We’ve had a few threads in the last year or so in GQ discussing the real victories in ‘The War on Cancer’. It may have been me who noted that one of the first wins was against a childhood leukemia - Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia (ALL) - and took place over half a century ago. In some sense, ALL is the poster child of a treatable, highly curable cancer. And, that’s especially gratifying because so many of its victims are kids.
It is sick, and sickening, beyond belief that we have still, in 2014, those who would deny proven successful therapy to children with ALL. Here is one of a series of links to a Florida naturopath (a “Dr.” don’t you know) who has convinced at least two Native Canadian families to trust him and not the “doctors at McGill or Toronto”. He told the mother of one girl, “Oh yes no problem we can help her”. Indeed, he also states, “We’ve had more people reverse cancer than any institute in the history of health care.”
The first kid he helped is now in critical condition. According to her mother (who I won’t pit but is probably as deserving as the good doctor), the good news is, “(the quack’s institute) is continuing to provide care by analyzing (her) blood test results sent by mail”. Isn’t that swell. No doubt he’s still charging for his care.
Can’t he be charged with fraud or something? Maybe criminal negligence causing bodily harm? Or, but I hope not, manslaughter?
“Naturopathy is a cornucopia of almost every quackery you can think of. Be it homeopathy, traditional Chinese medicine, Ayurvedic medicine, applied kinesiology, anthroposophical medicine, reflexology, craniosacral therapy, Bowen Technique, and pretty much any other form of unscientific or prescientific medicine that you can imagine, it’s hard to think of a single form of pseudoscientific medicine and quackery that naturopathy doesn’t embrace or at least tolerate.”
I feel your pain. It’s particularly bad when you have a disease that was almost universally fatal and is now more than 90% curable with appropriate treatment. I know in the US, you could certainly sue them for something, even if there are no criminal penalties. Can you charge them with practicing medicine without a license?
They hold licensure as Naturopathic Doctors (ND or NMD) in 17 states and DC, Puerto Rico and The Virgin Islands. Florida is not one of those states.
Where there are licensed, they’re generally working as primary care providers, and in some states they can do OB/GYN. Their scope of practice varies from state to state. They can almost always do physical assessments and order labs and diagnostic imaging. Some states allow them to prescribing authority and minor surgery and vaccine administration, others don’t.
If they’re in an unregulated state, you might be able to charge them with practicing medicine without a license, but most of them are very good at skirting the line and playing the terminology so they’re “counseling” “clients” to “promote health” not “treating” “patients” to “cure disease”.
As one of those who believes wholeheartedly in Integrative Medicine, I find Naturopaths largely disturbing. There are some excellent ones, but a whole lot more who wholeheartedly believe in what they’re doing, but put lives in danger.
Fucking insanity. Why don’t we just go ahead and let witch doctors write prescriptions too? It’s fucking absurd that we put real doctors through this stringent screening, huge and lifelong amounts of training, and we heavily regulate their practices. And then we just go ahead and say “or if you’re a witchdoctor, you can pretend to be a doctor and have those powers too”
Why? Out of respect for traditional/aboriginal treatments.
Oh, I get that.
A wiser decision might have permitted ‘traditional’ therapy but only in concert with effective methods. Remember, the disease is over 90 percent curable with chemo and a death sentence without.
Jeesh, I understand us European-descended gits have a nice long history of trampling over traditional practices when it’s really none of our business… buuuuuut surely there’s a legitimate public health interest in trampling over some traditions. Otherwise next time I get sick I’m petitioning the court to let me try balancing my humors. Y’know, for tradition’s sake.
E: Of course, I also don’t mind if both can be done simultaneously without interference.
[Cynic hat on] Because witchdoctors don’t pay a school hundreds of thousands of dollars for a four year post graduate degree and pay the state hundreds of dollars for licensing fees, and don’t pay insurance companies more thousands every year for liability and/or malpractice insurance.
“Witchdoctors” don’t pay a lot for the privilege of learning hooey - they share it freely with one another on message boards and charge only in the two and three digits for workshops and seminars, and none of that makes it back to the state or insurance companies.
Follow the money. Naturopaths aren’t untrained. They have to complete a lot of education and pay for the privilege. Their education includes most of what medical students learn. I don’t believe they spend much time on specialties such as neurosurgery, for example, so it’s not accurate to say they learn everything an MD does - but they do learn *most *of it. (If you want to know more about naturopathic education and standards, see here.)
The problem is that their good training is topped off with a generous dollop of hooey, and that hooey is largely what their patients are coming to them for. Some of them have the integrity and the balls to say, “I think this time we’re better off using chemo, let me write you a referral for an oncologist,” and those are the good ones. But those are the ones that aren’t in court, and I’m not concerned with those. The ones that can’t do that, that continue to enable their patients’ insistence on using *only *“natural” treatments that have been proven not to work…those are the problem children.
Chiros also claim their pre-clinical training is essentially the same as what MDs get.
I could never figure why you’d put in all those hours in anatomy, biochemistry etc., only to be told “OK, now forget all that, here’s the woo.”
Apparently the basic science training is either window dressing for p.r. purposes, or used to justify tuition fees.
As for the unfortunate child mentioned in the OP, everything would have turned out fine if the naturopath’s advice had been followed - think positively. The kid obviously had negative thoughts.
Right. The real question, I suppose, is how much of one program would transfer to the other, if both were accredited by the same agency. 70%? 80%? 99%? I don’t know. But it’s not enough to just point to a course catalog and say, “See? We both teach anatomy!” The Anatomy I had in massage school was great for massage therapy, but completely inadequate for the pre-req for nursing school, as it focused mostly on musculoskeletal anatomy, with a quick wave in the general direction of every other body system and one slide of cellular anatomy. A massage student and a nursing student may both study anatomy, but one course will not necessarily transfer for the other, for good reason.
I know I deal in a lot of what you consider woo…but I still agree. My woo meter is calibrated differently than yours is, but there’s still a too-woo range where I can’t believe educated people fall for this nonsense. See: Cleanses, toxins, anti-vaccination and treating curable cancers with stuff that doesn’t cure them.
The quack operator of the quack “health institute” (you know, the one that “reverses more cancer than any institute in the history of health care”) is being sued by his own staff!
Among other things, former staff members accuse him of “operating a scam” and for firing them because they documented what he was doing (i.e. he violated the ‘whistle blower act’).
I’m sure all the ex-cancer sufferers he’s helped will be lining up to support him.
It’s always somewhat disturbing to me that whenever I need to go to my local clinic (part of the Providence system), I see an electronic display in the waiting room about the acupuncture services provided there and how they treat every ailment from soup to nuts. Has profit motive now brushed aside all semblance of medical ethics?
Acupuncturists can have ethics. An old friend of mine had horrible back pain that just kept getting worse. He spent lots of money on a chiropractor who didn’t help him at all. Finally he decided to try acupuncture; yes, he was a guitar player & old hippie. (We were not close at this time or I would have offered my opinion.)
The acupuncturist checked him over & immediately told him he needed a Real Doctor. Who diagnosed pancreatic cancer. Early treatment might not have “cured” him but at least he got access to morphine for what time remained…
The family is in Canada, and the doctor is in Florida using a mixture of made-up shit. How is that traditional or aboriginal? And did First Nations people send blood through the mail to their traditional healers?
