Idiopathic said:
I appreciate the vigilance, but physicians cannot honestly expect to have a monopoly on the healthcare delivery system. Ideally youd like to see this coupled with an initiative to produce research and back up the methodology, but why is a 4-year degree in alternative medicine any less challenging or less valuable. Maybe its scary because we dont know what they learn, but all that will come in time. BTW, this will happen, but hopefully some strong requirements (i.e. must complete the 4 year program, no grandfathering, strict licensure exams) will be met.
These alternative docs have patients, and those patients keep coming to them, otherwise there would not be a demand for this legislation. Whereas you see this as a threat to all physicians, I think the mainstream medical community fears changes like this, mainly because it will force the current FP system to improve its delivery of health care. Having seen plenty of primary care options, I dont necessarily feel that is a bad thing.
As the article says, it's been practiced for over a century in the US. Then they called it snake oil salesmen, now they call it "naturopathic".
They don't use "synthetic" drugs, but "herbals." Well, guess what, boys and girls, "herbals" have had pharmacologically active substances going further back than recorded history. We use them on a daily basis. The boiled bark of the willow tree was used to make a tea that relieved headaches, chest pain and arthritis pain, it was a truely miraculous substance. Today, we don't peel bark off of trees, we go to the grocery story pay a buck and buy a bottle of aspirin. And use it for darned near everything from strokes and heart attacks to bee stings to colon cancer prevention/treatment.
One of the most powerful antineoplastic drugs we know of are taxanes, which stablize microtubules preventing completion of mitosis. These drugs were discovered originally in the pacific yew tree in the late 1980s and the Sierra Club and a few other misguided individual groups decided that we shouldn't kill trees to get taxol to treat ovarian cancer and cut off the supply for several years, until some research scientist found a way to make it from other materials. Now it's a mainstay. Naturalpathy or good empirical science and research?
Abx. A sloppy scientist in a lab has mold growing on his culture plates. Although sloppy, he's observant and notes that moldy plates don't have any bacterial cultures. Hmmm, extract of mold juice becomes b-lactams and now we have penicillins and suddenly our life expectancy doubles because we can cure most bacterial infections. Thank you Dr. Fleming.
Contraception. True story. 27 yo G4P3 finally comes in for follow up to an abnormal pap, has a palpable fundus. UPT positive, and a 26 week uterus. You're not pregnant because a.) you're not doing 'it'? b.) you're doing it but taking precautions? Ans: I was on the pill but my friends told me that it was dangerous to take those "synthetic drugs that upset your metabolism" so I switched to soy estrogens. Ahh, I see, did you know that OCP originally called premarin comes from the urine of pregnant mares? (PREgnant MARe urINe) It's just been purified, standardized and the hormonal and dosing quantified. There are ongoing studies using soy extracts and lycopenes in stabilization of prostate cancer right now...stay tuned for results in several years, but for now, gimme the lupron and radiation/surgery.
And does anybody know that St. Johns Wort really works for depression? Yes, folks, it's natural. It's a natural mono-amine oxidase inhibitor. And, as we are all hopefully taught, MAO inhibitors have lots of drug-drug interactions, but does anyone know what the concentrations in the GNC version of an MAO really are? And while we're at it just why did we switch to SSRIs as a first line antidepressent? Maybe because if you did the study you found that they were as effective and perhaps safer?
I ask, what could be more "natural" than aspirin, extract of mold juice, and horse pis?
So, we want to licence them and give them legitimacy?
...and they only want to do "natural" procedures like natural childbirth, giving potions of undetermined pharmacology at uncertain dosages and "minor" surgery? Well, what happens when the natural childbirth has a failure to progress, the kiddo starts having long deep decels? And my definition of minor surgery is when I'm pointing the knife at someone else. If someone else is pointing the knife at me, then it's not minor, no matter how skilled and how simple the surgery may be.
Licensing of naturopaths? Skilled and diligent though they may be, they are not trained, and perhaps the AMA has gone overboard in demanding that everyone be a "specialist" including GPs taking multiple years of residency instead of the old med school + internship = GP leading the would be "naturopathic doctors" to seek quicker alternative routes. Maybe we need a few more GPs and an opportunity for them to practice unhindered by the need for two additional years of residency, instead.
Licensing of naturopaths? Horse hockey.
