As quackery in the form of “integrative medicine” has increasingly been “integrated” into medicine, medical journals are starting to notice and succumb to the temptation to decrease their skepticism. The BMJ, unfortunately, is the latest to do so. It won’t be the last.
Chiropractors and acupuncturists have lobbied for a greater role in treating pain. They might well have won it. Last week, the FDA released proposed changes Wednesday to its blueprint on educating health care providers about treating pain, which now recommend that doctors learn about chiropractic care and acupuncture as therapies that might help patients avoid opioids. There’s still time to stop this, but you have to write the FDA.
In the Journal of Integrative Medicine, acupuncturists argue for modernizing acupuncture by uncoupling it from its traditional Chinese medicine background and avoiding the mystical language about qi and meridians. Hilarity ensues, because acupuncture can’t be separated from the prescientific mysticism from which it arose.
Acupuncturists complain that the UK’s National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) recommends treatments for knee osteoarthritis for which the evidence is weak. They think that means that NICE should also accept acupuncture. In reality, it means that NICE should stop recommending treatments without support by strong scientific evidence.
Just over two years ago, the Society for Integrative Medicine issued clinical guidelines for breast cancer care. Now it’s updated them. Unfortunately, mixing cow pie with apple pie for a little longer doesn’t make the cow pie any better than it was last time.
