Jun. 24, 2009 - Issue #714: The Rural Alberta Advantage
Well, Well, Well
Really crazy talk
A recent Newsweek piece titled "Crazy Talk" missed the mark of balanced
and credible reporting to become a condescending attack on the credibility of
Oprah Winfrey, some guests she hosted earlier this year, and alternative
medicine in general. Derogatorily describing the show with Suzanne Somers as
"a perfect hour of tabloid television," the writers produced something that
might have been a public relations piece written by the pharmaceutical
industry, which is probably not all that far from reality.
The truth is that Newsweek, like so many media outlets, has close ties with
the pharmaceutical industry. In 2001, the magazine ran a special health
edition that conferred sponsorship for the issue entirely on the
pharmaceutical lobby. It has cosponsored conferences with the drug lobby. Its
reporting has been used as direct-mail lobbying by the industry and an
industry-funded front group called the Pharmaceutical Research and
Manufacturers of America, or PhRMA. And Pat Wingert, one of the authors of
the article, is anything but unbiased—he's written much on the benefits
of starting hormone replacement early, and is coauthor of The Complete Guide
to Menopause.
I don't watch Oprah, but to say her show is deserving of the adjective
"seamy" for hosting advocates of alternative medicine and to refer to those
people as "pop-science artists" appears to be little more than a last gasp
attempt at defending a system of medicine that is failing us. Dr. Christiane
Northrup, Dartmouth-educated ob-gyn, also criticized in the article, is
hardly a quack for opposing Gardasil (even the FDA has strengthened its
warning on the vaccine), nor for recognizing the mind-body connection doctors
tend to overlook (it's a connection solidly supported by science.)
Making the assumption that the medical establishment recommends only what is
safe and in our best interests, and that alternative approaches to health are
foolhardy and pseudoscientific, the writers overlook the fact that much
medical practice is in fact years behind what the science supports. As Dr.
David Newman, the emergency room physician, clinical researcher and Columbia
University teacher of medicine makes abundantly clear in his book
Hippocrates' Shadow, much of what we assume to be both safe and effective in
medical practice is sometimes neither.
The writers of "Crazy Talk" dismissively refer to bio-identical hormones in
quotation marks, implying there's no such thing. They claim that what passes
for bio-identical is no different and no safer than are synthetic hormones, a
claim not even remotely true—their chemical structure and actions in
the body are quite different. Bio-identical means chemically identical to the
hormones produced in our bodies—and it means they're not patentable as
drugs. The FDA knows of no adverse effects associated with bio-identical
hormones properly used, something not true of their synthetic
counterparts.
Synthetic counterparts to our hormones on the other hand present a challenge
to our bodies. We have trouble metabolizing them. They stress our livers,
increase our nutritional needs and their use is strongly correlated with high
homocysteine levels and inflammation. They increase our risk of heart
disease, stroke, high blood pressure, dementia, diabetes, osteoporosis and
cancer.
To refer to alternative approaches as "hogwash" having an "aura of being
scientific" is, though condescending and absolutely untrue, a highly
effective tactic for discrediting ideas that are a threat to the orthodoxy.
The medical orthodoxy, aware of its own damaged credibility, wants the
thousands of people finding help with alternative medicine to go away. The
only way it will achieve that goal is to disparage them, to dismiss
alternative medicine as dangerous and foolish mumbo-jumbo even when it is
soundly grounded in good science.
As German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer once said, "All truth passes
through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently
opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident." V
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