Accused of being a closet allopath....

[Seth Joo]

My main failure to comprehend with OMM is that I don't think it's reasonable even when it does work. You do OMM for like 10 minutes on a patient and make their pain or dysfunction lessen for a day. This is not reasonable to compare to that of say a physical therapist who is committed to doing therapy all day and the patient can have multiple sessions without disrupting my capacity to see patients with more serious concerns and needs.

I find this whole episode of a student being ridiculed for being a "closeted Allopath" ridiculous when in the real world 95 percent of practicing DOs are "closeted Allopaths" that do not practice any form of OMM whatsoever, many students themselves do not touch OMM after the second year of medical school. And its us DOs that are more under the microscope than our MD colleagues in the real world by patients and by the medical community as to whether we are sufficient doctors. A professor at Hopkins several years ago completely trashed the profession in his article in Forbes, a DO wrote a more mildly worded response to that article:
Article by Professor Salzberg
http://www.forbes.com/sites/sciencebiz/2010/10/27/osteopaths-versus-doctors/
Salzberg started his article saying that he believed that there were some DOs that were superior to MDs but later stated when he would seek medical attention it would not be from a DO but from an MD, wow. The title of his article is insulting enough. Dr. Salzberg briefly mentions Dr. Weil, but then starts mentioning Dr. Mercola and uses it as a focal point to criticize Osteopathic Medicine.

The response:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/larry-malerba/osteopathic-doctors_b_1460022.html
This was written by a DO, and published two years later but the title of it itself is self deprecating. I really started to grind my teeth when Dr. Malerba tried to explain to Huffington Post readers that a DO is like a regular physician and a chiropractor combined.

Professor Salzberg has appointments at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Engineering, and Public Health, his words however damaging have a lot of weight.

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[Drrrrrr. Celty]

We have a problem in osteopathic medicine in regard to these holistic osteopaths who are anti-science and endanger patients, Sherrli Tennepenny and Mercola must be directly refuted and directly cited by the AOA and their schools and lose any right to claim that they are physicians.

 

[Seth Joo]

We have a problem in osteopathic medicine in regard to these holistic osteopaths who are anti-science and endanger patients, Sherrli Tennepenny and Mercola must be directly refuted and directly cited by the AOA and their schools and lose any right to claim that they are physicians.

What Professor Salzberg is saying is that many DOs as a whole are anti-science, he particularly cites the curriculum taught at DO schools, although he cites a famous MD who pushes holistic care, Dr. Weil, who is a Harvard educated MD, it is clear he has a very negative view of the Osteopathic profession. The title of his article says it all, "Osteopaths vs Doctors" which he later edited to "Osteopathic Physicians vs Doctors", both are very insulting.

Dr. Malerba published a response to Dr. Salzberg but his response was weak, and its title was self deprecating. Dr. Malerba lost the argument when he started saying that Osteopathic Physicians are like have the same skills as MDs and Chiropractors, the latter had me grinding my teeth, because he clearly wrote a very poorly worded response.

In a debate Dr. Salzberg would rip Dr. Malerba to pieces.

 

[meliora27]

DO's don't have the exclusive right to claim quackery. Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you Andrew Wakefield, M.D., a quacks quack...

Here is a charlatan of the highest degree:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Wakefield

 

[Seth Joo]

DO's don't have the exclusive right to claim quackery. Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you Andrew Wakefield, M.D., a quacks quack...

Here is a charlatan of the highest degree:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Wakefield

Also Dr. Oz but still MDs do not get much backlash, because of people like Mercola, DOs get a lot of backlash.

 

[meliora27]

I think there are some very legitimate uses of OMT and with more and more research into anatomy and physiology, I hope that this bears true. Cranial and Chapman's aside, perhaps one day DO's will no longer "own" manual medicine.

Perhaps in the future, good, quality research will support the OMT and it will be a standard tool in the armamentarium of physicians treating MSK complaints, MD and DO alike, or a specialized skill learned in post-graduate PMR training.

 

[kalat]

The fact is the osteopathic medicine is having its penultimate identity crisis. It's borne of one and evolved to two parts: osteopathy and medicine. The incoming students want to practice more medicine than osteopathy. As such, as more students graduate, on the whole, the profession becomes less osteopathic. Set aside the philosophical tropes and mental gymnastics, and you will realize that very few osteopathic students or physicians would accept exclusively the practice of osteopathy in lieu of medicine. Why is this? What is the distinction? Medicine has long since incorporated the efficacious parts of osteopathy as medicine. So, osteopathy has grown old, tired, and redundant. It has necessarily revised itself into pretending primary care, rural medicine, and holistic patient approach are its monopoly. The degree (or rather, the letters DO) will be the last bastion of osteopathy, and rightly, it's all that's left.

The profession is clearly not capable of having a serious conversation about this, despite the obvious fact it is and has been being absorbed and assimilated slowly. The real question is what happens when this reaches its logical conclusion.