The placebo effect is a strange and powerful facet of human conciousness - direct control of the body through fooling the mind. It's a shame that instead of probing this more deeply, effort it being put to just making better fools. NDs are quacks. Granted, quacks with good memory for body parts, but quacks.

The attempt to discredit Complementary and Alternative Medicine, and their practitioners by various well known insulting words is the last gasp of Allopathic thinking, from the medicine which set itself up IN THE LAST CENTURY, as the one true medicine. The AMA actively lobbied and used POLITICS to destroy competitors like Homeopathy but this approach, by the 1970's backfired in their faces when the Chiropractors fought back and won a major court battle against them in the U.S.

In the meanwhile, on all fronts, people are becoming familiar with the inexpensive, often impressively fast, and free of side effect ridden drugs which characterizes ND, DO, Chriopractors, Oriental Medicine Physicians, Homeopathic physicians and other modalities.

The attempt to brand the alternative system as "unscientific" or not "evidence" based is actually focusing attention on the allopaths, and their rabid supporters as people learn of the cross connections, influence peddling and outright fabrication of drug data which has been rampant for some decades and which only now is starting to be identified and reformed.

A British medical journal survey indicates that an incredible 46% of standard treatments are of unknown effectiveness while less than a third are actually beneficial - others are outright harmful or of dubious merit.
Meanwhile, patients by the millions are aghast at the "side effects" which are somehow routinely accepted without question by the anti-alternative medicine scientism-ists.

What is the proximal cause of the latest waves of innuendo, hysteria and attacks against alternative medicine? Could it be the coming reforms by President Obama and his administration which for the first time in decades will start to expose the extraordinary power and influence of the media based special interests and will slowly insitute reforms, which are already happening, spontaneously, at the state level, to address the grevious attempt to maintain near monopolism by a single medical system to the utter disregard of the health, safety and well being of men, women and children who might benefit from the allowance of other systems and other kinds of practitioners.

Freedom of choice laws have already been passed in several states and the trend is accelerating, creating fully licensed primary care physicians who are Oriental Medicine physicians, Naturopaths, Homeopaths and others. It is an inevitable and good developement which will lead to a new era of fully integrated medicine and all the invective, misrepresentation and hysteria against it will only accelerate this trend rather than forstall it.

A chiropractor once told me my ADHD, nagging shoulder injury, AND my migraines were a result of a mis-aligned spine. I asked for scientific evidence. He gave me a brochure. I asked for reference to a peer reviewed study with a control group and a treatment group, and perhaps even some physiological explanation that wasn't about "fluids" (humors, anyone?) and nerves in the spine. He became quite irritated and told me that if I thought he was wrong then I shouldn't come to his office. Ah, what a response. If you don't believe my ridiculous, unexplained, unsupported theory on faith then you shouldn't be my customer. I don't know much about NDs. But Chiropractors are quacks.

Oh, and hey NDs, how about some LINKS to NEJM, BJM, JAMA, etc. that support your credibility? It's not that I doubt they exist, but you claim there are "many" credible article that support your treatments and profession...ok, prove it. And NOT journals reserved for natural medicine. After all, there are always internal-to-field peer reviewed journals, such as the Journal of Parapsychology, but that doesn't mean they are credible.

Here's the challenge with providing articles that support the credibility of naturopathic medicine: there is not a particular modality or technique that is 'naturopathic' that can be definitively tested. Rather, it is a philosophical approach to medicine, the essence of which is to maximally individualize approaches to patient care with the minimally invasive procedures and imaging. And, contrary to what Science says about it, there is no directive against or in opposition to allopathic medicine in the legal definition (or spirit, in my opinion) of naturopathic medicine.

In fact, I'm surprised people are so hung up on whether or not naturopathic doctors are well educated. That's not the issue - the education is good. It has to be in order for them to pass fairly rigorous board exams to receive their license (incidentally, to do this they have to know allopathic standards of care, and know when to refer).

The issue that I think Science and many other concerned posts on this board echo is professional oversight throughout the rest of one's career. This is the arena in which the naturopathic profession (and many other complementary healthcare professions) falls short of their allopathic counterparts.

I'm in the ND program at Bastyr. We don't use Pizzorno's textbook for diagnosis! Try: Harrison's Principles of Internal Medicine, Seller's & Ferri's for quick reference.... if you're in medicine you'll recognize those. Pizzorno's is a reference text for naturopathic treatments, with symptoms listed briefly the way they are in, oh, say, my pharmacology text ("Illness A is recognized by the following symptoms").

You people are fighting a fight that is over. Talk to the MDs who work with us and know us. Talk to our patients.