Argument for naturopathic regulation

As a general anti-government conservative type I generally oppose government regulation. But the naturopathic movement is becoming so alarming of a threat to not just the health of those that fall for it, but also those close to them, that it gets to a breaking point of sorts. At the very least, if REAL medicine is regulated, perhaps discouraging some from seeking treatment for those in their care or for a public health threat, then the corner drug guy selling root extract really should be too.

At the very least, peddlers of 5.99 bottles of whatever should not be allowed to treat the same conditions that a real doctor treats just by finessing the words on the label, by saying things like "creates the feeling of wellness" instead of "makes you well." And currently, that is allowed. Amazingly. I think that the fact that rubbish is collected from a bunch of weeds in someone's garden and sold as medicine has come to the attention of health officials in Canada, but they are going the exact wrong direction with it.

Knowing that there is a segment that is for some reason desperate to avoid actual health screening by those who MIGHT be able to help them, they want to give the naturopathists that people go to instead the right to prescribe actual medicne rather than only having fictitious concoctions at their disposal, perhaps many of them that they profit from directly. THIS IS SO ABSURD. It is true that much of the naturopathy industry is fueled by sales of their own products, while medical doctors have the option of suggesting drugs that they don't profit from directly, but this will lead to other problems. These people do not have any medical training, and no systemic knowledge of chemistry, medicine, the body or public epidemiology.

They are noted and most revered for not their actual ability to cure ANYTHING but rather their paranoia-fueled rants against anything an actual doctor does, including the doctors that have ended up ending public health crises such as cholera or plague and the ones that if we leave them alone may solve problems like heart disease or cancer, and not by ingesting some strange substance in a bottle or rubbing some ineffectual rubbish over the skin when we fall ill of a tumor, by actually understanding the cause of the illnesses so that they no longer occur. (This will not be possible by tapping into the secrets of the Native Americans or some other folk medicine - the Native Americans' secret to not getting cancer was dying by their twenties of an ear infection or broken bone.)

The most the naturopathists do is dispense sensible dietary advice that is widely available, parasitically employ selectively those things they choose from the medical community, and peddle their own products (all the while deriding big pharm for making money!). At least my doctor doesn't peddle his own wares like these snake oil salesmen do.

So what will naturally (haha) happen if people can go to their buddy the naturopathist is that people will route through these guys and not end up being seen by a doctor at any point, and not only jeopardize their own health but also will encourage any spread of public disease that might be going around.

See I think that it should be someone's right to not get treated for a health problem such as cancer if they really don't want to. It is interesting that when a bone is broken or anything actually diagnosable happens it becomes obvious that the naturopathists can't help anyone. Even a very basic medical practice such as setting bones, which real doctors mastered three hundred years ago, the magnets and vitality crowd are absolutely helpless to treat. The reason that the naturopathists still have patients seeking to treat cancer is that NO ONE treats it effectively yet, shielding them from the fact that they haven't a clue what they are doing. Why anyone would think that the people who can't treat a broken bone or a strep throat can cure cancer, I don't know, but I think it has something to do with the wishfull thinking of those who want an easy cure for a bad problem - and more acutely one that doesn't exist yet at all. But just because the cutting edge doctors can't cure it doesn't mean the witch doctors CAN, they are just unpoliced to the point that they will SAY they can.

And again, if I have a personal pain or other health problem and I want to go see someone who simply waves their arms around me or burns incense for my own sense of comfort or well being, it should be my right to waste my own money. But if they are given primary care specialist rights or rights to dole out medicine, what will happen is that people with treatable conditions that are currently controlled by the basic health screening of someone who has attended a year or two of medical school will probably, in focusing on mercury or silver to treat some various issue, allow a basic and understood and nearly extinct disease to rage out of control, unduly taxing emergency or palliative care when it becomes more serious than splinting a bone or taking penicillin.

This is particularly alarming due to the tendency that people have to under treat even their own children when there are very serious symptoms if they have caught the anti-doctor bug. The anti-vaccine crowd has already resulted in somewhat of a resurgence in diseases that were almost licked twenty years ago before the autism insanity began (and was dispatched by controlled studies showing vaccines to definitely NOT be the culprit), and things like Rubella are rearing their head again when it need not. There are already reports of people staying home and surfing the internet rather than taking their kid to a doctor when the kid has a fever of 106.

Part of the problem is that official channels of health care are regulated and therefore rationed, making it much more difficult to seek the advice of a trained doctor than it is to type your list of symptoms on a search engine, so with the appearance of some kind of screening or vigilance, there will be a segment of the population that attempts to treat their own problems with Tylenol or worse some kind of distilled herbal product that who knows what it is doing to them or their kids. And they run the risk that they won't be seen by a doctor when they have something serious or worse, that will spread.

Even diseases like chicken pox are very curable and preventable, such that the risk is that there is a percentage will likely escape the disease entirely into adulthood, as I did. I got chicken pox when I was 26, between pregnancies thank goodnes, just as the vaccine was coming out, and would definitely have gotten it and given it to my children a year or two later when it became more widely-used. But today mothers are more likely to fear the phantom menace of the vaccine than what the diseases themselves can do.

It used to be a very real situation what it was common to die of something like smallpox or even a bad case of influenza. But I think that in our post-epidemic society we take for granted that we won't die very often from communicable disease so people's fears are turned to the rather more benign threats of the administration of the very health care advances that see the majority of us living into our forties. I felt really bad that in my ward a mother of an autistic child had become so brainwashed by the anti-vaccine hype that her baby died in utero of a chicken pox infection that SHE GAVE IT. Very sad.

But it made me not only sad for her but frightened for others to think of her and her children spreading chicken pox to the unvaccinated and the one percent that are unresponsive to the vaccine. At some point it crosses the line from being an individual freedom to the point of being a public health concern. The reason that I don't fear that it is a big-brotherish threat (to the tune of violating my conservative, anti-government principles), however, is that if the public health officials act in accordance with scientific principles and observed data, there will a limit and check upon their options, so there will be less risk of them acting in a way that is not in accordance with the public interest. All actions on the books, and above board to be seen and evaluated by other health officials at a later date, so no funny business will likely be encouraged.

It is easy for me to say, because I know that I would never allow my child to die of a treatable disease because of an irrational fear of white coats, but whether or not others would is a very real problem, and not just for themselves or their children--I could catch whatever it is that they are spreading out of unjustified fear. And those that have no understanding of or respect for the scientific method and its fruits, preferring some hoodo voodo instead, should in my opinion not be allowed to negatively impact the health of the rest of us.

I think it is interesting that even Canada has an unusual caveat on their naturopathy proposal. The faux doctors will not be able to treat family members or friends. Hmmm. I wonder if even those who would allow the unknowing to go without treatment don't think it is right for people to dispense their 'wisdom' to their doctor-fearing friends or worse their own children, when a doctor's care to the unbiased would obviously be the sensible option.