Naturopaths & Alternative Or Naturopathic Pharmacology

Once more an anonymous person who says s/he is an ND has told me that naturopaths are trained in pharmacology and the use of prescriptions drugs just like primary care MDs are. 

For starters let me make it clear that I have no reason to doubt that s/he has earned a degree from an accredited ND school. In fact everything s/he has said to me sounds as if that assertion is true but I have no way to verify it. 

I believe that s/he and many others who write to me anonymously saying they are licensed NDs and that they are trained in pharmacology and the use of prescription drugs really believe it. However, everything I know about naturopaths and everything they say makes me conclude that they are terribly and dangerously mistaken. Let me try to explain.

When I first developed argyria, I researched dermabrasion, a procedure in which the top layer of skin is literally sanded off, but I and the dermatologists I consulted dismissed it because we knew that silver was bound up so deep down in my skin that it couldn’t be sanded off. For that reason, we assumed that dermabrasion could not effectively treat argyria. Roughly twenty years later, I noticed that I had thin light lines on my skin which resembled scratch marks. While I’ve always been around dogs, cats, puppies and kittens, I didn’t remember ever being scratched. Any scratches I had gotten were so minor that they never bled. Suddenly it hit me. For twenty years I’d assumed that dermabrasion couldn’t help me, but IN MEDICINE YOU DON’T ASSUME. YOU TEST. 

I felt like the world’s biggest fool thinking that maybe I had been discolored all those years when I could have been “normal”. What if the silver could have been removed with dermabrasion? Just because the dermatologist couldn’t sand off enough skin to reach it with his little electric sander didn’t mean that the procedure wouldn’t cause a chemical reaction that would have an effect on the silver. For instance, the inflammation the dermabrasion caused might possibly result in forcing the silver out of my skin to a place where the body could eliminate it or where it wasn’t visible.

I knew I had to have a test patch done, something I should have had done 20 years before because IN MEDICINE YOU DON’T ASSUME. YOU TEST. 

Medical doctors who practice evidence-based medicine and scientists like pharmacologists know this exceedingly well. The years they spend doing and following research drills the lesson into them. They know that when you are dealing with a complex organism like a living human being that all kinds of unknown things take place inside the organism that can effect the person’s health and the way that drugs, therapies and toxins affect him. While many of these effects are predictable, many are not and experience has shown scientists time and time again that ASSUMPTIONS HAVE TO BE TESTED OBJECTIVELY TO SEE IF THEY ARE ACCURATE. Naturopaths who have only very recently been exposed to scientific or evidence-based medicine and who still aren’t engaged in scientific research haven’t learned this yet. They have over 100 years of catching up to do. A great many don’t even want to catch up. They are still very weary of scientific medicine and even afraid of it which is exactly why they want to use “natural” alternatives. 

But back to the little light lines on my gray skin. 

After calming down and thinking rationally, I decided to have a test spot on my skin dermabraded. However, by then I realized full well that even if it worked it wouldn’t help me because I would never let anyone sand my upper and lower eyelids so that if the silver were removed from the skin on the rest of my face I’d wind up looking like a raccoon, but by golly, by then the experiment wasn’t about curing me.  It was about seeing what effect dermabrasion has on argyria. Something I really wanted to know.

This urge to experiment to learn and to objectively test your suspicions to see if they are true is the most integral part of science, including scientific or evidence-based medicine and all the medical sciences like pharmacology, yet it is the very need to test rather than assume that drugs and therapies are safe and effective that separates naturopaths from scientists and medical doctors who practice evidence-based medicine. 

While I have no doubt that ND schools teach a subject that they label  “pharmacology”, that perhaps they even have people who have earned PhDs in pharmacology teaching the course and that they may even use pharmacology textbooks that medical scientists state are reliable, I don’t think that NDs are taught, understand or appreciate the medical science of pharmacology or any other science for that matter. If they did, they wouldn’t fail to comprehend the need to objectively test their assumptions and beliefs about natural drugs and therapies before routinely using them.

Here are just a few examples of NDs, as a profession rather than just a few individuals, routinely assuming that their assumptions are correct without ever testing them or checking to see if anyone else has.

Over 200 naturopaths licensed in the state of VT assumed that silver taken internally or put in the eye was safe and offered benefits. Why else would they have included it in their VT sanctioned Naturopathic Formulary?  http://rosemaryjacobs.com/naturopaths.html (Scroll to the bottom to see the formulary.)

Over 200 naturopaths licensed in VT assumed that cobalt, nickel and tin offered benefits when administered IV. They included them in their formulary too. 

I am not an MD or a medical scientist and was not about to take the time to research those items, but the idea of anyone shooting cobalt, nickel or tin into someone’s vein sounded really weird and dangerous to me, which is why I asked the newly appointed VT official charged with regulating licensed NDs in the state about the practice and expressed my concerns to him. 

http://rosemary-jacobs.blogspot.com/2011/08/naturopaths-vermont-and-me.html 

(Scroll down to # 12, the letter from VT Health Commissioner, Harry Chen, MD, the VT NDs’ state regulator.) Specifically notice his statement:

“Tin is sometimes administered by naturopaths who believe tin can be used to treat baldness based on a few studies involving mice. The efficacy of this treatment has not been demonstrated in the medical literature. Tin is not an essential nutrient.”

As far as I’m concerned that is totally insane. No one trained in pharmacology will assume that something that has an effect in mice will have the same effect in humans or that it will be safe to use in humans. Scientists, or anyone who knows anything about the history and development of drugs, knows that you can’t  assume that a substance that works in a test tube will work and be safe in humans. Heck, they’ll even know that what is safe and effective in one species like a mouse may not be safe or effective in another species like dogs, cats or humans. That is why drugs aren’t approved simply based on studies that show they work in a test tube or that they are safe and effective in an animal model like mice. Everyone who knows diddle about evidence-based medicine and pharmacology knows that, but NDs don’t. That tells me that they know nothing about science or the science of pharmacology which is why I would label any pharmacology naturopaths learn in their accredited schools as Alternative or Naturopathic Pharmacolgy, something which is the opposite of the science of pharmacology.

Using tin intravenously to treat baldness in humans because of a few studies showing it worked in mice, even assuming the mice studies were good, without ever testing it in humans is totally irresponsible and crazy especially when baldness is not a disease and especially when it would be so very easy for naturopaths to conduct tests to determine if their assumption about it is correct. It would be so simple, easy and cheap to do experiments to determine if their assumption was true. Heck, I even know a few NDs who would be perfect test subjects. 

Dr. Chen did not address cobalt or nickel in his letter to me yet if you check the Memorandum at the bottom of this page, http://rosemaryjacobs.com/naturopaths.html, you will see that on his advice, in the interest of patient health and safety, they were removed from the formulary along with colloidal silver, silver and tin, and quite frankly I’m very certain that none of those things would have been removed if I hadn’t so aggressively pursued the matter. 

Including untested substances in their formulary certainly didn’t bother any of the NDs licensed by the state of VT all of whom have degrees from accredited naturopathic “medical” schools. Apparently it never occurred to them to test the things they included in their formulary to see if their assumptions about them were true or to even review the medical literature to find out if they had already been tested and found to be useless and/or toxic by scientists.  Worse yet, when I expressed my concerns, they didn’t investigate to see if I was right. They simply brushed me off. All of this convinces me that, contrary to what naturopaths believe, they know nothing about pharmacology, toxicology, science or evidence-based medicine.

In addition to learning something about prescription drugs in their “medical” schools, naturopaths are taught about classical homeopathy, botanical drugs and dietary supplements (natural medicines) and are expected to incorporate them all into their practices. Most NDs also sell these “natural remedies” to their patients. 

There is no objective evidence to support the use of any classical homeopathic remedy, and if there were, chemistry as we know it would be flushed down the drain because such remedies don’t contain active ingredients. They are well shaken sugar or water that homeopaths and naturopaths believe, but have never objectively demonstrated, have curative properties. It isn’t just pharmacologists, medical doctors who practice scientific medicine, and medical scientists who you will find rolling on the floor with laughter when they hear NDs claim that homeo remedies are medicine, chemists too find it so outlandish as to be preposterous. It is the antithesis of science. The antithesis of chemistry. Classical homeopathic “remedies” are things that people who understand chemistry or pharmacology, a very specialized branch of chemistry, simply would never use except as a placebo, a sugar pill the doctor knows is useless but which he gives a patient he can’t help to make him “feel better”. But NDs don’t use homeo remedies as placebos. NDs are taught and most believe that they really are medicine. If they understood pharmacology, they would never believe that.

Except for a very few diseases which are treated with specific vitamins, there is no evidence that crude botanical drugs and supplements offer benefits and lots of evidence that they cause harm. http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2013/07/the-vitamin-myth-why-we-think-we-need-supplements/277947/. Yet they are an integral part of the practice of naturopathy. Why? Because NDs assume that Mother Nature offers cures but they never test the substances objectively to see if that assumption is true. What they do is mine scientific data bases to find studies showing that the natural drugs and therapies they believe in and assume are safe and effective are. They compile the results along with lists of the natural chemicals found in specific botanical remedies and mistake the results for pharmacology when what it really is is a smorgasbord of isolated study results. That’s called “cherry picking” - pulling together things that prove your claim without any regard to the accuracy or quality of the studies you cite or whether or not they are relevant to the claim you are making - are they lab studies, mice studies or human studies - all the while excluding anything you find that shows that your claims are wrong. While lawyers and naturopaths may get away with that. Scientists like pharmacologists can’t. They are required to present a large body of evidence - many good quality studies - that consistently give the same results before they can draw a conclusion. 

Here’s another example of what I call “Alternative” or “Naturopathic Pharmacology” taken from Textbook of Natural Medicine, 1999, 2nd edition, Pizzorno & Murray, which Bastyr, the naturopathic “medical school”, calls, “the gold standard in science-based natural medicine.” 

http://bookstore.bastyr.edu/products/1014-textbook-of-natural-medicine.aspx

What follows are excerpts interspersed with my comments.

p. 775

Hydrastis canadensis (goldenseal) & other berberine-containing botanicals

The pharmacology of these plants is primarily discussed in terms of the activity of berberine. 

p. 776

Pharmacology

Berberine has demonstrated antibiotic, immunostimulatory, anticonvulsant, sedative, hypotensive, uterotonic, cholerectic, and carminative activity. Berberine’s pharmacological activities support the historic use of berberine-containing herbs. 

Berberine has shown antimicrobial activity against bacteria, protozoa, and fungi,…

[Comment: Ten references are given. None look as if it is to a study done in humans. Several of the publications are obscure. One is a book about herbs for the general public. NDs may mistake these references for evidence. Scientists never would. Scientists require a large body of solid studies that consistently give the same results, not a few obscure ones, some or all of which are of questionable quality, and when drugs are concerned, the studies have to be done in humans with a standardized substance.]

p. 778

It appears that berberine is effective in treating the majority of common gastrointestinal infections. The clinical studies have produced results with berberine comparable to standard antibiotics in most cases. In fact, in several studies results were better.

p. 779

Berberine has been shown in several clinical studies to stimulate the secretion of bile (cholerectic effect) and bilirubin. In one study of 225 patients with chronic cholecystitis, oral berberine doses of 5-20 mg three times a day before meals caused, over a period of 24-48 hours, disappearance of clinical symptoms, decrease in bilirubin level, and an increase in the bile volume of the gallbladder. 

[Comment: Cholecystitis is an inflammation of the gallbladder. I don’t see a citation to the study mentioned. They also recommend goldenseal for the treatment of trachoma, an infectious eye disease, cirrhosis of the liver and cancer. p.778-779.] 

p.780

The dosage should be based on berberine content. As there is a wide range of quality in goldenseal preparations, standardized extracts are recommended...

Now lets compare what the naturopaths’ gold standard textbook says about the pharmacology of Hydrastis canadensis to a few sources Mr. Google found.

University of Maryland. Accessed July 2013:

http://umm.edu/health/medical/altmed/herb/goldenseal

Excerpt:

Goldenseal (Hydrastis canadensis) is one of the most popular herbs in the United States, often combined with echinacea and sold to treat or prevent colds. But there's no evidence that it works. In fact, there's very little scientific evidence that goldenseal works to treat any condition… A substance in goldenseal, called berberine, does kill some kinds of bacteria and fungus in test tube studies. But scientists don't know if goldenseal would kill any germs in people.

NCCAM, the US government agency setup by Congressmen who were strong proponents of “alternative” medicine and “dietary supplements” and wanted the government to conduct studies they thought would show that their pet remedies and therapies were safe and effective.  Accessed July 2013:

http://nccam.nih.gov/health/goldenseal

Excerpts:

Few studies have been published on goldenseal’s safety and effectiveness, and there is little scientific evidence to support using it for any health problem.

Clinical studies on a compound found in goldenseal, berberine, suggest that the compound may be beneficial for certain infections—such as those that cause some types of diarrhea, as well as some eye infections. However, goldenseal preparations contain only a small amount of berberine, so it is difficult to extend the evidence about the effectiveness of berberine to goldenseal.

NCCAM is funding research on goldenseal, including studies of antibacterial mechanisms and potential cholesterol-lowering effects. NCCAM is also funding development of research-grade goldenseal, to facilitate clinical studies.

The Mayo Clinic on inflammation of the gallbladder or cholecystitis. Accessed July 2013: 

http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/cholecystitis/DS01153]

Now if you think that maybe UM, the NCCAM or the Mayo Clinic simply didn’t find the studies the NDs found, you’d be wrong. The scientific medical literature which includes things like drugs and natural products is indexed. Searching it and finding studies relevant to a particular topic is what medical doctors and scientists do all the time. It is what many of the people who posted the material on the 3 sites above do for a living.

Medical scientists like pharmacologists have and continue to study all kinds of plants and substances found in nature looking for active ingredients that offer benefits. They study them in the lab, in animals and in humans. They find many that have active ingredients, describe the ingredients chemically (most people have seen chemical diagrams of molecules) and explain what they discover those chemicals do, but they don’t assume that they are safe and beneficial or routinely use them as medicine until they have a large body of evidence consisting of many solid studies done in humans that consistently show that they offer benefits and are safe. In other words SCIENTISTS DON’T ASSUME. THEY TEST. That is the essence of science. The essence of pharmacology. The essence of scientific or evidence-based medicine. It is the very essence that NDs totally miss. 

I suspect that naturopaths learn a lot of chemical names as well as the chemical components of plants and drugs and what those chemicals do in test tubes and mice and erroneously assume that they do the same thing in people. I also suspect that they assume that when they learn all that that they are learning pharmacology, but that assumption is wrong. They completely miss the fact that until there are many good studies in humans consistently giving the same results that there is no pharmacology to learn other than their alternative, naturopathic pharmacology which is based on assumption not experiments. 

naturopaths, pharmacology, science, medicine, licensed naturopaths, naturopathic schools

Silver Added To Antibiotics

What follows are my thoughts on this article, http://www.latimes.com/news/science/la-sci-antibiotics-silver-20130620,0,6215677.story, which was written by Monte Morin and published in the Los Angeles Times on June 20, 2013 with the title, “Silver found to increase effectiveness of antibiotics”. The article reports that James Collins, a microbiology professor at Boston University, has found that silver, “when added to antibiotics in trace amounts makes the drugs as much as 1,000 times more effective in treating mice…” I have not yet obtained and read Dr. Collins’s study but am blogging on the LAT report because of the attention I am sure that it will get.

This is very exciting and promising. I hope that further studies, especially studies in humans, consistently confirm the results. If so, I will certainly endorse using silver this way and suspect that drug companies will want to add it to antibiotics and that before doing so they will do studies that show under what conditions it is beneficial, the amount that is beneficial and the amount that is toxic to the average person taking it. 

However, assuming the Times article accurately reports the original research, there are some very important things to note.

The study didn’t use colloidal silver. It used silver nitrate. Silver nitrate was used before the advent of antibiotics. It didn’t work when taken internally although it did cause many cases of argyria, gray skin. When silver was studied back then, researchers discovered that mice don’t get argyria. 

The Times reports that, “In one experiment, researchers induced peritonitis in mice by injecting them with E. coli cells. Of the mice treated with silver and vancomycin, 90% survived…Half of the mice that got silver died, along with 90% of the mice treated with antibiotics.” That sounds as if: silver nitrate and vancomycin very effectively treated E. coli peritonitis in mice; silver nitrate alone was effective in half the cases; and, vancomycin was effective in 10% of the cases. However, without knowing more details, I can’t conclude anything other than that the combination of silver nitrate and vancomycin sounds very promising indeed and should be studied further. Without knowing things like how long the animals were kept alive and monitored after the study, I have no idea whether or not any of the treatments cured them or just slowed the progression of their disease.  

The story also notes that bacterial resistance to silver has been reported. That is true. It has been seen with approved topical silver drugs that have been used extensively to treat wounds, especially serious burns usually in hospitals burn units. 

I find this study very relevant to this blog on naturopathic medicine because it strongly reinforces my entire point which is that the difference between the evidence-based or scientific medicine espoused by MDs, medical doctors, and the belief-based system of medicine embraced by NDs, naturopaths, is that MDs believe that the only way to evaluate drugs and therapies to see if they are safe and effective is to study them extensively and objectively before using them routinely. NDs on the other hand, believe in trying anything they think or hope may work either because it is natural and their philosophy holds that natural = beneficial or because, based on their own personal experience or testimony from someone else about his, they conclude that it works. 

Additionally, scientists who develop drugs and therapies believe that the only way to do that is by doing exactly the kind of objective studies that Dr. Collins has done here progressing one step at a time whereas naturopaths and other alts jump right in using whatever suits their fancy playing Russian roulette with your life and health. See why naturopaths terrify me?

silver, antibiotics, drug resistance, naturopaths, colloidal silver, silver nitrate

What Amy Rothenberg, A Connecticut Naturopath, And Huffpost Don’t Seem To Want You To Read

Amy Rothenberg, ND had an article published by Huffpost on July 11, 2012, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/amy-rothenberg-nd/naturopathy_b_1660830.html#postComment,

I submitted the following comment:

The author states that naturopaths, “look for low risk methods that have few to no side effects”. Unfortunately, they don’t know where to look. If they did, the 241 naturopaths licensed in VT never would have included silver, a heavy metal toxin, in their drug formulary. They would have known that taking it internally is all risk and no benefit and that it is dangerous snake oil that can seriously disfigure you. 
http://rosemaryjacobs.com/naturopaths.html 
Rosemary Jacobs

http://rosemaryjacobs.com

http://rosemary-jacobs.blogspot.com

As of today, July 15, 2012 my comment has never been posted on the site. Wonder why? Bad for business maybe?

Amy Rothenberg, ND, Huffpost, naturopaths, doctors promoting their profession, Connecticut naturopaths

Joel J. Gagnier, PhD, ND Assistant Professor, Department of Orthopedic Surgery, Assistant Professor, Epidemiology, Michigan School of Public Health

Finally, a naturopath, an ND, has engaged me in a public conversation and he used his name rather than the screen tag “Anonymous”! Thank you, Dr. Gagnier! 

Our exchange took place in the comment section after an article about regulating NDs in Ontario, Canada.

http://nationalhealthwatch.ca/ontarios-proposed-naturopath-regulations-out-of-step-with-future-of-health-care/#comment-330

The Michigan School of Public Health has this listing for Dr. Gagnier: http://www.sph.umich.edu/iscr/faculty/profile.cfm?uniqname=jgagnier in which it states that in addition to having a ND degree from the Canadian College of Naturopathic Medicine where he was also an assistant professor (2002-2004), that he has a PhD in epidemiology, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epidemiology, and is presently an assistant professor at the Michigan School of Public Health.

Dr. Gagnier told me and another commentator that we are “incredibly uniformed” about naturopathy and should not write about topics that we don’t know anything about. Speaking directly to me, he said that I was making “outrageous, inflammatory, and generalized statements…” and guilty of “classical inferential, unfounded, biased reasoning,” things alt med practitioners are notoriously guilty of, going so far as to call me a monster adding that what he feared about our public exchange was that “good reasonable people” would read it and “not actually think for themselves.” 

In response to my questions regarding the promotion, use and sale of silver by licensed naturopaths, Gagnier replied that NDs study toxicology, learn about argyria, skin discolored by silver, and can diagnose the condition. He added that, “I am a Canadian, licensed in Ontario, ... We do not use colloidal silver. I have never used it, don’t know anyone who has, and would not recommend it…I do not claim there is evidence for colloidal silver for any therapeutic means.” I assume that final sentence means that he doesn’t know of any evidence showing that ingesting silver offers benefits. 

What Gagnier did not respond to was my question as to why if all that he said is true that 241 of his colleagues, naturopaths licensed in Vermont with degrees from 4-year naturopathic schools including Canadian, had included silver for internal use in their state sanctioned formulary. He didn’t explain how they could possibly have done that if they knew, as he claimed they did, that it causes argyria and that there is no evidence that it offers health benefits. Or as the attorney who heads the naturopaths’ Vermont state regulatory agency put it when I presented him with evidence of the uselessness, danger and illegality of including silver in the state formulary, “Why hasn’t anyone brought this up before?” 

Oh if only Gagnier or one of his colleagues would tell me! I mean with 241 NDs in VT who graduated from schools that he claims teach them about the danger of ingesting silver, why hadn’t any of them picked up their mistake? And why won’t Gagnier or any of his ND colleagues address this when I bring it up? And why do they all insist that they don’t know of any licensed ND who uses silver when you can find several of them promoting and selling it on the Internet?

If they don’t have answers, why won’t they admit that Vermont NDs were wrong to include silver in their formulary and that all the licensed NDs outside the state who use and sell it are too? 

Could it be  because they know that such an admission will reflect poorly on their profession and be bad for their businesses? Or perhaps because their system of medicine is based on the belief that Nature and her products heal, they believe in spite of all the objective evidence to the contrary, that taking silver internally offers benefits and can be done safely because, even without toxicology studies, NDs think that they can accurately guess the amount that is “safe” to take? Neither explanations would surprise me.   

I am furious with NDs for ignoring this very important issue and trying to sweep it under the rug. I am furious with NDs for trying to convince the public and legislators that the dangerous belief-based system of medicine that they practice is safe, effective, supported by evidence and scientific when that isn’t so. While I suspect that many naturopaths actually believe all that and believe that they learn the same things in their accredited schools that MDs learn in medical schools, the fact that so many of their naturopathic treatments and remedies are unproven or disproven shows that they are wrong. I will continue shouting that as loud as I can and continue presenting the reasons why I believe I am correct in order to protect the public. 

I don’t want another person to come down with argyria in this day and age. I don’t want one more person to hear people who claim to know as much or more about medicine than MDs do, people the public trusts because they are licensed as “physicians” by governments, that ingesting silver offers benefits and is safe when that isn’t true.  I especially don’t want another child or teenager to have to live through what I lived through. 

In this day and age there is absolutely no excuse. MD stopped using silver internally over 50 years ago when they discovered that ingesting it was at best useless and at worst harmful. Silver seriously disfigures people for the rest of their lives! In this day and age anyone calling himself “doctor” who has a government license to do so and a license to “practice medicine” should know better than to promote silver and should be prosecuted if he sells, recommends or administers it to patients.  

No matter how angry NDs like Gagnier get with me for exposing their profession for the dangers it poses, I will continue to do so because I fear that they will cause more new cases of argyria and that one or more of their “treatments” or “remedies” may be far more dangerous than silver. 

Yes, Dr. Gagnier, PhD, I know that I have “inferred” that you are angry with me. While you may consider the inference to be “unfounded” and based on “biased reasoning”, I believe that your comments are evidence that my conclusion or inference about your attitude towards me is correct. Any interested reader can decide for himself. I also think you’ve got your priorities all screwed up. Instead of being angry with me you should be furious with your colleagues who have included dangerous snake oil in their state sanctioned formulary and totally ignored me and my friend Arline when we expressed our concerns, http://rosemaryjacobs.com/naturopaths.html. You should call licensed NDs who promote and sell silver quacks. 

Doctor, heal yourself and your profession before trying to save and legitimatize it.  Go back to the drawing board and get it right before you try selling it to the public. 

Joel J. Gagnier, Michigan School of Public Health, silver, colloidal silver, naturopaths, canada, ontario

Chiropractors Marketing Themselves

Steven Salzberg wrote an article for Forbes published online on June 10, 2012 about government subsidizing chiropractic schools, http://www.forbes.com/sites/stevensalzberg/2012/06/10/why-does-the-government-subsidize-chiropractic-colleges/?utm_source=alertscalledoutcomment&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=20120610, in which I thought that he and Allen Botnick brought up important points. 

Last I looked there were 5 pages with 59 comments, most of which were from chiropractors or people studying to be chiropractors. I read very few of the comments. A glance was enough to disturb me because it told me that they were not addressing the important issues raised the way people concerned about providing good health care would. They were ducking the issues and attacking those who had brought them up. Like I’ve seen naturopaths do constantly, they were marketing their goods and services, defending their turf. 

With a few notable exceptions that stand out this is what I’ve seen chiropractors do en mass whenever anyone questions the safety of their neck manipulations which are known to cause strokes and even kill people, mentions the lack of evidence supporting the benefits of chiropractic treatments or speaks about the pre-scientific concepts, now known to be wrong, that chiropractic is based on.  

Why is it that so many alt med practitioners, not just chiropractors, who use “remedies” and “therapies” that have never been evaluated for safety or efficacy and for which there is no plausible scientific reason to suspect they may be beneficial constantly insist that their treatments are science-based and that they practice scientific medicine? Why do they go ballistic when others say that isn't true rather than simply stating, “There is no evidence that this works, but many people enjoy the results they obtain using it and as far as I know I’ve never hurt any of my patients. That’s good enough for me. Science doesn't have all the answers.” I can only guess. My guess is that the self promoters believe that making scientific claims about the safety and efficacy of the goods and services they sell is a wonderful marketing device that greatly increases sales. 

Steven Salzberg, Allen Botnick, chiropractors, marketing medicine, selling alternative medicine; alt med practitioners 

John Weeks, Huffpost, Naturopaths

John Weeks posted a blog on Huffpost on 6/13/12 on naturopathy, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-weeks/integrative-medicine_b_1584998.html, but he hasn’t published the comment I submitted below or the second one I left excluding the links in the first. 

To me that shows that he is promoting, pitching, selling his cause rather than trying to gather and address the facts of the matter.  That might be fine if the product is a toaster but not when it is a system of medicine.

The comment Weeks won't post:

Naturopaths terrify me. They routinely use products that have never been evaluated for safety or efficacy. One or more of these products could be totally useless and as lethal as cigarettes but by the time that is known, it will be too late to prevent many premature deaths.

http://rosemary-jacobs.blogspot.com/2012/04/naturopaths-terrify-me-nds-do-not.html

http://rosemary-jacobs.blogspot.com/2012/05/deadly-folk-medicine.html

Worse still, they use dangerous snake oil like silver which disfigured me over 50 years ago. 

http://rosemaryjacobs.com/naturopaths.html

Naturopaths practice a belief-based system of medicine, not an evidence-based one with the result that when there is overwhelming evidence that something like silver is useless and dangerous they are emotionally unable to believe that because the idea that something natural can be harmful and useless is contrary to their religious or philosophical belief that Nature heals.

john weeks, huffpost, naturopaths, health care reform, integrated medicine, bad medicine, dangerous medicine, political agendas

Accredited Naturopathic Schools

Naturopaths, NDs, have a very successful marketing/lobbying campaign going on across N. America aimed at making them the legal equivalents of medical doctors, MDs, by having states and provinces grant those who have graduated from “accredited 4-year naturopathic medical schools” the same privileges that MDs have, such as prescribing and using prescription drugs. One of the marketing mantras they use is that “naturopathic medical schools” provide the same education that MDs get in “their medical schools”. NDs present lists of the courses they take, many of which use the same titles as the courses given in real medical schools, such as “pharmacology”,  "gastroenterology", "oncology".

http://www.ncnm.edu/academics/Program_Layouts_2010-11.htm, click on “5 yr ND track)

In reality, naturopaths do not believe in or understand science or the medical sciences like pharmacology or toxicology. Theirs is a dangerous belief-based system of medicine.

http://rosemaryjacobs.com/naturopaths.html 

http://rosemary-jacobs.blogspot.com/2012/04/naturopaths-terrify-me-nds-do-not.html

I don’t have the resources to investigate to see if my suspicions are correct, but I’ve long believed that those who are attracted to “naturopathic medical schools” are for the most part the most gullible among us. Who else would pay huge sums of money to get degrees that only qualify them to work as clerks in health fraud stores? Who else would believe that the folk medicine that didn’t work for and often killed our ancestors and which is now taught in naturopathic schools is scientific or evidence based?

http://rosemary-jacobs.blogspot.com/2012/05/deadly-folk-medicine.html

Today I was sent the link to a blog that I think gives a lot of weight to my suspicion that naturopaths have been scammed into believing that the educations they get in their schools are the same as those that MDs get in theirs.

http://open.salon.com/blog/ipab/2012/06/07/why_congress_wants_you_to_default_on_your_student_loans_1

While the author’s expertise is chiropractic schools, I suspect that his allegations apply equally to “naturopathic medical schools” and wish that I had the resources to throughly investigate and report the matter. 

Except for a few obvious conmen, the majority of NDs I’ve dealt with strike me as being caring human beings who really want to heal people and solve all of life’s problems. However, they also strike me as being the most gullible among us, the most easily conned since they believe everything that pleases them without ever trying to verify any of it independently. They also strike me as running away from everything unpleasant. So it makes perfect sense to me to think that when they get their “med school” diplomas and can’t use them to earn a decent living that they believe the people who convinced them to enroll in those schools when they tell them that the problem isn’t the education they paid all that money for, but  rather The Establishment, the medical doctors who believe in and practice evidence-based or scientific medicine who fear that NDs will put them out of business. It also makes perfect sense to me to see the most aggressive of this passive lot chant the marketing/lobbying mantras that savvy professionals teach them. What I don’t understand is why so many politicians support and enable them, especially since they don’t seem to have much public support evidenced by the fact that so few people use their services and so many don’t even know what a naturopath is, even in Vermont, a hotbed of alternative medicine.

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