HB 4531
oracknows | July 11, 2016Welcome once again to Sh*t Naturopaths Say, my periodic look at what naturopaths say behind closed doors (metaphorically speaking). At least, it’s a look at what they say when they are discussing patient management with their peers. It is a series to which I can add new entires from time to time, thanks to Naturopathic Chat (NatChat, for short), a discussion forum with hundreds of naturopaths as members that also includes someone who goes by the ‘nym Naturowhat and occasionally leaks the content of the forum to a Pastbin. Also, it never hurts to remind my readers of the quackery that is…
oracknows | June 20, 2016Living and practicing surgery in Michigan, it’s not surprising that I am very concerned about a bill being considered in the Michigan House of Representatives. The bill, HB 4531, would license naturopaths as health care providers. In fact, it would give them a very broad scope of practice, defined by a newly created board of naturopathic medicine. Basically, HB 4531 would give naturopaths a scope of practice almost as broad as that of primary care providers, like internists, family practitioners, and pediatricians. The only difference, if HB 4531 passes, would be that naturopaths would not be…
oracknows | June 15, 2016We in Michigan are dealing with yet another effort on the part of NDs, which stands for “naturopathic doctors” but more appropriately should mean “not a doctor, to achieve licensure in the form of Michigan HB 4531. As I mentioned when I first learned that HB 4531 was passed by the House Committee on Health Policy and sent to the full House for consideration, it’s a scary, scary bill. Moreover, it’s supported by the Michigan Association of Naturopathic Physicians (MANP), who are taking money from the supplement industry to lobby for this bill’s passage. It’s a bill that would grant NDs a wide…
oracknows | June 8, 2016Those of us living in Michigan who support science-based medicine have been forced to deal with a bill that, if passed, would grant practitioners of unscientific “medicine” a wide scope of practice—almost as wide as that of primary care practitioners such as pediatricians, internists, and family practice doctors. I’m referring to HB 4531, a bill that would license naturopaths who graduated from “accredited” programs. If this bill were to pass, the only difference between the scope of practice of primary care physicians and naturopaths would be that naturopaths wouldn’t be allowed to prescribe…
oracknows | June 1, 2016With a bill to license naturopaths (HB 4531) wending its way through the Michigan legislature supported by supplement manufacturers, its current status being in consideration by the full House of Representatives, periodically I feel the need to provide ammunition to the bill’s opponents, because we need to protect the patients in the state of Michigan from the naturopathic quackery that would be unleashed if this bill were to be passed into law.
If there is one area that naturopaths have been invading with a vengeance and even gaining enough seeming legitimacy to propose what they risibly…
oracknows | May 22, 2016Over the years, I’ve taken care of women with locally advanced breast cancer so advanced that it’s eroded through the skin, forming huge, nasty ulcers filled with stinky dead cancer tissue that’s outgrown its blood supply, leaving the patient in chronic pain. If the patient is fortunate, her cancer has not metastasized beyond her axillary lymph nodes (the lymph nodes under her arm), and her life might still be saved by a combination of chemotherapy, radical surgery, and radiation. If the patient is not fortunate, either the cancer has metastasized and she is doomed or hasn’t metastasized yet…