Patients, doctors embracing alternative medicine in battle against cancer? Not so much.

[SidDithers]

http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2014/04/15/patients-doctors-embracing-alternative-medicine-in-battle-against-cancer-not-so-much/

In the well over nine years that I’ve been blogging, there’s one tried and true, completely reliable topic to blog about, one that I can almost always find. I’m referring, of course, to the credulous news story about pseudoscience. The pseudoscience can be quackery, creationism, anthropogenic global warming denialist arguments, or whatever; inevitably, there will be some journalist, somewhere, who will fall for it and write a story that basically toes the line that supporters of pseudoscience like to see. Given that I pay the most attention to medicine, I notice this phenomenon the most when applied to quackery and, as I like to call it, quackademic medicine.

Two messages are constant in such credulous stories about the infiltration of quackery into mainstream medicine. The first message is that it’s not quackery, even though you and I know that it is. The second message is that it’s becoming enormously popular, embraced not just by patients but by physicians, the latter of whom are putting their imprimatur of medical authority on these modalities. The subtext to these two messages is that all these “alternative” treatments, this “complementary and alternative medicine” (CAM), this “integrative medicine” is something new and wonderful that should be not just tolerated but celebrated. A perfect example of such lazy, credulous reporting popped up in my Google Alerts yesterday. At first I thought I’d ignore it, but it kept irritating me, to the point that I decided, what the heck, it’s deserving of some not-so-Respectful Insolence. And so it shall receive some.

The article, by Elizabeth Payne, appeared in The Ottawa Citizen under the title, Patients, doctors embracing alternative medicine in battle against cancer: Naturopathy, acupuncture among techniques increasingly being used alongside established treatments. Yes, I’m sure regular readers can tell that such a title is akin to waving the proverbial red cape in front of the bull. Unfortunately, the story doesn’t “disappoint.” It’s every bit the mess I expected it to be when I read the title. It begins with the story of a woo-loving patient named Jennifer Miriguay, who is in the middle of her second battle with breast cancer and wanted to “take control of her health.” Man, I hate that cliche, but it’s a cliche that seems to appear in just about every one of these articles about the infiltration of quackery into mainstream medicine. Why is it that embracing quackery is “taking control of your health”? On a strictly trivial level, I suppose that it is, but in exactly the wrong way. Think of it this way. Taking control of your health does not require embracing quackery, but the unrelenting message from those who promote quackery is that it does and infiltrates the discourse about CAM or “integrative medicine,” or whatever the term du jour is. This embrace of quackery led to:

Her appointment with a naturopath at the Ottawa Integrative Cancer Centre was a “watershed,” she says. But Miriguay said she feared her oncologist wouldn’t be as positive about her embrace of naturopathy and acupuncture while being treated for metastatic breast cancer.

She was wrong. Her doctor didn’t balk, telling her he wished all his patients would take diet and nutrition as seriously.

The 41-year-old mother of two is part of a quiet, but significant, shift that is breaking down walls between traditional medicine and complementary therapies for treating cancer.

It’s a movement cancer patients have long pushed for, often to be met with negative or uncertain responses from their doctors. But that is changing. And a nondescript Hintonburg clinic is part of the shift.

More at link.

Sid

[pnwmom]

1. Acupuncture isn't being used as a cancer treatment, but for the pain and other effects

of cancer and its treatment. And it's being used at top centers across the country, including the Mayo Clinic and Memorial Sloan Kettering.

[SidDithers]

2. A poster in the comments of the article in the OP asks the right questions...

Denice Walter

April 15, 2014
When people feel helpless, they want to believe that their own actions can somehow counteract their current state: offering whimsy-based substitutes for SBM seems to take advantage of them. Shouldn’t ‘psycho-social’ intervention address that issue?

I wonders and I wonders….
if there are data which indicate how much
- the addition of woo-ful specialities contributes to patients’ choice of using a particular facility
- which woo is most lucrative
- how much woo contributes to the bottom line: i.e. profit

Wouldn’t that be ironic?
If SB facilities added altie nonsense in order to make money.
I thought that they were already rolling in it.

Maybe the Mayo Clinic, or Sloan-Kettering, is doing it to make money from woo. In that setting, the woo doesn't harm or interfere with the real cancer treatments that they're providing, and the revenue generated can go toward helping to fund real, science-based treatments.

Sid

[pnwmom]

3. Except that these institutions are also carrying out research to test

the effectiveness of their treatments. Sloan Kettering, for example, is in the midst of a double blind study testing acupuncture for reducing swelling in the arms of breast cancer patients, after an initial study showed it had positive results.

The NIH has been funding studies of acupuncture in institutions across the country.

[Bluenorthwest]

4. The ACA expansion of Medicaid covers acupuncture, Sid and you heartily supported the ACA

and opposed all criticism and objections to it. So in effect, you put your labor toward providing acupuncture to tens of thousands of Oregonians, so thanks. And you might want to write to Obama and say 'As a Canadian who is not a medical professional of any kind, let me offer you my advice.' I'm sure you will be warmly received.
I use acupuncture from time to time at the recommendation of a seriously major physician, heads a pain management department. Don't you teach math to school kids or something? Not heading any chronic pain department or anything these days are you Sid?
I saw the tar drop post today, it was very interesting. I thought to myself between when that tar started dropping and today, 'medical science' has changed so much that it no longer teaches that gay people are diseased and can be cured with ice water or electricity or lobotomy, it no longer diagnosis women with 'wandering womb' and it recently stopped claiming that autism was cause by 'distant mothering'. So when that tar started it's course, those who parroted all that 'science' had to say sounded much like Michelle Bachman, curing the gay and blaming women for all that is wrong with their children. It's what 'science said'. They used to bind gay people and leave them in ice water baths for hours, to 'cure the disorder of homosexuality' they did this with peer review and full certainty of their correctness. Some in that community have learned not to indulge in foolish nothing that what they 'know' is an absolute.
Others are willing to wipe the blood off the scalpel after a few 'cure the gay lobotomies' and instantly resume claiming they are without error.

[SidDithers]

5. Wut?...nt

Sid

[etherealtruth]

6. Here's an interesting link from "Science Based Medicine"

http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/uff-da-the-mayo-clinic-shills-for-snake-oil/

The implied question: Do the world’s leading medical experts know which are the “best complementary” practices, or even if any of them work?

The straight answer: No. Most “alternative” or “complementary” practices are known not to work or are vanishingly unlikely to work. Exceptions are a few botanical medicines, but these are overhyped and are disadvantageous compared to purified, precisely dosed, well-studied pharmaceuticals. Other claimed exceptions, such as rational diets, exercise, manual techniques for musculoskeletal complaints, and relaxation techniques, are not “alternative” at all.