Exposing Quackery In Medical Education

[HuckleB]

http://doctorrw.blogspot.com/2008/01/exposing-quackery-in-medical-education.html

"Academic medical woo (maybe we should start calling it quackademic medicine) has, in recent weeks, received increased coverage in the blogosphere and beyond. I’m encouraged by this groundswell of interest. Medical education needs a good Flexnerian housecleaning. What better tribute could be paid to Abraham Flexner a century after his seminal report? If Flexner could see what’s happening in academic medicine today he would be appalled. He was not in sympathy with integrative medicine. Wikipedia has this to say about the impact of the Flexner Report: Medical schools that offered training in various disciplines including eclectic medicine, physiomedicalism, naturopathy and homeopathy, were told either to drop these courses from their curriculum or lose their accreditation and underwriting support. A few schools resisted for a time, but eventually all complied with the Report or shut their doors.

...

Soon after the Flexner Report and for decades thereafter medical education and practice gradually became more scientific, long before Guyatt and colleagues coined the term evidence based medicine. (I reviewed some of the history of twentieth century medicine’s scientific progress in a recent post here). Ironically, in fact, it was about the time the evidence based medicine movement was birthed in 1992 that pseudoscience under the rubric of complementary and alternative medicine was getting its foot in the door of medical schools. Since then medical education has turned its back on Flexner’s warnings and devolved from its scientific underpinnings.

If there’s any chance to expunge quackery promotion from academic medicine it has to start with exposure. Recent blog and media reactions have been modestly encouraging. Here’s a roundup of the past few weeks along with some observations.

Kevin, in typical pithy style, nailed it by pointing out that the infiltration of woo is weakening the credibility of academic medicine and damaging the evidence based medicine movement. His post was titled A step backward for academic medicine. Indeed academic medicine is moving backward, but I would characterize it as more of a slide down a slippery slope, a slide that’s picking up speed.

..."


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There are many people who push health care providers to move away from evidence based and science based medicine, because they've read or heard some anecdotal evidence. Alas, too many medical schools are going along for the ride.

[bemildred]

1. +1.

Money corrupts.

[dtexdem]

2. CAM should be subject to rigorous scientific study, just as allopathy should be and increasingly is.

The problem is that many proponents of CAM don't want this, rather want "alternative" means of assessment. That is b.s. Anything wanting recognition as good medicine needs to undergo the most rigorous clinical trials possible.

[bemildred]

3. Selling snake oil has always been easy and profitable.

It's not proper to any particular part of the health care business.

What annoys me is that we are on our own, there is nobody one can really trust, nobody who is not financially interested in our "health".

[MedicalAdmin]

4. I am not a fan of the Flexner report.

But then again I am skeptical of all corporate paid for reports....

[HuckleB]

5. LOL!

Yeah, that Carnegie Foundation is so disreputable.

Meanwhile, we must trust in the snake oil salespeople of the world!

[MedicalAdmin]

7. You can trust the corps. I'll trust the research. n/t

[HuckleB]

8. Your response makes no sense whatsoever.

But thanks for making such a ridiculous assumption!

:rofl:

[MedicalAdmin]

9. I made no such assumption. You said that you support the flexner report,

and yet you seem to know little of it's history or corporate sponsorship. Either you follow the evidence or you don't. That is the only assumption I make and I didn't make it of you.

It is likely that we are basically aligned regarding research, but maybe not. I take nothing at face value, including peer review. What about you.

http://www.ted.com/talks/marco_tempest_the_magic_of_truth_and_lies_on_ipods.html

[HuckleB]

13. You're both putting words in my mouth, and continuing to make a sketchy claim.

Certainly, you're offering no context whatsoever.

[MedicalAdmin]

19. I have supplied no words attributed to you.

Which claim do you refer to?

[HuckleB]

20. I see that games are all you have to offer.

Boring. :boring:

[MedicalAdmin]

22. Sorry about that.

It's just that I don't trust corporations.

I make no comment on the current state but the reason the Flexner report was commissioned was to focus medicine in the US on the German model of pharaceutical intervention and long hospital stays. Both the Carnegie foundation (Rockefeller) and the AMA of that time were rife with corruption.

Was good done, yes. There were huge problems including diploma mills, but I still look at the report as a work of a political hitman. His job wasn't to strive for scientific efficacy,, but rather to support the very same type of therapies that the backers of those organizations were investing heavily in.

If you think the Flexner report is a white as the driven snow and that large corporate and banking interests would NEVER stoop so low as to use foul means to achieve their ends, then I would like to sell you a ticket to ride a street car in LA, the city with the best public transit system in the world .... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_American_streetcar_scandal

My comment wasn't on the many valid (and several invalid points)that an old corporate sponsored document contain nor to knock down you obvious preference of evidence based medicine (which is great for acute care BTW), but rather to point out that I distrust anything that a corporations says. I don't find this to be unreasonable. You may disagree.

You may go back to napping now. :hide:

[HuckleB]

24. It's just that you are playing games.

Sorry to cut to the chase.

Generalizations like the one you're offering lead to nothing but ignorance.

[xchrom]

6. invisible rec. nt

[laconicsax]

10. x2

Some people really don't like facts.

[HuckleB]

16. ouch.

[HysteryDiagnosis]

11. Unrecced for the BS factor. No explanations necessary. n/t

[HuckleB]

12. In other words, you don't like reality, so unrec it.

:rofl:

[Name removed]

14. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[HuckleB]

15. And, yet again, you post meaningless ad hominem nonsense.

:rofl:

[Liberal Veteran]

17. Your lack of trust in alternative medicine is like due to an overabundance of yellow bile.

I know a friend with some leeches that can take care of that for you.

:P

[HuckleB]

18. Don't be talking smack about leeches.

Why I've got a small, selected study that proves that leeches are God's gift to mankind!

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18484250

[bemildred]

21. PATHOLOGIES OF YELLOW BILE:

As an effete humor, Choleric pathologies aren't so much those of deficiency, but rather of excess, aggravation and morbidity. Unfortunately, the abuses of modern life, especially dietary, give plenty of opportunities for this aggravation and morbidity to occur.

Yellow bile, being hot and dry, is most prone to aggravations of excess heat. Most specifically, this refers to oxidation, which is a burning or charring of the humor by excess metabolic heat. Heat and dryness can also unduly thicken or solidify bile, causing stagnation, obstruction and stone formation.

Yellow bile can also be amalgamated with, or corrupted by, other humors. Of these, phlegm is the most common offender. Morbid forms of yellow bile are also produced as a breakdown product from the putrefaction of blood. Yellow bile, if charred or oxidized enough, will be burnt black and turned into morbid black bile.

Yellow bile is hot, sharp and caustic; it is also light, subtle and penetrating. Its subtle vapors can penetrate every nook and cranny of the organism, causing sallow, jaundiced, feverish, irritable, inflammatory, choleric conditions on a systemic level, or anywhere in the body.

http://www.greekmedicine.net/pathology/Pathologies_of_Yellow_Bile.html

[laconicsax]

23. Vapors! LOL!!!

:rofl: