Why Does Getting The Science Testing Right Always Make The NewAge Healing Beliefs Wrong?

"Here's a couple of websites commenting on the fact that the state of Minnesota, the liberal bastion, has just passed a law designating practitioners of naturopathy as "doctors." I share their concerns. According to at least one interpretation, they'll be able to admit patients to regular hospitals and manage their care. To the extent that it's even imaginable, I find it frightening. On the other hand, in my state of Washington it's been the case for years that, by law, health insurance must cover such crapola as chiropractic, accupuncture, aroma therapy, massage therapy (yes, to the extent that it's the same as physical therapy, I have no problem, but there's all that other therapeutic touch nonsense...), and, of course, naturopathy. Far as I know, homeopathy, too, which is at the very bottom of the barrel, unproven-bullshit-wise. But that's not my point. My point is to give credit when it's due.

Seattle is home to Bastyr University, the mecca of "natural medicine." They claim the mantle of scientific research. And, contrary to what I'd have expected, it seems they actually do it. In the Seattle Times a couple of days ago were the results of a study they announced, on the efficacy of St. John's Wort for treatment of ADHD. It appears to have been an actual double-blind prospective study, and darned if it didn't show exactly what you'd expect real science to show: bupkis. So I congratulate them on being willing actually to subject their stock in trade to the science it requires.

I applaud Bastyr for doing the study and for publishing the results. I assume they'll continue doing so, even though I'd guess someone there must be worried they'll science themselves out of business eventually. We'll see. Meanwhile, it sets a standard for advocates of homeopathy, chiropractic,* Reiki,* accupuncture,* aroma therapy, etc etc ad nauseum to show the same kind of character and honesty and subject their modalities to the same rigorous and reproducible study. Good job, Bastyr."

-- Dr. Sid Schwab, applauding the serious testing of "alternative" medicine, on his Surgeonsblog

Isn't it strange how the mainstream media is so quiet on how bogus "alternative" medicine is? No big stories on the billions of dollars people are throwing away on nothing. Nothing on colleges trying to promote it. Just a bunch of feel-good, human interest stories with no journalistic integrity attached to them at all.

It's like a conspiracy.

And We Have Another Winner: Dr. Sid Schwab

"Many years ago I watched, drop-jawed, the television commercial of a local chiropractor as he stood by a couch-full of young kids. Recommending monthly preventative adjustments for these four- to six-year-olds, he touted the obvious benefits: look how healthy they are. Not, he seemed to imply, a heart attack among them. Nary a stroke. Probably not even a case of colon cancer. And I wondered: is he stupid enough to believe or is he simply a cynical and dishonest charlatan? I got a partial answer a few months later when a woman arrived in the emergency department, acutely paraplegic. Her chiropractor had continued manipulating her increasing and unresponsive back pain until she became paralyzed. The "doctor" must have known about her history of breast cancer, because he was also her husband.

Until that time, because the theory behind chiropractic is so obviously loony, I'd assumed practitioners all knew it and were simply crooks who'd found a surefire way to separate the credulous from their money. (And yes, I acknowledge that manipulation has a place in certain specific anatomic disorders of the back itself. But using it to treat or prevent systemic disease is nothing but laughable. Except that it's not funny.) Stupid, careless, lacking judgment: yes, the man must have been all that. But unless he hated his wife, I had to conclude he believed in what he was doing.

I still haven't figured it out, and I'm sure I never will. Of what do the cerebral lacunae consist in these people? How can (some) otherwise intelligent people (givers and takers) become convinced of the efficacy of whatever woo they wish? Is truth just too hard to take? At some primordial level, is it just that we need to believe in silly stuff? What is it about humankind that pines for magic, for simplicity, for answers that pave over the painful? Why isn't inquisitiveness universal; doesn't skepticism confer survival benefit? Or would we all be jumping off cliffs if we didn't have mythology? Maybe that's it. Maybe too many skeptics have already jumped.

The frailty, the neediness of the human brain, when stacked against the obvious power of it -- the ability to create, to invent, to inquire -- is a probative paradox. It may be a stretch to write my way from anger about alternatives and chafing at chiropractic, to the death of skeptics and skepticism, but in my mind it's of a piece. I have a friend, a brilliant physician and much more of a scientist than most, who tells me he knows, based on his particular faith, exactly into which level of heaven he will enter; as if he's already done a mapquest search and downloaded the directions. Given that there are about six billion people on the planet who believe something else, and with just as much certainty, I find it amazing. And revelatory. It's a need. It's built in. It's human.

My conclusion is that the desire to believe in certain unprovable things at one time was good for us: when the dangers in the world were mostly external -- volcanoes and saber-tooth tigers -- and the need to organize and stay together was clear, supernatural beliefs were of obvious benefit. And now, as society has gotten impossibly complex, and the dangers are mostly human-generated, it's become a detriment. Rather than helping mankind to cleave together and help one another, magical beliefs -- whether on couches or in the clouds -- are causing us to fall upon one another in hate, in fear, in the unreason that comes from a mind blown by the awful realities we have brought upon ourselves.

Magical thinking is who we are, I guess. If it were only that it serves to enrich some at the expense of others, maybe even make some people feel better, what the hell. If they're only hurting themselves, or the willingly deceived, should I let it go? But they are hurting people, and it's pretty clear that eventually it will hurt me."

-- By Dr. Sid Schwab