The Journey of a “Doctor” Who Joined the Cult of Alternative Medicine and Then Broke Out of It
Source: flipboard.com Author: Akshat Rathi Date: September 30, 2017 One Friday afternoon in May 2014, Britt Hermes was scheduled to treat one of her cancer patients with an injection of Ukrain. This wasn’t especially unusual; people often came to Hermes, a naturopath in Arizona, for the treatment. That day, though, an expected shipment of the drug hadn’t arrived, and Hermes’s patients weren’t happy. They had been promised that Ukrain given on a strict schedule would help them when nothing else was working. So she asked her boss what was going on. “In response, he made an off-hand remark: ‘Oh don’t worry. Most likely the FDA [Food and Drug Administration] confiscated it. It’ll just arrive late,’” Hermes recalls today. When she asked him what he meant, he fumbled. “He realized that he may have said something he shouldn’t have.” Complementary medicine therapies drawn from traditional practices, ranging from massage and vitamin supplements to acupuncture and meditation, are today becoming broadly incorporated into mainstream medicine as more scientific studies validate their efficacy. But naturopathy, a belief system built on the concept that “nature knows best” when it comes to healing, takes it a step further. Practitioners use a host of pseudoscientific techniques including energy healing and homeopathy that can be not only ineffective, but dangerous. Instead of thinking about the techniques as adjunct therapies to proven modern medicine, many naturopaths will reject the pharmaceuticals and other treatments that we know save lives. Over her seven years of training and practice, Hermes had [...]