By Jack Raso
Posted: Wednesday, March 1, 2000

ARTICLES
Publication Date: March 1, 2000

Homeopathy (see The Scientific Evidence on Homeopathy)— a major form of so-called vibrational medicine—and naturopathy (mistermed "natural medicine")—a limitless miscellany of which homeopathy is perhaps the preeminent member—are popular counterfeits of medicine in the United States. The January 2000 issue of the American Medical Association journal Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine features a survey, from Harvard Medical School's Center for Holistic Pediatric Education and Research, of "pediatric care" that homeopaths and "naturopathic doctors (NDs)" provided in 1998 in Massachusetts. Neither homeopathic nor naturopathic licensure or "credentialling" is regulated in that state.

The title of the report is "Homeopathy and Naturopathy: Practice Characteristics and Pediatric Care." But its authors, Anne C. C. Lee and Kathi J. Kemper, M.D., M.P.H., have suggested that none of the 23 homeopaths and 15 naturopaths who participated as subjects in the survey had been conventionally certified in pediatrics—the branch of medicine distinguished by the treatment of children and adolescents. Indeed, they have suggested that only 13 (34 percent) of the practitioners held any doctorate other than a chiropractic or naturopathic degree. Most homeopaths and most naturopaths in the U.S. hold neither an M.D. degree nor an equivalent, such as a D.O. (osteopathic) degree. Of the thousands of persons in the U.S. who offer homeopathic services—perhaps well over 18,000—only a few hundred are credentialed physicians.

Lee and Kemper state that, according to survey responses:

•  more than a third of the homeopaths recommended herbal "therapies" and/or counseled patients on nutrition, and most of the homeopaths "prescribed" dietary supplements;
•  most of the homeopaths' patients and most of the naturopaths' patients became so not as a result of a credentialed physician's referral;
•  although only about a third of the homeopaths and about a third of the naturopaths had undergone "training in pediatrics," 92 percent of the homeopaths and all of the naturopaths regularly dealt with children and adolescents as patients;
•  32 percent of the homeopaths' patients and 19 percent of the naturopaths' patients comprised children and adolescents;
•  only 35 percent of the homeopaths and 20 percent of the naturopaths "actively" recommended childhood vaccinations;
•  three of the nine nonphysican homeopaths who responded to a question concerning fever would themselves "treat" a two-week-old child with a body temperature of 101.8 degrees F, and one would otherwise not immediately advise seeing a physician or emergency-room professionals; and
•  9 of the 15 naturopaths would not immediately advise seeing a physician or emergency-room professionals for the hypothetical fevered newborn.

The researchers note: ". . . [Naturopaths] commonly prescribe herbal remedies and dietary supplements whose contents and drug interactions in children are unknown. . . . It is worrisome that a substantial proportion of [homeopathic and naturopathic] providers of pediatric care are not equipped with the clinical skills to recognize emergent conditions for which homeopathy or naturopathy might not be effective or expedient, and that could result in detrimental outcomes." They also cite coffee enemas, colonic irrigation (a form of what is known as internal hydrotherapy), and fasting as potentially dangerous.

In an editor's note accompanying the survey, Catherine D. DeAngelis, M.D., says that "we need to understand and use or correct the complementary methods." But to correct homeopathy would be to demolish it; and correcting naturopathy without making it unrecognizable as such would render it a combination largely of those modes of biofeedback, diet therapy, hypnotherapy, physical therapy, and psychotherapy—and those relaxation techniques—whose theories are sound and that have been at least marginally established in the biomedical community.

Jack Raso, M.S., R.D., is the author of three books on alternative medicine.

Source Notes:  
Priorities Volume 12 Number 1 2000