I’ve written before about the unethical and misleading negative advertising that so often characterizes the promotion of alternative veterinary medicine. But I ran across another example that set my teeth on edge and illustrated a particular problem I have with this kind of thing.
Dr. Karen Becker, a prominent CAVM vet who writes for one of the most notorious sites promoting quackery through denigrating conventional medicine, Mercola.com, recently blogged about the much-reported decline in veterinary office visits. In this article, she makes a number of assumptions for which there is little or no evidence, and several accusations about the inadequacy of conventional veterinary care.
The accusations essentially amount to saying that conventional medicine ignores preventative care apart from given vaccinations and selling pest-control products, both of which Dr. Becker frequently cites as significant health hazards for our pets.
Perhaps a reason for fewer vet visits is the new canine vaccination guidelines which will hopefully put an end to the dangerous and unnecessary practice of yearly re-vaccinations.
I suspect another reason (aside from today’s tough economic climate), is because many traditionally trained DVMs practice ‘reactive’ veterinary medicine.
This means they don’t have much to offer pets unless and until they’re good and sick…
…preventive medical care in the mainstream veterinary community has evolved to mean not much more than yearly vaccines and chemicals to discourage pests and parasites like fleas, ticks and heartworm.
There is rarely discussion between vets and pet owners about nutrition (because vet students receive almost no education in the subject), exercise and other physical therapies, or the importance of a strong, resilient and balanced immune system.
This also raises the cliché about conventional veterinarians being ignorant in the area of nutrition, which is nonsense. The definition of ignorance most likely meant here, is simply a failure to agree with specific theories about what constitutes a healthy diet, including the unsubstantiated beliefs often promoted about the benefits of raw diets, the dangers of grains, and so on.
This then leads to the suggestion that alternative veterinarians do a better job of preventative care, because they promote “wellness” therapies.
For some reason the methods used to maintain a pet’s vibrant good health – everything from species-appropriate nutrition to maintenance chiropractic care to homeopathic remedies and herbal supplements – fall into the category of ‘alternative medicine.’
Isn’t it strange that natural modalities used not to cure illness (although they do that, too), but to maintain health are thought of as ‘alternative,’ yet chemical drugs and invasive surgery are considered mainstream health care?
Actually, it isn’t strange at all. There is no reliable scientific evidence for the preventative health benefits of maintenance chiropractic care, homeopathic remedies or herbal supplements. These products are touted as “wellness” care based solely on the personal beliefs of the vets who use them and the beliefs of previous generations of vets and animal owners. This is the same level of evidence that has supported such winning strategies as bloodletting, purging, and animal sacrifice as preventative health measures.
What is strange is that someone with medical training can so blithely denigrate preventative and therapeutic methods proven to work and wonder at the failure of mainstream medicine to accept without proof her belief that these alternative therapies are better.
I recommend twice yearly wellness examinations to my Natural Pet clients.
A thorough nose-to-tail professional checkup every six months is the best way for you and your vet to detect and stay on top of any changes in your pet’s health. This is especially true for older pets.
This is undoubtedly great for the bottom line, but again there is no evidence that biannual or annual wellness examinations recommended for all pets is an effective or efficient strategy for preventing disease or extending length and quality of life. In humans, the evidence in fact is building against the value of annual exams for well people. There is no evidence either way in veterinary medicine, so while I myself think it likely that regular examinations could have some benefit, there is no objective reason for a strong recommendation of this kind. And certainly such visits are not a substitute for the “chemical drugs” and vaccinations that have been far more effective than any other measure and reducing disease and preserving health in our companion animals.
…Proactive vets are typically obsessive about clinical pathology…most proactive vets recommend annual vector borne disease testing instead of waiting until lyme disease has set in, causing incurable auto-immune polyarthritis.
This is a completely irrational and baseless recommendation. Screening tests without an appropriate reason for doing them waste money and cause far more harm than they prevent. There is a strong movement in human medicine now to reduce exactly this kind of misguided thinking. So to imply that the care such alternative vets provide is superior to that of conventional veterinarians because the former recommend unproven preventative measures and unnecessary testing is misleading and unethical. Given the complaints so often made by CAM vets about the purported financial motivation behind many mainstream practices, it is quite ironic that this sort of advertising promotes far more aggressive, and likely expensive, use of approaches with no proven value.
Here is a email about annual vaccines sent to me. The promotion about the visit to my office has been fabricated but I am not sure why . Did you get this in your email mail? I suspect they send one out to a lot of vets And plan to do something with the answers since i would guess most vets that do not promote annual vaccines but give them anyhow would respond thinking the person really did come to their office and talk with a employee . I wonder what they are doing. When someone brings up dr dodds vaccine schedule it seems like it ends up they are trying to sell some type of alternative medicine. I am old enough to remember when there were no annual vaccines except human flu vaccines.
Art Malernee dvm
Sent from my iPad
Email Deleted at request of original sender
NO, I havent’ seent his one yet. Part of what is deceitful about these sorts of complainyts is that annual vaccination is NOT a widely accepted standard among conventional veterinarians. The controversy has largely passed, and few vets in my area, certainly none who’ve been out of school 10 years or fewer, vaccinate according to any rigid and indiscriminate timetable, annual or otherwise. It’s a straw man argument.
“much-reported decline in veterinary office visits.” My vet, like most people here, simply assumes this is because there’s an economic recession in progress – but this would be a reason not to waste money on CAVM…………
The debate about pet vaccination within the veterinary profession in the last 40 years always has been whether we should be vaccinating based on sound immunological principles or just when it suits us. I am skeptical of anyone in the profession forty years ago that now says we thought vaccines were immunological needed every 1-3 years to maintain immunity. To look back in history now and say vets started to practice astrology because we thought it was best that re vaccination should be based on how long it takes the earth to go around the sun, I think harms the profession more than to fess up and tell the public we started re vaccinating every 1-3 years forty years ago because the laws got changed forty years ago that allow us to do it. If vets and pet owners do not understand why we started to vaccinate every 1-3 years forty years ago they will not understand laws are needed to force us to stop it now. You do not get revaccinated every 1-3years with the same vaccine and neither should your pet.
Art Malernee dvm
Fla lic 1820
Art Malernee dvm
Oh, it’s “proactive” now, is it? And wellness is different than preventative care…how?
I suppose pet owners just gobble up this recycled spin on b.s. Becker is a disgrace to the veterinary profession, as is any vet who denigrates another simply because they’ve gone woo and can’t stand on their own merits.
The flu vaccine doesn’t count, then?
I’m confused by your statements Art. It seems to me that your argument is badly constructed and unsupported. While there may well be a good argument against revaccinating pets yearly, or even every 3 years, depending on the vaccine, you don’t actually advance any – to the extent that your entire point is nullified by:
- the fact that there is a human vaccine which must be renewed annually
- the knowledge that diffferent species have different metabolisms
@Art
Did you bother to contact the sender to see if it was a legitimate email? I just looked up the alldogboots.com site and there is indeed an owner by the name of Karen.
Also Dr. W. Jean Dodds (not Jean Dodd) is far from a quack. She has over 100 published works and has collaborated with Dr. Ronald Schultz on DOI research studies, not to mention founded Hemopet/Henolife.
http://www.itsfortheanimals.com/DODDS-CHG-VACC-PROTOCOLS.HTM
I don’t have any knowledge about or opinion on the alldogboots site or the issue of the email Art wrote about.
As far as Dr. Dodds is concerned, she has certainly made many significant and valuable contributions to veterinary medicine. She is also dedicated to a number of ideas that are absolutely pseudoscientific. She was awarded the honor of Holistic Veterinarian of the Year in 1994, she promotes an unvalidated salivary test for food allergies, and she has been quoted as saying such things as (http://www.itsfortheanimals.com/DODDS-NUTRITION-THYROID.HTM):
“Holistic alternatives and homeopathic remedies can be used in place of standard allopathic treatments for immunologic disorders”
“Bolstering detoxification pathways mediated through the cytochrome P450 system and via conjugation with protective amino acids (glutathiones, cysteine, taurine) is important. Antioxidants including vitamins A, C, D and E, selenium, bioflavonoids and homeopathics are used as biosupport to strengthen the patient’s metabolism and immune system before implementing harsh detoxification regimens (once offending toxicants have been identified by such methods as applied kinesiology, intero- and electrodiagnostics). This author supplements all patients on a weight basis with extra vitamin E (100-400 IU/day), vitamin C in the ester C form (500-1500mg/day), Echinacea with Golden Seal, and garlic, although many other herbal and supportive nutrients also can be used. Animal experiencing adverse vaccine reactions are given Thuja, Lyssin (rabies vaccine) or sulphur. Specific Bach flower remedies are also helpful.”
Dr. Dodds is a perfect example of a smart, educated, well-intentioned person who can both make important contributions to scientific medicine and be completely unscientific about alternative therapies. Her position on vaccines is extreme and in many aspects not at all evidence-based. She claims, for example, that vaccination for parvovirus is “optional” after 14 weeks, when it is well-established than maternal antibodies can interfere with vaccination and leave animals vulnerable up to 16-20 weeks, and she promotes fears about “vaccinosis” and other supposed vaccine adverse effects that wre not supported by real science. While many of her recommendations are reasonable, some are not, and she undoubtedly supports some kinds of pseudoscientific nonsense like homeopathy and Bach flower therapy, so I think that has to be considered in any evaluation of her contributions to the profession, along with the unqeustionably valuable work she has done.
You made some good points re some of Dodds’ holistic theories, but on the whole I feel the work she’s done/is doing re canine breed-specific endocrine disorders as well as furthering research into vaccine DOI (not to mention Hemopet/Hemolife) is contributing to our knowledge base in a positive way. I tend to agree with Schultz in the areas where he and Dodds’ do differ. For Schultz’ vacc recommendations see:
http://www.beaconforhealth.org/Schultz_CHF_article_website.doc
Also forgot to add this link re Schultz’ 2012 recommendations:
http://www.healthydogproject.org/Site/2012_Dr._Schultz_Notes.html
The flu vaccine doesn’t count, then?>>>>>
We started vaccinating every year with the same vaccine when we saw the human doctors vaccinating for flu every year. Our annual pet vaccine sales pitch was to remind clients humans get vaccinated every year for flu. What we never told the client was we were giving the same vaccine year after year after year. Human flu vaccines are reformulated yearly so it’s a new vaccine not the old vaccine promoted as a booster to the one given last year. If Human flu vaccines did not need reformulated every year vets would never have been allowed by the government to use annual vaccination as a carrot or when required by law a stick to get clients into the office. The three year alternative is part of keeping annual revaccination legal. Vets who get paid to give vaccine CE make the claim that the government is going to change the laws so that vaccine company’s will not be allowed to promote revaccination every year or three years but it’s been a few years that the CE vets have said that and I have seen nothing from the USDA about it.
I can remember when i was a kid working for vets the final puppy vaccine was called the final adult shot. That was fifty years ago.
Art Malernee dvm
Fla lic 1820
Art Malernee dvm
@Art
Did you bother to contact the sender to see if it was a legitimate email?>>>
The claim that the writer has been to my office and spoke to a receptionist about vaccinations has been fabricated. Once you know that it looks a lot like a form letter sent to more than one office.
Art Malernee dvm
@Art I actually contacted Karen and she was legit. She was searching for a vet. Do you have a receptionist or female employee that could have been mistaken for one?
Do you have a receptionist or female employee that could have been mistaken for one?>>>
No.
Art Malernee dvm
Fla lic 1820