Pseudomedicine

Pseudomedicine is medicine which claims to be effective for diagnosing or treating specific medical conditions, but which has been disproven or which is unproven and the mainstream scientific opinion is that it will not be proven to be effective. It is distinct from experimental medicine, which is medicine that has not yet proven but which is undergoing the process of either being proven and becoming accepted, or being disproven and being discarded.

Definition

PSIRAM has defined pseudomedicine as referring to "treatments that claim to be working concepts of medicine that have no objectively verifiable benefit or are incompatible with the current state of knowledge in the field of science-based medicine."^[1]

Historically, the term was used in the early 20th century by the American Medical Association when, as part of the effort to gain establishment status, it combated what it called quackery and pseudomedicine, thus differentiating itself as a professional organization of experts distinct from charlatan practitioners.^[2]

Sociology

The National Council Against Health Fraud has said that the existence of pseudomedicine results from the effect of market forces: on the one hand a desire for quick fixes rooted in alienation from mainstream medicine, and on the other hand businessmen only too willing to meet that demand.^[3]

List of fields characterized as pseudomedicine

• Chiropractic – a system of medicine based on beliefs of Daniel David Palmer (1845–1913), who proposed that the spine and musculature underpin all aspects of human health.^[4]
• Osteopathic manipulative therapy – a repertoire of technique based on tenets laid down by Andrew Taylor Still (1828–1917), who proposed that an interlinked tissue layer in the human body could be manipulated to treat systemic human disease.^[4]
• Pagtatawas – a ritual in pseudo-medicine in Filipino Psychology (but considered superstition in Western psychology) where an affliction or psychological disorder is diagnosed by interpreting the form produced in water by heated alum or molten wax droppings from a lighted candle.
• Phrenology – a set of practices primarily focused on measurements of the human skull, based on the concept that the brain is the organ of the mind, and that certain brain areas have localized, specific functions or modules.^[4][5]
• Rife machine treatment – treatment using an electronic device purported to cure cancer by transmitting radio waves.^[6][7]
• Homeopathy - a system of medicine started by Samuel Hahnemann based on two major principles (like cures like, diluting a drug increases its potency) that contradicts fundamental principles of pathology, physics and chemistry.
• Eugenics – including forced sterilization^[8]
• Refusing to treat medical conditions in people with disabilities for social or political reasons^[8]

See also

• Pseudoscience

References

1. cited in Gilson S, dePoy E (1 September 2015). O'Reilly M, Nina Lester J, eds. Child Mental Health: A Discourse Community. The Palgrave Handbook of Child Mental Health (Palgrave Macmillan). p. 190. ISBN 978-1-137-42832-5.
2. Boyle EW (2007). "Chapter 4:AMA Investigations and Propaganda for Reform". The Boundaries of Medicine: Redefining Therapeutic Orthodoxy in an Age of Reform. ProQuest. p. 194. ISBN 978-0-549-27005-8.
3. "NEJM focuses on pseudomedicine". NCAHF Newsletter (March/April). 1992.
4. Swanson ES (2015). "Pseudoscience". Science and Society: Understanding Scientific Methodology, Energy, Climate, and Sustainability. Springer. p. 65. ISBN 978-3-319-21987-5.
5. Fodor, Jerry A. (1983). Modularity of Mind: An Essay on Faculty Psychology. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. ISBN 0-262-56025-9 p.14, 23, 131
6. "Rife machines and cancer". Cancer Research UK. Retrieved August 2013.
7. "Rife devices." NCAHF Newsletter Mar.-Apr. 1992: 3. Academic OneFile. Web. 18 Dec. 2015.
8. Mack, Cheryl; Leier, Brendan (2016-01-05). "Brokering trust: estimating the cost of physician-assisted death". Canadian Journal of Anesthesia. doi:10.1007/s12630-015-0574-x. ISSN 1496-8975. PMID 26732480. Traditionally, in the rare circumstances in which individual physicians stray into practicing forms of “pseudo-medicine”, the greatest danger presented is a loss of trust in the profession as a whole. To illustrate this danger, we need only recall a recent and somber example of pseudo-medicine in the overextension of medical science into social and political eugenic policies. Eugenics and the selective non-treatment of infants born with trisomy 21 are the best, and perhaps most extreme, examples of situations where medical science was utilized as an appeal to authority to justify and rationalize bias.4 More recent instances might include physician product endorsement and physician conflict of interest in biased industry-sponsored research.5 With PAD, we are again being asked to endorse and sponsor a practice that relies neither on medical science nor on clinical judgment.