CAM proponents often engage in the rhetorical fallacy known as special pleading. Wikipedia’s definition of this is adequate: “a form of spurious argumentation where a position in a dispute introduces favorable details or excludes unfavorable details by alleging a need to apply additional considerations without proper criticism of these considerations themselves. Essentially, this involves someone attempting to cite something as an exemption to a generally accepted rule, principle, etc. without justifying the exemption.”

Because many forms of CAM, such as homeopathy and various “energy” and “mind-body” therapies are based on principles inconsistent with established scientific knowledge, their advocates sometimes have to try and find ways to justify why these methods should be taken seriously despite this major weakness. They frequently argue that their methods rely on principles science does not yet, or perhaps cannot, understand. They argue that, despite the incontrovertible success in the last few hundred years of established methods of scientific investigation in figuring out and manipulating phenomena in the real world, these methods are culturally defined (i.e. “Western”) and only apply to their cultural of origin, or that they are incapable of dealing with new kind of phenomena.

These arguments seem pretty weak in the face of historical reality, but there is of course always a chance that a given “paradigm shift” or “revolutionary” new principle of biology, medicine, or physics has been discovered that turns all we know out the door.  However, this is an extraordinary claim, and it cannot be defended simply by pointing to a few anecdotes, one’s personal experience, or the ultimate foundation I believe it really rests on, faith. The whole reason we even have a category of medicine called “alternative” (or as I prefer to call it, “faith-based medicine”) is because people believe things they cannot convincingly demonstrate to those who do not share their faith or their trust in personal experience.

In 2008, there was a symposium held at the UCLA Center for East West Medicine (note the postmodernist bias that all knowledge is culturally relative even in the very name of the organization) and reported in eCAM. The purpose of the symposium was, as always, to try and convince mainstream medicine and the public of the scientific legitimacy of CAM.

“Its purpose was to address the finding by the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM) that IRB’s may be unfamiliar and/or uncomfortable with unconventional medical modalities thus apt to disapprove studies of those modalities. The hope was to better this state of affairs by familiarizing the audience with some of the major controversies surrounding CAIM research and its regulation.”

NCCAM has been widely criticized for being a tool of the CAM political lobby and of wasting taxpayer money trying to validate implausible therapies only because they are favored by powerful politicians or well-funded lobbies. This criticism, and questions about the scientific legitimacy and ethics of NCCAM-funded research was raised by critics at the UCLA symposium, and the responses of CAM advocates are enlightening in that they demonstrate the special pleading CAM requires because it cannot meet the evidentiary standards of scientific medicine.

According to the eCAM article, “Dr Ary Goldberger, Director of the Margret & H. A. Rey Institute for Nonlinear Dynamics in Medicine at Boston’s Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School….suggested that conservatism in science extends to the underlying approach to physiological systems, often wrongly privileging homeostasis (‘constancy as the wisdom of the body’) over complex adaptability, multi-scale dynamics and emergent properties. In as much as they are non-linear, non-stationary, non-additive and show time irreversibility, however, complex systems may be inaccessible to conventional analytic techniques, according to the speaker. Dr Goldberger left the impression that he believes both investigators and NIH Centers in general ought to be more open to novel but rigorous research designs and methodology.”

So here’s the claim that because CAM methods don’t seem to get validated by conventional scientific investigations, the flaw must be not with those methods but with the very nature of science. We need to invent new ways of studying nature, despite the wild success of our current approach, because the methods he favors don’t get validated the way we do things now. Again, paradigm shifts do happen, but they are rare, and the vast majority of revolutions proclaimed by outsiders in science are nothing more than desperate attempts to defend failed ideas.

Next, Distinguished Professor Edwin Cooper (Editor in Chief, Evidence Based Complementary and Alternative Medicine) “raised questions about what passes for good research methodology, asking whether studying ancient, whole systems of medicine using Western, reductionistic techniques doesn’t strip them of essential features.”

Here again is the postmodernist notion that truth is culturally relative, and that science somehow only applies to ideas that originated in the culture that most directly contributed to the creation of modern scientific methods. This is blatantly ridiculous, as any Chinese or Indian or other “Eastern” patient benefiting from modern scientific medicine could tell you. Our physiology doesn’t care where we live or what language we speak, physics doesn’t work differently on different continents, and while values depend heavily on culture, the truth about how our bodies work doesn’t. Millennia of traditional folk methods in India or China or anywhere else failed to eradicate infectious diseases like polio, lower infant mortality, raise life average expectancy, or otherwise improve human health and well-being to anything like the extent “Western” science has in only a few hundred years. The notion that other cultures have other medical realities is at best a sincere but weak defense of implausible or outright failed ideas based on the inappropriate translation of cultural relativism to the scientific domain. At worst, it is simply old-fashioned orientalism with the patina of scientific “open-mindedness.”

My favorite comment, though, comes from Professor-in-Residence Mark Cohen. First continuing the special pleading approach, he “expressed the view that current research tools may be inadequate for measuring the effects of some CAIM treatments.” Yeah, well prove it. But he then went on to all but admit that CAM is a faith-based belief system much more like religion than science: “he noted that taxpayers already support faith-based initiatives and questioned whether conventional science has a ‘special entitlement’ to public funds, given that orientation.” Here he is saying that because a large number of Americans accept giving government money to religious organizations for performing services previously considered the responsibility of a secular government, we should similarly support giving taxpayer dollars to study CAM rather pretending conventional science should have a special claim to research money just because it is a proven and effective approach and CAM is mostly a hodgepodge of vitalism, folk traditions, and stuff outright made up by unappreciated lone genius or know charlatans. Our faith, our belief alone should be sufficient to justify it. It isn’t possible to be much clearer about the philosophy behind alternative medicine than that.

CAM proponents are very fond of citing the antiquity and lineage, fictional or not, for their methods. Acupuncture, Traditional Chinese Medicine, and many herbal nostrums are promoted as “time-honored,” with the implication or explicit statement that anything people have been doing for so long must be a good thing. Foolishly expecting reason and logic to have some impact on this, we skeptics often try to point out that the number of people who believe something and the duration of time they believe it is not, unfortunately, a reliable indicator of whether or not it is BS. Or, as Tim Minchin more eloquently puts it in one of his songs, “I don’t believe that just because ideas are tenacious it means that they’re worthy.”

Soldiering on despite the blank stares or scoffing such a response often engenders, we continue to offer facts as rebuttal. The dramatic increase in life expectancy and health as scientific medicine came to replace traditional folk medicine seems a particularly salient fact in this context, but I recently ran across another smaller but more specific example of medical progress through time.

Dr. Atul Gawande, of Complications fame wrote an article for the New England Journal of Medicine in 2004 entitled Casualties of War–Military care for the wounded from Iraq and Afghanistan. As part of his discussion of care for wounded soldiers, he presented some historical statistics on the lethality of wounds suffered in combat by U.S. soldiers since the Revolutionary War. The table below illustrates the findings:

While we don’t have numbers from earlier eras or other countries, and while some caution is indicated in looking at numbers as old as those in the 18th and 19th centuries, the pattern is quite interesting. Survival varied, likely due in part to the reliability of the statistics, especially for small conflicts such as the Spanish-American War, but was consistently at or below 30% for most of the period until the 1950s. It improved to a consistent 25% for conflicts from then until the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts and then improved dramatically. 90% of wounded soldiers can be expected to survive and come home, and while this raises legitimate questions about  how we ensure they have an acceptable quality of life and adequate help dealing with the lasting effects of their injuries, very few of them over the long term will likely prefer to have died. In this limited sense, such a change represents true progress in medical care for these servicepeople.

Dr. Gawande doesn’t address the changes prior to the current wars, but it seems likely that the development of antibiotics, blood replacement products, and other crucial developments in trauma care are responsible for the improvement after WW II. Gawande does delve into the details of the changes in medical practices that have dramatically improved survival in the current conflicts.

The point from the perspective of the difference between traditional and science-based medicine is that 1) the improvement coincides with major developments in scientific medical care which are often dismissed as irrelevant or even sources of harm and 2) medical practices are constantly being re-evaluated and improved based on measurable results. This is in stark contrast to the claims of those who argue for faith in tradition and received ancient wisdom.

Traditional folk medical practices have indeed often been around for centuries or even millennia, though these claims are sometimes exaggerated or fabricated by CAM advocates. However, in all those centuries or millennia, these methods have never succeeded in making the improvements in survival and health that have come in the last two hundred years, as Enlightenment rationality and scientific medicine have been born and matured. And these traditional practices are founded on the perceived virtue of not changing, whereas the ability to change and adapt that science gives mainstream medicine is one of its greatest strengths. This paper provides a small but clear illustration of the general case that the virtues of the scientific method demonstrably provide better results than the claimed virtues of tradition and longevity often attached to alternative medical practices.

Good eveni…Is this on? Can you hear me in the back? Good, ok. Good evening ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the 129th meeting of the Skeptics’ Circle. I’m SkeptVet, and I’ll be your MC this evening. Sorry, it’s my first time as MC, so I’m a bit nervous. Anyway, my Toastmaster’s class said I should open with a joke, so here goes..

I ran into Shirley McClain the other day, and I asked her, “Why did the chicken cross the road?”

She told me, “A chicken doesn’t cross the road when it crosses the road, and we know this because Stephen Hawking says we understand energy.”

Thank you, thank you, yes I’m here all week. For more skeptical chicken and road mockery, check out the ultimate collection at Skeptico.

Ok, we have a great lineup tonight, so let’s get right to it.

The august Dr. Aust considers the needs of those suffering from the recent earthquake in Haiti and suggests that while maybe sending money to aid organizations is a quiet, anonymous, not terribly dramatic way to help, it is better than arrogantly and flamboyantly rushing there to show off your woo, as some homeopaths have done. And now for something completely different (how many of you are old enough to remember that show?!) he takes an informative and surprisingly lighthearted look at Hitler and homeopathy.

Speaking of Haiti, I think we all know Pat Robertson had a few words to say on the subject. Well, The Skeptical Teacher has a few words to say back. Amen, brother! And on the subject of homeopathy, ST brings us a not-so-tragic story of one of our own, skeptic and atheist blogger Ziztur, who overcome by the meaninglessness of life (or by realization of the eternal gullibility of human beings) attempts to commit suicide with a homeopathic sleep aid. An entertaining and instructive, if futile gesture! Finally, The Teach also brings us a clip of Captain James T. Kirk interviewing someone even farther out in space than himself, psychotic–er, I mean–psychic John Edward. Set phasers for debunk!

And because woo is a global phenomenon, we have Stuff and Nonsense across The Pond pointing out the potential for confusion when discussing homeopathy and herbal remedies. Most homeopathic remedies are so dilute that they contain nothing but water and the hopes of their befuddled proponents. However, herbal remedies actually contain active compounds, for good or ill. Unfortunately, the two types of nostrums share many marketing points, including buzzwords like “natural,” which make it easy for consumers to confuse the two, with potential dangerous results.

Next, Akusai  at Action Skeptics takes on a subject I’ve also been known to rant about from time to time; the depressing decline in the quality of the Discovery Channel, from decent nature documentaries to “reality-TV” dreck and woo promotion. There are a few decent shows left, and Akusai reviews these and the rest in Discovery Channel- The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. Oddly enough, The Onion had a related story today entitled Science Channel Refuses to Dumb Down Science Any Further.

It’s been a tough winter already, but when not shoveling snow, Don Reifler of The Lafayette Skeptics has put together a comprehensive video presentation on the history of anti-vaccine activists called The March of the Mercury Militia which should be required background for anyone dealing with this particular anti-science bunch.

In the much warmer clime of South Africa, a nice local test of electromagnetic hypersensitivity syndrome I described by Paul Hutchinson, along with the disappointing lack of interest shown by sufferers in the results.

PodBlack Cat has for us an entertaining look at Superstition and the Olympics.

And continuing our look at medical nonsense, Bing over at Happy Jihad’s House of Pancakes has some thoughts to share with Grand Woomeister Mike Adams regarding his recent incoherent rant against skepticism, a temper tantrum precipitated by his losing to Dr. Rachel Dunlop (aka Dr. Rachie) for the Shorty Award in Health. These thoughts are incisive and cogent, and at least PG-13. Bing also has a proposal for an International Dr. Rachie Appreciation Day that merits serious consideration. I’ve taken the liberty of including a post from Dr. Rachie herself, showing a rare example of regulatory oversight actually calling BS on claims. And finally, Bing shares a few snapshots from his tour of the Creation Museum.

Also fighting the good fight against the imposition of the dangerous irrationality of religious fundamentalism on the rest of us, Ron Britton at the Bay of Fundie continues his extensive analysis of the Darwin Was Wrong “Conference”, which he infiltrated in November. Part 9: Fossil Fraud deconstructs the laughable attempts of one of the conference speakers to demonstrate why the fossil record is just God’s little joke, so we must abandon the notion of evolution all together. Good luck with that!

We get to enjoy three posts from Andrew Bernardin at Evolving Mind this time! First, he dissects the fuzzy “science” behind a study of the effects of stress after the Katrina disaster on children. Next, he shows us the connection between the anthropic principle and drunken billiards. Finally, he uses a bit of consumer research to help explain why good solid science is harder to market than vague nonsense.

Cubik’s Rube tells a wrenching horror story about Facilitated Communication and then follows it with a detailed and intelligent analysis of this practice and its implications. An excellent resource to point the credulous towards, and an excellent example of how to connect with people’s emotions to make them care about an issue without sacrificing reason and fact.

Who can foresee what the fickle winds of Fate will bring? In an unexpected stroke of good fortune, Lord Runolfr has won a valuable prize! Or has he…?

But wait! Perhaps the future isn’t so opaque after all. Hear Ye, Hear Ye! Red Stick Skeptic has had a vision! He has cast aside self-doubt and bravely proclaimed his ability to see the future, and woe to those who ignore his prognostications! I know all you closed minded skeptics out there are going to be keeping score, but I’ll bet he at least beats Sylvia Brown!

Well, I’m afraid that’s all we have time for tonight. I’m so glad we’ve had this time together. Just to have a laugh and sing a…What? Oh, sorry I thought I was supposed to sing.

The next Skeptics’ Circle, will be held at The Lay Scientist February 11, 2020. Please send more good stuff their way, at layscience@googlemail.com.

OK, good night everybody! Thanks for coming! Don’t forget to tip your waiters!

Mark Crislip at Science-Based Medicine recently discussed Hill’s Criteria of Causation, but after looking at Dr. Hill’s original paper I felt obliged to examine the subject here as well because it is central to science-based medicine, and key in differentiating real medicine from quackery.

As I often discuss, a crucial issue in medicine is the question of epistemology; how we know what we know. Our therapies ought to be based on a real understanding of health and illness, and sound evaluation of the safety and efficacy of the interventions we undertake. The key difference between scientific and alternative medicine is in the criteria  for such evaluation. CAM proponents are often satisfied with theories of disease than are either made up out of whole cloth by individuals (e.g. homeopathy, chiropractic) or that are an agglomeration of folk beliefs (e.g. acupuncture, reiki and other energy therapies, TCM). Whether these theories are consistent with our general understanding of the universe, or with each other, is not a concern.

Even more damning, CAM practitioners are frequently satisfied that their personal impressions and experiences are adequate to validate the truth of the causal associations they see underlying disease or in the response to their treatments. Despite the manifold errors the human mind is known to exhibit in making causal associations, these people don’t see any need for a type of validation that compensates for these errors. They may lay claim to any scientific evidence that can be found for their approaches, for the aura of legitimacy it confers, but they will never reject the conclusions of their experience or intuition in light of any other kind of evidence.

In 1965, Dr. Sir Austin Bradford Hill gave a talk to the Royal society of medicine entitled The Environment and Disease: Association or Causation? In this address, he laid out nine criteria for concluding that an observed association was in fact representative of a causal relationship. His lucid and cogent presentation provides us with an excellent framework for making decisions about the causes of disease or the effects of treatments, all the more because he was so careful to emphasize that his criteria were guidelines which should support, not replace critical thought and judgment.

Here are Dr. Hill’s criteria, with a brief explication of each:

1. Strength– The strength of an association can be supportive of a true underlying causal relationship. If a proposed cause for a disease is associated with the disease itself only sporadically or unpredictably, this is weaker evidence for its causal role than if it is reliably present in conjunction with the disease. As always, Dr. Hill cautioned that “we must not be too ready to dismiss a cause and effect hypothesis merely on the grounds that the observed association appears to be slight,” but the strength of an association is a relevant factor in evaluating its significance.

2. Consistency– An association between cause and effect should be robust enough to be demonstrable in multiple studies by different investigators. This is key to understanding the fallacy of presenting a single study as definitive evidence for or against a disease etiology or treatment effect. The preponderance of the evidence as it accumulates is more meaningful than the results of particular studies, though the quality as well as quantity of the evidence must also be considered.

3. Specificity– If a putative cause is associated with a very specific set of symptoms, or a treatment with very specific effects, this supports a causal relationship. If the cause is present with a wide variety of different clinical presentations or the results following a treatment are highly variable, this argues against a causal relationship. As always, Dr. Hill correctly cautions against excessive rigidity in the application of this criterion, pointing out that many diseases are multifactorial and may not exhibit great specificity of association with a single causal factor. As he puts it, “if specificity exists we may be able to draw conclusions without hesitation; if it is not apparent, we are not thereby necessarily left sitting irresolutely on the fence.”

4. Temporality– Causes by definition precede their effects, so if a potential causal agent is observed after the condition it is speculated to be causing, this argues strongly against a true etiologic relationship. The obverse of this is, of course, the post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy, perhaps the most intransigent and troublesome reasoning error in medicine. The observation that one thing precedes another is not in any way evidence for a causal connection because of the myriad of alternative explanations that often turn out to dictate the order of precedence. Unfortunately, precedence is very compelling as proof of causality despite being unreliable.

5. Biological Gradient– Also known as a dose-response curve, this relationship is common in biological systems and is strongly supportive of a causal/effect relationship. If the amount of a drug given or the intensity of an exposure to a potential cause of disease is correlated with the likelihood or severity of the resultant effect or the disease, this supports a conclusion of causation. If, however, a little bit is as good (or bad) as a lot, the hypothesis of causation should be questioned.

6. Plausibility– Dr. Hill was less convinced of the reliability of this criterion because, as he correctly observed, “What is biologically plausible depends upon the biological knowledge of the day.” However, as he explains in discussing his subsequent criterion, a proposed relationship which contradicts well-established understandings in biology or other areas of knowledge should be viewed as less likely to be correct, and less worthy of implementation or investigation, than a relationship consistent with such understandings.

7. Coherence– In contrast to his caution regarding the criterion of plausibility, Dr. Hill states, “On the other hand, the cause-and-effect interpretation of our data should not seriously conflict with the generally known facts of the natural history and biology of the disease.” A proposed mechanism, such as that underlying homeopathy, which requires overturning well-established principles in biology, chemistry, and physics must face a far greater burden of proof to be accepted as valid than a hypothesis consistent with established knowledge.

8. Experiment– Clearly, the results of controlled laboratory, animal model, or clinical trial studies are critical in drawing firm conclusions about the causation of disease or the effects of medical interventions. Contrary to the stereotype sometimes promulgated by CAM advocates, scientific medicine does not rely solely on this criterion, but it can be a very powerful tool for confirming or invalidating proposed relationships.

9. Analogy– This is perhaps the weakest of Hill’s criteria, though it is popular because of the simplicity and apparent clarity of arguments by analogy. While toxins may cause illness, for example, not all illness should be attributed to toxins. Likewise, while infection may cause a fever, not all fevers are due to infection. Analogies are most useful for suggesting possible relationships, which should then be confirmed or disproven by application of more rigorous criteria.

After discussing his criteria, Dr. Hill goes on to eloquently addresses two critical issues in the epistemology of medicine. First, he is very clear that conclusions about cause and effect relationships must be based on assessment of multiple criteria and application of sound reasoning, not on slavish adherence to one criterion or to any algorithmic model, including his:

“What I do not believe – and this has been suggested – that we can usefully lay down some hard-and-fast rules of evidence that must be obeyed before we can accept cause and effect. None of my nine viewpoints can bring indisputable evidence for or against the cause-and-effect hypothesis and none can be required as a sine qua non. What they can do, with greater or less strength, is to help us to make up our minds on the fundamental question – is there any other way of explaining the set of facts before us, is there any other answer equally, or more, likely than cause and effect?”

This shows a sophistication of reasoning inconsistent with the stereotype of science-based medicine advocates as obsessed with randomized clinical trials and blind to all other evidence for or against proposed causal relationships.

Dr. Hill also presciently addresses the proper role of statistical analysis in medical decision making. In dealing with questions of cause and effect, he argues that “no formal test of significance can answer those questions. Such tests can, and should, remind us of the effects that the play of chance can create, and they will instruct us in the likely magnitude of those effects. Beyond that they contribute nothing to the “proof” of our hypothesis.” He goes on to discuss how statistical analysis entered medical research in the 1920s and 1930s as a needed anodyne to the practice of basing firm conclusions and therapeutic practices on small, not representative case examples. However, he speaks strongly of the excessive role such methods were then coming to play in drawing conclusions from medical research, and the problems he describes have only worsened in the intervening time:

“I am told, some editors of journals will return an article because tests of significance have not been applied. Yet there are innumerable situations in which they are totally unnecessary – because the difference is grotesquely obvious, because it is negligible, or because, whether it be formally significant or not, it is too small to be of any practical importance. What is worse the glitter of the t table diverts attention from the inadequacies of the fare….Of course I exaggerate. Yet too often I suspect we waste a deal of time, we grasp the shadow and lose the substance, we weaken our capacity to interpret the data and to take reasonable decisions whatever the value of P. And far too often we deduce ‘no difference’ from ‘no significant difference.’ Like fire, the chi-squared test is an excellent servant and a bad master.”

Lastly, Dr. Hill answers definitively and in no uncertain terms those critics who falsely accuse practitioners of science-based medicine of passivity or helplessness in the absence of definitive clinical trial evidence:

“Finally, in passing from association to causation I believe in ‘real life’….In asking for very strong evidence I would, however, repeat emphatically that this does not imply crossing every ‘t’, and swords with every critic, before we act.

All scientific work is incomplete – whether it be observational or experimental. All scientific work is liable to be upset or modified by advancing knowledge. That does not confer upon us a freedom to ignore the knowledge we already have, or to postpone the action that it appears to demand at a given time.

Who knows, asked Robert Browning, but the world may end tonight? True, but on available evidence most of us make ready to commute on 8:30 the next day.”

I really shouldn’t be giving this guy so much attention, but after our little tiff I’ve taken to checking in on his blog, and the vicious and self-serving marketing strategy is offensive enough to stimulate a response. Dr. Shaw Messonnier is continuing his tirade against veterinarians who stubbornly cling to science over faith-based medicine. His most recent blog post is still combining the blatantly unethical and deceitful mischaracterization of science-based veterinary medicine with the self-serving plugging of his own practices, and his book.

“Every day I see pets whose owners share with me the same tragic story. Their veterinarians have told them there is nothing they can do to help their pets. Many of these pets were seen by their veterinarians for routine checkups or what appeared to be minor problems. During the visit, a serious condition, often cancer, was diagnosed. As a result of the seriousness of the disease, the veterinarian offered no hope. Instead, the veterinarian told the owners that their pets had only a few weeks to live and recommended euthanasia when the pets’ condition declined.”

Of course, honestly discussing the inevitability of death is taboo in our culture, and while scientific medicine has much to offer in the treatment of cancer, and outperforms alternative methods whenever real tests are done (and this study), the reality is that some diseases cannot be cured and treatment must focus on maintaining comfort and a good quality of life. And the ultimate act of care for terminally ill pets is to let them die peacefully and without pain, rather than suffer the frequently awful and prolonged experience of an unaided death.

But Dr. Messonnier prefers confidently offering false, unsubstantiated claims of miraculous benefit from his methods (including diets free of supposed “toxins,” unproven or disproven nutritional supplements to “boost the immune system,” and of course avoiding “unnecessary” vaccinations). He makes wild and unsubstantiated claims about the success of his own methods, based solely on his opinion of what a great doctor he is. For example, “In general, pets treated with a combination of conventional medications plus natural therapies will usually live 2 to 3 times as long as those whose treatment does not include natural therapies.” This seems odd considering the evidence that in human cancer patients alternative medicine may actually be associated with shorter survival, either because of the effects of the CAM therapies themselves or because patients turn to CAM when they have diseases for which no real therapies exist. Still, he insists, “Integrative/holistic/natural/green therapies can offer “hope for the hopeless.” While I can’t always cure all of my patients, I can offer all of them hope and make them healthier. It is not uncommon for me to treat a pet who is given weeks to live by the previous veterinarian and have that pet live many months or even several years!”

In addition to such fanciful “clinical impressions,” and false hope, Dr. Messonnier bases his marketing strategy on mischaracterizing mainstream medicine, with all the cliches about real medicine only treating symptoms an CAM creating health, and so on: “The reason for my success? Unlike conventional doctors, I focus on HEALING the pet rather than TREATING the disease. This is a foreign concept to many doctors. When I was in veterinary school, I was taught to diagnose and treat disease. Our goal was never to improve the health of the pet but simply to win the battle against the disease. When that is not possible, the only other alternative is euthanasia.”

Not surprisingly, the rant ends with a plug for his new book: Unexpected Miracles-Hope and Holistic Healing for Pets. I have no doubt this will be a touching and emotion collection of anecdotes which create the impression, false though it is, that his methods can save those who we closed-minded and ineffectual science-based practitioners have given up on. Despicable and deceitful nonsense couched in the self-righteous language of the enlightened bringing hope and compassion to those abandoned by the cold and heartless practitioners of  mainstream medicine. Truly, if it were possible Dr. Messonier should feel ashamed.