Dr Cherilyn Lee

Discussion in 'General Distance Learning Discussions' started by PaulC, Jul 1, 2009.

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  1. PaulC

    PaulC Member

    You've seen the story by now:

    ""I told him this medication is not safe," Lee said. "He said, 'I just want to get some sleep. You don't understand. I just want to be able to be knocked out and go to sleep...I told him -- and it is so painful that I actually felt it in my whole spirit -- 'If you take this, you might not wake up.' "


    http://www.cnn.com/2009/SHOWBIZ/Music/07/01/jackson.wrap/index.html


    At least she's a doctor....

    http://www.nutrimedhealthcare.com/DrLee.htm

    "Dr. Cherilyn Cammon-Lee.....received her Ph.D. in Holistic Medicine from Clayton School of Natural Health."
     
  2. japhy4529

    japhy4529 House Bassist

    Ah, the prestigious Clayton School of Natural Health. Is it legal to refer to one's self as a Doctor when said doctorate is from an unaccredited mill? What are the regulations in California?

    I found it interesting that she is also a Physicians Assistant and a Nurse Practitioner. I would guess that this is uncommon, although these credentials appear to be legitimate.
     
  3. Sleestack

    Sleestack New Member

    She believes that “A disease is nothing more than malnutrition left untreated.”

    I guess the good doctor has never heard of germ theory!



    Why Naturopaths Should Not Be Licensed

    Kimball C. Atwood IV, M.D.

    Naturopaths are licensed as independent practitioners in eleven states (Alaska, Arizona, Connecticut, Hawaii, Maine, Montana, New Hampshire, Oregon, Utah, Vermont, and Washington) and the District of Columbia, and can legally practice in a few others. Naturopaths who have attended on-campus schools are pressing for licensure in the remaining states.

    Approximately 30 naturopaths are lobbying for licensure in Massachusetts. They portray themselves as "primary care physicians," consider themselves superior to other naturopaths whose "degrees" were obtained from nonaccredited correspondence schools, and assert that licensure is needed to protect the public from unqualified practitioners. However, the existing naturopathic licensing agencies have done little or nothing to protect the public from naturopathy's widespread quackery.

    Since treatment by incompetent practitioners can cause great damage, health professions should be held to very high standards. To be considered a health profession, an occupational group should be able to demonstrate an objective, scientific, and ethical basis. Naturopathy fails to meet this standard. I believe that it is dangerous and that no amount of regulation can control the danger. Moreover, as noted by William T. Jarvis, Ph.D., past-president of the National Council Against Health Fraud:

    The difference between more and less educated naturopaths is . . . . like comparing more and less educated witch doctors. It could actually be argued that less schooled naturopaths are safer because they may have a smaller bag of tricks and, because they don't consider themselves "primary health physicians," they are more apt to refer patients to M.D.'s for additional care.

    The Massachusetts Medical Society strongly opposes naturopathic licensure in Massachusetts. Our reasons include:

    Naturopathy is both potentially and actually injurious when practiced according to the accepted standards of the profession. This injury is likely to be due to the failure of the naturopathic practitioner to recommend appropriate medical treatment.

    Unscientific naturopathic beliefs pose irrational challenges to proven public health measures, most notably childhood immunizations.

    Irrational, unscientific beliefs and practices abound in naturopathy, likening it more to a cult than to a valid form of health care. These beliefs and practices are not merely at the fringes but are the standards of the field. They are advocated by the leaders themselves.

    Naturopathic practitioners are incapable of self-regulation commensurate with public safety. No study has demonstrated that naturopaths who attend full-time schools are any less dangerous than those who have mail-order degrees.

    Naturopaths prescribe numerous "natural medicines" with a standard for safety and efficacy that is unacceptably low, as evidenced by the leading textbook in the field.

    The scientific pretensions of naturopathy and naturopathic training programs are baseless. There is ample evidence that the basic science courses do not teach students to think critically. Research performed at naturopathic colleges is lacking in scientific rigor and has not investigated common naturopathic claims. The libraries at naturopathic colleges are filled with books and journals that promote trendy but implausible notions regarding health care. The major journal in the field is filled with articles that are both absurd and dangerous. The oft-repeated claim that the major textbook in the field cites "more than 10,000 scientific references" is a misrepresentation, as exemplified by the textbook's claims for "natural remedies."

    Collaboration with medical doctors is uncommon in naturopathic practice.
    Naturopathy involves many nonsensical diagnostic practices that mainstream medicine considers quackery but naturopaths consider standard.
    There are ubiquitous claims of dubious clinical "syndromes," among which are multiple "food allergies," "toxemia," and chronic yeast infections, which cast further doubt on the science and ethics of naturopathic practice.
    The duration and setting of naturopathic clinical training, even overlooking its content, is inadequate for producing competent primary care physicians. This is clear from a comparison of the training of medical doctors to that of naturopaths. Just as a newly graduated medical doctor, no matter how well-intentioned, would not be allowed to assume the role of a primary care physician, neither should this be allowed for a naturopath whose training is clearly inferior.

    Naturopathic services are not covered by Medicare or most insurance policies. Expansion of naturopathic licensing will make naturopaths appear more legitimate and could help them gain passage of laws forcing insurance companies to cover their services.
     
  4. edowave

    edowave Active Member

    I saw her give an interview on CNN this morning. She only claimed to be a nurse.
     
  5. Daniel Luechtefeld

    Daniel Luechtefeld New Member

    One of the most well-known naturopathic schools is here in Seattle, Bastyr University, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bastyr_University.

    Accreditation? Regional - Northwest Commission on Colleges and Universities. Same as University of Washington medical school.

    It's natural the MD's would be hostile to this; a cynic would say it's because alternatives to allopathic medicine represent a threat to the MD's trade.

    I would say that naturopathy is a developing modality. Allopathy has taken a century (centuries?) to develop its body of knowledge to its current high level of technical sophistication. If naturopathy lacks the same level of clinical validation, it will get there.

    In the meantime, its holistic approach - to include focus on proper nutrition - is working for many for whom allopathy has failed:

    http://www.pnwlocalnews.com/vashon/vib/lifestyle/44829877.html

    Moreover, not all traditional schools are as hostile to naturopathy. From the University of Washington's MPH website:

    http://depts.washington.edu/hsedp/articles/511
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Jul 2, 2009
  6. BlueMason

    BlueMason Audaces fortuna juvat

    Excellent post, and I tend to agree. My wife is pursuing education in Heilkunst and we have been visiting a Heilkunst practitioner for going on three years (my wife became interested in pursuing this education after the consultations and the results we were seeing with our kids). My entire family is healthier because of it... We've had this discussion on here before whereas MD's are advising against other ways of treating illness, etc.... North Americans particularly need to open their eyes to other ways of treating illness other than seeing an MD and getting a prescription... What? You have a little fever? Take this to make it go away! I'm sorry, but a fever is your body's way of fighting back and shouldn't be suppressed! Being from Europe, my family has been using homeopathic remedies as long as I can remember - with excellent results. I am raising my kids with the same belief of homeopathic treatment before modern medicine.
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Jul 2, 2009
  7. Sleestack

    Sleestack New Member

    homeopathy

    I’ve always found the history of homeopathy to be very interesting.
    The following is from the web site: http://www.skepdic.com. This is a great resource for learning about all types of pseudoscience and new age medicine.

    ***********************************************


    Classical homeopathy originated in the 19th century with Samuel Christian Friedrich Hahnemann (1755-1843) as an alternative to the standard medical practices of the day, such as phlebotomy or bloodletting. Opening veins to bleed patients, force disease out of the body, and restore the humors to a proper balance was a popular medical practice until the late19th century (Williams 2000: 265). Hahnemann rejected the notion that disease should be treated by letting out the offensive matter causing the illness. In this, he was right. On the other hand, he argued that disease should be treated by helping the vital force restore the body to harmony and balance. In this, he was wrong. He rejected other common medical practices of his day such as purgatives and emetics "with opium and mercury-based calomel" (ibid.: 145). He was right to do so. Hahnemann's alternative medicine was more humane and less likely to cause harm than many of the conventional practices of his day.

    Scientific medicine was developing in Hahnemann's time but homeopathy would not be part of that development. Scientific medicine is essentially materialistic. It is based on such disciplines as anatomy, physiology, and chemistry. While Hahnemann's methods involve empirical observation, his theory of disease and cure is essentially non-empirical and involves the appeal to metaphysical entities and processes.

    Hahnemann put forth his ideas of disease and treatment in The Organon of Homeopathic Medicine (1810) and Theory of Chronic Diseases (1821). The term 'homeopathy' is derived from two Greek words: homeo (similar) and pathos (suffering). Hahnemann meant to contrast his method with the convention of his day of trying to balance "humors" by treating a disorder with its opposite (allos). He referred to conventional practice as allopathy. Even though modern scientific medicine bears no resemblance to the theory of balancing humors or treating disease with its opposite, modern homeopaths and other advocates of "alternative" medicine misleadingly refer to today's science-trained physicians as allopaths (Jarvis 1994).

    Classical homeopathy is generally defined as a system of medical treatment based on the use of minute quantities of remedies that in larger doses produce effects similar to those of the disease being treated. Hahnemann believed that very small doses of a medication could have very powerful healing effects because their potency could be affected by vigorous and methodical shaking (succussion). Hahnemann referred to this alleged increase in potency by vigorous shaking as dynamization. Hahnemann thought succussion could release "immaterial and spiritual powers," thereby making substances more active. "Tapping on a leather pad or the heel of the hand was alleged to double the dilution" (ibid.).

    Dynamization was for Hahnemann a process of releasing an energy that he regarded as essentially immaterial and spiritual. As time went on he became more and more impressed with the power of the technique he had discovered and he issued dire warnings about the perils of dynamizing medicines too much. This might have serious or even fatal consequences, and he advised homeopaths not to carry medicines about in their waistcoat pockets lest they inadvertently make them too powerful. Eventually he even claimed that there was no need for patients to swallow the medicines at all; it was enough if they merely smelt them. (Campbell)

    Two potency scales are in common use: the decimal, which proceeds by 1:10 steps, and the centesimal (1:100). Starting from the original "mother tincture" (in the case of a plant this is an alcoholic extract) a 1:10 or 1:100 dilution is made. This is succussed and the resulting solution is known as the first potency. This now serves as the starting point for the next step in dilution and succussion, which results in the second potency, and so on. The 1:10 potencies are usually indicated by x and the 1:100 by c; thus Pulsatilla 6c means the 6th centesimal potency of Pulsatilla, which has received six succussions and has a concentration of one part in a thousand billion. (Campbell)
    Like most of his contemporaries, Hahnemann believed that health was a matter of balance and harmony, but for him it was the vital force, the spirit in the body, that did the balancing and harmonizing, that is, the healing.

    Hahnemann claimed that most chronic diseases were caused by miasms and the worst of these miasms were the 'psora.' The evidence for the miasm theory, however, is completely absent and seems to have been the result of some sort of divine revelation (Campbell). The word 'miasm'

    derives from the Greek and means something like "taint" or "contamination". Hahnemann supposed that chronic disease results from invasion of the body by one of the miasms through the skin. The first sign of disease is thus always a skin disorder of some kind (Campbell).
    His method of treatment might seem very modern: Find the right drug for the illness. However, his medicines were not designed to help the body fight off infection or rebuild tissue, but to help the vital spirit work its magic. In fact, Hahnemann believed it is "inherently impossible to know the inner nature of disease processes and it was therefore fruitless to speculate about them or to base treatment on theories" (Campbell). His remedies were determined by the patient's symptoms, not by the supposed disease causing those symptoms.

    homeopathic "laws"

    Homeopaths refer to "the Law of Infinitesimals" and the "Law of Similars" as grounds for using minute substances and for believing that like heals like, but these are not natural laws of science. If they are laws at all, they are metaphysical laws, i.e., beliefs about the nature of reality that would be impossible to test by empirical means. Hahnemann's ideas did originate in experience. That he drew metaphysical conclusions from empirical events does not, however, make his ideas empirically testable. The law of infinitesimals seems to have been partly derived from his notion that any remedy would cause the patient to get worse before getting better and that one could minimize this negative effect by significantly reducing the size of the dose. Most critics of homeopathy balk at this "law" because it leads to remedies that have been so diluted as to have nary a single molecule of the substance one starts with.

    Hahnemann came upon his Law of Similars (like cures like) in 1790 while translating William Cullen's Materia Medica into German (Loudon 1997: 94). He began experimenting on himself with various substances, starting with cinchona.

    Daily for several days, he wrote, he had been taking four drams of the drug. Each time he had repeated the dose, his feet and finger tips had become cold, and other symptoms had followed which were typical of malaria. Each time he had stopped taking the cinchona, he had returned rapidly to a state of good health. (Williams 1981: 184)
    Hahnemann experimented on himself with various drugs over several years and concluded that "a doctor should use only those remedies which would have the power to create, in a healthy body, symptoms similar to those that might be seen in the sick person being treated (ibid.)." Medicines should be given in single doses, he claimed, not in complex mixtures. His conclusions seem to have been based upon intuition or revelation. He did not experiment with patients by giving them drugs to discover which remedies worked with which illnesses or that only unmixed substances were effective. Indeed, he couldn't experiment on sick people because he assumed the remedy must produce an effect similar to the disease and he'd never be able to tell what remedies to use because the symptoms of the disease would be difficult to distinguish from those of the remedy in a sick person. Instead, he assumed that whatever caused the symptoms in a healthy person would be a remedy for a disease with similar symptoms.

    Hahnemann called this method of finding what symptoms a drug caused in a healthy person "proving."

    Hahnemann did not leave us any details of the doses he used or the manner of giving the drugs, but from chance remarks elsewhere in his writings and from the accounts of his provers we have a pretty fair idea of what went on. All the provings at this time were carried out with tinctures (extracts) of herbs or, in the case of insoluble substances, with 'first triturations' (one part of substance ground up with nine parts of sugar or milk)....
     
  8. John Bear

    John Bear Senior Member

    Richard Crews, 20-year president of Columbia Pacific University, had a Harvard M.D., and was (perhaps still is) a practicing homeopath. His joke:
    "Did you hear about the man who forgot to take his homeopathic remedy? He died of an overdose."
     
  9. edowave

    edowave Active Member

    I don't think the MD's trade is threatened anytime soon. Come up with an alternative treatment with measurable results for AIDS, Cancer, Hepatitis, TB, etc, then they might feel threatened.
     
  10. Sleestack

    Sleestack New Member

    I think MDs are hostile to alternative medicine in the same way most of us are hostile to degree mills and unaccredited institutions.
     
  11. Daniel Luechtefeld

    Daniel Luechtefeld New Member

    Primary care =! critical care. MD's are seeing increased competition in the realm of primary care, from agents both internal and external to allopathy: nurse practitioners, physician's assistants, and the alternative modalities we're talking about.

    Few would entrust a homeopath with the highly-intensive treatment of leukemia or AIDS, conditions that require every weapon that the medical-industrial complex can throw at them. It is fortunate that relatively few of us will experience these.

    Many more would entrust a homeopath or naturopath with nutritional guidance that will help us not just live longer but live better - avoid obesity, and treat the sub-acute conditions that accompany aging. Many more (most?) of us will experience these conditions.

    Within this latter realm, when was the last time the primary care doctor in your HMO's network gave you advice any more specific than "try to lose some weight"?
     
  12. Ian Anderson

    Ian Anderson Active Member

    December last year - my Kaiser Permanente (KP) doctor recommended a class given by a KP nutritionist who then set me up with a diet plan. Results since then have been amazing since I now minimize my carbohydrate and sodium intake.
     
  13. Daniel Luechtefeld

    Daniel Luechtefeld New Member

    Congratulations. You enjoy the good fortune to belong to an excellent, progressive, non-profit HMO that reimburses many of its MDs on a salaried basis, not fee-for-service. Note that K-P also offers reimbursement for some alternative care modalities:

    http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0EIN/is_2004_Dec_8/ai_n8551059/

    BTW, here in Washington it's a matter of state law that insurance must reimburse for alternative treatments. Owing to our progressive stance, most of the structured, clinical examination of alternative treatments using scientific methods, peer review, etc. originates here.

    In short, Washington state's refusal to marginalize the alternative medicine community (as suggested by one MD quoted in this thread) is serving the cause of expanding the body of accepted medical scientific knowledge.
     
  14. Sleestack

    Sleestack New Member

  15. edowave

    edowave Active Member

    LOL. My fiancee is a pharmacist from Switzerland, so she is very well aware of herbal and alternative treatments. Even she thinks homeopathy is a joke, but there is a lot to be said of the placebo effect.
     
  16. Daniel Luechtefeld

    Daniel Luechtefeld New Member

    And I'm from the US, making me an expert on meat, internal combustion engines, professional wrestling...

    1. Well-designed studies account for placebo effects. Naturopaths design their studies as well - or as badly - as any other clinical investigator. May I suggest taking the time to educate yourself on their protocols? http://www.naturopathic.org/content.asp?contentid=59

    2. Need it be noted that as a pharmacist, your fiancee has a financial stake in the medical-industrial complex. We all agree that pharmaceuticals have their place, but I think that she would agree that, for example, resorting to Lipitor and Nexium aren't really the ideal ways to go about treating diseases arising from lifestyle and diet.
     
  17. Sleestack

    Sleestack New Member

    The big drug companies like alternative medicines as they produce a great deal of them at huge profits. The “alternative medicine” and “herbal remedies” market has been huge for many traditional drug companies. They have high profit margins and they don’t have to deal with the FDA. To say that alternative medicine or herbal medicine is outside of the big pharmaceutical / medical complex is a fallacy.

    Many herbal products made by Big Pharma
    Drug makers Bayer, GlaxoSmithKline and Wyeth also sell supplements

    updated 11:34 a.m. PT, Tues., June 9, 2009

    Some people who buy supplements to avoid Big Pharma drug companies may find themselves doing business with Big Herba, instead.

    Some of the same companies that mass-produce drugs in huge chemical labs also churn out vitamin and herbal pills sold in bottles with rainbows, sunrises and flowers on their labels.

    Dozens of other supplement makers reap more than $100 million in annual sales. One of the largest — NBTY Inc., on New York's Long Island — sold $2 billion last year in the United States alone. Its brands include Nature's Bounty, Vitamin World, Puritan's Pride and Sundown.

    "They used to be mom and pop operations but now they're major companies," said Bruce Silverglade, chief lawyer for the consumer group, Center for Science in the Public Interest.

    There are hundreds of small firms, including niche players with only a few products. But they account for a slim slice of total sales, industry experts say.

    Supplements often are sold through multilevel marketing — distributors and franchise holders earn commissions by selling and recruiting others to sell for a large company at the top of the pyramid.

    Even many ingredient suppliers are multimillion-dollar firms that do business all over the world.

    Little herbal stores are only "what the consumer sees when they're shopping," while the large companies that supply them are mostly invisible, Silverglade said.

    The industry's little-guy, granola image has been a great marketing asset, allowing it to tap into Americans' frustration with big medicine, big prices and big risks. Supplement makers are dwarfed by leading pharmaceutical firms, whose drugs command sales in the tens of billions of dollars. Yet the reality is that natural remedy makers constitute a sizable business that doesn't have to play by the same rules as companies that make prescription or over-the-counter medicines.
     
  18. Daniel Luechtefeld

    Daniel Luechtefeld New Member

    Indeed. And the CAM community is our best watchdog against this sort of "greenwashing" by Big Pharma.
     
  19. edowave

    edowave Active Member

    The fact that she is Swiss doesn't make her an expert. Her doctorate and years of clinical training makes her an expert. The Swiss part is just a bonus. :D

    I wasn't referring to naturopathy, I was talking about homeopathy, but hey, if Head-On and Airborn work for you, by all means take it. I am always for a simpler approach. Dr. Atkin's "Vita-Nutrient Soultions" book, helped me with my asthma, but if I have an attack, only albuterol will work.

    Protocols? What protocols? I didn't see any protocols, just a bunch of lip service about treating the whole person, the importance of exercise and a healthy diet. This is what MDs and DOs have been telling people for years, but people get offended when their doctor tells them their cholestorol is through the roof because they are a fat-ass.

    Oh please, and naturopathic doctors do everything pro-bono, right? Crap like Head-On is the biggest rip off out there!
     
  20. TEKMAN

    TEKMAN Semper Fi!

    Just watched Nancy Grace CNN interviewed her, and they referred her as Nurse Cherilyn Lee not Dr. Lee. Maybe they avoid the confusion between MD in this situation.
     

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