Study Proclaiming Dangers of Alternative Medicine Is So Flawed It's Useless

This study is so bad, it's an embarrassment. It's full of unsupported claims and the design is fatally flawed. It's even good for a couple of laughs.

by Heidi Stevenson

26 December 2010

In the increasingly obnoxious attacks, the docile, bought and paid for medical research and media reports are misrepresenting virtually all aspects of alternative medicine. The latest is being hyped everywhere, claiming that alternative medicine methodologies—all types—are dangerous when applied to children. However, the study itself is so deeply flawed that it would be laughable. It purports to show that alternative medicine is dangerous for use in children, but it provides absolutely no comparison with standard modern medicine. Without that, the study is meaningless—and it's fairly obvious why such a comparison isn't made.

The study was done in Australia and reported in the Archives of Disease in Childhood. Financial support for the study was not revealed. One of the three researchers is employed by Murdoch Childrens Research Institute, which is financed largely by Rupert Murdoch's mother. Murdoch, his family, and his business partners, are heavily invested in Big Pharma.

The authors searched for complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) related adverse events reported to the Australian Paediatric Surveillance Unit between January 2001 and December 2003. They found a total of 39 reported events. Four of the events were deaths, which they say were the result of "failure to use conventional medicine in favour of a CAM therapy".

The Deaths

Let's examine that statement alone. The authors have presumed that use of an allopathic treatment would have saved the lives of those four children and that the parents chose to use an alternative instead of that allopathic treatment. Neither of these assumptions is valid.

It is the height of hubris to presume that any of these four lost lives would have been saved with allopathic treatment—and not one bit of evidence is given to support the claim.

Some people will refuse to use modern allopathic medicine, whether there are alternatives or not. The assumption that alternatives were used to avoid allopathic treatment is neither substantiated nor addressed. It is entirely possible that no treatment would have been used. The implication that people were wooed away from allopathic treatment is assumed. It is neither addressed nor documented.

Less Severe Events

Those were the worst cases. Now, let's take a look at some of the other events reported.

Definite Adverse Effects

The incidents the authors believe were definitely related to CAM therapies were:

• Two cases of constipation, one from valerian and one from large volumes of chamomile tea.
• One case of bleeding (details not given) from taking ginkgo and ginseng (quantities not given).
• One case of carotenemia from high doses of beta carotene.
• One case of leg pain and left sciatic neuropraxia from vitamin injections.
• One overdose of thyroxine—which seems rather strange, since that's generally a prescribed drug
• One case of hypercalcemia from oral and intravenous calcium.
• One case of argyria from taking colloidal silver.

With the exception of argyria, every one of these problems can be resolved by removal of the offending substance. Argyria is not considered harmful to health, though it does discolor the skin. No information is given to suggest whether this incident was the result of self-administration or done by a health care professional.

The bottom line regarding problems definitely related to CAM is that there was only one case that could rise to the level of serious, argyria. Interestingly, we don't know if the patient was driven to use of colloidal silver because of failure of allopathic medicine. (The authors did not treat any of these cases as serious.)

Potential Adverse Effects

Let's look at situations the authors classed as "potential adverse events", all of which they claim are directly caused by the CAM treatment:

1. Poor growth from taking echinacea.
2. Allergic reaction to ingestion of a vitamin mixture.
3. Acidosis from taking a crushed pearl.
4. Mouth ulcers from taking homeopathic drops.
5. Seizure and apnea from taking homeopathic medicines.
6. Acute hepatitis and liver failure requiring a transplant from "multiple herbal therapy and minerals".
7. Fever, vomiting, drowsiness and respiratory symptoms from taking Pulsatilla 30 with protoanemonin. Note that the authors didn't know enough about homeopathy to specify the Pulsatilla dosing properly, and the specification of protoanemonin would imply that it was a material dose, which the number 30 would indicate is a nonmaterial dose in any homeopathic remedy type.
8. Vomiting and dehydration from high dose taurine and inositol added to infant formula.
9. Intraoperative bleeding from "herbal medicines, including slippery elm".
10. Premature closure of the ductus arteriosus in a fetus from taking raspberry tea leaf.
11. Neonatal hyponatremic seizures (seizures from inadequate sodium) resulting from taking multiple herbal and vitamin/mineral supplements.
12. Overdose of gingko and brahmi with admission for observation, but no information on whether there were any toxic effects.
13. Overdose causing tachycardia, fever, drowsiness, and hypoglycemia from accidental ingestion of Infacalm drops, which contain the drug simenthicone.
14. Steroid excess from a "herbal centre medicine".

These possible adverse effects are often bizarre. If echinacea actually caused poor growth, it would be the very first case. An allergic reaction to taking a vitamin mixture seems rather odd, since vitamins are substances that everyone requires. It may be possible to have an adverse reaction to them because of the type of preparation or method of administration, but an allergic reaction makes no sense.

The homeopathic claims are...well, they're bizarre. It seems that the authors are among those who use magical thinking, believing on the one hand that homeopathic preparations cannot possibly do anything and then, when it's convenient, claiming they can cause terrible harm.

Taurine and inositol are not noted as causing any adverse effects, but since the possible effect is in an infant, then a potential adverse effect should be considered. Acidosis from taking a crushed pearl? That would have to be one humongous pearl!

The potential connection of raspberry leaf tea to a birth defect in the fetus is a stretch. It would be the first ever noted. The claim that slippery elm might have cause intraoperative bleeding is truly bizarre, since not even the FDA has been able to find something bad to say about it! Acute hepatitis and liver failure from unnamed "multiple herbal therapy and minerals" is based on what? Without even bothering to name the herbs and minerals, how can anyone take the claim seriously? The same must be said about the neonatal seizures from lack of sodium, along with the observation for possible overdose of gingko and brahmi without any information about the results. Steroid excess from an unnamed "herbal centre medicine" is, again, much too broad to take seriously. Each of these claims is reaching. There is absolutely nothing on which to base them.

How an overdose from Infacalm drops, which contain an allopathic drug, got on this list is utterly baffling.

It's interesting that the authors commit one of the crimes that CAM therapists are so often accused of. They make cause and effect connections that are not justified. Nowhere in the study report was any information given that might justify a single one of these claims.

Adverse Effects from Lack of Use of Allopathy

This is the favorite trick that allopathy tries to pull in blaming CAM for harms. At best, it's a stretch. In this case, it goes even beyond that, because it assumes that these children would have been just fine if they'd been treated allopathically—but not one whit of evidence is given to support that idea.

The incidents include malnutrition, sepsis, and death from giving rice milk and a "life-start supplement" to an infant. (There is no description of what a "life-start supplement" consists of.) There's another case of the same symptoms blamed on homeopathy and dietary restrictions, and one of malnutrition and edema blamed on the same, though no details are given. Failure to thrive is blamed on rice milk.

Dehydration, encephalopathy, acidosis, and subsequent refeeding syndrome are blamed on massage and fluid restriction for cough.

Worsening seizures, admission to hospital with seizures, further seizures and unexpected death, death following pulmonary embolus, hyperglycemia, polyuria, and polydipsia are all blamed on not using conventional therapies. Hemophilus influenzae B pneumonia is blamed on lack of vaccination.

A woman who gave birth to a Down's syndrome baby and regretted not getting prenatal testing was included.

A "confused and complex grieving process" was blamed on an "opinion from chiropractor". Lack of diagnosis of a urinary tract infection was blamed on a chiropractor's treatment of the infant. Delayed management of severe cerebral palsy was blamed on going to a naturopath.

Finally, the most hyprocritical classification of so-called adverse events was "Unnecessary Treatment". Frankly, as practitioners of a system that's rife with unnecessary and dangerous treatment, it's hard to imagine that they'd have the gall to list it. Even so, the two cases are, at best, a stretch. One was that a chiropractor did "routine referral of all common infant problems by maternal child health nurse". Perhaps you can figure that one out—I can't. The other is the claim that a chiropractor did a "normal back examination". To that, all I can say is, "Huh?"

How These Adverse Events Were Reported

So, out of a total number of 39 possible adverse events, how many do you consider worth mentioning? When each listed incident is examined, very few appear to have any legitimacy. Many are so far-fetched that they're laughable. Assumptions that harm resulted because of a refusal to accept allopathic treatment is presumptuous, at best.

However, the authors had a different take on it. To disguise the paucity of results, they focused on the percentages. When there were only 39 case, not even a full hundred, percentages are fairly meaningless. The authors claimed:

• 64% of adverse events were "severe".
• 77% were believed by the reporters to be probably or definitely cases of cause and effect.
• 44% of reporting doctors believed patients had been harmed by not using allopathic treatment.

Not one of these statistics is meaningful. The authors have lumped together incidents that they believe are definitely caused by the CAM treatment with those that they acknowledge are only possibly caused by CAM, and those that they claim result from not using allopathy. They don't even try to offer stats beyond these that are, obviously, meaningless.

The authors stated, "All four fatalities resulted from a failure to use conventional medicine in favour of CAM therapies." That is absolutely unsupported. It is only a presumption on their part. Not one bit of documentation or argument is given to support the claim. This is not science!

The Biggest Flaw of All

Even if the data reported by this study were valid—which it obviously isn't—there is another issue that makes it meaningless. Where is the comparison with allopathic treatment? Over a span of three years, the authors found only 39 cases of purported harm from CAM in Australian children aged up to 16. Where are the figures for harms incurred by allopathic treatments?

Where are the numbers for children who've developed asthma, autism, and encephalitis after vaccinations? Where are the numbers for children who've suffered from anaphylactic shock from drugs? Where are the numbers for children who've developed drug-resistant diseases? Where are the numbers for children who've suffered harm from unnecessary early and caesarian deliveries? Where are the numbers for children who've suffered from unneeded SSRIs, SNRIs, and neuroleptic drugs?

This study is sloppy. It's methodology is atrocious. It makes assumptions that cannot be supported. It doesn't even do the primary thing a study should, provide a comparison and framework within which to make sense of the results. However, it does not make a comparison with the modality that the authors clearly are implying is superior without any evidence. The simple fact is that, without a comparison between CAM and allopathy, the study has no value.

This study is pure unadulterated trash. It is a prime example of how medical studies have been hijacked by profiteers, and of how it makes no difference how bad it is, since the media will blindly report whatever claims the authors make.

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