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This is a quick posting that begins to respond to the question posted today by Joe:

What I don’t understand is why the majority of doctors at Columbia did not say “This is obvious abuse of patients, and it will not be tolerated here.” Given his richly-deserved malpractice record, why was [Gonzalez] even associated with Columbia?

David Gorski answered it in part: “Grant money.” There are also other factors: widespread naivete about the nature of quackery, ignorance of the methods themselves, widespread lack of scientific sophistication among physicians (!), unwillingness to appear contrary to whatever the current trendy thing may be and more. I’ll mention some of the particulars regarding Columbia and Gonzalez over the next couple of weeks.

But today this advertisement arrived:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

A discussion about Integrative Health with Christy Mack, President of The Bravewell Collaborative, Ralph Snyderman, Chancellor Emeritus for Health Affairs at Duke University, as well as President and CEO of Duke University Health System and Dr. Harvey Fineberg, President of the Institute of Medicine will air on the Charlie Rose show tonight. Please check your local listings for times and future air dates.

For more information or to view the segment on-line, please click on the following link: http://www.charlierose.com/shows/2008/03/28/2/a-discussion-about-integrative-health

Those of you who’ve been following SBM will recognize the imprints of all 3 of Charlie Rose’s guests in recent posts: Harvey Fineberg, who presided over the IOM’s entry in the most recent W^5/2; Christy Mack of the Bravewell Collaborative, which bankrolls the Consortium of Academic Health Centers for Integrative Medicine; and Ralph Snyderman of Duke. Snyderman and the “Consortium” were the authors of two of the misleading passages quoted in Misleading Language: the Common Currency of “CAM” Characterizations Part II.

I suspect that this show will reveal a lot—to those who are aware of the language distortions—about the insidious creep of pseudomedicine into places where it has no business going. If you can’t watch it tonight, go to the website and see it another time.

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Posted by Kimball Atwood