Despite the real harm unproven or bogus alternative therapies can cause, I get a lot of flak here for being critical of alternative practitioners. Some of that stems from the natural resentment of having one’s beliefs questioned. Alternative medicine is more of a philosophy, even a religion, than it is a rational approach to healthcare (1,2,3), so challenging it is much like questioning someone’s religious beliefs, and it tends to draw the same sort of response as illustrated by the sometimes vicious hate mail I get (4,5). And pointing out the lack of scientific evidence or a plausible theory behind an alternative practice can (hopefully) dissuade people from pursuing it, which obviously threatens the livelihood of some practitioners, so naturally this would engender some angry responses.

However, this criticism of criticism is pretty hypocritical given that the foundation of most alternative medicine marketing is exaggerating the risks and minimizing or ignoring the benefits of science-based medicine. The criticism alternative practitioners level at conventional medicine in promoting their own practices is often dramatic, and even those who claim their methods are compatible with conventional therapies and that they employ these still most often give more credit to the alternative treatments they use.(6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12) Ultimately, most alternatives to science-based medicine have to be sold with the claim, or at least the implication, that they work better than conventional medicine or in situations where it does not, whether or not there is evidence to support these claims.

A reader recently pointed me towards a particularly egregious example of the marketing of complete nonsense as a substitute for real medical care. See if you can spot the subtle suggestion that the methods being offered can replace conventional care.

That wasn’t hard, was it? Now in the U.S. it is illegal to claim to diagnose or treat any disease without a license to practice veterinary medicine. I presume the same rule applies in Canada, where this quack is located, and as a result the web site is all about implying therapeutic powers without ever actually directly stating this. The usual sort of disingenuous CYA disclaimer appears on the home page:

The information contained on this website is for educational purposes only. It is not to be used as medical treatment or diagnoses. Do not alter any medical treatment, or the use of any medication without the permission of your medical care provider.

So if you aren’t supposed to use these products and services as medical treatments, why is the site called “No Vet for My Pet?” And why are there lists of medical conditions, from allergies to infections to cancer, paired with the names of specific products? Doesn’t that perhaps suggest the products are recommended as treatments for those conditions?

The site belongs to a veterinary technician/nurse named Salina Bhimji. Veterinary nurses, like nurses in human medicine, are in many ways the backbone of clinical medicine. They provide much of the direct patient care, and they serve as eyes, ears, hands, and often brain and conscience for veterinarians. I am blessed to work at a hospital with an amazing staff of highly intelligent, motivated, and trained nurses, and they make life incalculably better for me and my patients.

Unfortunately, in human medicine nurses are often a driving force for the integration of pseudoscience and nonsense into patient care, and I have seen at least some examples of the same problem in veterinary medicine. Healing Touch is the classic example of such a method among nurses in the human medical field. A form of “energy medicine,” which really amounts to a spiritual rather than a medical practice, it was invented by a nurse and has been accepted and promoted primarily by nurses despite clear evidence that it is nothing but a placebo ritual.

It is actually understandable that nurses in human and veterinary medicine might be more inclined towards alternative therapies than many doctors. Their training is often more practical and involves less basic science and scientific method and theory. And nurses provide most of the direct comfort to patients, so treating psychological, emotional, and spiritual needs more often falls within their domain than in the territory of doctors.

Most nurses, fortunately, believe in providing comfort and high-quality, science-based medical care, but a small group do tend to be sympathetic towards the kind of nonsense Ms. Bhimji sells. It is critical that those of us committed to evidence-based medicine include the nursing/technician community in our ranks and in our education and training efforts, because they are a large and indispensable part of the healthcare system for our patients.

According to her bio, Ms. Bhimji has an undergraduate biology degree and became a certified veterinary technician working at veterinary emergency hospitals. Apparently finding real medicine not to her liking, she has begun offering a wide array of the most ludicrous pseudoscientific and mystical nonsense available in the alternative medicine “toolbox.”

So what sort of alternatives does she offer? She seems to specialize in the more spiritual styles of therapy. This may be because of her personal beliefs, but I suspect it has more to do with legal restrictions on providing the more “medical” forms of alternative therapy (herbal remedies, acupuncture, chiropractic, and so on) without a license to practice medicine. She states that she is pursuing a doctorate in naturopathy, so I expect once she achieves that she will expand her product line—uh, I mean “toolbox.”

Reiki
This is is essentially a form of spiritual healing in which a healer directs a mysterious form of spiritual “energy” to heal physical disease.(13) It has the advantage over some alternative therapies of being benign in itself since it relies on magic rather than plant chemicals or needles. Nevertheless, no reliable scientific evidence has demonstrated any actual healing effects. If magic is real, then perhaps someday we will be able to demonstrate such effects, but as Tim Minchin has pointed out, “Throughout history, every mystery ever solved has turned out to be—not magic.”

The process of performing Reiki, however, might have some actual behavioral and physical effects on animals. It does, after all, involve quiet, gentle interaction and sometimes touch from a human. Anyone who has ever shared a bed or petted a dog or cat will be unsurprised by the idea that animals might enjoy this sort of interaction and find it comforting. It seems gratuitous to take ordinary kind and comforting interaction that might help shelter animals and load it down with a pile of mystical baggage and then claim that is why the animals benefit.

The use of spiritual practices in medical care does come with significant risks. While the humans involved may find such practices comforting, and that is a good thing, there is no reason to think our animals share any of our many specific and often incompatible spiritual beliefs. I have personally seen animals who are suffering be denied appropriate pain control and human euthanasia by owners whose spiritual beliefs precluded the use of these therapies. While animal owners are entitled to these beliefs, veterinarians have a duty to advocate for the welfare and interests of our patients. It is all too easy for psychologically comforting rituals like Reiki, acupuncture, homeopathy, and so on to fool us into thinking we have done something real to reduce an animal’s suffering when we actually have not. We must rely on objective scientific evidence to help us determine if what we are doing is truly comforting our patients and not just us.

Ms. Bhimji has a variety of certificates from training as Reiki practitioner. This may qualify her as a spiritual advisor of sorts to people who believe in the sort of ideas behind Reiki, but it does not give her any legitimate medical expertise or right to imply that she can treat health problems in veterinary patients.

A separate service Ms. Bhimji lists on her site is “energy healing,” but it is unclear how this differs from Reiki, which is just one of many forms of “energy medicine” (aka faith healing).

Crystal Healing
Here is how Ms. Bhimji describes this therapy:

What is Crystal Healing

This is a healing method that is used to heal animals using various types of crystals. There are many different crystals that work well with animals, it is about what crystal resonates with you.  If a crystal jumps out at you, or you are attracted to one, that is the stone that you are meant to use.

What does it do?

Using crystals in conjunction with other healing methods can enhance the healing process for an animal.  They simply amplify the energy that is flowing throught [sic] the animal.

It should be fairly obvious that this is again more religion than medicine, but there is no scientific evidence that crystal healing is anything other than a placebo therapy. (14, 15) While one can legitimately debate the merits of offering people placebos, it is clear that it is ethically unacceptable to treat disease in animals with placebos for their owners. (16)

Essential Oils
Essential oils are one of the products and services Ms. Bhimji offers which sound less obviously like religion and more like actual medicine. The claim that odors distilled from plants can heal disease, however, is still pseudoscience unsupported by reliable research evidence. There is little doubt smells can have potent emotional effects on humans, and they could potentially have behavioral effects on veterinary patients. BThere is weak evidence for beneficial effects on subjective mood states, such as anxiety, in humans, but the notion that they can influence the outcome of serious diseases, such as cancer, diabetes, and so on, is entirely unproven and highly implausible. (17, 18, 19, 20)

Ms. Bhimji specifically offers a type of essential oil therapy called Raindrop, and she proudly attributes the practice to Gary Young. Mr. Young is an infamous character with a long history in alternative medicine. Though the details are often in dispute, and Mr. Young does not hesitate to threaten legal action against those who criticize him, he has apparently been in regular legal trouble for practicing medicine without a license, making illegal drug claims, and other alternative medicine marketing activities for decades. (21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26). This is not a source anyone should trust, and the fact that Ms. Bhimji uses Mr. Young’s method and appears to admire him speak poorly of her own judgment and reliability.

Consultations
Finally, Ms. Bimji offers consultations in person or via Skype for $50-65 per hour to help pet owners “achieve their goals in enhancing the health and wellness of their pet.” She also offers a variety of educational  presentations in person and online. While I suspect there is nothing illegal in this, it seems obviously unethical and fraudulent by every other definition. Ms. Bhimji essentially offers either spiritual guidance or completely unsupported pseudoscience and calls it “healing” or “wellness.” It is hard to imagine how anyone could come to this web site and view the material there as anything other than healthcare advice for their pets, despite all the careful language and disclaimers, so the site strikes me as misleading even if Ms. Bhimji actually believes the nonsense she is preaching.

Bottom Line
I have no quarrel with people who find comfort during times of illness from spiritual practices. And I see no problem with utilizing these practices for our pets when they are intended to give us spiritual and emotional comfort. But there is a meaningful difference between medicine and religion, and when the distinction gets muddled patients suffer. Treating serious disease in animals with religious rituals and pseudoscience in lieu of science-based medicine denies these patients real, effective medical care and causes real and unnecessary suffering. Advertising oneself as a spiritual advisor helping people cope with their pets’ illness is perfectly fair. Advertising spiritual services and bogus treatments as if they had real medical benefits is misleading and dangerous.

Ms. Bhimji seems to take great care to avoid explicit claims that could get her in trouble with the law though I suspect those will appear if and when she gets licensed as a naturopath. But she clearly creates the impression that what she offers can have real medical benefits and can replace science-based medical care, and that is wrong whether legal or not.

A while ago, I wrote about a bill in the California legislature intended to remove non-medical exemptions to vaccination requirements for children in the state. Despite often vicious and irrational opposition, science and reason and public health have won the day! The bill passed all committees and both houses of the legislature, and it has now been signed into law by the governor.

SB_277_Signing_Message

It wouldn’t surprise me if there are legal challenges to the law ahead, but I am proud of my state and grateful as a parent that the politicians have made the right choice for public health.

This is an article I originally posted on a preliminary SkeptVet website which I no longer update since it has been replaced by this blog. I have copied it here since the links to the prior site no longer function.

Acquiring clinical experience is a major part of improving one’s medical knowledge and skills. Unfortunately, extensive practical experience can often lead to the erroneous the belief that we can reliably determine the safety and efficacy of a particular therapy based on our personal experiences or those of other doctors, especially specialists or experts. “I’ve used it, and I know it works/doesn’t work” is the most common response by doctors or clients to the suggestion that research evidence contradicts what we believe about a given medical practice. Another common response from experienced veterinarians is “I don’t need to run Test X. I know what this is because I’ve seen a hundred cases like it.” Such personal experiences are very compelling, but science is built on the premise that our imperfect brains can make mistakes and that careful use of appropriate research techniques can compensate for our limitations. Here are a few reasons to be skeptical of one’s own clinical impressions and those of “experts” and to look for guidance in good quality research evidence when it is available. (much of this has been adapted from “Why Bogus Therapies Often Seem to Work” by Barry Beyerstein, Ph.D.)

1. Self-Limiting Disease Many diseases are self-limiting. If the condition is not chronic or fatal, the body’s own recuperative processes usually restore the sufferer to health. Thus, to demonstrate that a therapy is effective, its proponents must show that the number of patients improved exceeds the number expected to recover without any treatment at all. Without detailed records of successes and failures for a large enough number of patients with the same complaint, someone cannot legitimately claim to have exceeded the norms for unaided recovery.

2. Waxing and Waning Chronic Disease (also known as Regression to the Mean) Such conditions as arthritis, allergies, and gastrointestinal problems normally have “ups and downs.” Naturally, clients tend to seek therapy during the period or greatest clinical symptoms. In this way, a treatment will have repeated opportunities to coincide with upturns that would have happened anyway.

3. Placebo Effect Through suggestion, belief, expectancy, cognitive reinterpretation, and diversion of attention, people given biologically useless treatments often experience measurable relief. Some placebo responses produce actual changes in the physical condition; others are subjective changes that make patients feel better even though there has been no objective change in the underlying pathology. Of course, in veterinary medicine, the effect is mostly “by proxy,” in which the owner’s beliefs and desires lead to a report of improvement in the pet’s symptoms when none has actually occurred.

4. Multiple Concurrent Therapies If improvement occurs after a pet has had several interventions, and probably other unremarked changes in the owner’s treatment of the sick pet, one or another of the changes often gets a disproportionate share of the credit or blame. Frequently, the latest in a series of interventions or the newest thing tried is credited with improvement even though many things were done.

5. Misdiagnosis Scientifically trained veterinarians are not infallible. A mistaken  diagnosis, followed by an irrelevant intervention, can lead to a glowing testimonial for curing a condition that would have resolved by itself. In other cases, the diagnosis may be correct but the time frame, which is inherently difficult to predict, might prove inaccurate.

6. Human Psychology Even when no objective improvement occurs, people with a strong psychological investment in the pet can convince themselves the treatment has helped. And doctors, who want very much to do the right thing for their patients and clients, have a vested interest in the outcome as well. A number of common cognitive phenomena can influence one’s impression of whether a treatment helped or hurt a patient. Here’s a brief list of common cognitive errors in medical diagnosis. Any of these sound familiar.

7. Cognitive Dissonance When experiences contradict existing attitudes, feelings, or knowledge, mental distress is produced. People tend to alleviate this discord by reinterpreting (distorting) the offending information. If no relief occurs after committing time, money, and “face” to a course of treatment internal disharmony can result. Rather than admit to themselves or to others that their efforts have been a waste, many people find some redeeming value in the treatment.

8. Confirmation Bias is another common reason for our impressions and memories to inaccurately represent reality. Practitioners and their clients are prone to misinterpret cues and remember things as they wish they had happened. They may be selective in what they recall, overestimating their apparent successes while ignoring, downplaying, or explaining away their failures. Or they may notice the signs consistent with their favored diagnosis and ignore or downplay aspects of the case inconsistent with this.

9. Anchoring This is the tendency to perceptually lock onto salient features in the patient’s initial presentation too early in the diagnostic process, and failing to adjust this initial impression in the light of later information. This error may be severely compounded by the confirmation bias.

10. Availability The disposition to judge things as being more likely, or frequently occurring, if they readily come to mind. Thus, recent experience with a disease may inflate the likelihood of its being diagnosed. Conversely, if a disease has not been seen for a long time (is less available), it may be underdiagnosed.

11. Commission Bias results from the obligation toward beneficence, in that harm to the patient can only be prevented by active intervention. It is the tendency toward action rather than inaction. It is more likely in over-confident veterinarians. Commission bias is less common than omission bias.

12. Omission Bias the tendency toward inaction and rooted in the principle of nonmaleficence. In hindsight, events that have occurred through the natural progression of a disease are more acceptable than those that may be attributed directly to the action of the veterinarian. The bias may be sustained by the reinforcement often associated with not doing anything, but it may prove disastrous.

13. Diagnosis Momentum Once diagnostic labels are attached to patients they tend to become stickier and stickier. Through intermediaries (clients, techs, other vets) what might have started as a possibility gathers increasing momentum until it becomes definite, and all other possibilities are excluded.

14. Feedback Sanction Making a diagnostic error may carry no immediate consequences, as considerable time may elapse before the error is discovered, if ever, or poor system feedback processes prevent important information on decisions getting back to the decision maker.

15. Gambler’s Fallacy Attributed to gamblers, this fallacy is the belief that if a coin is tossed ten times and is heads each time, the 11th toss has a greater chance of being tails (even though a fair coin has no memory). An example would be a vet who sees a series of patients with dyspnea, diagnoses all of them with a CHF, and assumes the sequence will not continue. Thus, the pretest probability that a patient will have a particular diagnosis might be influenced by preceding but independent events.

16. Posterior Probability Error Occurs when a vet’s estimate for the likelihood of disease is unduly influenced by what has gone on before for a particular patient. It is the opposite of the gambler’s fallacy in that the doctor is gambling on the sequence continuing.

17. Hindsight Bias Knowing the outcome may profoundly influence the perception of past events and prevent a realistic appraisal of what actually occurred. In the context of diagnostic error, it may compromise learning through either an underestimation (illusion of failure) or overestimation (illusion of control) of the decision maker’s abilities.

18. Overconfidence Bias A universal tendency to believe we know more than we do. Overconfidence reflects a tendency to act on incomplete information, intuitions, or hunches. Too much faith is placed in opinion instead of carefully gathered evidence. The bias may be augmented by both anchoring and availability, and catastrophic outcomes may result when there is a prevailing commission bias.

19. Premature Closure A powerful error accounting for a high proportion of missed diagnoses. It is the tendency to apply premature closure to the decision making process, accepting a diagnosis before it has been fully verified. The consequences of the bias are reflected in the maxim: ‘‘When the diagnosis is made, the thinking stops.’’

20. Search Satisfying Reflects the universal tendency to call off a search once something is found. Comorbidities, second foreign bodies, other fractures, and coingestants in poisoning may all be missed. Also, if the search yields nothing, diagnosticians should satisfy themselves that they have been looking in the right place.

21. Yin-Yang Out When patients have been subjected to exhaustive and unavailing diagnostic investigations, they are said to have been worked up the Yin-Yang. The Yin-Yang Out is the tendency to believe that nothing further can be done to throw light on the dark place where, and if, any definitive diagnosis resides for the patient, i.e., the vet is let out of further diagnostic effort. This may prove ultimately to be true, but to adopt the strategy at the outset is fraught with the chance of a variety of errors.

I have written frequently about the tendency of leaders in the alternative veterinary medicine community to talk about science as if they valued it while really either not understanding how science actually works or simply rejecting its basic principles (e.g. 1, 2). Alternative medicine, at its heart, is philosophically opposed to the method for understanding nature that has been so successful when applied through science. Supporters of alternative therapies will cite scientific evidence when it supports their beliefs, but they generally ignore or dismiss it when it does not, and they nearly always believe individual personal experience is a better guide to the nature of reality than controlled research. Science is more a means to advertise and promote their beliefs than a method for discovering which of those beliefs are true and which false.

A recent article in the Integrative Veterinary Care Journal by Dr. Nancy Scanlan, another leading figure in the alternative veterinary medicine community, illustrates this problem.

Choosing the Best Models for Integrative Research. IVC Summer 2015, 60-62. By Nancy Scanlan

It sounds pretty good, right? Looking for the best approach to do scientific research on so-called integrative therapies? However, the piece starts and ends by questioning the basic premises of medical research and suggesting science isn’t really needed to understand the truth about alternative therapies.

Conventional medicine focuses on separating out the individual actions of substances that have an effect on systems or diseases defined by conventional research.

To an extent, this is quite true. Science does make use of the principle of reductionism, minimizing the number of variables and potential sources of error in research studies to help separate out which effects are most significant. This does not deny the importance of complex interactions within systems, but it does recognize that human beings simply don’t have the ability to keep track of every element and every interaction in such systems, and when we try to view them without simplification, we are often wildly wrong about the true cause and effect relationships at work. Reductionism does have limitations, but it’s been a very successful tool in compensating for our own limitations in understanding how nature works.

Dr. Scanlan also tosses in the phrase “defined by conventional research” to suggest that this is simply one arbitrary way to define health and disease and that there may be others equally legitimate. This is a very post-modern view that rejects the concept of a stable and definable natural world that has whatever properties it has regardless of our beliefs and instead suggests that all human understanding should be viewed as no more than metaphor, with one set of metaphors being as “real” as another (though they often inconsistently choose to prefer their own paradigm over that of science-based medicine even while insisting that scientific rejection of their claims is merely bias in favor of one of multiple legitimate world views). She expands on this later in the article:

When traditional medicine [whatever that is] looks on disease and physiology as circular, as seen in the Five Element cycle of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM), different practitioners may decide to attack the same disease process at different parts of that cycle. The treatments may be seen as different by conventional medicine, but…final conclusions should be based on two criteria: were the cases treated successfully, and were all cases within the series consistent based on the traditional, not the conventional, view?

Essentially what she is saying here is that the problem, the method of treatment, and the outcome should all be defined by the standards of the alternative therapy being tested, not that of scientific medicine. We should view a series of case reports that have, by scientific standards, different diseases and which receive different herbs or other treatments and have success defined differently and however the practitioner chooses to define it, as legitimate scientific proof of the practice being tested. It is just like real science, except it ignores all the principles of scientific research and presumes the legitimacy of its own principles from the beginning.

Similarly, Dr. Scanlan argues that it is not legitimate to try and isolate individual compounds, or even individual herbs, when testing herbal remedies because the effects we are evaluating likely come from the specific combination of herbs ina  remedy. And how do we know this? Because, “If a formula has withstood the test of time and has been used for decades or even hundreds or thousands of years, it is most likely there’s a reason for using a specific combination of herbs.” In other words, if people claim to have used an herbal remedy successfully for a long time, without any proof of this claim, then the only appropriate way to test that remedy is to assume those claims are true and structure our research around them, rather than following the standard scientific practices that have so far proven far more successful in improving human health than thousands of years of uncontrolled, trial-and-error folk medicine did.

While Dr. Scanlan makes a few reasonable suggestions, such as encouraging standardization of herbal formulas so different researchers studying them are at least studying the same thing, she makes it clear throughout the article that the purpose of research is not to find the truth but to use the marketing value of science to convince others of what alternative practitioners already “know” through unscientific means. The possibility that these therapies might not work or that research results may necessitate abandoning any practice is never once even hinted at in this article.

“Studies structured to meet the expectations of conventional medicine…will encourage a better understanding and wider acceptance of integrative medicine.”

“When designing a study for integrative medicine, this approach can help satisfy both the conventional method of choosing treatments, and traditional methods that ensure better outcomes.”

“A standardized formulation and dose meets the conventional need for studies of a standard disease with a standard treatment. Once acceptance occurs, individual variations can be introduced.”

“In order for acceptance to occur, initial research may need to be more standardized…the fact that a remedy consistently “improves” (to the conventional eye) symptoms of a specific “disease” (as defined by conventional medicine) may open the door to acceptance of homeopathy as a valid part of integrative medicine.:”

“Echinacea…has usually been studied with the expectation that it will increase immune reactions in some way. [based, she neglects to mention, on claims by herbalists that it “boosts” or “strengthens” the immune system] However, it may have more of an immune-modulating effect, as evidence by at least one trial showing a decrease in WBC activity. Instead of viewing this as conflicting evidence, it would be better to examine herbal tradition…to see whether this herb has been used as an immune “normalizer.” If so, the conflicting evidence is actually supporting evidence for the original premise.” [In other words, any result can be viewed as supporting the hypothesis if we simply interpret it through the lens of pre-scientific folk medicine texts or our own experiences, and we never have to judge any practice to be inconsistent or ineffective.]

The recent canine influenza outbreak in the Chicago has generated a lot of anxiety among dog owners around the country. Unfortunately, the understandable and appropriate stream of questions from dog owners about this disease has generated a great deal of misinformation in the media and on the internet, and sadly some of it has come from veterinarians. While there is much we do not know, there are some things which are certainly not true and not helpful to dog owners.

To begin with, the most reliable sources of information about this disease are reputable veterinary infectious disease experts. Cornell University’s Animal Health Diagnostic Center (AHDC) has been the gold-standard lab for testing samples from dogs involved in this outbreak, and this is a great source of information. The Centers of Disease Control (CDC) and American Veterinary Medical Association AVMA) are also reliable sources. In brief, the current outbreak is a new variety (H3N2) of the previously identified canine influenza virus (H3N8), which itself originated in horses. Neither has been shown to be transmissible to people or most other animals, though the H3N2 variant can infect cats. The vast majority of infected dogs will show mild to now symptoms. Affected dogs typically have a mild persistent cough for 10-30 days, though the rare case that develops serious illness can show high fever and pneumonia. There is no direct treatment for the disease, but supportive care and treatment of secondary infections is very important in severely affected dogs. There is a vaccine which can reduce the risk of disease from the H3N8 strain, but it is not clear if there is any cross-protection against the H3N2 strain.

Since dogs do not travel as widely and readily as humans, influenza outbreaks are much less prone to spreading in this species. Unfortunately, as in humans, during an outbreak every dog with any symptoms that even vaguely resemble influenza is often assumed by its owners to have the disease. This leads to a lot of claims about the disease being present in places where it is not, as well as claims about animals either dying from the illness or being cured of it when they likely have not had it at all. Only appropriate diagnostic testing, as done through the AHDC, can confirm the presence of canine influenza, so we cannot make decisions about managing outbreaks or individual patients by assuming the disease is present based on compatible symptoms. These same symptoms are caused by many other, far more common, illnesses. The most up-to-date summary of cases tested and confirmed by the AHDC can be found on their web site.

As an example of egregious and dangerous misinformation about canine influenza, we can turn to our old model of veterinary quackery, Dr. Will Falconer. This fellow regularly attacks science-based veterinary medicine and essentially recommends magic as a substitute. He has a fondness for homeopathy, despite the abundant evidence that it is useless pseudoscience, and he has a particular loathing for vaccines. Predictably, he recommends homeopathy as treatment and prevention for canine influenza, providing an excellent model of the ridiculous fake science of homeopathy, and he derides vaccination as a preventative measure with arguments that are clearly and demonstrably false.

To begin with, he has posted his process for determining which homeopathic products to use to treat canine influenza. This involves the usual nonsense of listing symptoms which are in no way unique to this disease and then turning to collections of substances organized by the symptoms they are supposed to cause in healthy individuals based on so-called provings. Extremely dilute versions of these substances are then given one at a time. If the pet gets better, the treatment gets the credit. If not, another remedy is chosen just as capriciously and on and on until the patient either recovers or dies or the owner realizes that they are being scammed.

Dr. Falconer used this process to select a classic homeopathic remedy, Nux vomica (the poison strychnine diluted into non-existence), as the “cure” for canine influenza. However, after a couple of clients tried a different product (phosphorus, also diluted into non-existence) and their dogs got better, he decided this was the first choice cure. The fact that none of these patients were ever actually tested to see if they had influenza doesn’t bother Dr. Falconer, which given his demonstrated belief in magic isn’t surprising. One can easily see how this sort of extended process of trying one fake remedy after another without obtaining a real diagnosis or making any effort to employ real medical treatment could be dangerous for a dog who actually has influenza, or any other serious illness. It is ethically inexcusable for a veterinarian to practice this way, and it astounds and depresses me that Dr. Falconer is permitted to do so.

Of course, practicing voodoo in place of medicine doesn’t work nearly as well if you don’t try to mislead and frighten people away from actual medicine, and Dr. Falconer has shown himself cheerfully willing to do that before. In the case of canine influenza, he asserts that vaccines are useless and potentially dangerous and only considered because of the malign influence of, you gussed it, Big Pharma:

The Influence of Big Pharma

it’s widely known there’s no cross immunity between flu virus strains.

But, [a reporter sufficiently naïve to interview Dr. Falconer] went with, “experts don’t know” if the current vaccine will help.

Damn.

Here we with go with the “uncertainty” again, that keeps the doors open for lots of dogs to be unnecessarily vaccinated for this flu. With all the inherent risks vaccination carries.

The current vaccine will not prevent it. Any vet who’s uncertain about that is shining you on.

Despite what is “widely known” in homeopathy fantasyland, cross protection between vaccines for different influenza strains is common, and the CDC, AVMA, and AHDC have no reason to “shine us on” when they admit that the protective value of the H3N8 vaccine against the H3N2 strain is unknown.

Bottom Line
There is no need to panic about canine influenza. The current outbreak is not spreading like wildfire across the country, most dogs who have coughing and other respiratory symptoms do not have influenza, most dogs exposed to influenza do not get seriously ill, and it is probably not worthwhile vaccinating your dog if you live outside of the area where confirmed cases have been detected or if your dog does not have extensive contact with other dogs. There are plenty of reliable sources of information, but you cannot assume that just because someone is a veterinarian that they have the facts about this disease. Certainly, anyone claiming miraculous cures, effective prevention, or some sort of vast conspiracy or willful ignorance on the part of mainstream infectious disease and public health experts is not someone you should consider a reliable source of information about this or any other health risk to your dog.

As I’ve discussed before, the terminology associated with alternative medicine is complex and inconsistent, so it makes discussing and debating the subject that much more challenging. Terms like “alternative,” “holistic,” “integrative,” “natural,” etc. are often used interchangeably, but they tend to have subtle distinctions in meaning or in the underlying ideology they represent, and their popularity varies over time.

Mostly for fun, but hopefully to generate at least a little insight into the use of such terms, I have been playing around with Google’s ngram viewer to track the use of common alternative medicine terms over time. This tool identifies the frequency of occurrence of words of phrases in the enormous collection of published books digitized by Google. While it is not a complete collection of everything ever published, since no such resource is likely even possible, it does include a large enough sample of books published in the last two centuries to provide a rough guide to the popularity of specific terms in published writing.

My understanding has long been that the terms used to label, and to market, alternative therapies have changed in response to ideological shifts and to changes in the perception of these practices. For example, I would guess that the earliest term would be “alternative,” which arose to suggest such therapies could be used in place of science-based medicine. When people proved unwilling to give up conventional medicine, the term “complementary and alternative” and ultimately just “complementary medicine” arose to suggest one could benefit by using both science-based and other therapies. This, however, carries the implication that alternative medicine is subsidiary or an afterthought to conventional treatment, which some CAM practitioners dislike. The most recent innovation, in my view, has been “integrative medicine,” a term which implies that alternative and science-based therapies are equally legitimate and that there is some advantage to using them together despite the lack of evidence for many specific CAM practices and for any real improvement in outcomes to mixing these with conventional medicine.

In general, the ngram view supports this understanding, though with some interesting twists. First, the term “alternative medicine” yields this result:

Clearly, the term came into use during the late 1970s and was used with markedly increasing frequency starting in the early 1990s. Interestingly, it appears to have declined in frequency beginning in the early 2000s, which I would not have expected. Of course, given the limitations of the ngram viewer, it is not clear if this is entirely a real change in the popularity of the term or simply an artefact of the database. However, looking at the results for other CAM terms might shed some light on this question. For example, here is the result for “complementary and alternative medicine:”

As expected, this term seems to have appeared later than “alternative medicine,” emerging in the mid 1990s. Unlike “alternative medicine,” this term does not yet appear to have peaked or started to decline in popularity.

Interestingly, my assumptions about the term “integrative medicine” appear to have been mistaken, as the usage of this term follows a pattern almost identical to that of “complementary and alternative medicine,” whereas I would have expected it to have arisen later.

Another popular term, “holistic medicine,” shows features of both the patterns seen with the previous terms:

This term appears to have shown up slightly before “alternative medicine” and reached its peak popularity earlier, though it was never nearly as popular as “alternative medicine.” However, this term too appears to have begun declining in use beginning in the early 2000s. One might hope this represents a decline in the popularity of these questionable concepts as well, but of course this data cannot really determine that.

The slightly more common term “natural medicine” shows pattern similar to that of “alternative medicine:”

Though this one has been around at a low level for longer than either “holistic medicine” or “alternative medicine,” it appeared to have a big jump in usage in the 1990s and to have had a drop in popularity since about 2000:

I also thought that checking the usage of the names for specific alternative therapies might help sort out whether the apparent patterns seen in the use of these more general terms are accurate, and the results suggest they may be. First, acupuncture:

This term takes off in frequency in the 1970s, likely stimulated by the writings of journalist James Reston, who wrote glowingly, and somewhat inaccurately, about the use of acupuncture following his surgical treatment for appendicitis in China. A second step up in usage seems to have occurred in the late 1990s, similar to that seen for most of the general terms examined above. Also similar to the patterns for these terms, the use of “acupuncture” in published writing seems to have declined since about 2000. The related term “traditional Chinese medicine” follows a very similar pattern:

Though the terms “chiropractic” and “homeopathy” appear somewhat earlier, these too show a marked increase in usage in the 1990s followed by a decline since 2000.

Once again, it is possible that the apparent decline in the appearance of these terms represents an artefact of the database, so to test this idea I also evaluated a few common terms from science-based medicine. These show marked increases in use associated with their introduction, but no apparent decline such as that seen for CAM terms.

So what does all of this tell us? Well, given the limitations in the underlying database, we cannot make any confident pronouncements. However, what these data suggest is that terms associated with alternative medicine as a general ideological concept, and with specific alternative therapies, have experienced a significant increase in frequency of appearance in published English in the last few decades, primarily in the 70s-90s. Interest in these approaches seems to have increased as a function of larger cultural trends, including the increase in cross-cultural communication and awareness, the counterculture movement, the rise of post-modernism, and so on. Arguably, there has also been a growing anti-science and anti-intellectual trend, at least in the U.S., over the same time period, which would likely increase the attractiveness of pseudoscientific approaches that question the meaning of specialized expertise and the privileging of scientific evidence over belief and personal experience that is an intrinsic part of science-based medicine.

I would like to see some glimmer of hope in the apparent decline in the use of these terms which has occurred for most of them since about 2000. The idea that the cultural pendulum may be swinging back towards science and reason and away from opinion-based and faith-based medicine is appealing, but these data alone are not sufficient to demonstrate such a shift is really happening. Nevertheless, for the sake of human and veterinary patients, I will continue to hope this is the case!