Bland is the father of functional medicine, a form of quackery that encompasses a large number of unproven and disproven methods and treatments backed by pseudoscience, anecdotes, hunches and conspiracy theories. Bland even readily admits that there is no evidence base: “Unfortunately, current research models do not have a way to test each individualized, patient-centered therapeutic plan that is tailored to a person with a unique combination of existing conditions, genetic influences, environmental exposures, and lifestyle choices”, says Bland. It is not true that there is noway of testing their claims (and no, human biochemistry really isn’t that individual, even if we all want to feel special, and they could of course just test whether their individualized plans worked … but of course they won’t), and yes: the claim it’s really just a simple and feeble “get out of jail free” card and the same excuse quacks always use to not have to rely on evidence and instead do what they want and making it up as they go, which is exactly what they do. That it also means that they have no evidence for their recommendations is left unsaid.
Allegedly, functional medicine focuses on the “root causes”, which is false on any interpretation of ‘root’ and ‘cause’, based on purported interactions between the environment and the gastrointestinal, endocrine, and immune systems … but really based on the opportunity to prescribe a number of useless and expensive tests. As response to whatever they deem to be the root cause, functional medicine proponents develop “individualized treatment plans”, i.e. not based it on cold, hard, impersonal facts, but whatever suits the interests of the practitioners at the moment. There are decent primers on functional medicine here and here.
That said, it is really hard to pin down precisely what functional medicine is supposed to be – it’s usually defined in terms of thoroughly vague, largely metaphorical terms like “taking a whole-patient perspective” and “imbalances” in hormones and neurotransmitters – expressions that could mean anything and which functional medicine providers accordingly use to mean whatever they fancy. According to Bland himself, “disease appears real and fixed, just as the earth seems flat, and time and space seem linear and solid.” Apparently that is part of a paradigm-shifting insight. In reality, it is new age guru gobbledygock, nothing else. But that kind of stuff has a rather significant audience.
Since 2014, the Cleveland Clinic has despite everything sported a Center for Functional Medicine. Functional medicine remains pure quackery. But there is money in it, and what centers the Cleveland Clinic hosts is not decided by its medical personnel, far less by anyone working in science. It’s apparently been very popular.
Bland founded The Institute for Functional Medicine (IFM) in the early 1990s as part of one of his companies HealthComm. Bland is not a medical doctor but a former chemist and dietary supplement hawker, whose companies have been fined an impressive number of times by the FTC and FDA and have been ordered to stop making medical claims for their products. At least the Nu-Day Diet Program and the UltraClear dietary program were obvious scams: they were falsely claimed to reduce the incidence and severity of symptoms associated with gastrointestinal problems, inflammatory or immunologic problems, fatigue, food allergies, mercury exposure, kidney disorders, and rheumatoid arthritis. Later, Bland’s company Metagenics got in trouble for falsely claiming that their products UltraClear®, UltraMeal®, UltraInflamX™, and UltraGlycemX™ , promoted e.g. for “Support of Metabolic Detoxification”, were medical foods rather than bullshit. You can read more about Bland’s colorful adventures in the fields of fraud, scam, and con artistry here. The IFM was arguably founded precisely to push the kinds of supplements Bland used to get in trouble for, and the reason it is hard to pin down what functional medicine is, is presumably exactly because it was invented precisely as a ploy for Bland to sell his supplements.
Bland was also on the board of directors for Keats Publishing, possibly America’s most prolific publisher of questionable information about health, nutrition, and “alternative” health methods at least prior to the 2000s. He was also on the “medical advisory board” of Healthshop, an online supplement recommending fraud and spam website. Also before he decided to invent functional medicine, Bland was a central promoter of nutritional supplements and gave talks to and adviced a range of rather influential quack cults trying to pose as legitimate medical associations, such as the Council on Nutrition (a chiropractic organization – Bland and functional medicine remains popular with chiropractors, apparently). He is even on the Advisory Board of Julian Whitaker’s lobbying organization known as the American Association of Health Freedom (AAHF). But of course he is. Ask him about his views on vaccines.
What’s thoroughly scary, though, is that even in 2015, the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education would accredit organizations like The Institute for Functional Medicine, with speakers like Bland, for continuing medical education credits. He is regularly featured as a speaker by organizations and groups that really should know better.
Diagnosis: One of the most influential quacks in the US, Bland is most of all a kind of spineless guru who seems to have evolved from cynically employing any scheme possible to push his supplements to becoming something like a true believer in whatever he makes up as he goes along. Yes, it’s hard to believe that he takes his own helpless metaphorical gestures seriously, but he seems to do.
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