Archive for the ‘'Alternative' Therapies’ Category

Also posted on That’s the Way the Banana Crumbles.

I was asked to write a post about Chiropractic. I am (obviously) not a medical professional, and so I won’t deconstruct any of the studies pointing to specific things that chiropractic can and cannot do. Instead, I’ll attempt to look at broader trends within chiropractic. Wikipedia has been used (and linked to), but for definitional purposes only.

Chiropractic is a minefield for any skeptically-minded person. On the one hand, the entire institution was founded on theories of health and disease which have been thoroughly discredited, and are obviously wrong. On the other hand, unlike faith healing or homeopathy, chiropractic involves an actual physical mechanism, which can plausibly affect the body. Regardless, the people who continue to practice chiropractic based on false beliefs and discredited theories of sickness and disease (i.e. “straights“) are dangerous, due to their lack of understanding of what they’re doing, and the inherently dangerous nature of manipulating peoples’ spinal cords.

Fortunately, amongst chiropractors, this group is slowly shrinking. The growing trend in the field of chiropractic seems to be one where genuine medical diagnoses are mixed in with vestiges of the old vitalistic belief system. These “mixers“, though not as dangerous as their “straight” counterparts, are still a few subluxations short of being medical professionals.

As with anything that can affect/be done to/be inserted into the human body, if you look hard enough, you will find claims that chiropractic can cure any disease — from headaches to cancer. However, this would be disingenuous to chiropractors, as the ones making these claims are part of a small (radical) fringe group. At the other end of the spectrum, there’s very little controversy over the studies and claims that show that chiropractic manipulation can ease lower back pain, or help treat other chronic pain-related conditions. In this way, chiropractic is somewhere between physical therapy and massage therapy in its efficacy.

So where does that leave us with chiropractic? Realistically, it’s disingenuous to talk about chiropractic as a unified organization (or profession) in the same way we might talk about neurosurgeons. There’s no unifying philosophy, standards of practice, or professional ethics that are upheld by all chiropractors.

Some who argue in defense of chiropractic might point to the developmental history of the medical profession. Medicine as it was practiced a century ago doesn’t resemble modern medicine at all. If medicine had not been given the benefit of the doubt, it never would have reached its present state, so shouldn’t we extend that benefit to chiropractic as well?

The medical sciences took thousands of years of trial and error and development to reach their present state. There was a time when the practice of medicine was based on flawed knowledge and, as a result, caused more harm than good. That being said, medicine has already evolved past this point. Thanks to things like the germ theory of disease, medicine is no longer a guessing game. That being the case, it’s hard for me to see why anybody would think it appealing to ignore this progress and practice medicine based on outmoded and flawed ways of thinking. We already have a system that works; so I don’t see the need to go back and re-iterate past mistakes.

I also think that it’s incredibly telling that the more chiropractic progresses and enters the mainstream, the more it begins to resemble modern physical therapy techniques. The fact that chiropractic seems to be honing in on real medicine as it matures seems to indicate not that it is a new way of treating disease; but merely that it is slowly converging on what medical science already knows.

Complimentary and Alternative Medicine (CAM) is sold as an alternative to conventional (i.e. science/evidence based) medicine. The rallying cry of CAM supporters is usually that of choice. They feel that the supporters of conventional medicine have backed them into a corner, and conspire alongside “Big Pharma” to ensure that their choices for treatment are limited. They demand to be able to choose how they treat their own bodies. Naturally, in a place like Canada where we have a universal public health care system, we fund these “treatments”, because we don’t want to deprive people of their ability to choose. Even if we take into account the fact that these “treatments” don’t work, they still make people feel better and get rid of symptoms, so why shouldn’t we fund them? Granted, some forms of CAM can be dangerous, but as long as people are properly informed as to the safety and proven efficacy of CAM techniques, why shouldn’t they be able to take that risk? Some forms of CAM, like homeopathy, are truly harmless — especially if taken in conjunction with conventional medicines.

Taken together, this sounds like a compelling case for public support and funding of CAM, and this is often seen as a compelling reason by legislators. If the people want it, and it makes them happy, then why shouldn’t we support it? Aside from the fact that this lends credence to ineffective methods of treatment (which arguably is also a rather large problem), the main reason for why this is a bad idea lies in the intended purpose of universal public health care.

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There seems to be a rather large problem with Bill C-51 that has been overlooked by our policy makers and health officials alike: nobody seems to understand the bill. The premise is simple enough: treat all medications the same way. If you want to sell something that claims to cure cancer, then prove that it cures cancer. That’s it. Simple.

Unfortunately, there seems to be a rather large opposition to this bill, and the basis of this opposition seems to stem from a gross misunderstanding of it. The C-51 Opposition Party is a big tent, ranging from FDA paranoia to the belief that this bill aims to ban all herbal remedies.

To clarify, this bill will not ban herbal remedies. It will require that all drugs marketed as cures or treatments will be subjected to the same standards. This would not prevent people from selling, purchasing or consuming non-harmful (and legal) substances. This is about health claims and fraud… that’s all.

I can’t help but think how much smaller the opposition to this bill would be if people only understood what it was about. The conspiracy theorists would probably still rant about how this is another scheme by Big Pharma to steal our money, make us sick, and extract our surplus value… but those people are already a lost cause. Hell, if you really wanted to, you could still sell Orgone crystals!

Here’s my challenge to you: If you are not in favour of Bill C-51, go and read it. Make sure you understand the terminology, and what each section means. Afterwards, if you still think it’s a bad idea, come back and chat.

Let’s talk about Orgone. A form of energy allegedly discovered by Wilhelm Reich, it has spawned an entire system of belief and generation of quackery. Due to the complex nature of this post, I’m going to break it down into topics. Let’s start with the basics:

What is Orgone?

From Wikipedia:

Orgone energy is a term coined by psychoanalyst Wilhelm Reich for the “universal life energy” which he was convinced to have discovered in published experiments in the late 1930s. Reich claimed that Orgone energy was a “life energy” which filled all space, was blue in color, and that certain forms of illness were the consequence of depletion or blockages of the energy within the body. These theories are considered pseudoscience by most.

In many ways, the concept of Orgone bears certain resemblances to the Chinese concept of Qi, or how the force worked in Star Wars before Lucas changed his mind and decided informed us it was caused by midi-chlorians. The concept was actually originally based on the Freudian concept of libido. Though Orgone doesn’t obey the same set of laws as the rest of the physical universe (it isn’t subject to the laws of Thermodynamics, for example), it can still be captured and directed. Again, much like Qi, Reich believed that certain illnesses were caused by a lack of Orgone in key places in the body. Naturally, Reich created a machine called a cloudbuster, which he claimed could cause clouds to dissipate merely by manipulating Orgone fields. Later, certain conspiracy groups adapted the technology to disperse so-called chemtrails.

So why should we reject this premise?

Lack of any evidence. Beyond that, lack of any hypothesized mechanism for what Orgone is, how it behaves, or how it is able to do what people think it does. Wilhelm Reich was not a total crackpot; realizing that he was dealing with science outside of his professed field, he enlisted the help of some notable physicists in order to verify his claims. Subsequent tests showed that Reich’s Orgone accumulator was not able to generate the intended effect. Since then, nobody has been able to show conclusively (i.e. in a controlled test) any effect from the direction or accumulation of Orgone energy. Nor have physicists, with their ever-increasing knowledge of what the universe is made of, uncovered some type of particle or field that bears resemblance to Orgone.
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One of the dangers of being a skeptic is receiving the ire of those lacking a sense of rationality. Make no mistake, by pointing the finger at unscientific shenanigans, you’re most likely going to hear about it. Not by those who’ve been fooled into believing the nonsense, but by those who’ve dedicated themselves to that nonsense and, even more likely, by the people who are selling it. Such is the case with the proposed Canadian Bill C-51, which according to some will “criminalize activities like picking dandelions, drying herbs, or even giving homeopathic medicine to your own child(sic)!”

Link.

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Being a disease that is so destructive, so persistent and so random, Cancer, perhaps among the most dreaded diseases in recent history, has attracted the attention of not only the scientific community, but the public in searching for a cure. Some show their support by donation, others by organized activity. There are always some however, who, through either good or bad intentions, claim to have discovered a ‘cure,’ which only later turns out to be not so.

Nearly a century ago, when radio waves were still a somewhat new discovery, a man by the name of Albert Abrams fashioned what he called a “Dynomizer,” which was essentially a box of wires Abrams claimed could cure disease through a process he dubbed “Electronic Reactions of Abrams.” Medical practitioners became not only suspicious, but alarmed as Abrams claimed his Dynomizer could cure virtually every disease known to man, including Cancer. The patient wouldn’t even have to be in the same room: He/she could receive the cure via telephone call (And how convenient!).

It probably doesn’t need to be said, but it turns out Abrams was full of it. Not only did the Dynomizer do nothing, Abrams apparently knew it did nothing. His legacy? Being considered “The Biggest Quack of the 20th Century.”

But can’t an ordinary Joe discover something useful to the world of medicine? And can’t radio waves have any potential medical application?

Enter John Kanzius and his radio frequency transmitter.

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