• Author unknown

  The twelve days of (alternative) Christmas

  http://draust.wordpress.com/2008/12/25/the-twelve-days-of-al...
  14 days ago in Dr Aust's Spleen · Authority: 35

  Holiday best wishes to all Dr Aust’s readers (all four of them). As a bit of light seasonal fare, I decided on a Christmas song. Others may like to invent their own versions. On the twelfth day of Christmas, My true love sent to me Twelve healers “healing” Eleven chiros suing Ten psychic surgeons Nine worthless journals Eight random needles Seven magic crystals Six placebo pills Five sessions of homoeopathy (Or:  “Five alternative realities” ) Four nutritionistas Three imagined allergies Two crank diets And a fictitious Ph.D. ! [BPSDB]

  • Author unknown

    BMAS - a confession

    http://northerndoctor.com/2008/12/01/bmas-a-confession/
    37 days ago in Northern Doctor · Authority: 6

    OK, I think I had better confess before I go any further. I am GP and I have been on a British Medical Acupuncture Society (BMAS) course. I have been thinking of posting this for a wee while but I feel my hand has been forced as the BMAS has been dragged into the limelight by the good Dr David Colquhoun. It was about 6 years ago and I was working for the Army seeing a lot of musculoskeletal medicine. I am not sure when the BMAS distanced themselves from meridians and such-like but I vividly recall a great deal of emphasis on it. Over the course of two days I was slowly and inexorably turned off - it felt a lot like an exercise in brain-washing. A group of susceptible individuals all herded together and then relentlessly bombarded by frightening well groomed zealots. I found their unquestioning belief in acupuncture frankly creepy. I have noticed that there is a bit of a line with GPs that use acupuncture - it usually goes: “I don’t belief all that ear acupuncture/addictions/meridians stuff and I only use it for some musculoskeletal conditions”. That’s OK then. Oh, apart from the piss-poor evidence base, of course. DC is, as PG Wodehouse might say, if not disgruntled, far from gruntled with the BMJ Group. The BMJ Group are launching a new journal - an acupuncture one. DC points out the evidence for the efficacy of acupuncture has been well summarised recently and it ain’t all that. (I won’t comment further - my copy of Ernst and Singh’s Trick or Treatment is on my bedside pile to be read.) DC highlighted that the BMJ suggest that their “brands stands for medical credibility”. Their opening gambit on the same page is: The BMJ Group is an innovative, ethical and evidence-based company… I refer readers back to this post if they want further evidence that the BMJ group is happy to sell their soul to the highest bidder. I can’t get too upset about all this - ultimately, BMJ Group is a company and one that wishes to turn a profit. However, there is an issue that their name lends credibility to the undeserving. If they position themselves in the market as standing for credibility and basing their strategies on ethical issues then I also think it is entirely fair that they deserve a kicking when they peddle complementary medicine and court Big Pharma. If they lay down with dogs then they can expect to get fleas. Dr Adrian White is the editor in chief of the new BMJ acupuncture journal. There is a nice little summary of his position A Reappraisal of Acupuncture, 1998 on the BMAS site. I like this quote: It also incorporates a modern approach to health care, which recognises the need to provide clinical trial evidence to back up anecdotal reports of acupuncture’s successes. Only by providing evidence can acupuncture stand alongside other therapies that are already established, and be judged by the strictest criteria of evidence-based medicine. 10 years later and evidence aplenty has been gathered. It doesn’t yet seem to have been quite enough for Dr White to have abandoned acupuncture. The DC post and subsequent discussion highlights the issues for all. After my BMAS course I went home and I have never stuck an acupuncture needle in a soul. Honest. In the last few weeks I have come across a number of GPs who practice or support acupuncture. I find the unceasing creep of CAM into general practice worrying. Why do so many GPs love acupuncture and CAM? On one level I am looking forward to the new journal - it should certainly provide me with plenty of opportunity to practice my critical appraisal as I take a close look at the papers. There is plenty of anti-woo going on across the blogs but I think it does deserve a vociferous and quite specific backlash directed at GPs who are running rough-shod over the medical evidence.

    • Author unknown

      Of pins and needles

      http://blogs.nature.com/news/thegreatbeyond/2008/11/of_pins_...
      57 days ago in The Great Beyond · Authority: 245

      Posted for Heidi Ledford The publishers of the British Medical Journal have announced their first business foray into the murky world of complementary medicine: the publication of a quarterly journal dedicated to acupuncture. BMJ Group said yesterday that it has acquired the quarterly journal Acupuncture in Medicine, which was previously published by the British Medical Acupuncture Society. The BMJ itself is no stranger to the technique. Judging from papers it has published over the years, acupuncture might be useful for treating all sorts of things: chronic headaches, chronic neck pain, back pain, and osteoarthritis of the knee (well, except when it doesn’t work). And who could forget the most curious and controversial acupuncture finding of them all: the meta-analysis which suggested that acupuncture improves the rate of pregnancy and live births following in vitro fertilization. To be fair, the journal has also taken a critical look at the placebo effect, and even the safety of the technique. But to those acupuncture skeptics out there, acquiring the journal was an embarrassing excursion into the land of woo. One blogger spared no mercy: “BMJ Group promotes acupuncture: pure greed”. Image: Punchstock

      • Author unknown

        BMJ Group promotes acupuncture: pure greed

        http://skepfeeds.wordpress.com/2008/11/11/bmj-group-promotes...
        57 days ago in Skepfeeds-The Best Skeptic blogs of the day · Authority: 18

        Today brings a small setback for those  of us interested in spreading sensible ideas about science.  According to a press release “The BMJ Group is to begin publishing a medical journal on acupuncture from next year, it was announced today (Tuesday 11 November 2008). This will be the first complementary medicine title that the BMJ Group has published.” And they are proud of that? What one earth is going on?   The BMJ group is a publishing company which says, of itself, “Our brand stands for medical credibility.   We are one of the world’s best known and most respected medical publishers.” Well perhaps it used to be. They have certainly picked a very bad moment for this venture.  In the last year there have been at least five good books that assess the evidence carefully and honestly.  Of these, the ones that are perhaps the best on the subject of acupuncture are Singh & Ernst’s Trick or Treatment and Barker Bausell’s Snake Oil Science.  Both Ernst and Bausell have first hand experience of acupuncture research.  And crucially, none of these authors has any financial interest in whether the judgement goes for acupuncture or against it. Here are quotations from Singh & Ernst’s conclusions “Reliable conclusions from systematic reviews make it clear that acupuncture does not work for a whole range of conditions, except as a placebo.” “There are some high quality trials that support the use of acupuncture for some types of pain and nausea, but there are also high quality trials that contradict this conclusion.  In short, the evidence is neither consistent nor convincing - it is borderline.” READ THE REST OF THIS ENTRY AT “DC’S IMPROBABLE SCIENCE” Posted in improbable science Tagged: accupuncture, alternative medicine, CAM, Integrative Medicine

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