Alternative "Medicine" -- The Illusion Of Control

HuckleB

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Mon Oct-17-11 11:01 PM
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Alternative "Medicine" -- The Illusion Of Control

http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2011/10/alternative_medicine_the_illusion_of_con.php?utm_source=networkbanner&utm_medium=link

"We humans like control. Actually, we need to feel as though we are in control. Perhaps that's why, when we aren't in control--can't be in control, for whatever reason--we instinctively seek ways of being more in control, or at least of feeling as though we are in control. I've often wondered if providing the illusion of control is part of the reason for the appeal of quackery alternative medicine, or, as it's become known these days, "complementary and alternative medicine" (CAM) or "integrative medicine" (IM). That, and the human need for certainty.

Think about it, taking cancer (my specialty) as the prototypical example. What do those nasty, reductionistic, science-based doctors tell a patient when confronted with a patient with cancer? Even for an early stage, eminently treatable cancer, we rarely use the word "cure." We speak in terms of five- and ten-year survival and percentage chance of relapse. We almost never, ever tell a patient that we can definitely cure them. That's because pretty much all of us have been gobsmacked and saddened by cases like that of a woman with a 1 cm breast cancer with no lymph node metastases, favorable histology, and positive estrogen receptor status who came back three years after apparently successful treatment with stage IV disease. The frequency of this sort of thing may only be in the single digit percentage range, but if you see hundreds of patients a year you will see a few of these patients every year, and you will be humbled. Even more humbling is when a patient asks me what caused her cancer. As much as I can pontificate on the molecular and genetic derangements that are associated with cancer, how cancer cells escape the normal controls that keep normal cells in check, only growing when they're supposed to and then stopping, when it comes to the question "Why?" I can never tell the patient what it is she really wants to hear. That is the cause of her cancer and whether there was anything she could do to prevent it. In most cases, the answers are, to the patient at least, maddeningly vague and hand-waving.

Contrast that to the quack. There's a famous saying about surgeons, "Sometimes in error, never in doubt." With quacks, the saying should be, "Always in error, never in doubt." However, it's that "never in doubt" part that can suck in patients who are normally skeptical and hard-headed rationalists in other areas of their lives. For instance, when a quack like Tullio Simoncini tells patients that cancer is a fungus and that treating it with injections of sodium bicarbonate (i.e., common baking soda) straight into the tumor will cure it, a surprising number of patients believe. Ditto the late Hulda Clark, who proclaimed that the cause of all cancer is a common liver fluke and that she could "zap" it with her "Zapper." Indeed, she even proclaimed that she had the "cure for all cancers." Never mind that as a piece of technology her Zapper looked less convincing than a Scientology E-meter. Or take Robert O. Young, who tells patients that the cause of cancer is "acidity," that cancer is actually a reaction to cells "spoilt by acid"; and that they can cure their cancer by "alkalinizing" their body with a special diet and, of course, supplements. Regardless of how utterly ridiculous his quackery is, intelligent woo-prone women like Kim Tinkham fall for it and pay the price with their lives.

What the quacks give, I've found, is both certainly and control. Well, they actually don't give patients real certainty and control. Rather, they provide the illusion of certainty and control. Of course, there is a dark side to this message. In fact, Robert O. Young, as goofy as he looks and as goofy as he comes across when you see him on video, is a master at providing a false sense of control, as he demonstrates in a post on his blog I saw the other day entitled Health and Fitness Is A Choice Just As Sickness and Disease Is A Choice. Seldom have I seen the attitude of quacks laid out so baldly.

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This spells out what is happening in health care and "alternative health care," but the analogy goes to politics and the ugliness of the GOP, too.