Dr. Joel Kahn is a well-regarded “integrative” cardiologist. So why is he spreading COVID-19 and antivaccine disinformation on Twitter? Simple. “Integrative” medicine can be a “gateway” to antivaccine beliefs.

Dr. Joel Kahn is a well-regarded “integrative” cardiologist. So why is he spreading COVID-19 and antivaccine disinformation on Twitter? Simple. “Integrative” medicine can be a “gateway” to antivaccine beliefs.
The Cleveland Clinic has, unfortunately, embraced the quackery known as “functional medicine.” Now it’s publishing dubious studies touting it.
From the viewpoint of hospital administration, patient satisfaction is increasingly the be-all and end-all of how doctors are evaluated, and it is assumed that patient satisfaction is highly correlated with quality of care. Unfortunately, patient satisfaction ≠quality. A new study shows this very phenomenon in an outpatient setting.
Over the weekend, I came across a local news story from Toledo about Chris Tedrow, a patient who was treated at Dr. Mark Hyman’s Center for Functional Medicine at the Cleveland Clinic. Let’s just say that it was, in essence, free advertising for functional medicine nonsense. The Cleveland Clinic should have had to pay the Toledo ABC affiliate to air it.
For a quarter of a century, quackery and pseudoscience have been integrated into medicine through the construct of “integrative medicine” and into academic medicine in the form of quackademic medicine. Unfortunately, there has been little pushback. That’s why it’s good to see a recent article in The Surgeon decrying this phenomenon. We need more of this.