“Integrative oncology” attempts to integrate pseudoscience, woo and pseudo-religious quackery with science-based oncology on the false premise that integrating bullshit with reality-based measures will improve the outcome for patients and the true premise that such integration might be financially lucrative. An important component in marketing such efforts is to recategorize science-based techniques, such as diet and exercise, as “alternative” to justify the conclusion that “alternative” treatments work and then use that conclusion to market pure bullshit such as reiki or TCM. Another important marketing component is pointing to the opioid crisis and concluding that we need alternative treatments of pain, neglecting to mention that the alternatives suggested don’t do shit for pain. Though it is dishonest, the marketing is effective, and centers that offer “integrative” treatments to patients and courses designed to indoctrinate healthcare practitioners have popped up all over the place.
The Integrative Oncology Program, for instance, was one such effort, funded by a National Cancer Institute R25 grant and designed to offer training of healthcare personnel through an online eLearning component and in-person sessions at the University of Michigan. And yes, it would promote homeopathy, as well as Ayurvedic medicine, naturopathy in general and high-dose Vitamin C. And it would be promoted precisely in the way proponents of integrative oncology usually do it: Co-opt some science-based diet and lifestyle modalities (diet, exercise), and use them as cover for the quackery.
Judith Fouladbakhsh was one of the instructors affiliated with the program, and an entirely typical specimen. Fouladbakhsh is an advanced practice nurse and Associate Professor at Oakland University, but she also holds “advanced clinical practice certifications” [certified by whom?] “in Community Health and Holistic Nursing, Healing Touch, Reflexology and Reiki” (i.e. various variants of energy medicine). She is apparently also faculty member at the Beaumont Health System School of Yoga Therapy and can report “extensive experience in complementary and alternative (traditional) medicine, integrative oncology, pain management, public health and cancer nursing”. (Her actual research, however, consists of things like investigating “effects of yoga on breathing, mood, sleep and QOL of lung cancer patients”, which can’t really be deemed obviously “alternative”). Fouladbakhsh is also on the board of trustees of the Society for Integrative Ontology (SIO) and, apparently, developer of the CAM Healthcare Model©. She is also coauthor (with e.g. Lorenzo Cohen, Dugald Seely and naturopath Heather Greenlee) of the miserable failure of a wishwashy, market-jargon-laden infomercial that is the SIO updated clinical guidelines for breast cancer care, which was somehow endorsed by the American Society of Clinical Oncology but which strikingly, and predictably, neglects to try to explain what integrative oncology even is (answer: it is a brand, not a medical specialty).
Diagnosis: One of a scary number of genuine medical providers who have conflated market-friendly with safe and efficacious … and that’s the most favorable attribution we could come up with. There are darker and scarier diagnoses that are probably correct, too.
Hat-tip: David Gorski @ sciencebased medicine
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