On Dealing with Shruggies

As I read through this new volume of content I found it to be poorly written and journalistically weak – and the subject matter of article after article was unfamiliar to me. Colon cleansing, liver flushes, systemic yeast overgrowth, energy healing – it all sounded far-fetched, and so flawed as to be almost humorous. It was utter pseudoscience – full of silly jargon and implausible “mechanisms of action” that defied what I knew of pathophysiology and even basic chemistry and physics. I looked around to see if I was on Candid Camera – but alas, it was not a joke.

So I began researching these subjects in the medical literature to try to make sense of the content. I sought input from medical experts whom I trusted – I interviewed gastroenterologists, infectious disease specialists and even one of the world’s leading hepatologists. They all confirmed that these treatments and conditions had no scientific basis whatsoever, yet they were being widely promoted in the “natural health” world.

Still reeling from the bizarre nature of this new pseudo-scientific babble, and utterly convinced that promoting false information to patients was unethical, I told John that I simply couldn’t approve any of these articles for publication. John protested that I was “putting a gag order on content” and that he’d do whatever it took to go around me to promote his pro-CAM agenda. He went on to call me “a racist against CAM…a dinosaur, part of a dying breed of physician… and paternalistic and narrow.”