The skeptical cardiologist, like all advocates of science-based medicine, knows that “integrative” medicine integrates quackery into real medicin. In many respects quackery and integrative medicine are to real medicine as fake news is to real news.
As Dr. David Gorski at science-based medicine has noted:
Originally known as quackery, the modalities now being “integrated” with medicine then became “complementary and alternative medicine” (CAM), a term that is still often used. But that wasn’t enough. The word “complementary” implies a subordinate position, in which the CAM is not the “real” medicine, the necessary medicine, but is just there as “icing on the cake.” The term “integrative medicine” eliminates that problem and facilitates a narrative in which integrative medicine is the “best of both worlds” (from the perspective of CAM practitioners and advocates). Integrative medicine has become a brand, a marketing term, disguised as a bogus specialty.
Much of this quackery being integrated is easy to recognize:
A lot of it is based on prescientific ideas of how the human body and disease work (e.g., traditional Chinese medicine, especially acupuncture, for instance, which is based on a belief system that very much resembles the four humors in ancient “Western” or European medicine); on nonexistent body structures or functions (e.g., chiropractic and subluxations, reflexology and a link between areas on the palms of the hands and soles of the feet that “map” to organs; craniosacral therapy and “craniosacral rhythms”); or vitalism (e.g., homeopathy, “energy medicine,” such as reiki, therapeutic touch, and the like). Often there are completely pseudoscientific ideas whose quackiness is easy to explain to an educated layperson, like homeopathy.
However, lately I’ve seen the word functional used to describe a lot of bogus and pseudo-scientific medicine. From the institute of Functional Medicine’s website comes a completely indecipherable description:
Functional Medicine addresses the underlying causes of disease, using a systems-oriented approach and engaging both patient and practitioner in a therapeutic partnership. It is an evolution in the practice of medicine that better addresses the healthcare needs of the 21st century. By shifting the traditional disease-centered focus of medical practice to a more patient-centered approach, Functional Medicine addresses the whole person, not just an isolated set of symptoms.
Dr. Gorski notes that functional medicine has been integrated into well-respected academic programs:
“there are modalities being “integrated” into medicine whose quackiness is not so easy to explain. Perhaps the most popular and famous of these is a specialty known as “functional medicine” (FM) whose foremost practitioner and advocate (in the US, at least) is Mark Hyman, MD, a man whose fame has led him to become a trusted medical advisor to Bill and Hillary Clinton. Perhaps Hyman’s greatest coup came in 2014, when the Cleveland Clinic Foundation hired him to create an institute dedicated to FM, an effort that has apparently been wildly successful in terms of patient growth. Never mind that around the same time Dr. Hyman teamed up with rabid antivaccine activist Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. to write a book blaming mercury in the thimerosal preservative that used to be in vaccines for causing autism, an idea that was shown long ago to have no scientific merit.
To fully understand the bogusness of functional medicine I highly recommend you take time to read Dr. Gorski’s excellent and detailed article at science-based medicine . It’s entitled
Functional medicine: The ultimate misnomer in the world of integrative medicine
From SBM:
Dr. Gorski’s full information can be found here, along with information for patients. David H. Gorski, MD, PhD, FACS is a surgical oncologist at the Barbara Ann Karmanos Cancer Institute specializing in breast cancer surgery, where he also serves as the American College of Surgeons Committee on Cancer Liaison Physician as well as an Associate Professor of Surgery and member of the faculty of the Graduate Program in Cancer Biology at Wayne State UniversityFunctional Medicine
Dysfunctionally Yours,
-ACP