Saturday, May 15, 2004

Alternative Medicine Outside the Ivory Towers. The formation of CAM departments has legitimatized "alternative medicine." Are the universities now benefiting monetarily from the promotion of CAM as well? Medscape General Medicine™ [Medscape PublicHealth Headlines] This editorial has some good points, I suppose, but they're lost in the bluster.  Note that in the specialties he lists as falling prey to the "chicanery," gastroenterology is nowhere to be found... Germane to the issue, however, is the question of "how far out of our bounds of allopathy can we promote things before we lose the theoretical underpinnings of our specialty?"  How many people can even define allopathy (as distinct from homeopathy, naturopathy, osteopathy, etc.)?  I went to Google for some interesting results...the first of which was this thesis...especially the part about "administration of highly toxic drugs."  But more importantly, allopathy has come to mean different things depending on which side of the debate you're on...We (M.D.s and ?osteopaths to some extent) define it as, essentially, medicine that can be proven to work...Homeopaths, naturopaths, etc. use the original derivation (from "opposite") to set us apart from their more holistic view.  The whole thing makes me dizzy. For now, the theoretical underpinnings of family practice - patient-centered evidence-based care of a bunch of families (my swiss-cheese definition) - seems enough to give me direction...if it's been shown to work, I shouldn't have a lot of heartburn recommending it... 7:17:23 PM