Dominic Lawson: So now we will have degrees in quackery
What, really, is the difference between acupuncture and psychic surgery?
Tuesday, 24 June 2008
Print
Email
It's hard to grade nonsense on a scale, but of all forms of medical quackery, psychic surgery must be judged one of the least scrupulous. You might recall the odd television expose of its practitioners - so-called 'surgeons' who appear to be operating on patients with their bare hands, and who seem to be able to remove allegedly diseased tissue without making any incisions.
Despite being exposed as hoaxers, 'psychic surgeons' continue to cast their spell over the gullible and desperate – mostly in Brazil and the Philippines. The odd case still crops up in the supposedly less superstitious United Kingdom.
About a year ago the Conservative MP Robert Key wrote to the Department of Health following a complaint by one of his constituents, who had been a victim of such fraudulent "healing." I have the full ministerial reply in front of me. Lord Hunt of Kings Heath told Mr Key: "We are currently working towards extending the scope of statutory regulation by introducing regulation of herbal medicine, acupuncture practitioners and Chinese medicine. However, there are no plans to extend statutory regulation to other professions such as psychic surgery.
"We expect these professions to develop their own unified systems of voluntary self-regulation. If they then wish to pursue statutory regulation, they will need to demonstrate that there are risks to patients and the public that voluntary regulation cannot address. I hope this clarifies the current position."
Indeed, it does. It makes it clear that the lunatics have taken over the asylum. For a start, how could Philip Hunt, previously director of the National Association of Health Authorities and Trusts, possibly have thought that "psychic healing" constituted a "profession" – let alone one which would "develop its own system of voluntary self-regulation? What might this involve? A code which declares that members must never perform genuine surgery, lest it brings the "profession" into disrepute?
Last week, in fact, the Department of Health published the report which outlines the regulation hinted at by Lord Hunt. It is called the Report to Ministers from the Department of Health Steering Group on the Statutory Regulation of Acupuncture, Herbal Medicine, Traditional Chinese Medicine and other Traditional Medicine Systems Practiced in the United Kingdom.
It is a scary document, and not just because many of its recommendations stem from something called the "Acupuncture Stakeholder Group". You thought they just used needles, didn't you?
Acupuncture is at the most respectable end of the alternative health spectrum – its practitioners would be affronted to be lumped in with psychic surgeons. Yet what, really, is the difference? There are many "patients" in the Philippines and Brazil who will insist that psychic surgery has cured chronic ailments which conventional medicine failed to alleviate.
Such is the power of placebo – the driving force of all unconventional medical treatments, including acupuncture.
A few months ago an investigation into acupuncture, involving 1,162 patients with lower back pain, made a splash in newspapers across the world. The researchers at Regensburg University declared that just 27.4 per cent of those who had only conventional treatments such as physiotherapy felt able to report an improvement in their condition. However, of those who also underwent acupuncture, 47.6 per cent reported an improvement. So all that stuff about "different levels of Qi", "meridians", "major acupuncture points" and "extraordinary fu" is scientifically validated, then? Well, not quite, despite what some of the news reports said.
You see, the cunning researchers of Regensburg had one control group of back-pain sufferers who were told that they were undergoing traditional acupuncture – whereas in fact the needles were inserted entirely at random; and instead being put in to a depth of up to 40mm (as required by the acupuncture textbooks) were merely inserted just below the skin.
This was sham acupuncture. And guess what? It worked – within the statistical margin of error – just as well as the "real" acupuncture: 44.2 per cent of the recipients of the sham treatment said that their back pain had been alleviated in a way which they had not experienced through conventional medicine.
Now here's another remarkable thing: the main body of the report produced for the Government last week does not contain the word "placebo" – and it crops up only twice in the appendices. One can understand why the various "stakeholders" who were consulted might have wanted to steer away from this fundamental question, but it's surprising that the chairman of the report, Professor Michael Pittilo, principal of Robert Gordon University, didn't insist upon it.
After all, Professor Pittilo claims that his report was an "echo" of the House of Lords' Science and Technology Committee report on the same subject – which had declared that the single most important question that any such investigation must address is: "Does the treatment offer therapeutic benefits greater than placebo?"
That indefatigable quackbuster, Professor David Colquhoun of University College London is on the case, however. His indispensable blog points out that Professor Pittilo is a trustee of the Prince of Wales's Foundation for Integrated Health, which advocates exactly the sort of therapies that this committee is supposed to be regulating.
Pittilo and his band of "stakeholders" have come up with their own way of "regulating" the alternative health industry – which the Government has welcomed. It is to suggest that practitioners gain university degrees in complementary or alternative medicine. Pittilo's own university just happens to offer such courses, which Professor Colquhoun has long campaigned against as "science degrees without the science."
It will be a particular boon to the University of Westminster, whose "Department of Complementary Therapies", teaches students all about such practices as homeopathy, McTimoney chiropractic, crystals, and 'vibrational medicine'.
One can see how this might fit in with the Government's "never mind the quality, feel the width" approach to university education. One can also see how established practitioners of such therapies might see this as a future source of income – how pleasant it might be to become Visiting Professor of Vibrational Medicine at the University of Westminster.
Thus garlanded with the laurels of academic pseudo-science, the newly professionalised practitioners of "alternative medicine" can look down on such riff-raff as the "psychic surgeons". Yet in one way those charlatans are less objectionable than Harley Street homeopaths: they openly admit that they are faith-healers, rather than pretend to academic status; and while they have made fools of their patients they haven't-yet-made a fool of the Government.
Also in this section
- Dominic Lawson: Tories used to condemn the politics of envy. Now they're seeing it from the other side
- Dominic Lawson: Meet the new Obama, master of the U-turn
- Dominic Lawson: This child protection hysteria deflects attention from a real, and growing, danger
- Dominic Lawson: This is more than a political knock-about – it's the inexcusable smearing of an opponent
Comments
52 Comments
While I certainly agree that irrational and biologically implausible methods of healthcare should be publicly criticised, ridiculed even, and certainly not supported by government and universities, those offering such criticism would do well to be informed on the subject and make convincing agruments to the public about why using such services is a bad idea.
In my opinion, the presence of a placebo response is possibly the weakest argument of all. Not because it isn't true, but because it applies equally well not most biomedical treatments. Try doing a search for placebo effects in surgery. There is absolutely no method by which placebo can be removed from clinical medicine (conventional or otherwise). While this is not an excuse for quackery, there are strong arguments for using it to a patient's advantage.
Posted by Luke Rickards | 30.06.08, 10:25 GMT
Dicky Darwin: 'Don't blame me for the way women are.'
I don't blame you, Dicky, I very much like the way women are, and it never crossed my mind that it was down to you.
I'm not sure about your last comment re: women voting. Are you saying that you don't think women should have the vote? That's 50% of the adult population without representation or a voice in the political and social process. I'm sure you can't be saying that but I'm just checking.
Posted by Andrea | 25.06.08, 17:00 GMT
Andrea - the evidence is there aplenty if you look. This is not some undergraduate seminar and I do not have to cite references for you to look up. But I can assure you that in every developed country (except the USA) women are more religious than men - they are also in my experience more supertitious and likely to believe in stuff like horoscopes and crystals and new age mumbo jumbo, even the supposed rational ones like cheris blair. In my view this is caused by brain biology and evolution for good survival reasons - and the most recent MRI research is backing me up too.
Do not blame me for the way many women are just because you can't accept it. There will also be exceptions to the rule of course, and I know several women who are not mumbo-jumbo merchants, but rationalists.
By the way, women are also more conservative than men and we would have been spared 15 years of UK conservative government in the 20th century if women had never had the vote. Yes, really.
Posted by Dicky Darwin | 25.06.08, 15:15 GMT
Alex - interesting view, but all the evidence of science and history is on my side actually. I've heard your view a million times and know people like you won't change your view in spite of all brain scan and IQ evidence - so argue with someone else eh?
I did not say women are stupid and talk too much - but that women have, on average, lower IQs - and the higher one goes on the IQ scale the more men outnumber women, who tend to be very average and middling - even Greer admits women don't do genius.
Women talk more as they are there to have children and bring them up, and to be the social glue that sticks a tribe together - but that does not mean they have 'better language skills' as you state, as most great writers are and always were men, as are most film and song writers - for BIOLOGICAL reasons, not because of sexism.
The media is actually very feminised - why mumbo jumbo and irrationality is on TV all the time perhaps.
Posted by Dicky Darwin | 25.06.08, 15:08 GMT
You've still not produced one piece of evidence which proves women to be more religious than men, Dicky Darwin. Just you saying it doesn't make it so. You tell us that you are a scientist, so where is your research based evidence? Where do you get your facts from? I don't doubt you believe it but then again, that is not evidence.
Daytime TV does have a tendency to be aimed at women, but that should cheer you up, knowing we're all safely 'glued' into our caves. You can go happily about your hunter gathering unhindered by irrational females, or build your temples and places of worship knowing that women are nowhere to be found on the macho world of the building site. At the end of the day you can drag home you slaughtered woolly mammoth, and put your feet up in front of your man-made fire, whilst the missus pushes it into the cooking pot.
So cosy.
Posted by Andrea | 25.06.08, 15:06 GMT
Dicky - your view that women are stupid and talk too much is typical masculinist fiction. There is a long history of men writing essays on why women are too stupid to do numerous things, like think, maintain their morals and even have souls. This does not make those things true.
To say that THE great writers are men does a great disservice to hundreds of female writers, including Aphra Behn who practically invented the novel as a literary form. As writing was one of the first professions that become respectable for women you will find hundreds of female writers, dozens of whom can be described as great. When it comes to who writes more films/songs consider who will be sitting on the commissioning board handing out the money - the world is a biased place and you cannot deny who has the power.
Just because men are more likely to reach the top doesn't mean that women don't have the capacity to do so.
Posted by Alex | 25.06.08, 14:03 GMT
Alex - your view that women have invented very few things and tend not to excel in science or technology due to social reasons is a typical feminist fiction. Women have not excelled in these areas due to innate, biological reasons - and not lack of access to education.
Men excel, full stop - and have higher IQs on average, especially in the top range. Women talk more (it would be a disadvantage for men to do so) but the great writers are men, most speeches are written by men (incl. mrs thatchers), as are most songs and films etc.
Nature designed women to be risk-averse and middling, which is fine, and better for children - this is also why women tend to believe more in the irrational - it bonds women in the cave.
If you are waiting for women to catch up with men in the science and invention stakes you'll have a very long (and endless) wait for sure.
If you read for example Susan Pinker you will see that men are naturally more likely to reach the top for lots of reasons.
Posted by Dicky Darwin | 25.06.08, 13:42 GMT
Dicky I was only answering your question! It is no surprise that historically women haven't invented as many things as men as men have had greater access to education. Most of women's inventions have tended to be things that benefits women's lives, like the dishwasher and disposable nappy, because these have been things they have had access to and understand clearly and rationally how to improve them. Now that women (in this country at least) have equal access to education I expect there will be more of a balance.
MRI scans may show differences in male and female brains but I doubt they account for the generalisations you list. They may show that men are better at spacial awareness and women have better language skills but the way our society operates does not necessarily allow them to flourish - for example with all these language skills you'd think there would be more female politicians.
Posted by Alex | 25.06.08, 13:27 GMT
Alex - for goodness sake! Most things were invented by men and the one or two things invented by women are the exception that prove the rule. That is NOT a sexist thing to say but a RATIONAL one, based on evidence (perhaps why so many mumbo-jumbo irrationists here have trouble grasping that!)
In general women are more conservative and judgmental than men, less risk-taking and rash, less rational, less good at maths/technology, less good at leadership/spatial awareness, and more prone to believe in alternative therapy and religion too (in every developed country).
My point was that it is perhaps because TV and media is now so female-controlled and influenced that this stuff is given a serious hearing when in a more rational male-dominated age it wouldn't have been. The same could be said of celebrity obsession (another female thing).
These generalisations are about tendencies, not all men and all women, but are pretty damn spot-on and are backed up by MRI brain scans too. OK?
Posted by Dicky Darwin | 25.06.08, 12:56 GMT
Hey Dicky, here's two things invented by women:
Windshield Wiper – Even before Henry Ford started manufacturing his Model A, Mary Anderson was granted her first patent for a window cleaning device in November of 1903. Her invention could clean snow, rain, or sleet from a windshield by using a handle inside the car. Her goal was to improve driver vision during stormy weather. In 1915 the Mary Anderson ‘windshield wiper’ became standard issue on all cars.
Kevlar - Stephanie Kwolek’s research with high performance chemical compounds for the DuPont Company led to the development of a synthetic material called Kevlar which is five times stronger than the same weight of steel. Kevlar, patented by Kwolek in 1966, does not rust nor corrode and is extremely lightweight.
Men and women really aren't that different - we're all human.
Posted by Alex | 25.06.08, 12:10 GMT
52 Comments