Should medical schools teach CAM?
That’s the ongoing debate at Medscape.
The greatest concern is that medical students might be exposed to — gasp — dogma.
Dr. Robert Donnell from St. Mary’s Hospital in Rogers, Arkansas is concerned that “Medical schools are ‘adding pseudoscientific health claims to their course materials under the rubric of ‘integrative medicine.'”
Young Dr. Nicholas Genes, an emergency medicine resident at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City, naively views CAM as “an umbrella term for remedies that are based on tradition and spiritualism, which receives heartfelt anecdotal support but little else to vouch for its efficacy.”
Gloomy Dr. Roy Poses, who is president of the Foundation for Integrity and Responsibility in Medicine, gives examples of an “uncritical embracement of CAM” among US medical schools at the expense of evidence-based medicine.
The bottom line?
Gentlemen, CAM is here to stay — stop whining.
Dr. Genes is hopelessly out of touch. It might be easy to define CAM as anything that doesn’t work, but it’s not accurate.
However, Drs. Donnell and Poses are on solid ground to lobby hard to teach and practice healthcare based on the best scientific evidence.
That’s my view. You can comment on this blog or at Medscape.
12/11/07 20:15 JR