11/21/07

“I Have Been Humble For Two Decades Now”

A disturbing example of arrogant and addle-brained alternative health care

by Paul Ingraham, Vancouver, Canada MORE
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Credentials and qualifications

I am a writer and retired Registered Massage Therapist (unusually well-trained for a massage therapist, a 3000-hour program). I’m almost done with a Bachelor of Health Sciences degree. I am a peer reviewer for The Natural Standard, and a copyeditor for Science-Based Medicine. My most important qualification is more than a decade of workaholic post-graduate study, clinical experience, and constant conversations with readers from around the world, including many experts who have provided countless suggestions and criticisms.

For more information, see: Who Am I to Say? More information about my qualifications, credentials and professional experiences for my readers and customers.

I don’t have it in for alternative health care. Really, I don’t. I want alternative health care to thrive — but I also don’t want it to be anti-scientific and pseudoscientific. I want it to be friendly and warm. I want it to be an alternative to impersonal, institutionalized health care, in the spirit of Dr. Patch Adams — not an alternative to medical science.

Unfortunately, I am often disappointed. Recently I had a troubling exchange of emails with a colleague. His message perfectly demonstrated what is worst about alternative medicine. In particular, his arrogance shocked me: it is “arrogance” that alternative health care professionals so often accuse doctors of, yet arrogance was the most obvious problem this individual had.

He began by briefly expressing his appreciation for my writing, and then asked:

Would you like to know what actually causes trigger points? I have been at this for twenty years and have the answers that we all search for.

Uh oh.

Clearly, this is someone who fancies himself a healer (“healer syndrome”) with special knowledge — probably a structuralist theory. Structuralism is the preoccupation among therapists with the importance of biomechanical factors. At its worst it tends to attribute far too many problems to factors so subtle that no mortal could possibly have any justifiable confidence in diagnosing or treating them. It’s common in chiropractic particularly, but in my own profession as well.

Structuralism tends to attribute problems to factors so subtle that no mortal could possibly have any justifiable confidence diagnosing or treating them.

I decided to bite, just to see what he would say, and his reply was vain and vague, with hand-waving references to an “amazing” therapeutic protocol that can work marvels with pain patients, and all of it depending on something — he still doesn’t say what — in the feet. This has to be a classic wind up for a doozy of a structural theory to explain all pain. For structuralists, “it all” always hinges on one critical biomechanical factor, and the smaller and more unconventional, the better it is for their personal prestige.

I pointed out that his lack of humility, lack of detail, and lack of scientific evidence was all pretty off-putting. And this was his reply, pitch perfect for a delusional “healer.” I have reproduced it here word for word, because it is just such a gloriously irritating example of this kind of thinking, which is absolutely rampant in alternative health care:

I appreciate what you are saying, I have been humble for 2 decades now, in fact this has been my ministry for 20 years. As I have said I don’t have all the answers and I don’t have a panacea for anything, neither have I cured anything, I’ve worked with many alternative types of medicine and have used these methods to end my own bout with cancer. What makes my method work is a complimentary adjustment top to bottom. What makes the adjustment stay is the cuboid [a small foot bone] being held in place. If you have the skills needed to reduce or eliminate the scoliosis then you can appreciate that just to get proper treatments in some areas, you have to fight. I am entirely guilty of being an old warrior, who finally has won. I don’t need to argue any more, I demonstrate. I have no desire to change the way things are, only to save as many as I can. Technical explanations are good for conversing with doctors, but my mission is to communicate with the average joe who has been through the “mill” and has lost hope, these are my flock. To check out my “ extraordinary claims” You will find confirmation in Dr. Warren Hammers book entitled; Soft tissue examination and treatment by manual methods pg 425.

There are so many things about his thought process that are disturbing that I hardly know where to begin, but here are the highlights:

Well, first of all, “I have been humble for 2 decades now” is not an expression of humility. No one gets bragging rights for being humble!
Unsurprisingly, he attributes his miracluous healing abilities to a single biomechanical factor … and a small one at that, the cuboid bone, a sugar-cube sized lump of bone in the foot which he can therapeutically “hold in place,” implying both that it could be significantly and disastrously loose before his treatment (it can’t), and that he has the magic hands to somehow ensure that it remains firmly in place after his treatment (he can’t). Man, this really is structuralism at its most outrageous!
In the attempt to seem humble, this guy claims that he doesn’t have all the answers and that he hasn’t cured anything … but then in the same paragraph he goes ahead and claims that his method depends on a single biomechanical factor, directly implies he can cure, that he’s “an old warrior who has finally won”, that he wants to “save” people, and that he can reduce or eliminate scoliosis — a condition that I have never seen successfully treated in my career, despite the efforts of many who claimed they could.
Like every intellectually lazy quack, he dismisses the importance of “technical explanations.” They are good “for conversing with doctors” … something I think we can safely bet he doesn’t actually ever do.
He cites a single reference as “confirmation” for a wildly optimistic, extravagant claim of therapeutic efficacy. Wow, that must be some reference! That brings oversimplification of a complex subject to new lows!

That brings oversimplification of a complex subject to new lows!

And a final dig I can’t resist…

He is allegedly a complementary medicine professional … but he can’t spell it. How sad. Also, he can’t punctuate. As my father always said, “Bad writing doesn’t necessarily mean you’re stupid, but it sure makes you look stupid.”

This is why so many doctors so reasonably object to alternative medicine: because it is, so often, so disappointingly, egregiously ego-driven and anti-scientific.

“I have been humble for 2 decades now” is not an expression of humility.

For more about structuralism, see Your Back Is Not “Out” and Your Leg Length is Fine and The Humble Therapist. For more about what alternative medicine should really be for, see Alternative to What? For a much more interesting and less ridiculous explanation for a lot of undiagnosed pain, see Save Yourself from Trigger Points & Myofascial Pain Syndrome!