Universities
in Australia are defending their teaching of alternative
medicine after a group of the country’s top scientists and
doctors urged them to abandon this increasingly popular subject.
Friends
of Science in Medicine — a recently formed group that includes more
than 400 prominent scientists, doctors, academics and consumer
advocates from Australia and overseas — wrote to the vice
chancellors of Australian universities last month. They
outlined their concerns about what they called the “diminishing of
the standards applied to the teaching of science in our universities”
and “the increased teaching of pseudoscience.”
The
vice chancellors were asked in the letter to help reverse “the
trend which sees government-funded tertiary institutions offering
courses in the health care sciences that are not underpinned by
convincing scientific evidence.”
“Such
courses involve so-called ‘complementary or alternative medicine’
masquerading as, and sitting side-by-side with, evidence-based
health-related science courses,” the letter said.
It
added that universities were risking their reputations by teaching
courses like chiropractic, homeopathy, iridology and reflexology.
“We
take the view that those universities involved in teaching
pseudoscience,” the letter said, “give such ideologies undeserved
credibility, damage their academic standing and put the public at
risk.”
The
group says that 19 of Australia’s 39 universities offer degrees or
courses in alternative health care. Such universities have asserted
that their courses are legitimate.
Macquarie
University, which is in Sydney and offers bachelor’s and master’s
degrees in chiropractic science, said it offered rigorous,
high-quality courses.
“Our
chiropractic science students are well trained in the fundamental
relevant sciences (physiology, anatomy, biochemistry, biophysics,
radiology, etc.) together with units in chiropractic methods and
clinical practice,” the university said in a statement. “Our
students are taught to understand that science proceeds only on the
basis of evidence. We are confident that our graduates have been
taught those techniques that are known through science to be
beneficial.”
Nick
Klomp, dean of the science faculty at Charles Sturt University, in
Wagga Wagga, New South Wales, said while Friends in Science in
Medicine made some valid points, the degree offered at his
university, a bachelor of health science (complementary medicine),
was based on science.
He
said the course was designed to impart evidence-based science to
people who already had a qualification, like a diploma, in
alternative health care. The course includes such subjects as biology
and physiology.
“They’re
all subjects that are already mainstream, hard health science
subjects,” Mr. Klomp said.
He
said that thousands of practitioners were already providing
alternative medicine and that there was much demand for their
services.
“I
could ignore them or I could train them better,” Mr. Klomp said,
adding that a majority of the university’s students were already
practicing. “We actually create graduates who are much better
health care providers. It’s all about evidence based, science
based.”
Murdoch
University, in Perth, said it was committed to the promotion of
research-led teaching and evidence-based practice across all
disciplines, and that its School of Chiropractic and Sports Science
was “established to be consistent with that approach.”
“Students
are taught the science-practitioner model and our aim is to produce
graduates who are critical thinkers,” the university said in a
statement. “This enables them to distinguish between fad and
genuine innovation in the discipline as practitioners, intelligent
consumers of research and promoters of the scientific method. A clear
distinction is made in all of our courses between areas for which the
evidence is clear and those in which the science has not caught up
with accepted practice and where sufficient evidence has yet to be
accumulated.”
Universities
Australia, which represents the country’s universities, said in a
statement that the schools were “self-accrediting institutions with
the autonomy and capacity to ensure the quality and relevance of the
courses they offer.”
John
Dwyer, co-founder of Friends of Science in Medicine and an emeritus
professor of medicine at the University of New South Wales, said the
academics had decided to form the group because of concerns about the
growing number of courses in alternative medicine and their rising
popularity among students.
“For
many of us, we’ve been concerned for a long time that in this most
scientific of all ages, pseudoscience seems to be flourishing,” he
said in a telephone interview.
Mr.
Dwyer said more than 50 scientists from Britain, the United States
and Canada involved in similar efforts had expressed their support
for the Australian group.
“It’s
becoming an international effort,” he said, adding that the British
government withdrew government funding for alternative-medicine
courses in January.
David
Colquhoun, a professor of pharmacology at University College London
who has called for ending of alternative-medicine programs in
Britain, is a member of the Australian group.
“Courses
in alternative medicine are dishonest, they teach things that aren’t
true, and things that are dangerous to patients in some cases,” Mr.
Colquhoun said in a statement.
Emphasizing
that the group was not opposed to universities’ conducting research
into different fields, Mr. Dwyer said the scientists were urging the
vice chancellors to review the teaching of these courses and come up
with a statement on the issue when they meet in.
Coment
This
new was published on 5th February 2012 in the New York Times. It was
written by Liz Gooch.
Alternative
medicine is becoming more popular in first world countrys. The
governments are trying to regulate its practices and avoid
irregularities. Some of these irregularities are the doctors who
practice this kind of medicine without any titulation. This is very
dangerous because in many cases they don't solve the problem or they
make it even worse because they don't what they are doing.
To
avoid this problem, in Australia, some teachers of the universities
are trying to implant the teaching of alternative medicine in
universities in order to regulate the sector. If this law was
approved, many false doctors would disappear and there would only be
doctors with titulations and with real knowledges. These would be
very benefitial because they would solve more diseases and people
would trust more in this kind of medicine.
In
the new it is mentioned the chiropractic , this is a complementary
and alternative medicine health care profession concerned with the
diagnosis, treatment and prevention of disorders of the
neuromusculoskeletal system and the effects of these disorders on
general health. It is not very popular in Spain but in other
countries like Australia or the US it's very common and many people
practice it.
To
sum up, I'll say that it is necessary a regulation of this sector of
the medicine and a good way to make it is by teaching it at the
universities.
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