Tuesday, October 3, 2017

Inevitably, the wacky billionaire and snake oil threads collide

As many others have observed many times before, Michael Hiltzik does exceptional work.

That was a problem, because homeopathy is a discredited and thoroughly debunked “alternative medicine.” Even Howard Federoff, UCI’s vice chancellor for health affairs, agreed that the scientific basis for homeopathy was “lacking.” The issue is important because the donors of a $200-million gift to UCI’s medical schools, the billionaire couple Susan and Henry Samueli, are sworn believers in homeopathy and supporters of a raft of other “integrative” health treatments. As I reported, some medical authorities have raised questions about whether the Samuelis’ beliefs and their rare generosity will undermine UCI’s explicit commitment to science-based medicine.

So it’s interesting that after I raised questions about the treatment’s listing on the website, it mysteriously disappeared. As of this writing, a UCI spokesman hasn’t gotten back to me with word on when it was removed, or whether its removal means that homeopathy no longer will be offered to patients, or merely that UCI is keeping it quiet. The listing was present as recently as last Wednesday, when I asked Federoff about it in connection with my column about the Samueli gift, which appeared online Friday; its presence can be seen on an archived version of the website dated Sept. 19.

What happened to "homeopathy"? As recently as last week, the debunked treatment was listed as a therapeutic offering on UCI Health's website, seen at left. After we asked about it, the reference disappeared, at right. (UCI Health)

As it happens, UCI didn’t succeed in scrubbing all mentions of this quack remedy from its website. At the moment, it appears on the web page of Dayna Kowata, a naturopath and acupuncturist associated with UCI’s Susan Samueli Center for Integrative Medicine. Kowata’s page says homeopathy is Kowata’s “preferred mode of treatment.” (Thanks to naturopathy debunker Britt Marie Hermes for the catch.)

The on-again-off-again appearance of homeopathy on UCI’s website and among its clinical offerings underscores the difficulties the university may face in navigating the inconsistencies between the world view of its biggest donors and its explicit commitment to rigorous scientific standards in its medical teaching, research, and clinical treatment. The Samuelis, after all, will have their names on UCI’s main on-campus medical building, and their gift will endow up to 15 faculty members, all of whom will have to demonstrate some “expertise in integrative health.”

Homeopaths occupy and interesting position in the world of snake oil and medical pseudoscience. From a scientific standpoint, they aren't any worse than practitioners of things like energy manipulation and since the active ingredients are generally diluted to the point of nonexistence, there's a limit to the harm their concoctions can do directly.

But perhaps alone among alternative medicine treatments, homeopathy has lost its plausible deniability.  Everyone who is halfway serious about medical science, knows that this is not medical science. You might be able to convince a knowledgeable audience that the jury was still out on acupuncture or that some treatment with an eastern name that sounded kind of ancient and mysterious needed more research. By now, though, very few people are willing to give homeopathic remedies the benefit of the doubt.

In a very real sense, we got lucky here. In that they featured easy to spot pseudoscience so prominently. If they had gone with something like reiki, Hiltzik's criticisms probably wouldn't have gotten much traction, and the real scandals here would not have gotten nearly as much attention.

What are the real scandals? One is the unholy amalgam of mysticism and credulous hype. The second is unprecedented in modern times concentration of wealth and economic power, amplified by a culture that assumes that the super rich are gifted with extraordinary, even supernatural competence and character.

Both of these scandals have permeated our society. I suppose it was only a matter of time before they overlapped.

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