One of the major challenges facing every patient is dealing with the "ideologies" that permeate health care. Ideologies, of course, are supposed to explain all aspects of political, religious, or other major areas of life, and thus are all-encompassing and highly controversial. Wars are fought over ideology (i.e. World War II, The Cold War) In health care, the major ideological struggle now taking place pits the conventional medicine of the hospitals and Big Pharma (i.e. surgery and drugs offer the best hope of cure) against the alternative medicine of the acupuncturists, chiropractors, nutritionists and others (traditional and natural approaches offer the best hope of staving off disease). (An emerging area of health care, known as "integrative medicine," is trying to stake out an in-between area.)
My article on BusinessWeek.com about Standard Process, the Wisconsin vitamin company that is attempting to prohibit health-care practitioners from selling its products via the Internet, highlights this ideological struggle. Standard Process wants the practitioners who dispense its products to believe that, thanks to organic foods and animal glands, the products have certain unique properties that help cure conditions and diseases out of the reach of both conventional medicine and other makers of nutritional supplements. I had chiropractors tell me about patients with everything from cancer to constipation had been "cured" by Standard Process products. Would other supplements have been able to accomplish the same things with these patients? Who knows?
It all hearkens back to a major problem facing alternative healthcare practitioners: the snake-oil syndrome. Back in the 1800s, hucksters used to go from town to town, selling their potions from a soap box with talk of miraculous cures, moving on before buyers realized the concoctions were useless. Makers of nutritional supplements rely on this same formula, though obviously in more sophisticated packaging, to move product today, and it is part of the ideology of the alternative health care movement.
I’m not saying Standard Process products are without value. I appreciate that nutritional supplements are extremely important to health care during an age when we are likely being deprived of important vitamins and minerals because foods are less wholesome than they used to be and because our bodies have requirements that aren’t fully understood. I also believe that some supplements are of higher and more consistent quality than others. I’m just skeptical of health-care approaches by makers of supplements that rely on special claims based more on anecdote than on scientific assessment. And I readily accept that in real-life cases, Standard Process supplements (along with those of other manufacturers) have helped patients recover from conditions that conventional medicine couldn’t deal with.
One other trait I’ve noticed about ideologues is that they tend to be highly controlling. The Standard Process effort to prohibit its practitioners from selling over the Internet is about as controlling as you can get in this day and age. And its refusal to discuss the matter at all (in response to my requests for an interview with the president) is further indication of its control orientation. Ideologues don’t like their constituents to be out there exploring and trying new things.
Recent Comments