Doctors are indeed human, and I look kindly upon most of them.

I’m hoping someone blogging here will buy that ACP book and take it apart and let the rest of us know what’s on the inside. The authors of the book need to experience some sound criticism, if it is warranted, and I suspect it is.

I was treated by an orthomolecular physician in the 1980s, and am grateful as a patient to the one internist I later saw who stood up and called a quack a quack. Medicine is under siege and it needs to fight back, skillfully, especially in cases where the problem is internal.

The insidious “medical doctors are clueless” message from the alternative medicine camp has been really quite damaging, the idea of embracing alt med practioners and then integrating them into your standard of care is crazy in the extreme. Actually becoming clueless is not a good defense against the meme than says you are.

Oh, and to my former orthomolecular doc:

“I’ve upped my standard of evidence, up yours”. ;*)

You are exactly right in criticising medical doctors who drink the Kool Aid on their way down the rabbit hole to the wilds of irrational medicine. I have seen it happen repeatedly amongst my colleagues, but thankfully may of them become more disillusioned with starting up sCAM practices than in using treatments that actually work, at least in my experience. It has taken me a long journey from being a rabidly rational high school student to a fairly ‘integrationist’ medical student, to a burnt-out and cynical junior doctor, then a hard-nosed military doctor and finally after a few more peregrinations to being a pain management doc, with my final philosophical position settled as a scientific skeptic.

I firmly believe that MDs are as human as the rest of the population and I can tell you it feels great when you win over a patient with a bit of woo that seems to work. I imagine a magician must feel the same way. I have actually learnt more psychology from studying amateur magic than I ever did in medical school !

These medical true believers get into it for complex psychological reasons but in my experience despite the damage they can do, many drift off into shruggie-dom rather than staying complete woo-merchants.

Actually, come to think of it, Penn & Teller’s Bullshit is probably exactly what you’re looking for — a program that uses incredibly irrational and deceptive arguments to promote positions that are often associated with skepticism.

From the product description of the oxymoronically named book “The ACP Evidence-Based Guide to Complementary and Alternative Medicine”:
Here’s the comprehensive, evidence-based analyses physicians need to counsel patients about complementary and alternative medical therapies and to integrate these techniques into their own practices!”

Jeez. This is a must-read. And I really do wonder what evidence-based CAM modalities they’ve found to be working that the NCCAM hasn’t found yet albeit spending 2,5 billion dollars.

Other surveys show the same thing – the profile of a CAM user is a person with disposable income who has a chronic painful condition and is ideologically aligned with a more spiritual approach to their health and desires a sense of control over their condition.

I am an ex-acupuncturist & herbalist (Japan licensed) who came to this country in hopes of mixing Western and Eastern medicine when I became a physician assistant. I saw quickly how your above quote is correct. In Japan and China, people went to Acupuncturists to get better, not for the reasons listed above. It was new for me.
That said, I left these practices because I did not see the effectiveness I expected. Mind you, I saw amazing placebo effects.
I still don’t know if I think they don’t work for some things, but since I have left the field, I have not kept up on this.
Thanx for the post.

just remember, as naturopath Shanni Fox (ND NCNM; that vitalism bastion) tells us, at “Diabetes Health: [motto] Investigate, Inform, Inspire”

http://www.diabeteshealth.com/read/2009/07/24/6286/naturopathic-physicians-up-and-coming-partners-in-diabetes-care/

ND sCAM is great for diabetes:

“what if there were a ‘one-stop shop’ for diabetes management: a licensed medical professional skilled in diagnosis, medication, and nutrition and lifestyle management, as well as patient education? [...] meet the naturopathic physician [...] medical experts [...] With their focus on prevention, attention to each patient’s uniqueness, and empowerment of people to make beneficial choices for themselves, naturopathic physicians are often an excellent choice as partners in diabetes care.”

On her homepage shared with three other NDs [insightstohealth.net], they state in “FAQs”:

“most of our treatments have been researched and validated by rigorous scientific studies [par for NCNM, which states nonscience survives scientific scrutiny!].”

The ND seems to think she’s medical [she's not, she's naturopathic], professional [I don't see NDs living up to that ethos], educating [miseducating], empowering [are falsehoods empowering?], excellent [is it excellent to be WRONG?], and scientific [is vitalism, hugely expertly coded in that article, science?].

sCAM people are posing as communicators / investigators / informers-educators. Insightful!

They are posing as media people / journalists — propagandizing.

Just as they pose as science-experts.

-r.c.

They’re not selling a product, they’re selling symbols of an emotion.