Medical Resource A List of Unique Alternative Medicine

A list of some of the alternative medicine practices you're likely to encounter in the United States. Some of these are considered border-line acceptable even in the professional medical field, and many understand that this is unfortunate.

Mostly these are just scams, quackery, and nonsense, which unfortunately gullible people believe in if they are desperate and grasping at false hope. Keep your eyes peeled for any of these, and be prepared to stamp out the harmful ones.

Doman-Delacato Treatment
This approach, also called "patterning," was developed during the mid-1950s and is still offered at the Institutes for Human Potential in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Its proponents claim that the great majority of cases of mental retardation, learning problems, and behavior disorders are caused by brain damage and poor neurological organization. The treatment is based on the idea that high levels of motor or sensory stimulation can train the nervous system and lessen or overcome handicaps caused by brain damage.

Parents following the program are advised to exercise the child's limbs repeatedly and use other measures said to increase blood flow to the brain and decrease irritability. In 1982 and 1999, the American Academy of Pediatrics issued position statements concluding that "patterning" has no merit, that its proponents' claims are false, and that the demands on families are so great that in some cases there may be actual harm in its use. In 1996, neurologist Steven Novella, M.D., reviewed the scientific literature and concluded that "patterning" was a pseudoscience.

Orthomolecular Therapy
Orthomolecular therapy is defined by its proponents as the treatment of disease by varying the concentrations of substances normally already present in the human body. Its proponents claim that many diseases are caused by molecular imbalances that are corrected by administration of the "right" nutrient molecules at the right time.

Orthomolecular therapy dates back at least to the early 1950s when a few psychiatrists began adding massive doses of nutrients to their treatment of many severe mental problems. The original substance was vitamin B3, and the therapy was termed "megavitamin therapy." Later the treatment regimen was expanded to include other vitamins, minerals, hormones, and dietary supplements, any of which may be combined with conventional drug therapy and even electroshock treatments. A few hundred physicians now use this approach to treat a variety of conditions, both of a mental and physical aspect.

Raw Milk
Raw milk is milk in its unpasteurized state. Public health authorities advocate pasteurization to destroy all disease-producing bacteria that may be present. Health faddists claim that it destroys the essential nutrients. Although about 10% to 30% of the heat-sensitive vitamins, which are vitamin C and thiamine, are destroyed in the pasteurizing process, milk is not a significant source of these nutrients in the first place.

Contaminated raw milk can be a source of harmful bacteria, including those that cause undulant fever, dysentery, salmonellosis, and tuberculosis. "Certified" milk, obtained from cows certified as healthy, is unpasteurized milk with a bacteria count below a specified standard, but it still contains significant numbers of disease-producing organisms.

Rife Frequency Generator The Attorneys General of Wisconsin and Minnesota have sued to stop an unlicensed woman, Shelvie Rettmann, of Prior Lake, Minnesota, from representing that she cures cancer. In December 1997, Wisconsin Attorney General James Doyle showed that a Wisconsin resident who was diagnosed with advanced colon and liver cancer used Rettmann's services after being told that she could cure the woman's cancer. Although medical doctors had recommended chemotherapy, Rettmann had told her otherwise.

At their first meeting, Rettmann photographed the woman and her daughter with a Polaroid camera and put the photos in a cup fastened to a radionics machine. After informing the mother that she had colon and blood cancer and the daughter that she had breast cancer, Rettmann allegedly advised both to have treatments with a Rife Frequency Generator, a special diet, dietary supplements, a regimen of baths, and something called 'foot zoning', which is a type of foot massage claimed to break up accumulated deposits at the end of foot nerve endings in order to help heal the body.

VAX-D Therapy
The VAX-D Therapeutic Table is a motorized traction device which is used to stretch the lower back. VAX-D is an acronym for "vertebral axial decompression." The device is a two-part table in which the upper part is fixed to the table frame and the lower part slides back and forth to provide sudden intermittent traction. The patient is then anchored to the lower part by a pelvic harness.

VAX-D therapy is usually provided on an outpatient setting for the purpose of relieving back pain. Its providers, including chiropractors, medical and osteopathic physicians, and physical therapists, commonly recommend twenty sessions of 30-45 minutes, with a total cost of several thousand dollars. During the treatment, the patient lies face-down with the upper part of the body on the stationary portion of the table, and with arms overhead, grasping handles attached to the this part of the table. A pneumatic cylinder drives the two parts of the table apart and together to provide gradual stretching alternating with relaxation of the stretching. A typical cycle includes a minute of each half.

Auditory Integration Training
Abbreviated as AIT, this was developed as a treatment for autism by Guy Berard in France in the 1960s and since was introduced into the United States in 1991. It has also been advocated for children and adults with learning disabilities, attention deficit disorder, depression, migraine headaches, and many other mental conditions.

Proponents claim that individuals with these disorders have hearing that is disorganized, hypersensitive, different between the two ears, or otherwise abnormal. The first step in AIT is an audiogram, a diagram that determines the auditory thresholds to more frequencies than are typically measured during hearing tests. Suitable individuals then undergo training sessions, which are typically two half-hour sessions per day over a 10-day period, that involve listening to music that has been computer-modified to remove frequencies to which they are hypersensitive.

The American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Academy of Audiology have warned that no well-designed scientific studies demonstrate that AIT is of any use. AIT devices do not have FDA approval for treating autism, attention deficit disorder, or any other mental condition. In 1997, the FDA banned the importation of the Electric Ear or any other AIT device made by Tomatis International, of Paris, France, and they are now illegal.

http://www.articlesbase.com/non-fiction-articles/medical-resource-a-list-of-unique-alternative-medicine-79840.html

Pseudoscientific Treatments for Autism

By James D. Herbert and Ian R. Sharp

Autism is a relatively rare pervasive developmental disorder marked by severe deficits in the abilities to reason, communicate, and socialize. Roughly 7 to 13 out of every 10,000 Americans are autistic, and the prevalence of autism among males is 3-4 times that among females.

Several realities make autism a magnet for pseudoscience and quackery:

* Neither what causes autism nor what can cure it has been determined (though recent advances have pointed to possible causal factors, and certain behavioral and pharmacologic treatments have proved somewhat helpful for many autistic persons).
* While most other disabilities affect only certain domains of the disabled individual (i.e., certain areas of activity), autism impacts most or all domains—and autistic individuals typically are first diagnosed with the disorder during their preschool years. Learn-ing the diagnosis and what being autistic entails can devastate an autistic child's parents. Thus, such parents typically are highly, often indiscriminately or desperately, motivated to seek treatment for the condition.
* Physicians and psychologists generally accept the description of autism as a range of disorders. Moreover, the course of autism can vary considerably between cases. For these reasons, the re-sponse to a specific treatment for the disorder is highly variable. For example, a psychotropic* medicine that reduces certain autistic symptoms in an individual may exacerbate the same symptoms in another individual.
* Occasionally, autistic symptoms in a particular domain diminish for no apparent reason. A method utterly ineffective for the disorder may seem effective if such diminishment shortly follows the treatment.

Pseudoscientific Treatments

Many current treatments for autism and certain other psychiatric disorders are reasonably describable as pseudoscientific. It is generally held in the scientific community that there are no hard and fast criteria for discerning pseudoscience from science. Nevertheless, pseudoscientific treatments have common distinctive features. They tend to be:

* based on unlikely theories that are nonfalsifiable (i.e., that cannot be disproved);
* advocated with extravagant claims of efficacy and with evidence that is largely or entirely anecdotal; and
* publicized through proprietary periodicals, trade books, talk shows, and/or websites instead of through refereed scientific journals.

Below we describe four examples of dubious treatments for autism that we regard as pseudoscientific.


While most other disabilities affect only certain domains of the disabled individual . . . autism impacts most or all domains . . . .

Facilitated communication

"Facilitated communication," or "FC," refers to a group of methods intended to assist individuals with severe developmental disabilities to express themselves through a typewriter, keyboard terminal, or similar device. Its proponents hold that many (if not all) autistic persons have a hidden literacy and that FC can unlock it. According to FC theory, autistic persons have a neurologic condition termed "apraxia." Apraxia involves hindrance of voluntary motor (muscle-related) behavior. Proponents of FC further maintain that the motor dysfunction of autistic persons is unrelated to cognitive (mental-process) abnormalities, and that with appropriate hand or arm support autistic persons can overcome communication deficits and express themselves meaningfully.

Initially, FC inspired hope in the families of many autistic individuals who were subjected to it. During FC treatment, otherwise mostly uncommunicative youngsters seemingly revealed such sentiments as "I love you," apparently waxed poetic, and/or ostensibly conversed very intellectually. It is thus no wonder that FC went largely unquestioned by the families of FC-treated autistic individuals.

But FC has since been the subject of several rigorous scientific studies, and their findings unambiguously attribute to the FC practitioners, called "facilitators," the typed messages that FC engenders. More-over, these findings strongly suggest that the "facilitators" are generally unaware of their influence in this regard. The American Psychological Association took its current position on FC in 1994: "Facilitated communication is a controversial and unproved communicative procedure with no scientifically demonstrated support for its efficacy." FC remains in use nonetheless.

Auditory Integration Training

Otolaryngologist Guy Berard developed Auditory Integration Training (AIT) in Annecy, France, reportedly to normalize hearing. It involves exposure to sounds of varying volume and pitch (i.e., the result of filtering and modulating music). Autistic individuals thus treated typically undergo a half-hour AIT session twice a day for about 10 days. AIT's postulate is that the autistic person's auditory system becomes more normal as it adapts to the randomly varying sound. Proponents of AIT claim that it improves the ability to speak, comprehension, eye contact, memory, and social behavior of autistic individuals.

The findings of one controlled study, one pilot study, and one uncontrolled study suggest possible benefits of undergoing AIT. But in four studies of the treatment, researchers did not report finding any specific therapeutic benefit. Three of these studies were randomized controlled trials (RCTs). In the most recent of these RCTs, O. C. Mudford and associates compared AIT's effects on 16 autistic children and the effects of a control in which such children were exposed to ambient music as they wore inoperative headphones. In the American Journal of Mental Retardation, the researchers reported detecting no benefits of undergoing AIT in terms of IQ, comprehension, and social or adaptive behavior. (Adaptive behavior relates, for example, to self-help skills, such as cutting and spooning food, brushing one's teeth, and dressing.) Indeed, on two measures the control group had outperformed the AIT-treated children. The authors concluded: "[N]o individual child was identified as benefiting clinically or educationally from the treatment." In 1998, in the journal Pediatrics, the American Academy of Pediatrics' Committee on Children with Disabilities said of AIT and facilitated communication in regard to autism: "[C]urrently available information does not support the claims of proponents that these treatments are efficacious," and "[T]heir use does not appear warranted at this time, except within research protocols."

Secretin

As a drug, the digestive hormone secretin is used in a single dose to facilitate diagnosis of gastrointestinal problems such as pancreatic disease and ulcers. The Food and Drug Administration has not approved any other medical application of the hormone. Secretin attracted considerable attention as a drug for autism in 1998, when it was publicized that the condition of an autistic child had reportedly improved significantly after secretin had been injected into him in a single diagnostic dose. On the basis of this lone case, thousands of parents had their children likewise injected.

In 1999 The New England Journal of Medicine published a study in which A. D. Sandler and associates investigated the effects of secretin in a single dose on 56 children with disorders in the autistic spectrum. The researchers found that, relative to a placebo, the secretin had had no effect in terms of standard behavioral measures. In a more recent study (see ), whose subjects were 20 autistic children, Melvin Heyman, M.D., and other researchers with the University of California at San Francisco found that secretin had had no significant effect on language skills in terms of standard measures.

Despite these negative scientific findings and the absence of positive scientific findings, lay interest in secretin as an autism drug has not abated much. Indeed, psychologist Bernard Rimland, Ph.D., states in an essay on the website of the Autism Research Institute (http://www. autism.com/ari/editorials/findings.html): "The use of secretin appears to be the most promising treatment yet discovered for the treatment of autism."

Dimethylglycine

DMG—n,n-dimethylglycine, which is sometimes mistermed "pangamic acid" and "vitamin B15"—is a natural compound that has been described as the active component of calcium pangamate and pangamic acid. DMG is commonly promoted as a means of increasing energy and boosting immunity, and often it is also marketed as a treatment for autism.

Some professionals claim that DMG treatment increases eye contact and speech and reduces frustration among persons with autism. In response to the proliferation of anecdotal claims of DMG effectiveness against autism, W. M. Bolman and J. A. Richmond conducted a double-blind, placebo-controlled, crossover pilot study of DMG treatment of eight males with autism. In this study, published in 1999 in the Journal of Autism and Developmental Dis-orders, DMG did not prove significantly different from a placebo.

What Could Be the Harm?

Because of (a) the lack of knowledge of what can cure autism, (b) the paucity of scientific research findings on most novel treatments for autism, and (c) the profundity of the disorder, most parents of autistic persons—and even many educators and health professionals—tend to make light of the risks of undergoing fringe treatments for the disorder. We do not suggest that the parents and physicians of autistic individuals refrain from inquiring about various treatment options—we merely recommend that they do so as informed doubters.

Such skepticism is important in considering treatments for autism for several reasons:

* Some pseudoscientific treatments for autism are promoted with hyperbolic or scientifically unverified claims of efficacy.
* Time and resources spent on pseudoscientific treatments are time and resources that could have been spent on established treatments. Moreover, any subsequent or concurrent improvement in the subject's condition may well be mis-ascribed to the pseudoscientific treatment and thus may lead to further squandering of time and money. Deterioration or mere lack of improvement with a succession of enthusiastically promoted pseudoscientific methods may make members of autistic persons' families cynical even toward established treatments the autistic individual has never undergone.
* In the history of drug therapy there are numerous examples of baneful substances that initially were deemed both therapeutically useful and without serious side effects. The effects of long-term use of secretin and DMG have not been investigated. Fur-thermore, there have been many cases of persons with developmental disabilities supposedly revealing through so-called facilitated communication that members of their families abused them physically and/or sexually. Parents have been convicted and incarcerated solely on the basis of spurious FC communications. Despite the wealth of scientific data attesting that the FC practitioners originate such communications, some courts permit their use as evidence.

The Bottom Line

Health claims favoring novel, undertested, and/or pseudoscientific treatments for autism should be taken with a large grain of salt. If a treatment sounds too good to be true, chances are it is neither good (effective) nor true (possessing a correct basis).

James D. Herbert, Ph.D. (james.herbert@drexel.edu), is an associate professor in the Department of Clinical and Health Psychology at MCP Hahnemann University, in Philadelphia.

Ian Sharp, M.A., is a doctoral candidate in clinical psychology at MCP Hahnemann University.
------------------------------------------------------------------------

autism (infantile autism): In medicine and psychology, a pervasive developmental disorder that shows up in early childhood and is marked by repetitive movements (e.g., spinning), resistance to change, shortness of attention span, lack of eye contact, inability to treat other persons as persons, and non-seeking of comfort in times of distress.

pervasive developmental disorder (PDD): Any of a group of nervous-system disorders characterized by deficits in communication and in diverseness of activities.

developmental disability: Any of a group of lasting incapacities, mental and/or physical, that arise before adulthood.

apraxia: Inability or underability to move coordinately, and/or to manipulate objects, even without problems related to bones, muscles, the senses, and/or comprehension.

pilot study: A relatively small-scale experiment designed as a prelude to large-scale scientific research (more specifically, to test research procedures and an initial hypothesis, for example).

randomized controlled trial (randomized controlled clinical trial, randomized control trial, RCT): An experiment (a) involving at least one tentative treatment or tentative preventive and one control (e.g., a placebo) and (b) in which subjects are allocated randomly into such groups.

secretin (incretin, oxykrinin): A hormone made in the mucous membranes of the duodenum and jejunum that can stimulate the stomach, liver, and pancreas to secrete certain digestive substances and can inhibit gastric acid secretion.

double-blind study (double-blind clinical study, double-blind trial): Any clinical experiment designed so that none of the participants (e.g., the subjects and those treating them) knows the identity of the treatment any subject is undergoing.

crossover study: A study in which subjects undergo different treatment courses sequentially.

(From Priorities, Vol. 13, No. 1)

http://www.acsh.org/healthissues/newsID.620/healthissue_detail.asp

Pseudoscience in Autism Treatment - The Lovaas Center

http://www.thelovaascenter.org/index.php?pname=pseudoscience%20in%20autism%20treatm

Unfortunately, pseudoscience in autism treatment is far too common. Because so little is known about the causes and so many people are interested in finding “cures,” plenty of companies are anxious to target this growing market. Numerous claims are made about treatments that vary widely—from dolphin therapy to hyperbaric oxygen chambers. That’s not to say that certain treatments haven’t helped a few people, or that those offering such treatments intend any ill will. Unfortunately, there is seldom if ever any sound research to back it up and the harmful side effects are not always discussed.

The following list has been adapted from the American Arthritis Foundation and originally printed in Science in Autism Treatment, Spring 1999.

Warning signs of pseudoscientific therapies:
High "success" rates are claimed.
Rapid effects are promised.
The therapy is said to be effective for many symptoms or disorders.
The "theory" behind the therapy contradicts objective knowledge (and sometimes, common sense).
The therapy is said to be easy to administer, requiring little training or expertise.
Other, proven treatments are said to be unnecessary, inferior, or harmful.
Promoters of the therapy are working outside their area of expertise.
Promoters benefit financially or otherwise from adoption of the therapy.
Testimonials, anecdotes, or personal accounts are offered in support of claims about the therapy's effectiveness, but little or no objective evidence is provided.
Catchy, emotionally appealing slogans are used in marketing the therapy.
Belief and faith are said to be necessary for the therapy to "work."
Skepticism and critical evaluation are said to make the therapy's effects evaporate.
Promoters resist objective evaluation and scrutiny of the therapy by others.
Negative findings from scientific studies are ignored or dismissed.
Critics and scientific investigators are often met with hostility, and are accused of persecuting the promoters, being "close-minded," or having some ulterior motive for "debunking" the therapy. (asatonline.org/intervention/articles/evaluate.htm)

Increasing Autism Treatment Awareness
In recent years there has been a dramatic increase in autism awareness, no doubt due to the increase in diagnosis as well as the media coverage. However, we still have far to go, especially with regard to looking for and recognizing signs of autism in very young children to the ever-critical early intervention can begin.

At The Lovaas Center, we’re interested in increasing autism treatment awareness as well as autism awareness. Although sound scientific research supports early intensive behavioral intervention, there are many—far too many—alternative autism treatments that people have heard of but may not realize they’re ineffective or even harmful. We encourage you to examine a variety of reliable sources in order to learn more about autism treatments—those that are effective as well as those that are not. Then please, share with others what you have learned.