Rantings from a burned out resident

Panda Bear is a blog maintained by an emergency department resident physician. His views on CAM make Dr. Wallace Sampson seem like a believer.

Caution: You are about to enter a stomach-wrenching zone.

CAM, according to Panda Bear.

“Almost everything about Complementary and Alternative Medicine (CAM) is bunk and its purveyors are at best deluded and at worst quacks and charlatans who would make the snake oil salesmen of olden days blush from shame.”

“CAM exists in an alternate universe from real medicine. It wants to be legitimate but manages to avoid the responsibilities and liability of real medical practice.”

“The adherents of CAM are educated enough to realize that their beliefs are ridiculous and try to give them the imprimateur [sic] of scientific legitimacy, often with shoddily constructed studies. Every major legitimate study on CAM, however, has found very little to substantiate it even though the researching institutions bend over backwards and contort their data to make the best possible case for it.”

He also has thoughts on homeopathy, naturopathy, and acupuncture.

Most of the reader comments come from like-minded people. But there are some exceptions.

Pancho Villa:

• “I am mostly on your side PB, but quackery and pseudomedicine aside, you’d have to be a fool to believe that if it doesn’t come out of a medicine bottle, it can’t do any good. All I’m saying is, the medicine is out there, and we study it, isolate it, formulate it, and put it in cute little bottles for consumption. Willow gave us aspirin, and I’m sure more are out there.”

Apollo

• “Our allopathic sect of medicine rejected the Germ Theory for disease for about 20-25 years before it finally realized “Crap, these scientists were right” and “Holy crap, we can beat out the homeopaths if we pull out this Germ Theory card now.” Less than two centuries ago, allopathic doctors were bleeding patients (in a very non-evidenced-based way), sometimes to death. Our history isn’t exactly perfect either.”

Philip Tan-Gatue, MD

• “I’m an MD. I studied acupuncture in China. I hardly consider what I’m doing as NOT treating disease. I’ve successfully treated facial tics, migraines, low back and leg pain, elbow pain, asthma and a whole lot more “nebulous” entities that western medicine couldn’t even begin to touch. The beauty of my profession is that I know WHEN to turn to western medicine.”

The bottom line?
If you’re inclined, a few fair and balanced comments to Panda Bear are in order. Be concise. Be respectful.

5/8/07 10:20 JR