What's Eating Stephen Barrett?

What's Eating Stephen Barrett?

http://www.chiro.org/LINKS/FULL/What..._Barrett.shtml

Thanks to Alternative Medicine Digest, July 1998
for permission to reproduce this article!


You Don't have to be Sick: On the Edge with Burton Goldberg

Let's look at this set-up carefully.

Barrett and his "quackbusting" colleagues say they are working to
protect the public against health frauds. They don't want the public
to waste its money on "sham" treatments that don't work. In the
paradox of "quackbusting," the quackbusters say they're protecting
public health, but in fact, they're abandoning the public to their own
suffering to protect the financial interests of conventional medicine,
which has no interest in or ability to produce benefits for these
conditions.

He says he's using science to protect the public from
expensive fad diagnoses, but if this "quackbuster" has his way, the
public will have no recourse but conventional medicine for their
health problems.



Recently, I set myself the exercise of trying to understand
what motivates a self-proclaimed "quackbuster" to write a book
debunking an entire field of medicine. A "quackbuster," as we've come
to know over the years, is someone who is dedicated to casting
aspersions on alternative medicine, regardless of whether there is any
factual basis.

As alternative medicine continues to grow more popular-an
estimated 42% of Americans now use it-the "quackbusters" are growing
more clamorous in their denunciations of our field. They have to
be-they're almost a minority view.

Multiple chemical sensitivity, sick building syndrome,
food-related hyperactivity, mercury amalgam toxicity, candidiasis
hyperactivity, Gulf War syndrome-these are all costly misbeliefs and
fad diagnoses, says Barrett. "Many Americans believe that exposure to
common foods and chemicals makes them ill," he says. "This book is
about people who hold such beliefs but are wrong."

Not only are patients wrong, Barrett says, they are
"financially exploited as well as mistreated." They are duped by
"far-fetched" notions and "dubious claims," by headline-crazed media
and "toxic television," and by "physicians who use questionable
diagnostic and treatment methods."

Patients presume they are being made allergic or toxic or even
being poisoned by the mass of modern chemicals, cosmetics, cleaning
agents, drugs, and other human-made substances. They are mistaken,
says Barrett. Their misbeliefs are especially hard to understand,
Barrett says, "at a time when our food supply is the world's safest
and our antipollution program is the best we've ever had."

Patients' symptoms are mental (psychosomatic) in origin-"they
react to stress by developing multiple symptoms." Their symptoms are
not caused by chemicals or dietary factors, he says. In fact, Barrett
suggests that some patients are "hysterical," others are "paranoid,"
and the rest have "certain psychological factors" that "predispose"
them to "develop symptoms" and to seek out "questionable" doctors
(meaning alternative medicine practitioners) who will attach a ("not
scientifically recognized") disease label to them.

Regarding Gulf War syndrome, for example, Barrett declares:
"It provides a feeding trough for serious scientists, since funding is
abundant, and for every charlatan with a newsworthy theory." On the
matter of the dangers of mercury fillings, he states: "The false
diagnosis of mercury-amalgam toxicity is potentially very harmful and
reflects extremely poor judgment."

For the most part, of the illnesses listed above, nearly all
are mere "labels" rather than legitimate illness conditions, asserts
Barrett; they're not caused by foods or chemicals; there are no
"scientific" studies conclusively proving the association of diet,
chemicals, and illness; and we are best advised to dismiss them out of
hand, he says.

In most cases and for most of the illnesses commonly
associated with chemical sensitivity, Barrett says the mass of
mistaken patients would be better off seeking "mental help" from a
psychiatrist or other "mental health practitioner." Alternative
medicine physicians and especially "clinical ecologists" (the old name
for practitioners of environmental medicine, which links exposures to
toxic substances with health conditions) should be chastised,
investigated, put on notice, and if possible, put out of business,
says Barrett.

Most of what Barrett claims can be refuted, easily and
decisively. That's not my intention here. I'm more interested in
looking at the bigger picture-what is Barrett really saying amidst his
quackbusting bluster, and why?

Barrett appears to be saying that the typical American patient
is stupid, hysterical or paranoid, easily duped, and generally
incapable of making a rational, correct medical decision on their own.
The patient is mistaken and wrong in thinking their multiple symptoms
have any connection to the foods they eat or the environmental
chemicals to which they are exposed. The media is irresponsible and
not to be trusted as an information source about medicine, especially
about alternatives. Doctors who practice alternative medicine are
unscientific, opportunistic frauds or quacks, peddling flawed or junk
science.

I next pondered what could be the purpose of this book. What
could be the result of debunking the connection between foods,
chemicals, cosmetics, and drugs with the varieties of environmental
illness (mentioned above) now afflicting millions of patients. Why
does Barrett (and his colleagues) so dislike alternative medicine?
What's eating him that he must disparage the field at every
opportunity?

The purpose has to be this: to corral this mass of suffering
"confused" patients into the treatment pen of conventional medicine.
But here Barrett's rationale collapses. The patients end up with
nothing.

Surely no person suffering unexplained allergies or general
toxicity wants to be told they're stupid, mistaken, and ought to have
their head examined. And surely no patient who has abandoned
conventional medicine (because the one or two dozen doctors they
consulted hadn't a clue as to how to help them) would be interested in
Barrett's thesis. It is genuinely hard to imagine how a suffering
patient could actually be persuaded by Barrett to dismiss alternative
approaches when the conventional ones were not useful, or even worse,
were harmful.

But let's say, despite these reservations, patients allowed
themselves to be herded into Barrett's allopathic corral. There would
be nothing there for them. Conventional medicine has no cure or
treatment for these illnesses. In fact, as Barrett repeatedly points
out, for the most part, conventional medicine does not even validate
the existence of these illness categories and regards a diagnosis of
such illnesses as bogus medicine. Of course, Barrett does offer
patients "mental help."

Let's look at this set-up carefully. Barrett and his
"quackbusting" colleagues say they are working to protect the public
against health frauds. They don't want the public to waste its money
on "sham" treatments that don't work. The false labels of multiple
chemical sensitivity, environmental illness, and the rest, do the
public a "disservice," Barrett says, and seeking treatment for these
wastes the financial resources of insurance companies, employers, and
other third party reimbursers.

But since conventional medicine has nothing to offer patients
who "believe" they are suffering physical distress from these
conditions, the patients, in effect, are left on their own to suffer
some more. Barrett's plan seems to be to corral these misguided
patients into the conventional medicine pen so he can dissuade them of
their mistaken notions regarding their illness and make them "see"
that it's all psychosomatic.

Clearly the patients do not benefit at all from this scenario,
so who does? The makers of drugs, petrochemicals, cosmetics, synthetic
food additives, pesticides, prepared foods-in short, the massive food
and chemical industry of North America benefits. They are no longer
held accountable as causal factors in multiple symptom illnesses. They
are let off the hook. They can proceed with business as usual. There
are no poisons in their products. (See the cartoon about
"quackbusters" by Harley Schwadron in "The Politics of Medicine"
section, this issue, p. 106.)

In the paradox of "quackbusting," the quackbusters say they're
protecting public health, but in fact, they're abandoning the public
to their own suffering to protect the financial interests of
conventional medicine, which has no interest in or ability to produce
benefits for these conditions. The "quackbusters" say they're serving
the public, but the truth is they're grossly disserving patients.
Thanks to Barrett's remarkable chemical insensitivity, a great many
patients will be left to suffer on their own without any diagnosis or
treatment, except perhaps another round of Prozac on the house.

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