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From: [e-mail]
Subject:      Healthy skepticism
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Date:         Mon, 18 Jan 1993 20:48:16 -0600

The following is a reprint from "The Skeptic", the newsletter of
the North Texas Skeptics.  Free distribution of this is granted,
however, no commercial use should be made without the permission
of the author.
-------------------

                         Healthy Skepticism
                          Medical "Pathies"
By Tim Gorski, M.D.
(Second in a Series)

Unlike homeopathy (discussed in the December  issue),
"naturopathy" is not so much a coherent medical  pseudoscience
but a label for an eclectic approach  constrained by, as its name
implies, "natural" methods, or  methods that can be promoted as
"natural."

But like homeopathy, naturopathy's roots also lie in the
reaction by some physicians of 19th Century reaction against  the
bleedings and purgings of prescientific medicine.  In  this
country, Benedict Lusk is credited as the father of  naturopathy.
A German physician who immigrated to the U.S.  in 1892, Lusk was
a believer in the therapeutic powers of  water.  Adherents of
hydropathy, as it was known, made use  of water almost as if it
were a sacrament in soaks, showers,  and the like.  They often
also advised other measures such  "air baths," exercise, and
dietary practices as a means to  good health.  Lusk opened his
own water-cure facility in New  York City and by 1902 was
operating a school of massage,  chiropractic, and naturopathy.
In 1919 he founded the  American Naturopathic Association.

With the coming of age of scientific medicine, and  especially
the introduction of effective antibiotic agents,  naturopathy, as
well as its other prescientific competitors,  receded.  But
today, with the renewed interest in healthy  living, the
preoccupation of many with ideas about the  effect of
spirituality on health, and a lack of  understanding and
suspicion of science, naturopathy has  found fertile ground for a
comeback.

An N.D. (Doctor of Naturopathy) degree can be had today as a
mail-order item.  But there also exist two 4-year  Naturopathic
Schools.  In an effort to earn some  respectability, these
institutions try to emulate to some  extent the course of studies
offered at reputable medical  schools.  These are the National
College of Naturopathic  Medicine in Portland, Oregon, and the
John Bastyr College of  Naturopathic Medicine in Seattle,
Washington.  Eight states  now permit naturopaths to practice
medicine legally:  Washington, Oregon, Arizona, Connecticut,
Hawaii, Utah,  Florida and Alaska.  The last three require
previous  licensure in another state, however.  There are said to
be  some 800 N.D.s doing business in the U.S. currently, a
little more than half in Washington and Oregon.

Unfortunately, despite their emphasis on good health habits  and
preventive measures, naturopaths often are at odds with  such
practices.  Because of their emphasis on "natural"  healing
methods, for example, they may oppose such public  health
measures as water supply fluoridation and the  vaccination of
children.  Their knowledge of nutrition is,  more often than not,
nutrition pseudoscience, according to  William Jarvis, Ph.D., a
professor of health education at  Loma Linda University and the
President of the National  Council Against Health Fraud.

Naturopaths denigrate the use of medication by practitioners  of
medical science, preferring instead to use herbal  remedies of
various kinds.  N.D. Joe Pizzorno, president of  the John Bastyr
school, for example, says that strep throat  is caused by a
breakdown of the body's defenses since "if  you do routine
cultures of the population, 90% have strep in  their throat, but
it doesn't cause infection" (Medical  Tribune, 10/13/88). He
therefore treats strep throat with  Vitamin C and the herb
goldenseal, because berberine, an  alkaloid found in the herb, is
purported to kill strep. Such  claims and practices are simply
false, and can be  exceedingly dangerous since untreated strep
infections can  cause heart and kidney damage.  Parallel
situations exist  with respect to asymptomatic gonorrhea,
syphilis, and even  HIV (the virus which causes AIDS) infection.
A naturopath  would presumably be uninterested in the presence of
these  pathogens, whether eradicable by such simple measures as
penicillin or not.

Naturopaths claim that herbal products are better because
they're found in nature, whereas synthetic materials are
"chemicals the body's never been exposed to before," and so  are
more dangerous according to Pizzorno.  This assumes that  every
plant product on the planet was in the immediate  environment of
our African primate ancestors, of course.  It's also a bit like
saying that we should be restricting  our building materials to
grass, mud, and rocks since steel,  glass and concrete weren't
present during the course of  human evolution.

William Bennett, M.D., a Cambridge, MA internist and editor  of
the Harvard Medical School Health Letter, puts it this  way:
"regarding herbs ... as somehow different from drugs  strikes me
as just nonsense.  Either the herb has no effect,  in which case
why bother, or it has an effect, in which case  it's a drug."
Naturopaths claim that purifying a drug from  a plant material
makes it more toxic, which is why they  prefer to use the whole
herb in their treatments.  Bennett  says: "That's a piece of 19th
Century romantic philosophy."  The fact is that purification of
something like digoxin from  the foxglove plant makes dosages
safer and more  standardized.  Purification also removes the
therapeutically  inert materials which can nonetheless have toxic
effects of  their own.  Naturopath Pizzorno also claims that
"many of  the herbs have synergistic agents that work together to
produce the effect you're looking for."  But the fact is  that no
one has identified such "synergistic agents."

Despite their antipathy to drugs, naturopaths have fought  for
and won the right to prescribe in the states of  Washington and
Oregon.  Some also practice obstetrics and  perform minor
surgery.  And while they claim to be an  "alternative" to
high-priced conventional medicine, they  have also actively
pursued the right to bill insurance  companies and other
third-party payers for their services.

It's also difficult to see just what the significance of
naturopathy's efforts to appear more mainstream really  amount to
in practical terms.  For other than their general  preference for
"natural" methods, N.D.s may make use of just  about any
"alternative" medical approaches.  These include  colored light
therapy, homeopathy, iridology, "zone  pressure" (pressing with a
finger, hand, or toe near the  area of concern), acupuncture,
massage therapy, and colonic  irrigation (enema therapy).  If the
4-year colleges teach  any science, it doesn't seem to have an
effect.  Many  naturopaths are little more than jacks of all
quackeries. In defense of naturopathy, proponents point to their
frequent "success" in handling minor illnesses, infections  that
are less than life-threatening, and chronic medical  problems for
which medical science can offer no cures  either.  Undoubtedly,
lavishing attention and "natural  healing" therapies of some kind
on people suffering from  disorders with a psychosomatic
component is likely to  benefit some of them.  But it's hardly an
honest business to  mislead people in this way, or for those
interested in  alleviating disease to delude themselves into
believing in  pseudoscience as a means of accounting for their
successes. It probably happens frequently that practitioners of
medical  science attribute a success to their methods of
treatment  that would have occurred without them.  But at least
the  methods themselves are to a greater or lesser degree
connected with a body of facts and reasoning that support  them.
The ideas and practices of naturopaths are not, which  makes them
a threat to the unwary public.

This information is provided by the D/FW  Council Against Health
Fraud. For more information, or to  report suspected health
fraud, please contact the Council at  Box 202577, Arlington, TX
76007, or call metro 214-263-8989.

Dr. Gorski is a practicing physician,  chairman of the D/FW
Council Against Health Fraud and an NTS  Technical Advisor.


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| John Blanton                                                    |
| Secretary, North Texas Skeptics                                 |
| [e-mail]                                            |
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