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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.
+-----------------------------------------------------------------+
| John Blanton |
| Secretary, North Texas Skeptics |
| blanton@lobby.ti.com |
+-----------------------------------------------------------------+