Quack medicine- "wellness" almost killed a child- and yet regulations are still "voluntary"

[plumandolive]

Alternative medicines are to be "regulated"- but the regulation is "voluntary"
What on earth is the point of that?

voluntary regulation

And what on earth has blooming Prince Charles got to do with it?

"wellness" almost kills 11 yr old

chemotherapy

But they're all "regulated" deaths so no need to fret

actually that is a point - I really object to a lot of the mysticism and hippiness being attached to any form of complementary/alternative medicine - a lot of the practitioners themselves are to blame for this - I have met some real nutters! but it is, to my mind, a case of not throwing out the baby with the bathwater - some doctors are nutters too but people don't discount the entire medical profession because of them.

Another analogy (which no doubt someone will berate me for) is that CAM is a bit like women in business - it has to prove itself far more than Western medicine to be half as accepted. Not all Western medicine works all the time, despite extensive trials (randomised double-blind placebo controlled etc); in fact, quite a lot of it doesn't work anythign like all the time. But because it is conventional medicine it is mostly accepted without question - "ok, this statin/painkiller/anti-depressant/blood pressure tablet isn't working for you - let's try a different one." Patient tries a different one. Place that in the CAM field - "ok, this homoeopathic/chinese herb/supplement isn't working for you - let's try a different one" Patient accuses practitioner of charlatanism, not knowing what they are doing, ripping them off etc.

Hi thumb.. doctors don't have to be nutters to make mistakes though just tired, or not very good at their jobs, or inexperienced in a particular area, or swayed by the perks a drug company has offered them, or overworked.. happens a lot. But you're right it doesn't lead to the whole profession being called charlatans.
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Good point, Thumbwitch. The expectations are very high with CAM medicine, and if it doesn't work then it is dismissed as nonsense.

My DH was finally convinced that there must be some truth in the whole homeopathy business when his sister's horse was ill and it responded well to the homeopathic medicines given. His comment was, "Well the horse could not have just imagined it, could he? So much for the placebo effect"

Basically, conventional medicine causes so much more mortality and morbidity than non conventional therapy that these arguments are all a bit empty.

yes but you see stuffitllama, that doesn't matter to the combatants (sure that's not the word I really want) because conventional medicine has all been proven to work by RDBPC trials, whereas CAM is all just made up stuff - the REAL problem is not whether it works or not, not whether people are harmed by it or not, it's whether or not people are being RIPPED OFF.

My dp is a registered osteopath and underwent a huge amount of rigorous and exacting training (at least 4 years), is obliged to complete a lot of CPD and is answerable to the General Osteopathy Council. This is not alternative medicine it is complementary and he has a good relationship with the local doctors as they refer to him. He is highly trained in anatomy and physiology and regularly refers patients to their gp's or consultants for conventional treatment. He is trained to be hyper-aware of any dangerous ailments and never takes risks.

He is also qualified in Chinese acupuncture and is a registered physiotherapist. He is currently doing a masters in osteopathy.

My point being (apart from bragging about him) is that he is a complementary therapist yet by no means a charlatan, he come from it from an educated point of view. If this new regulatory body helps to differentiate between professional people like dp and dangerous nutters then it is a good thing.

Camenere
So practitioners such as your DH welcome the new regulations then? And are keen to sign up?

I don't know exactly what he thinks about it (I haven't spoken to him about it) but I know for a fact that he would sail through any qualifications or standards required to be on it.

stuffiyllama- that's a really impressive and quite scary ammount of suff you've given.
I'm sceptical about conventional medicine too sometimes...drug companies etc.

But I don't think two wrongs etc....

Carmenere- there's definitely a huge distinction to make between complimentary and alternative. Thanks for drawing attention to it.

Thumbwich- thanks for that explanation about electical impulses. I'll think of it inthat way then...although it still sounds mystical and spiritual rather than scientific in many descriptions.

thumb

Carmenere - but your DH wouldn't need to sign up really - he is already a member of a professional body with exacting standards and code of ethics, and he has a protected title.

Whoever said that CAM practitioners should all sign up for professional bodies doesn't know too much about them - there are frequently more than one "professional body" available in each therapy - which one should you choose? None of them are statutorily regulated, all of them have their own code of ethics/ standards, all of them require a subsription.
If there is ONE body (e.g. the CNHC) that can be taken as the gold standard of professional bodies to belong to, then that is better than the numerous little ones.

PlainOldPeachy, "Was it an amazing medicine technique? Probably not; soothing massage from an experienced practitioner quite probably"

And no harm done. It's like chicken soup. If you're ill you want someone to tell you it's going to be ok, to make you soup and get your pillows just right.
I'm all for massages, burning scented candles and so on because it makes you feel good and I suspect that feeling good helps you cope with the illeness. Anyway feeling good is an end in itself.
I just wish they'd describe themselves as 'amazingly good at massage' or something.

Trouble is lots of alternative medicine practitioners will claim (or carefully make it sound like they are claiming) that they can cure diseases by waving crystals or reading the ley lines and some people will fall for that.

Stuffitllama, I don't think mistakes made using medicine that does work justifies using medicine that doesn't. I share your dismay at the number of mistakes though. I feel like the medical profession is devolving so soon the distinction may not matter.

We keep hearing that they are trying new ways to encourage medical staff to wash their hands ffs. What is this? the Dark Ages?

onager great post

I think differently --- I think it justifies trying medicine that doesn't kill many thousands of people every year. I think it justifies giving it more funds for research than it already has. I think it justifies giving it more than the term "quack".

Don't forget these are not all "mistakes", these deaths -- not by any means. Look at the chemotherapy story. That was the regulated and recommended treatment, not a tired or inexperienced doctor, or a nutter, or faulty equipment.

Am not with ley lines and crystals but am definitely with homeopathy and nutritional therapy.

I'm not sure that the medical profession does itself any favours in saying that everything they do has been tested and trailed, because many things have not been. However all new drugs and therapies do have to go through trials before they are approved in practice, and this has been the case for a long time now. However many treatments were derived a long time ago, and some have little evidence behind them (especially in mental health - there is still a huge amount we don't know about the mind). Many of these are being weeded out, partly because when money is tight there is a stronger push towards only funding things that can be shown to work.

Of course clinicians make mistakes (I used to work in clinical risk, so know this very well), but then to err is to be human, and it is likely that if there was the same sort of volume of treatments given by the alternative sector there would be a similar error rate. That's not to say that time and effort should not be spent on trying to get it right, and understanding and rectifying what went wrong. Nor that it is not a tragedy when things do go wrong.

With the chemotherapy, it should be remembered that chemotherapy is the administration of poison. I think more thought should be put into deciding whether or not to embark on course of chemo, as often the benefits are slim and the side effects horrendous. But I don't think that we are very good at accepting that sometimes even though there might be something that sometimes offers hope the best approach is not to go down that route.

One thing I think that people forget with alternative medicines is that herbs and things can also be toxic. Just because they are natural does not mean they are safe. Indeed many medicines are based on plants and minerals, including things like digitalis (for heart attacks, but can kill you) and some of the most deadly poisons are natural (like arsenic).

One problem with some of the more holistic therapies is that the holistic approach almost certainly is a part of the therapy, and traditional research methods are not good at taking this into account. I think all therapies would be wise to have at least associations with standards that their patients/clients could access, otherwise the very good practitioners get affected by the poor reputations of the charlatans.

What a thoughtful post Nooka.

Unfortunately the calls for regulation are also tainted because they are associated with attempts by the pharmceutical market to retrieve control and lost ground in the health "industry".

For example, the CODEX plan for vitamin and mineral supplements, which would require them to undergo the same rigorous controls and double blind trials as pharmaceutical drugs, stipulating upper potency levels which many nutritional therapists regard as useless, and forcing food supplements into the drug category.

The cost of the trials would mean that effectively only large pharmaceutical companies would be able to test and market vitamin and mineral supplements. As vitamins and minerals are not "patentable" as such, their cost is relatively low and many people use them to keep themselves away from doctors and drugs.

This move would hand over control of their availability and potency to those whose interest is in reducing their availability and potency, and is driven by profit. The idea that they are aimed at protecting the consumer is a facade.

but massage is a technique onager which has many variants: cranial osteo could well be taken as the name for one of them! (I know a little, trsined in absic amssage as part of my beauty therapy course years back).

CO is manipulation of the head and sacral joint. That's what it is- massage is manipulation.

Is the issue therefore th practitioner offereing somethinga b bit oo-er mystic or the client hoping to get something more?

My experience is maybe the latter.

I am all for a register I think: but it won't stop the issue of people wanting mroe than they are going to receieve. The latter part is perhaps part of what makes people yell Quack! whren they don't get something they should never have expected.

Education? We need to know that CO offers XYZ; a Chiro offers ABC- that's where the register comes in in terms of definition but I still think you'll get hiccups because people will look at the cert of reg on the wall and not the meaning IYSWIM.

Personally I advocate a holistic apprioach that combines mainstream medicine with complementary therapies- which is indeed the idea of the Complementary term as I was taught it certainly. I've witnees cancer patients suffer relief from side effects of chemo and cancer treatment etc when these are applied well (ordema for example). It's a shame there are quacks out there- if used properly it would be fantastic.

I listened to a piece about the regulation of alternative/complementary medicine the other day, and whilst it will be voluntary, it also says the information will be made avaialble to clients....so, in the long run one would think that clients will come to chose registred practicioners and therefore will force practicioners to registre and be regulated in order to have a business.
So, in a way I can see how it would work in the long term.

I assume in order to be registred it is not just a matter of the practicioner to pay a yearly fee, but it would also mean they would have to give proof of expereince/education/and continual professional developement...similar to what nurses/OT's/Midwives...etc...have to proof?

what stuffitllama says is true - a proportion of the adverse events and iatrogenic responses to drugs are NOT through mistakes but through routine prescription - but perhaps the person had an idiopathic reaction to the drug, or perhaps they were on a cocktail of drugs and a reaction occurred between the drugs (like the viagra effect on people with heart problems - that wasn't picked up in trials, only from adverse reactions; similarly the Vioxx and Celebrex effect on patients with heart problems)

GPs often don't even report adverse events, they just change the medication for another variant, which indicates that adverse reactions to drugs may be severely under-reoported.

On the massage front - can I just say that not all massage is softly softly floaty floaty there there betcha feel better now don't you.. my own clients would take strong issue with this! My clients come back because they know that what I do addresses their muscular aches and pains, not because they feel "all relaxed and soothed".

I'm sure that big pharma could quite easily buy up a few vitamins and minerals type companies. In fact I'd be surprised if they haven't already to be honest. I'd guess however that apart from the formulations, most vitamins etc are without patent and therefore fairly low profit margin. Whether taking supplements etc makes any difference to your overall health and therefore consumption of medicines has yet to be proved. Certainly very few trials have shown more than a fairly limited effect (ie taking extra vitamin C does nothing to prevent colds, although it can be helpful once you have the cold).

I do agree that the testing regime required for drugs would be inappropriate, but I don't think the supplement market should be as unregulated as it is at present. Some of the claims made (not always by those selling the vitamins) are frankly rather ridiculous, based on tiny trials and poor science, and proffered by quasi scientists. I've yet to meet a dietician who though that there was any place for vitamin supplements for any but those with dietary or specific health problems. Personally I think people should pay more attention to eating good diets and taking exercise than to popping pills.

But then my experience has been influenced by watching my mother buy and eventually reject whole shelves of supplements in the hope that it would help her arthritis. Not that conventional medicine has done much better

Does anyone know if the practitioners will have to prove that they actually know what they are talking about? Do they have to show that they have done a course?

Saying that OC is just a nice relaxing massage does not explain the effects that it can have on, eg. a baby. Even the most relaxing massage is not going to have a long term effect, but I have often heard of babies who hardly slept until the parents took them to an OC. Afterwards they slept well, not just for one night but from then onwards.

As I mentioned earlier, it is common in Germany for GPs to do courses in CAM. This means that it is truly complementary medicine and much safer for the patients. I don't know if this is something that might happen in UK.

it is regulated nooka.

it's regulated by food regulations