states in the U.S. license them as such. Do you think they’d allow licensure to someone that didn’t know how to use a stethoscope? Surely you are joking.

Licensure often has more to do with record keeping and billing than curriculum content. Fortunately less so for doctors, unfortunately more so for naturopaths. Your practices are either redundant to real physicians, or empirically indefensible.

Penelope Dingle was treated by a homeopath in Australia. I do not know where her provider received her “training” or in what capacity. Clearly anyone that tells someone to stay away from “real medicine” is an extremist – much like I view you and this site for the abhorrence to alternative therapies.

What sort of training does one need when discussing homeopathy? It’s magic. Do you plan on using homeopathy when you graduate? How can you defend this?

Also, you should read this.

So be it. However, before you spend four years and a lot of money going to naturopathic school, I’d advise you to take a realistic look at your job prospects after graduation.

Exactly. I know of a naturopath who is working as a counselor at a local high school (the type of counselor that makes sure the students get the proper number of credits to graduate, not like the counselor who works in the teen health center). This person insists on being addressed as “Doctor.” Many in the school, especially those who teach science, and some parents usually say “doctor” sarcastically when out of earshot.

DoctorBull:

I’m well aware of the inserts that come along with prescription medications – how can you miss them when they are 5 pages long? Few deaths from vitamin overdoses have ever been found (and the conclusions are not so concrete), yet thousands die each year from FDA regulated prescription medications, and at the recommended doses.

Now you admit the opposite of what you said before: “I have yet to be to a doctor who has listed to me all the side effects, known or possible, of the medication he/she is prescribing . . .” Of course, you must not realize it is actually the pharmacist who is there to talk to. They have a graduate degree, and are always willing to discuss the medication, which they would know more about than the doctor.

Vitamin overdoses may not always lead to death, they are still dangerous. For example: iron supplements are deadly to children, overdoses of Vitamin A lead to some very nasty birth defects, and Gary Null almost died from taking his own Vitamin D supplement. Check out the 2011 Annual Report of the American Association of Poison Control Centers’ National Poison Data System (NPDS): 29th Annual Report. I see the tables also include “Dietary Supplements/Herbals/Homeopathic” along with a list of other things. There were not thousands of deaths, but there were tens of thousands of possible poisoning exposures from vitamins and supplements (though more from analgesics, household cleaners and a few other things depending on age, see Tables 17C and 17D). That is still quite significant, especially since many did have actual health effects.

And you neglected to mention how many millions have been saved by those FDA regulated drugs, especially vaccines. Not to mention antibiotics, blood pressure meds (I am related by marriage to a family with a genetic form of hypertension, until the 1950s their average lifespan was early forties, now it is mid-eighties), insulin, etc.

And I don’t hate naturopaths, I just have no respect for them. Especially if they ignore well tested ways to prevent disease (vaccines), and prescribe untested (possibly teratogenic) nostrums (mannose). You garnered absolutely no brownie points in your blind defense of an unscientific unproven mode of care that clings to old myths.

Well, at least in the world of Hogwarts, magic is real. On this planet, not so much.

I’m well aware of the inserts that come along with prescription medications – how can you miss them when they are 5 pages long? Few deaths from vitamin overdoses have ever been found (and the conclusions are not so concrete), yet thousands die each year from FDA regulated prescription medications, and at the recommended doses. So I am sorry that I fail to see why you all have such a strong conviction for the regulation of them, other than an argument that it is “not fair”? I’d much prefer the already overworked FDA spend time reviewing cancer drugs and other life-saving treatments than use its precious resources on regulating vitamins or other naturally occurring substances that have not yet shown to pose a threat to human lives.

I appreciate the differences in our opinion, and how strongly we are both convicted of them. I, however, do not choose to uphold my opinion in such a way that I debase others, as so many on this site choose to do.