Do any guys here know of any online writings by scientific researchers and doctors giving criticism of conventional medicine: telling us its limitations, its errors, its excesses, and how it’s practices are abused by conventional
doctors.
Such writings are very important for people to make use of conventional medicine effectively and economically and above all safely.
Thanks a lot and God bless you for your assistance.
Susma Rio Sep
Susmo, you are asking for people here to slam conventional medicine, with a tidy little agenda. You phrase it as an innocent question, to enlighten us all, but you emphasize limitation, error, and abuse of conventional medicine as a starting point of discussion.
I study alternative and traditional medicine, but do not see conventional medicine as a necessary foil to alternative methods. The best-proved points of both will make a better science for all. You seem to be itchin’ for a fight, and that’s a great disservice to furthering a better medicinal system. I’ll be blunt: scientific inquiry is a good thing. Often, good studies of of medicinal herbs in the US languish because of the FDA system. They are happening, though, because of public demand, but mainly because fine scientific inquiry and intricate method. Outside the hubbub, there are plenty of people in the scientific realm doing good quality research.
From your post, you want to approach alternative medicine in a negative way; to slam the established medical system rather than explain and highlight the positive about alternatives. That is a sad road, and does nothing to educate others. If you have some good experience with alternative medicine, detail it and be prepared to back it up and discuss it here. There are many fine open minds to rely on on the SD, but it does require some detail of thought.
As a future MD and a future PhD (I’m in a combined program), I know there are a few out there. There are certainly the contrarians, like Duesberg (AIDS is not caused by HIV). There are also the converts, like Andrew Weil. There are of course the eccentrics and the others, which from your OP it sounds like you want to avoid. Then there are those in the medical profession who turn an eye inward. This often comes out cynically (House of God-esque). Other times it turns into essays about compassion, the value of life, the healing “arts”, and so forth. I took a whole course called “Compassion and the Art of Medicine” which nearly every week featured a doctor who had written a book about how conventional medicine had failed its patients.
I think elelle is right, though, if that is indeed what you are seeking out. The progress of conventional medicine over the past 60 years is far too great to let a handful of naysayers take it apart.
edwino, I’d like to hear how your “Compassion and the Art of Medicine” course was taught, and discussed, to elaborate on the OP.
I would think that pretty much any medical publication, such as JAMA, would have examples of that, especially in the “limitations and errors” categories. However, I share some of the other posters’ concerns regarding your motivations. Ancedotal stories of unscrupulous doctors are hardly a valid basis for making medical decisions, any more than looking at a police blotter from a city would be a good way of deciding whether to vacation there.
The class tried to focus not on the science of medicine, but rather the art of healing and compassion. Naturally, teaching points were made by illustrating failings and successes of the medical profession.
We had doctors who were poets, doctors who were authors and philosophers, doctors on missions to improve certain aspects of the practice of medicine. One faculty member at my medical school who is a big anti-tobacco guy did a combination anti-smoking lecture and a slide show of portraits he had drawn of his patients.
As you are probably aware, in the current managed healthcare setting, it becomes difficult for a doctor to develop an intimate bond with every patient due to increased time pressures. Most of the lecturers were of the opinion that this was The Very Bad Thing about modern healthcare. Many of the talks centered around unique patients the lecturers had treated, and how the treatment of these patients was enriched by a little bit of bedside time. Most of these talks discussed how these relationships were the core of the art of healing.
One of the lecturers I distinctly remember was Abraham Verghese. He has a very interesting story and has written several essays and a book about his life. I have only read parts of My Own Country, but the link gives a pretty accurate picture of what I remember of it and his lecture.
Anyway, there are a lot of problems with traditional Western medicine. Nobody disputes this. To address the OP directly:
The scientific method has only limited power in resolving fundamental problems in medicine: the situtations are too complex, there are too many variables, there are ambiguous and paradoxical findings which cannot always be explained by hypothesis. A good example of this is hormone replacement therapy. There was apparently reasonable science showing that it did a lot of good. With 40 years of trials, though, that good disappeared into the noise. Now we don’t regularly give hormone replacement therapy anymore. Things like the link of breast implants to connective tissue disease will take decades and decades and thousands of cases to properly establish a link. Chances are that we may never be able to.
With the practice of medicine, doctors are humans, as I’m sure you realize. An MD after a name does not automatically designate sainthood or genius or inerrability. There are constantly new drugs, new therapies, and new studies which often show that the new drugs don’t work as well as the old ones. There is an ever-present hard sales push from pharmaceutical companies which ends up costing the patient money. For instance, when I was in clinics (4 years ago so I could be out of date), we were taught the first line therapy for high blood pressure should almost always be a diuretic. These cost cents a pill. There are hundreds of high blood pressure medications, and some of the newest and spiffiest meds cost dollars a pop. Just because the drug reps gave out free samples, note pads, and dinners, doesn’t make these drugs worth the cost (or at least worth using as a first-line agent). Add to that uninformed and lazy doctors not seeking out the latest knowledge in continuing education or in the literature, and it turns out that there are a lot of doctors out there who practice medicine at a subpar level.
The problem is that there is no better option right now. Nothing works as well as the flawed system we have in place. Every year, we can treat more disease. Every year, hopeless cases become treatable, and in cases like childhood leukemia, even curable at a high rate. I would be happy to take you on in a more appropriate forum if you disagree with this.
Except that once a point becomes proven, it isn’t “alternative” medicine anymore. In fact, the “alternative medicine” mindset is very harmful to medicine, in that whatever bits of it might actually work are never tested to find out.
The inherent misunderstanding in the OP is that modern medicine, like any science, is self-correcting. Once a problem becomes evident, you solve it. If it turns out that Medicine A is killing more people than it saves, then you stop giving people Medicine A. Yes, there are problems and shortcomings in medicine, but in most cases, the problem is that we don’t know about the problem.
Yes, they’re called medical journals. It’s why modern, scientific medicine is so good – it is self correcting. In journals, articles are reviewed by a board for correct and appropriate scientific standards. Then, once the article has been published, it can be reviewed by all other scientists and doctors. Some doing research will try to replicate the results of experiment. Some will do other types of experiments to either refute or substantiate claims.
Some articles do challenge standard practices in order to correct them. For example, for years now, medical journals have been after practicioners to stop prescribing antibiotics so often. Research has shown that overuse leads to antibiotic resistant germs.
And this is why alternative medicine is so bad. Within alternative medicine there are practices based on ‘traditions’ which may or may not be effective (in fact, may be harmful); there are practices based on theories and not experiments (like the theories of dilution which support homeopathic medicines, or of bodily energies which support Reiki therapy); there are practices based on sheer deception for financial gain. And alternative medicine has no peer-reviewed journals where scientific experiments can validate or invalidate all the claims of alternative medicine.
So, while both conventional and alternative medicines will have bad practices and theories, only one has a mechanism to deal with it and correct it.
Are there any books that will tell you if a word is spelled incorrectly?
Chronos, my point was that as some “alternative” methods have good studies done, and proven effective, they will hopefully be integrated into accepted medical practice. A more appropriate term used is integrative medicine. Complementary medicine is a useful term as well.
My main area of study is medicinal plants. This is a well-researched field, most modern scientific studies done in Germany and Japan. US research is being conducted as well, but is often only lucrative if it’s in a “drug-mining” sense; to isolate individual components for patentability and profit. Research funding is limited, because you cannot patent a plant, so to go through the expense of FDA approval and recoup the exhorbitant costs. That’s the main hurdle in getting medicinal herbs the necessary validation to become mainstream medicine. The other hurdle is that we are only beginning to be able to understand the complex synthesis of active components in plants. I’m an optimist, and think we’ll gain the necessary tools to understand it, and it will make for a better medical system.
I belong to the American Herbalist Guild, which is a professional organization in the process of creating a criteria for accreditation, an eye to the future when that might mean something in offering a beneficial practice. They’ve gotten strict, which has created a stir; some herbalists to moan and groan about capitulating to “the System”. The steering commitee, board, and advisors, are intelligent people with a lot of practical knowledge, and are trying to go through all the right channels to make herbal medicine a respectable practice. There is a peer-reviewed journal, quite well-done. The most knowledgeable herbalists -those who have now been practicing for thirty- some years, are often asked to lecture at medical schools. The head of the American Botanical Council has been lecturing at the pharmacy school of the University of Texas for a few years. In the case of medicinal herbs as an “alternative” medicine, there has been a lot of ground gained toward making it a valued part of medicinal knowledge. It does get my hackles up when it’s lumped as crappy science. About as much as it gets my hackles up when people try to blanket-slam conventional medicine.
edwino, thanks for that beautiful post. Physicians have a tremendously difficult job, that class must have been most heartening.
Yes, they’re called medical journals. It’s why modern, scientific medicine is so good – it is self correcting. In journals, articles are reviewed by a board for correct and appropriate scientific standards. Then, once the article has been published, it can be reviewed by all other scientists and doctors.
But can you say this about Duesberg’s numerous letters to Science in the early days?
or any rational discussion of the viral/HIV/AIDS hypothesis since then?
No.
Duesberg is an idiot. All his supporters are idiots. Here, I’m defining idiot as irrationally throwing out medical evidence in favor of unsubstantiated pet theories and declaiming anyone who disagrees with them as part of an establishment conspiracy. His contrarian notions regarding his claim that HIV is unrelated to AIDS was laughable from the moment he uttered it. And all evidence since then proves the scorn heaped upon him to be justified. He’s more than an idiot, his theories can cause people to die if they don’t think that HIV can and will lead to AIDS.
IOW, rejecting silly claims out of hand is not a sign that medical journals are closed minded. If submissions can’t pass the first test of the journal’s review board, maybe, just maybe, the submitter is an idiot. Journals don’t exist to publish every unsubstantiated crack pot theory. It was Duesberg’s onus to present a scientific article with the data of a scientific experiment to support his hypothesis. He never did such a thing, and thus, rightly was ignored by the journals.
And here’s another equally scientific theory on AIDS as proposed by televangelists: AIDS is caused by God’s punishment of gays. But the medical ‘establishment’ conspired to suppressed this theory. Tsk. Tsk.