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Complementary and alternative medicine Humor Medicine Quackery

My life is a waste!

PZ may have wasted his life preparing students for medical school, and Skeptico may have wished that he had thought of this first, but what about me, a real physician, who, if EoR is correct, has utterly wasted his life actually going to medical school?

Read this excerpt from EoR’s Words to a Potential Medical Student and see what I mean:

Before you enroll for that medical course, consider carefully whether it’s the best path for your life. Perhaps complementary medicine is actually a better way to go, with many clear advantages…

The course is shorter. Never mind years of study and internship, you could become an aura healer in a weekend.

Insurance premiums are lower. Never mind high liability for high risk procedures – iridology has never been a high risk science. In the better alternative therapies you don’t even touch the patient. In the best alternative therapies the patient doesn’t even have to come to you.

Profits are higher. If you’re a homeopath, you can continue to make your remedies from a small amount of the original for all eternity. If you’re a naturopath you can just mark your supplements up at high rates.

More spare time. Since the tenets of complementary medicine never change, you don’t have to worry about keeping up with the latest medical research, new drugs and new procedures. The stuff you’ll learn on your course will be thousands of years old and hasn’t changed at all in all that time.

(Now read the rest.)

And here I spent four years in college, four years in medical school, eight years in residency and graduate school, and three years in fellowship to get where I am today, begging for grant money in an increasingly tight funding situation, fighting for operating room time, and worrying about one of my patients suing me.

Perhaps it’s not too late to choose this better way.

Of course, I’d never be able to look at myself in the mirror again, but that’s a small price to pay, right?

By Orac

Orac is the nom de blog of a humble surgeon/scientist who has an ego just big enough to delude himself that someone, somewhere might actually give a rodent's posterior about his copious verbal meanderings, but just barely small enough to admit to himself that few probably will. That surgeon is otherwise known as David Gorski.

That this particular surgeon has chosen his nom de blog based on a rather cranky and arrogant computer shaped like a clear box of blinking lights that he originally encountered when he became a fan of a 35 year old British SF television show whose special effects were renowned for their BBC/Doctor Who-style low budget look, but whose stories nonetheless resulted in some of the best, most innovative science fiction ever televised, should tell you nearly all that you need to know about Orac. (That, and the length of the preceding sentence.)

DISCLAIMER:: The various written meanderings here are the opinions of Orac and Orac alone, written on his own time. They should never be construed as representing the opinions of any other person or entity, especially Orac's cancer center, department of surgery, medical school, or university. Also note that Orac is nonpartisan; he is more than willing to criticize the statements of anyone, regardless of of political leanings, if that anyone advocates pseudoscience or quackery. Finally, medical commentary is not to be construed in any way as medical advice.

To contact Orac: [email protected]

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