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You are here: Home / Economics / Grifters Gonna Grift / Annals Of Grift, Chapter [n]: “Pastoral Medicine”

Annals Of Grift, Chapter [n]: “Pastoral Medicine”

by Tom Levenson|  April 26, 201610:15 am| 82 Comments

This post is in: Grifters Gonna Grift, Ever Get The Feeling You've Been Cheated?

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This story is a perfect example of a truly elegant con.  On one side, the marks:  suffering, credulous, and primed to both reject and crave authority.  On the other, the grifters, offering valiant rebellion against the establishment, all the comfort of faith, and the knowledge that the truly dedicated marks will become repeat customers.

Ladles and jellyspoons, I give you pastoral medicine!

You’ve probably heard of the credentials M.D. and R.N., and maybe N.P. The people using those letters are doctors, registered nurses and nurse practitioners. But what about PSC.D or D.PSc? Those letters refer to someone who practices pastoral medicine — or “Bible-based” health care.

It’s a relatively new title being used by some alternative health practitioners. The Texas-based Pastoral Medical Association gives out “pastoral provider licenses” in all 50 states and 30 countries. Some providers call themselves doctors of pastoral medicine.

 

 

V0011224 Doctor and Mrs Syntax, with a party of friends, experimentin Credit: Wellcome Library, London. Wellcome Images images@wellcome.ac.uk http://wellcomeimages.org Doctor and Mrs Syntax, with a party of friends, experimenting with laughing gas. Coloured aquatint by T. Rowlandson after W. Combe. By: William Combeafter: Thomas RowlandsonPublished: - Copyrighted work available under Creative Commons Attribution only licence CC BY 4.0 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

And how do these fine practitioners roll?

[Stephen] Barrett [a retired psychiatrist and founder of the consumer protection siteQuackwatch.org] says the Pastoral Medical Association functions like a private club. Patients sign confidentiality agreements, pay out of pocket and are prohibited from suing if they’re unhappy with the care they receive. Any disputes are handled by an ecclesiastical tribunal.

“They’re claiming that ‘Any advice we give you is pastoral in nature,’ ” Barrett says. “In other words, ‘If I give you health advice that’s not health advice, that’s pastoral advice.’

 

The article goes on to dig up one person who felt helped by her pastoral “advisor” — a woman who believed “heavy metal detox, special diet and herbal supplements helped her lose weight and gain energy.”  And good for her! I’d hope she’d derive some comfort from her ~$5,000 donation to what the Pastoral Medical Association calls “the Almighty’s Health Care workers.”

A closing thought.  In the deregulated paradise sought by the Republican party and its Koch and Koch-esque paymasters, there’s no problem with such charlatanism.  Let people put their money where they like, regulatory oversight be damned, and let the market (and morbidity/mortality outcomes) decide the matter.  That sick people might not be fully at liberty to exercise their function as a homo economicus is somebody else’s problem.

Which is to say — this particular grift takes the form of the familiar American religious confidence game that has taken in its suckers since before the birth of the Republic.  At the same time, it’s a pretty good proxy for the long con being run on too many Americans by the folks who have come to use the Republican Party as its front.

Image:T. Rowlandson after W. Combe, Doctor and Mrs. Syntax and a Party of Friends Making an Experiment in Pneumatics, 19th c.

 

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Reader Interactions

82Comments

  1. 1.

    aimai

    April 26, 2016 at 10:16 am

    Its the next logical step for the faith based insurance companies which are offering to “insure” patients by forwarding their health care bills to a pyramid scheme of likely fools for payment.

  2. 2.

    Amir Khalid

    April 26, 2016 at 10:23 am

    @aimai:
    You might have just given Amway Corp an idea for its next line of business.

  3. 3.

    MattF

    April 26, 2016 at 10:26 am

    @aimai: “Pastoral” health care and mezzanine loans. A natural combination.

  4. 4.

    Shell

    April 26, 2016 at 10:28 am

    ecclesiastical tribunal.

    Shit, isn’t that from “The Crucible”?

  5. 5.

    japa21

    April 26, 2016 at 10:30 am

    There has long been, in the mental health field, a category of Christian Counselors. By itself, this is not necessarily a bad thing. As a counselor, it was very important to get an understanding of the faith that a client had and how important it was to them.

    This knowledge helped me to better understand not only where they came from but also provided me some knowledge on what assistance that faith could be in assisting them to overcome their issues. It was not a case of pray and be healed.

    However, there were some Christian Counselors that used that very technique. I had more than one client that had been to Christian Counselors and had been informed that their problems were due to their sinning and that by praying for forgiveness they would be healed. Usually, these clients came to me in worse shape than they had been before seeing those charlatans.

    As a caveat, I also knew some Christian Counselors who were quite good and used their faith and the client’s faith in a productive way, making the faith a basis upon which to grow, not the end all and be all of the “treatment”.

    I also knew some practitioners who would actually almost actively work against a client’s faith, as if the faith was the root of the problems.. These practitioners were almost as criminal in their treatment as the charlatan Christian counselors.

    Any good and honest practitioner of medicine, be it physical or mental health (and yes I know there is a strong physical element to mental health) will acknowledge that a person’s faith can be an important part of their recovery. It is when use of that faith supersedes everything else that the problem arises. And sometimes it can be fatal.

  6. 6.

    raven

    April 26, 2016 at 10:38 am

    @japa21: My mother and sister went to the same one in LA. What a fucking scam

  7. 7.

    Downpuppy

    April 26, 2016 at 10:39 am

    In the unquoted parts of the story, Chiropractors are busting these people as frauds. What next? “Acupuncturists dispute their qualifications”?

  8. 8.

    Tom Levenson

    April 26, 2016 at 10:42 am

    @Downpuppy: “you can’t have that con! That’s my con!”

  9. 9.

    liberal

    April 26, 2016 at 10:44 am

    @Downpuppy: it’s amusing to me that Chiropractors seem to be covered by insurance. Re acupuncture, while my wife is mostly an evidence-based thinker, she’s not as hard-nosed as I am and it grates on her when I bring up “but you get the same results when faux acupuncturists put the needles in random places.”

    One of the guys I worked with in my last job was a Chinese H1-B guy. Really smart, but he seemed to at least partly believe in Chinese medicine. I’m sure there might be elements of it that aren’t complete BS, just like IIRC people discovered aspirin prior to modern science, but to me it sounds like 99% BS.

    Of course, there’s a lot of plain old western-educated MDs that practice a lot of non-evidence-based medicine, some of it not ridiculous-sounding but still a ginormous waste of money.

  10. 10.

    Unknown known (formerly known as Ecks, former formerly completely unknown)

    April 26, 2016 at 10:45 am

    The problem with medicine from a free markets POV is that it runs into pretty much every market flaw in the textbook. There are huge information asymmetries between doctor and patient (if the doc tells you that your liver is out of alignment and will take $400 of treatment to correct, how are you to know they aren’t making it up?). There are huge power asymmetries (the stakes are much higher for the scared patient than the doc who gets to walk to the next treatment room in a few minutes). There are externalities (the patient is the one who suffers, not the doc who prescribes to them). The list goes on.

    The only way around these things is to employ some larger form of sanction – medical and ethical codes pushed by accrediting bodies, second opinions and courts of law, legal frameworks on who is allowed to remain licensed to practice.

    Lift the lid on all that, and you are left with these kinds of scam artistes.

  11. 11.

    raven

    April 26, 2016 at 10:46 am

    @liberal: Gluten free!!!!

  12. 12.

    Peale

    April 26, 2016 at 10:46 am

    @Downpuppy: I know. “Quit practicing medicine that isn’t related to chiropracty”. LOL. I thought all medical issues could be treated by an adjustment.

  13. 13.

    japa21

    April 26, 2016 at 10:48 am

    @liberal: There are two categories of chiropractors. One which believes that manipulation solves all medical problems. The other is more scientifically based and focuses more on specific physical problems such as lower back pain, etc, which they can do good things for.

    In general, insurance companies will credential and pay the latter category. They avoid the former like the plague.

  14. 14.

    liberal

    April 26, 2016 at 10:50 am

    @japa21: Is it really more scientifically based? (I know there _can_ be such things, kind of like physical therapy, but…)

  15. 15.

    Gin & Tonic

    April 26, 2016 at 10:51 am

    @liberal: Acupuncture might be 99% BS, but at least it doesn’t kill people, even when done incompetently. Chiropractic, on the other hand…

  16. 16.

    liberal

    April 26, 2016 at 10:51 am

    @raven: Yeah…I was thinking of that since we visited southern CA and one of my cousins there, her dad had actual Celiacs. But as a “dad” I here about lots of kids who are “gluten intolerant” and think to myself, “BS diagnosis.”

  17. 17.

    liberal

    April 26, 2016 at 10:52 am

    @Gin & Tonic: Yeah, there’s that.

  18. 18.

    japa21

    April 26, 2016 at 10:53 am

    @liberal: Yes, it is. It is, to some degree a very specialized form of physical therapy. In fact, I know some orthopedic doctors who will refer to chiropractors over a PT for some issues to see if that will solve a problem before looking for more drastic measures.

  19. 19.

    raven

    April 26, 2016 at 10:53 am

    @Gin & Tonic: Motherfuckers come near my back they’ll need a dentist.

  20. 20.

    raven

    April 26, 2016 at 10:54 am

    @japa21: A broken clock is right twice a day.

  21. 21.

    Gin & Tonic

    April 26, 2016 at 10:56 am

    @raven: As long as you don’t voluntarily walk into one of their offices, I think you’ll be safe.

  22. 22.

    Paul in KY

    April 26, 2016 at 10:58 am

    @Shell: I bet they get some cool robes & hats & shit. For some of them, that’s the only reason they are doing it…plus the money.

  23. 23.

    raven

    April 26, 2016 at 10:59 am

    @Gin & Tonic: There is a really sick fucking chiro that lives in my neighborhood. He’s a phony Nam Vet, wife and dog abuser and all around scumbag. There are also people in this town that just love him and claim he has “powers” in his hands. I’d like to think this does not influence me but. . .

  24. 24.

    Gin & Tonic

    April 26, 2016 at 11:00 am

    @raven:

    I’d like to think this does not influence me but. . .

    I think you tipped your hand.

  25. 25.

    scav

    April 26, 2016 at 11:03 am

    And practically speaking, I’ve somehow a little less concern when they keep their faith-based whatever tightly among themselves and don’t have entire hospitals devoted to the practice and imposing it on anyone who happens to need their general services, agreed to or not.

    But honestly, that upfront agreement forbidding suing is would seem to be a major tell that the whole thing is dodgy. They don’t have a lot of demonstrated faith in their faith-based efforts. And confidentiality agreements? All the church bells should be sounding the tocsin.

  26. 26.

    japa21

    April 26, 2016 at 11:04 am

    @raven: No doubt it does. That chiro is the rotten apple that can spoil the whole barrel or however that goes. And he is not alone. Probably the two fields that are the most open to crass abuse of the system is chiropractors and mental health practitioners. And with the latter, it is more difficult to tell because they hide behind what can be legitimate degrees.

  27. 27.

    Face

    April 26, 2016 at 11:04 am

    @Tom Levenson: The wife’s cousin is studying to be a chirogrifter. I struggle mightily every time she talks about her coursework to not tell her what an outright fraud she’s becoming. My (very limited, forced) experience with chiropractors is that they’re medically clueless, in every aspect of the game.

    Who’da thunk you could cure a broken arm with ultrasound and a spinal adjustment?

  28. 28.

    Germy

    April 26, 2016 at 11:12 am

    @Gin & Tonic:

    Acupuncture might be 99% BS, but at least it doesn’t kill people, even when done incompetently.

    I remember reading on a skeptical medicine blog about the needles pushing skin bacteria into the body where it can do harm. (Practitioners didn’t clean the punctured areas with alcohol before inserting the needles)

  29. 29.

    SFAW

    April 26, 2016 at 11:12 am

    I’m hoping to find one of those doctors who specializes in “dispelling bad humours,” because everyone needs a laugh now and then.

    I may also try to corner the therapeutic leech market, because once pastoral medicine sets up a booth at the Rethuglican convention, sales will go through the roof.

  30. 30.

    SFAW

    April 26, 2016 at 11:15 am

    Does anyone know if Jenny McCarthy has done an infomercial for these guys? Would seem to be right up her alley.

  31. 31.

    gelfling545

    April 26, 2016 at 11:15 am

    Me son in law was told at the flipping VA that he didn’t actually have PTSD. He was suffering from a “spiritual malaise” and needed God in his life. They’re everywhere.

  32. 32.

    benw

    April 26, 2016 at 11:15 am

    @SFAW: I can’t help you right now, because I don’t have my divining rod and ouija board at work, but I can stop by the “homosexuality cure” clinic later and ask around.

  33. 33.

    low-tech cyclist

    April 26, 2016 at 11:18 am

    As a born-again Christian who’s spent more than enough time around evangelicals to know exactly how they’re fleeced, I more than occasionally wish the good Lord would let me have a more larcenous heart. Because damn, they’re such easy marks.

    But no, per the conclusion of the book of Jonah, I serve a Lord who has compassion for the 120,000 of Nineveh who don’t know their right hand from their left. And the damn cattle, too. Not sure which category the evangelicals more naturally fit into, but I’m sure it’s one or the other.

  34. 34.

    opiejeanne

    April 26, 2016 at 11:19 am

    @SFAW: The experiment in pneumatics in the picture is described as an experiment with laughing gas. That ought to help with instilling “good humours”.

  35. 35.

    Germy

    April 26, 2016 at 11:21 am

    Ambrose Bierce, 1900:

    The Dog and the Physician

    A DOG that had seen a Physician attending the burial of a wealthy
    patient, said: “When do you expect to dig it up?”

    “Why should I dig it up?” the Physician asked.

    “When I bury a bone,” said the Dog, “it is with an intention to
    uncover it later and pick it.”

    “The bones that I bury,” said the Physician, “are those that I can
    no longer pick.”

  36. 36.

    D58826

    April 26, 2016 at 11:24 am

    In the middle ages they had a pole out front and were called barbers. same quality of care and same patient life expectancy

  37. 37.

    SFAW

    April 26, 2016 at 11:25 am

    @benw:

    I can’t help you right now, because I don’t have my divining rod and ouija board at work,

    Ha! Everyone knows a Ouija board is a scam.

    Now, if you had said tea leaves or goat entrails (although tough to pull that one off at work, I guess), I might have believed you. As the saying goes, “what kind of fool do you take me for?” (May he RIP)

  38. 38.

    tarragon

    April 26, 2016 at 11:36 am

    There’s an urgent care facility near me that offers:

    Primary, Comprehensive and Urgent Care We cater to you for the much needed Urgent Care, After-hours, Walk-In Clinic, Primary Care, Medical Practice, Complementary Medicine, Massage and Lasers.

    The sidebar also offers Chakra Balancing, Hot Stone Therapy, and Reiki.

    But it’s the “and Lasers” that makes me laugh or cry depending on the day.

  39. 39.

    gene108

    April 26, 2016 at 11:37 am

    @Downpuppy:

    In the unquoted parts of the story, Chiropractors are busting these people as frauds. What next? “Acupuncturists dispute their qualifications”?

    I’ve met a lot of people, who have gotten relief from both Chiropractors and acupuncture that I believe there is a “there, there”, with regards to the efficacy.

    @japa21:

    I also knew some practitioners who would actually almost actively work against a client’s faith, as if the faith was the root of the problems.

    An attitude embraced by a lot of liberals, who have become atheists in adolescence and adulthood. I see it expressed on blogs very frequently.

    Bill Maher is probably the most public example of an “evangelical” atheist, who wants to “convert” people away from religion.

    Maybe some of those people get into the mental health profession.

    @liberal:

    One of the guys I worked with in my last job was a Chinese H1-B guy. Really smart, but he seemed to at least partly believe in Chinese medicine. I’m sure there might be elements of it that aren’t complete BS, just like IIRC people discovered aspirin prior to modern science, but to me it sounds like 99% BS.

    People have been relying on Chinese medicine for centuries, in order to treat ailments before the 19th and 20th centuries, when advances in medical science outpaced traditional medicine.

    A lot of traditional medicine is evidence based, and builds up its treatments based on what people observed that helped patients.

    You just have to be aware of the limits of these types of treatments, as well as the limits and interactions with modern medicine.

    The problem with Chinese medicine is there are a lot of people pushing products, which are of dubious origin and with no guarantee of what is actually in those pills. So it becomes harder to find someone, who actually has a handle on the actual treatments, versus someone trying to resell pills at a mark-up for profit.

    Though, in regards to dubious origin, there isn’t much difference between Chinese medicine and what gets marketed as OTC vitamins, supplements, etc in large U.S. stores, like GNC.

  40. 40.

    Gin & Tonic

    April 26, 2016 at 11:43 am

    @opiejeanne: I, uhm, “experimented” a lot with nitrous oxide when I was in college. It does indeed remove “bad humours.” Funny thing, though, when I had it administered a couple of years ago during dental surgery, it wasn’t as much fun as I remembered.

  41. 41.

    scav

    April 26, 2016 at 11:48 am

    @Gin & Tonic: If that’s what my childhood dentist called sweet air, it nearly put me off dentristy for life, neither seemingly amusing nor effective.

  42. 42.

    Jacel

    April 26, 2016 at 11:49 am

    @tarragon: Perhaps the lasers are a part of physical therapy where you chase after the red dot.

  43. 43.

    liberal

    April 26, 2016 at 11:50 am

    @gene108:

    A lot of traditional medicine is evidence based…

    Some of it is, but IMHO most of it isn’t.

    An attitude embraced by a lot of liberals, who have become atheists in adolescence and adulthood. I see it expressed on blogs very frequently.

    It’s fine to claim that it’s waste of time to argue about these things, but religion as conventionally defined is just silly. Of course, you have to make some assumptions—science/materialism isn’t going to provide any axioms of what is right and wrong, or good. And IMHO science isn’t even close to solving problems we all want answers to (e.g. the mind/body problem). Nor do I see how it could ever answer the “why does anything exist” question. But religion provides no answers to these problems either. At best, it’s a psychological crutch; at worst, it’s a convenient excuse for people to murder each other.

  44. 44.

    Brachiator

    April 26, 2016 at 12:13 pm

    In the deregulated paradise sought by the Republican party and its Koch and Koch-esque paymasters, there’s no problem with such charlatanism.

    Homeopathy is allowed under the German and British health care systems. I think that herbal remedies of dubious efficacy are allowed in Germany as well.

    “Pastoral medicine” is insanely stupid, but I live in California, which has often seemed like ground zero for endless variations of quack medicine. And there is a persistent belief among many people that Big Pharma and Big Medicine are profit driven conspiracies to suppress “real” cures.

    The dumbest, worst thing about libertarian “thought” in this area is neutral to the idea that medical treatment is supposed to actually be helpful. When you strip their BS arguments down to their essentials, you get the insistence that there are no authorities and that people should simply be free to buy whatever they want in the medical market. Somewhere along the way, the Invisible Hand will bitchslap the losers and allow the winners to somehow prosper, if they can manage to live through any inevitable winnowing.

    But the relentlessly silly belief in quackery is deeper than Koch level machinations.

  45. 45.

    Unknown known (formerly known as Ecks, former formerly completely unknown)

    April 26, 2016 at 12:18 pm

    @liberal:

    religion as conventionally defined is just silly.

    I personally know a lot of smart and wise people for whom their (varying) religion(s) are ongoing sources of meaning, comfort, and moral and intellectual stimulation. It gives them profound intellectual and emotional experiences that enrich their lives, and reconnects them to their sense of compassion and kindness, it gives them a language and a set of metaphors for talking about some of the deeper and more vexing human problems they come across in the world, it gives them an identity touchstone to a stable and secure source of meaning and support, and it gives them meditative pleasure on a daily or weekly basis to move through the rituals, and contemplate the words and thoughts and images.

    Religion, like any other complex system, can be practised in a simplistic, tribal, jingoistic way, or in a thoughtful, nuanced, and layered way. It’s actually much better built to support the latter than most, because most religions have a long history of smart people who have been deeply engaged with them, and left a lot of writing and collected wisdom.

    Maybe that all works for you, and maybe it doesn’t. For me, personally I can never quite persuade myself to buy into the metaphysics, so I only appreciate it at a slight remove. But dismissing it all as “silly” says far more about you than it does about them.

  46. 46.

    Paul in KY

    April 26, 2016 at 12:18 pm

    @Face: A quack one. However, there are legit chiropractors.

  47. 47.

    Paul in KY

    April 26, 2016 at 12:19 pm

    @gelfling545: I’d have reported the dip that told him that. Unprofessional & not doing their job.

  48. 48.

    Paul in KY

    April 26, 2016 at 12:21 pm

    @low-tech cyclist: Evangelicals are the Pharisees, silly.

  49. 49.

    Paul in KY

    April 26, 2016 at 12:23 pm

    @gene108: One of my theories on why China ended up with so many people was the quality of their medical care back in Middle Ages. Also, living in beautiful China also helps.

  50. 50.

    Sad_Dem

    April 26, 2016 at 12:25 pm

    One thing that amazes me about the Encyclopedia of American Loons is the seemingly limitless supply of them. Is rational, critical thought more the aberration than complete nuttiness?

  51. 51.

    ThresherK (GPad)

    April 26, 2016 at 12:33 pm

    All I want to know: Has Rand Paul applied for cert yet?

  52. 52.

    Brachiator

    April 26, 2016 at 12:37 pm

    @SFAW:

    I may also try to corner the therapeutic leech market, because once pastoral medicine sets up a booth at the Rethuglican convention, sales will go through the roof.

    Of course, leeches have some actual medical value:

    These days, leeches are used to help heal skin grafts — the process for treating burns in which blood tissue is transferred from one part of the body to another — by removing blood pooled under the graft and restoring blood circulation in blocked veins. They’ve also been used in reattaching fingers and other body parts

  53. 53.

    scav

    April 26, 2016 at 12:38 pm

    @Sad_Dem: As someone who at least aspires to empiricism, I’d have so say the evidence strongly suggests yes. Although there seems a general predisposition towards rational-oid chains of thought, the tools and methods used to archive it are very often sub-par. As for the critical step of the process, that’s the element usually skipped altogether. The siren call of sinking unquestioningly into the controlling hands of an guiding authority seems very generally observed. It is rather the least-energy state, so I guess I shouldn’t be that surprised.

  54. 54.

    JimV

    April 26, 2016 at 12:41 pm

    Evangelical atheists, it seems to me (as one), are the same as ardent progressives who will defend their point of view against conservative commenters, and vice-versa. Or in general, everyone who wants to respond when something is wrong on the Internet. Some of us are jerks some of the time, and some of us are jerks most of the time, but everyone who comments on the Internet to express their point of view must have a similar feeling and motivation as I do – I think.

    Naturally, I think “evangelical” is a bit strong, coming from an organization which has its own TV networks and schools, and has adherents who have come to my house and stopped me on the sidewalk dozens of times. If “evangelic” is a bad thing, well, you know the saying (motes and beams).

    I have my own ideas about the mind/body problem (spoiler: there is no problem, someday if we last long enough we’ll build a computer which can think and prove that it’s just a natural process that occurs in this universe) and why there is something rather than nothing, but as much as I would like to express my views I will restrain this evangelical impulse. Starting now.

  55. 55.

    Brachiator

    April 26, 2016 at 12:47 pm

    @gene108:

    I’ve met a lot of people, who have gotten relief from both Chiropractors and acupuncture that I believe there is a “there, there”, with regards to the efficacy.

    Unfortunately, chiropractors and acupuncture don’t hold up in any investigations deeper than personal endorsement and anecdotes.

    People have been relying on Chinese medicine for centuries

    This has also been true of Western traditional medicine, and says little about the efficacy of medicine or medical practice.

    A lot of traditional medicine is evidence based, and builds up its treatments based on what people observed that helped patients.

    Well, no. You get a lot of post hoc, ergo propter hoc rationalizations. Something has been “observed” to help, what exactly what that something is has been missed or mis-identified.

    And Chinese medicine suffers from problems of adulteration and the unsafe addition of real medicine.

  56. 56.

    Sad_Dem

    April 26, 2016 at 12:54 pm

    @scav: And yet all the nuttiness is itself evidence of the random nature of natural selection. There’s no guiding hand–some believe x, while others believe y. The only common feature is the tendency of the human mind to believe things.

  57. 57.

    NotMax

    April 26, 2016 at 12:56 pm

    Snake handlers, snake oil.

    Po-tay-to, po-tah-to.

    @D58826

    Barber-surgeons did serve a need and provided at least some demonstrably helpful treatments and procedures, albeit limited by the breadth of general medical knowledge (and in Europe, by the strictures and limitation imposed by the church) at the time.

    See the movie The Physician for a decently produced treatment of the training of a skilled barber-surgeon in the 11th century, for example. Barber-surgeon’s apprentice undertakes a journey from Britain to Muslim Persia, determined to study at the Mayo Clinic of the time.

  58. 58.

    Mnemosyne

    April 26, 2016 at 1:03 pm

    @liberal:

    I know people are totally bored with me talking about FODMAPs but, yes, wheat and other foods that contain fructans can cause unpleasant (but in no way dangerous) digestive symptoms, but it has nothing to do with gluten. There are probably also people with wheat allergies who are incorrectly attributing their allergic symptoms to “gluten.”

    And there has apparently been a genuine if very slight rise in celiac disease — we’re talking about a change from 1 percent of the population to 2 percent, which is pretty significant.

  59. 59.

    Paul in KY

    April 26, 2016 at 1:08 pm

    @NotMax: Thanks for the movie title. I’ve only ever seen Theodoric of York, medieval barber.

  60. 60.

    Unknown known (formerly known as Ecks, former formerly completely unknown)

    April 26, 2016 at 1:15 pm

    @Brachiator:

    Unfortunately, chiropractors and acupuncture don’t hold up in any investigations deeper than personal endorsement and anecdotes.

    Actually, they do. There is good evidence that they have some efficacy for at least some therapies.

    Chiropractic

    Acupuncture

  61. 61.

    The Lodger

    April 26, 2016 at 1:25 pm

    What’s the difference between this and Christian Science (except of course that icky word “Science”)?

  62. 62.

    NotMax

    April 26, 2016 at 1:25 pm

    @Paul in KY

    trailer

  63. 63.

    Brachiator

    April 26, 2016 at 1:35 pm

    @Unknown known (formerly known as Ecks, former formerly completely unknown): By your own citation, chiropractic is at best a good massage, and acupuncture cannot be clearly shown to be good for anything.

  64. 64.

    Mnemosyne

    April 26, 2016 at 1:37 pm

    @NotMax:

    IIRC, barber-surgeons were probably the best medical practitioners of their day, because they did the grunt work of setting broken bones or pulling rotten teeth that physicians were too highfalutin’ to do. Even until the beginning of the 19th century, it was considered coarse for a physician to actually touch a patient — that was for surgeons to do. And to this day, surgeons in the UK are traditionally addressed as “Mr.” or “Ms.” instead of “Dr.” despite being fully qualified doctors.

  65. 65.

    Feathers

    April 26, 2016 at 1:59 pm

    @Brachiator: Good place to drop a link to the always appropriate Homeopathic A&E (ER in US-speak)

    One thing about “Complementary” Medicine being covered under the German healthcare system is that at least the various remedies are thus regulated and you know the contents of a bottle will match what is on the label. The US has no regulation of herbal remedies, you can be buying anything. Thanks Orrin Hatch! I know people who stock up on the stuff from Germany.

    I blame our shitty science education for this as well as our desire to force people into career paths before we know where their talents lie. A good friend was a “healer” of the most egregious sort. Spirit animals, chakras, auras, astrology, the works. However, she was one of the most intuitive people I’ve known in terms of being able to read people. She made an observation about me that was weird but seemed interesting (based on reading my natal horoscope) that I kept in mind but never really took very seriously. Some nearly two decades later I finally received a diagnosis of my psychiatric issues. When I brought up her observations to my doctor at McLean Hospital, she was very intrigued by how intuitively the astrologically derived metaphor described what I now know to be dysfunction in my working memory.

    Somebody at her college should have noticed her talents and pushed her to become a science-based mental health professional. But she had opted out of the science track too early and so went on to a quacky school in California to get a Masters in Spirituality and Mythic Studies, or something close to that.

  66. 66.

    Feathers

    April 26, 2016 at 2:06 pm

    @The Lodger: Christian Science practitioners work only on believing Christian Scientists, who know and accept that they are rejecting medicine in favor of prayer. The ethical questions become more pointed when children are involved, but I don’t have an issue with adults choosing prayer over medicine. Pretending that there is “Christian Medicine” which will heal you is just evil.

  67. 67.

    Bill Arnold

    April 26, 2016 at 2:07 pm

    @low-tech cyclist:

    I more than occasionally wish the good Lord would let me have a more larcenous heart. Because damn, they’re such easy marks.

    Agnostic (believe in zero or more gods/goddesses/similar-enties) here, and agree completely and unequivocally about the immorality of stealing from gullible believers. :-)

  68. 68.

    J R in WV

    April 26, 2016 at 2:09 pm

    @gelfling545:

    There’s a “counselor” who needs counseling in that alley out back. Despicable misuse of wrongly granted authority.

  69. 69.

    Brachiator

    April 26, 2016 at 2:23 pm

    @Feathers:

    One thing about “Complementary” Medicine being covered under the German healthcare system is that at least the various remedies are thus regulated and you know the contents of a bottle will match what is on the label.

    I guess it is useful to know that the useless stuff that you’re buying is at least pure or certified. But still.

    And I don’t solely blame Orrin Hatch. The herbal remedy industry is just that, an industry; and they fight off any attempt at regulation.

    I appreciate your example of your friend who was a “healer,” but I can’t entirely blame our shitty science education, although this certainly may be a part of it. I think that some people who appear to be “intuitive” sometimes have extremely sharp observational skills. A college friend who was very intuitive at first became a teacher, like her mother, even founding a school with some colleagues. Later she became a very good, very well respected pediatrician. She excels at diagnosing issues with young kids (who are not always good at explaining things).

  70. 70.

    Unknown known (formerly known as Ecks, former formerly completely unknown)

    April 26, 2016 at 2:34 pm

    @Brachiator: If “nothing” is defined as:

    one large meta-analysis (a type of systematic review) not carried out by The Cochrane Collaboration included data from more than 17,000 patients. It compared acupuncture to sham acupuncture or no acupuncture without patients being aware of whether they had received real or sham treatment.
    This review found acupuncture to be superior to both sham and no treatment for headaches, osteoarthritis, back pain and neck pain.

    then yes.

    The evidence on chiropractic and accupuncture is farfrom a slam dunk, and they certainly aren’t the pancea’s that some of their enthusiasts claim. But neither are they systematically debunked like, say, homoeopathy or vaccine-autism links. What is there to gain by insisting they fall in the same column, when they aren’t.

  71. 71.

    Ruviana

    April 26, 2016 at 2:38 pm

    @aimai: There sort of IS such a thing.

  72. 72.

    Paul in KY

    April 26, 2016 at 3:16 pm

    @NotMax: Appreciate that, sir!

  73. 73.

    Brachiator

    April 26, 2016 at 3:27 pm

    @Unknown known (formerly known as Ecks, former formerly completely unknown):

    The evidence on chiropractic and accupuncture is farfrom a slam dunk, and they certainly aren’t the pancea’s that some of their enthusiasts claim. But neither are they systematically debunked like, say, homoeopathy or vaccine-autism links. What is there to gain by insisting they fall in the same column, when they aren’t.

    I noted that chiropractic is at best as good as a massage.

    But I find “superior to both sham and no treatment” to be much less significant than you do. And the problem is that the practitioners of these treatment methods to not accept or agree with the limited areas of efficacy found so far. And the supposed theory or foundations of why acupuncture is supposed to work is still, so far, nonsense.

  74. 74.

    Unknown known (formerly known as Ecks, former formerly completely unknown)

    April 26, 2016 at 3:52 pm

    @Brachiator:

    Do you have any data supporting your claim that chiropractic is “at best as good as a massage?” It is, after all, an empirical question.If so then I would love to see it. If not, then you are pretty much just making stuff up that suits your prejudices (“Let’s see, massages are good for sore backs, and chiropractic is good for sore backs, so, let’s see, carry the five, add the two… it’s a duck! I mean, a witch!”)

    And “superior to both sham and no treatment” is science speak for “we find evidence that it has a real effect”. It doesn’t say how big of an effect, but it’s the same hurdle that any other treatment has to get over, be it a drug or a physical administration.

    It is certainly annoying that there are some people who believe that both therapies can do more than evidence suggests they can. But then the world is also full of people who refuse to believe that antibiotics won’t treat their viral infections. The fact that people are overly optimistic about a given treatment doesn’t change its actual proven efficacies.

    Also, it’s neither here nor there that the traditional explanations for these therapies don’t hold up. For a very long time scientists thought that it was the dust thrown out by volcanic eruptions that caused global cooling, whereas it turns out that it’s actually a chain reaction from the sulphur they release. Our being wrong about the mechanism never changed that really big eruptions do, in fact, make the planet measurably cooler for a couple of years. If you can show that there is a measurable medical benefit to acupuncture, or meditation, or eating raw worms, then what does it matter if people widely believe they work for the wrong reasons?

  75. 75.

    loco-comment

    April 26, 2016 at 4:11 pm

    Next, pastoral pilots and pastoral engineers

  76. 76.

    aarrgghh

    April 26, 2016 at 4:13 pm

    what do you call alternative medicine that works?

    medicine!

    thank you. i’ll be here all week …

  77. 77.

    Mike G

    April 26, 2016 at 4:19 pm

    My prediction: The next step for the dominionists who want to outlaw abortion, make the Bible the state book and cram the Ten Commandments and creationism into schools, will be to certify “Pastoral Medicine” as equivalent to “Secular Medicine”. Then people on Medicaid will be forced to use it, knowing they’ll die quickly and save the state money which can be used for tax cuts.

  78. 78.

    sm*t cl*de

    April 26, 2016 at 5:01 pm

    @aimai:

    forwarding their health care bills to a pyramid scheme of likely fools for payment.

    In the vile money-extractive industry of Mexican clinics and their “cures” for cancer, that is already a thing.

  79. 79.

    sm*t cl*de

    April 26, 2016 at 5:14 pm

    @Gin & Tonic:

    Acupuncture might be 99% BS, but at least it doesn’t kill people, even when done incompetently

    Your faith in the limits of acupuncture incompetence is touching.

    http://www.who.int/bulletin/volumes/88/12/10-076737/en/
    “Subarachnoid haemorrhage was reported in 35 patients, 3 of whom died.
    “With a total of 201 cases, pneumothorax was the most frequently reported acupuncture-related adverse event. Four patients died from it and the others recovered after 2 to 30 days of treatment.
    “Right ventricular injury was reported in four cases, two of which recovered after surgical treatment. The other two patients died from right ventricular puncture complicated by cardiac tamponade and multiorgan dysfunction syndrome.
    “One case of aortic artery rupture was reported after needling at the Qimen point (LR14) at a depth of 4 cm; the patient died within 15 minutes.”

  80. 80.

    Brachiator

    April 26, 2016 at 5:28 pm

    @Unknown known (formerly known as Ecks, former formerly completely unknown):

    Do you have any data supporting your claim that chiropractic is “at best as good as a massage?”

    That’s the conclusion I draw from the link provided.

    But I like your metphor: chiropractic is witchcraft.

    And “superior to both sham and no treatment” is science speak for “we find evidence that it has a real effect”. It doesn’t say how big of an effect, but it’s the same hurdle that any other treatment has to get over, be it a drug or a physical administration.

    “Science speak?” Uh, no.

    It is certainly annoying that there are some people who believe that both therapies can do more than evidence suggests they can. But then the world is also full of people who refuse to believe that antibiotics won’t treat their viral infections. The fact that people are overly optimistic about a given treatment doesn’t change its actual proven efficacies.

    It is not that people are overly optimistic about a given treatment. It is that the practitioners make overly optimistic claims about the efficacy of what they offer. This makes them quacks.

    Also, it’s neither here nor there that the traditional explanations for these therapies don’t hold up.

    It is both here and there.

    For a very long time scientists thought that it was the dust thrown out by volcanic eruptions that caused global cooling, whereas it turns out that it’s actually a chain reaction from the sulphur they release.

    Real science makes observations and conclusions that can be reviewed, revised, refuted, corrected. The assumptions of chiropractic and acupuncture are junk science.

    If you can show that there is a measurable medical benefit to acupuncture, or meditation, or eating raw worms, then what does it matter if people widely believe they work for the wrong reasons?

    People believe a lot of stupid stuff. But in 2012 Medicare paid $496 million for chiropractic treatments in all 50 states. When tax dollars are spent on dubious treatments, a high standard should be applied.

  81. 81.

    Shantanu Saha

    April 26, 2016 at 5:50 pm

    So, Elmer Gantry masquerading as Arrowsmith?

  82. 82.

    Uncle Cosmo

    April 26, 2016 at 6:42 pm

    @Germy: From The Devil’s Dictionary:

    Grave, n. A place in which the dead are laid to await the coming of the medical student.

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