#2823: Irene Estores

The infiltration of pseudoscience into academic medicine – in the form of fellowships, research and clinical trials studying nonsense, or even large centers – is a significant threat to health and wellbeing in the US. It is driven by the fact that there is a certain level of public demand for such things, that there is money in it, and that it is often easy to market in appealing-sounding ways (“care for the whole person”, “wellness”, “we offer every means available”); and since decisions are made at administrative – not scientific – levels, the temptation is often too big for these academic institutions. The University of Florida in Gainesville, for instance, launched their New UF Health program in 2013, with press releases full of market-tailored nonsense about blending “holistic therapies and modern medicine”, the “best of both worlds” and so on; according to the program’s “first fellowship-trained integrative medicine physician” and director, Dr. Irene Estores, “[i]ntegrative medicine addresses the needs of the whole person – mind, body, spirit – in the context of community. We’re coming back to our roots and honoring what was effective in other healing traditions and using that to be able to be more effective in caring for our patients.” Of course, there is nothing holistic about the treatments offered by so-called ‘holistic’ medicine (rather, ‘holistic’ is at best a line in a defense when confronted with the fact that the purported benefits don’t show up in tests caring for rigor, accuracy and accountability), treating the “whole person” – which ordinary doctors certainly do – doesn’t require embracing pseudoscience, and integrating science with pseudoscience – or medicine with fake medicine – doesn’t make for better science or medicine. (Those are indeed the crucial false dilemmas at the heart of all woo.)

 

At least the services provided by the program, such as guided imagery, medical acupuncture and yoga, are themselves mostly harmless. But the thing is: embracing these, too, requires deemphasizing or even jettisoning values like accountability and being guided by evidence – indeed, the whole point of such programs is to weaken or eliminate standards of care, which is certainly not a healthy thing to do. And indeed, looking beyond the press releases, you’ll see that the program’s recommendations may also include “referrals to practitioners of other healing systems such as Traditional Chinese medicine, Ayurveda (a holistic medicine system from India), or homeopathy.” Oh, yes, they do.

 

Estores herself is a trainee of Andrew Weil’s integrative medicine program at the University of Arizona, as well as a Bravewell fellow and an acupuncturist. According to herself, her “interest in integrative medicine grew out of self-exploration of other healing and belief systems, the deepening of her spiritual practice of prayer, self-reflection and meditation, and a mindful experience of both the good and bad things that have happened in her life as an individual and as a physician. She considers her practice of medicine as a vocation and a spiritual path.” Needless to say, this is not the kind of practitioner you should trust if you want reality-based care – note the conspicuous absence of ‘evidence’, ‘reality’, ‘facts’ or ‘science’. According to herself, however, Estores does not practice ‘alternative medicine’ – “[h]ere at UF, we do not have alternative medicine. We do not have complementary medicine. We have integrative medicine” – which is, of course, an attempt at pure semantics for marketing purposes; what she does practice, is woo based on pseudoscience

 

Diagnosis: Slick, smarmy, arrogant and completely devoid of any sense of care that reality matters. Though Estores does have a medical degree, she has done her best (worst) to cure herself of the notion that evidence and facts trump her gut feelings (‘spiritual’) or feel-good PR blather (‘coming back to our roots and honoring what was effective in other healing traditions’).

 

Hat-tip: Respectful Insolence