Attack on Complementary Medicine ''Undermines Safety'' !

Justin Norrie, Editor, of  The Conversation, an independent news website writes.........

Cutting complementary (alternative) medicine courses from universities would dilute the quality of the education available and threaten safe practice but have no impact on demand for it, according to academics writing in the Medical Journal of Australia (MJA). In an emphatic response to recent comments by Friends of Science in Medicine (FSM), a body, I mentioned my previous posting, that is committed to stemming the spread of ''pseudoscience'' in medicine, the authors accuse some of the medical orthodoxy of trying to stifle divergent views. Just like the global warmists not listening to the deniers and getting egg on their faces.

A strong retort was given by Stephen Myers, a Professor of Complementary Medicine at southern Cross University and co-authors in warning that there is ''a great danger for the public if complementary medicine practice is allowed to develop outside mainstream education. It would definitely undermine safe practice and critical appraisal.'' Among the co-authors was Dr Kerryn Phelps, former President of the AMA and Adjunct Professor at the School of Public Health in the University of Sydney. She added, ''Science sets out to rigorously eliminate bias, not assert it. The FSM's arguments are highly emotive and, while having a gloss of superficial reasonableness, they do not stand up to critical review.''



Dr  Stephan  Myers

Professor Myers said that alternative medicine was a broad field that could not be described with generalisations. It was important, he added, to distinguish the major professional and university-based disciplines of traditional Chinese medicine, Chiropractic, Osteopathy and Naturopathy from ''fringe practices, and the actions of rogue or unqualified practitioners.'' Two ''comprehensive reviews'' of complementary medicine practice and training in Australia over the past 15 years had both supported the movement of Chinese medicine and Naturopathy and Western herbal medicine into a university setting, ''just as earlier reviews had done for chiropractic and osteopathy.''  Professor Myers firmly added that, ''It is not melodramatic to point out that if the Friends of Science in Medicine were to succeed in their stated aims, they would achieve a dystopia -- a medical 1984  where only one way of knowing the body in health and illness is permitted in public discourse.''

But John Dwyer, the condescending president of FSM and Emeritus Professor at the University of New South Wales said that his fundamentalist organisation strongly supports research into currently alternative approaches to see if they are credible and there is sufficient evidence to warrant  science dollars being used to settle the question whether these supposed treatments are effective or not. He said, ''No amount of dogmatic pronouncement and assertions uttered by individuals who have invented various treatments, often centuries ago, and who are still blindly followed to this day, despite of scientific discovery and advancement in medicine should go unexamined.'' (I ask you, where has this douse bag been the last 50 years? Sorry John the examinations have been done)

The Way I See It.....the FSM's views exceed the boundaries of reasoned debate and risk compromising the values that the FSM claims to support. While there was now an extensive evidence base for complementary therapies, the concept of evidence-based allopathic medicine was highly contested within Western medicine itself.  Professor of Medicine at Monash University, Paul Komesaroff, writing in the MJA, said ''It is not appropriate for doctors or scientists with a particular view of medicine to impose those views on the whole community. It is important that those who seek to be friends of science do not inadvertently become its enemies. We call on the members of FSM to revise their tactics and instead support open, respectful dialogue in the great spirit and tradition of science itself.

UPDATE:  Last week, a study published in the Medical Journal of Australia by researches from the University of Melbourne provided the best picture yet of the most common conditions treated by chiropractors and suggests most chiropractic treatments and consultations undertaken in the country are EVIDENCE BASED! The study was the first of its kind in the world and provided the most detailed information yet published on chiropractic practice. I think now Dr Dwyer and his Whores of Big Pharma should leave the stage and fade away.