Intergrative health and CAM- delivering what people want as opposed to what we think they need

I colleague sent me a link to a blog from the British Medical Journal written by Timothy Caulfield entitled "The straw men of integrated health". Link


In this blog Tim Caulfield pretty much completely debunks the defenses proffered for CAMs in general However, it may not really matter because Mr. Caulfield perhaps misses the point. Mr. Caulfield, whose most recent book "Is Gwyneth Paltrow wrong about everything", believes we are mislead by celebrity and deceived by pseudo-science. He is probably right about the science but he is misled but what the actual deliverables are.


His book appears to be written to target people like me. (I have not yet read it but probably will). I use my plodding and non-reptilian brain to  sort through evidence and make plodding and thoughtful decisions. However, the target for his blog and book are people who make decisions to randomly avoid gluten and do cleanses because it makes them feel good about themselves. They could give a rip about any double blind control trials. They do a veggie purge which gives them a terribly satisfying sense of control and they feel great, at least for a while.


Human brains are complicated things and emotions are even more complex. The scientific basis of medicine and the deliverables in the health care realm used to be hard stops, literally. We intervened so that people would not die. It is a relatively easily measured endpoint and snake oils and witchcraft did not move the needle much. When modern antibiotics and modern acute care techniques came on the scene, these interventions quickly rendered less effective (or not effective) approaches to the dustbin of history.


We now have moved into a totally different realm of health care deliverables. People have the luxury of taking living for granted and have moved on to feeling good, feeling in control,  and worrying about the future. We in the scientific realm have not moved the needle much regarding making people happy. There are entrepreneurial sorts who peddle all sorts of compounds which some people crave and make them "happy" albeit for a brief period of time. There also are all sorts of downsides to many of these compounds.


Much of the population is either depressed, insecure, anxious, worried, or somewhat unfulfilled. This is a huge market and nature, abhorring any sort of vacuum, fills this will any number of people with a host of interventions. Some are activities (running, swimming, Lladro collecting, civil war reenactment, mission trips to Haiti), some are spiritual endeavors (praying, meditation, chanting), some appear to be deviant (cross dressing, pedophilia), and others dance around medical interventions. Many seem to make people feel better. None really make any scientific sense.


However, this is not a scientific issue, at least at this point. Perhaps at some point in time someone may be able to connect the dots and demonstrate how any particular activity or behavior makes a given person feel good. We are not likely close to that now.


I guess my point is Gwyneth Paltrow and the CAM crowd should not drape their decisions with the mantle of scientific legitimacy. However, the scientific community should stop telling people what they should or should not do to make them feel good about themselves.


This also has implications regarding what is defined as health care and what insurance pays for. In his Atlantic piece, he dove deeply into the movement of healthcare from addressing acute illnesses to addressing lifestyle concerns and risks of future disease link. The insertion of CAM into this discussion is a natural evolution of this trend. Will we end up requiring payment for CAM by third party payers?