The Naturocrit Podcast - Episode 013a [s02e03a] - Script & Annotations

here, in this first part of the two-part Naturocrit Podcast Episode 013, aka s02e03, titled "The State of Connecticut and Its Naturopathy: 'Deception, Fraud, Double-Dealing, Subterfuge, and Trickery'”, I'll delve into a very interesting and new State of Connecticut document published on their '.gov' this 2017 wherein Connecticut allied health care warns that naturopathy is not scientific and not committed to evidence: 

001. the Episode 013a script and annotations:

Standard Introduction:

Welcome to, as that robot voice says, The Naturocrit Podcast, and thank you for boldly listening.

What ARE we even talking about?

Well, this podcast series is my take on naturopathic medicine, an area I've been studying for about twenty years, including my time in so-called 'scientific nonsectarian naturopathic medical school'.

My approach is a pairing of scientific skepticism and a deep knowledge of naturopathy's intimate details.

In previous episodes of this series, I established that naturopathy is, essentially, a kind of knowledge blending, misrepresentation, and irrationality.

I have termed naturopathy both 'an epistemic conflation falsely posing itself as an epistemic delineation' and 'the naturopathillogical':

the science-exterior is mixed with what is scientific, then that whole muddle is absurdly claimed to be science as an entire category, while particular sectarian science-ejected oath-obligations and -requirements are coded or camouflaged, therein effectively disguising naturopathy's system of beliefs in public view.

Naturopathy's ultimate achievement is a profound erosion of scientific integrity and freedom of belief packaged in the marketing veneers "natural, holistic, integrative and alternative" and improperly embedded in the academic category "science".

Episode Synopsis:

In this two-part Naturocrit Podcast Episode 013, otherwise known as Season 2 Episode 3, titled "The State of Connecticut and Its Naturopathy: 'Deception, Fraud, Double-Dealing, Subterfuge, and Trickery'”, I'll delve into a very interesting and new State of Connecticut document published on their '.gov' this 2017!

The document is titled "Report to the General Assembly: A Report Based on the Committee on the Practice of Naturopathy Convened Pursuant to Special Act 16-3 Raul Pino, MD, MPH, Commissioner February 17, 2017" [2017 archived].

And, in sum, I can share these reactions immediately:

WOW, Connecticut seems very CONflicted academically, clinically, and commercially.

And, oh my: because I've used the term “Corrupticut” to characterize Connecticut, in part, though recently I've also grown attached to the label “The State of Con.”

By way of naturopathy in Connecticut, truly 'a state of con' exists, because we can find so much:

'Deception, Fraud, Double-Dealing, Subterfuge, and Trickery!'

Main Text:

I've decided to first define some terms.

From the Merriam-Webster online, there's: 

deception: as "the act of causing someone to accept as true or valid what is false or invalid [...] the act of deceiving"; 

fraud: as "deceit [...] intentional perversion of truth in order to induce another to part with something of value or to surrender a legal right [...] a person who is not what he or she pretends to be"; 

double-dealing: as "action contradictory to a professed attitude";

subterfuge: as "deception by artifice or stratagem in order to conceal, escape, or evade";

trickery: as "the practice of crafty underhanded ingenuity to deceive or cheat";

sectarian: as "of, relating to, or characteristic of a sect [...] limited in character or scope."

Now, I'm going to venture some musing here regarding the term 'sectarian medicine' which I equate with 'knowledge incompetence.'

The University of Bridgeport, whose College of Naturopathic medicine I attended, categorically uses the marketing label "non-sectarian" and obviously places that label upon their naturopathy which they falsely categorically term "health science".

I take sectarian to roughly mean 'narrow and doctrine-bound, as either ignorant or restricted', as OPPOSED to 'universal and widely ranging, as knowledgeable and inquiring'.

'Sectarian medicines' are the prescientific medical worldviews that were replaced by modern, scientific medicine.

In my view, naturopathy is an amalgam of 'ye old prescientific sectarian medicines' because it is based essentially upon patently science-ejected premises, methods, and obligations.

Naturopathy is 'knowledge incompetence' because such are categorized wrongly as "science."

So, this gets me to my next term:

pseudoscience: as "a system of theories, assumptions, and methods erroneously regarded as scientific"; 

academic: as "of, relating to, or associated with an academy or school especially of higher learning [...] based on formal study especially at an institution of higher learning"; 

clinical: as "of, relating to, or conducted in or as if in a clinic [...] involving direct observation of the patient [...] based on or characterized by observable and diagnosable symptoms";

commercial: as "occupied with or engaged in commerce or work intended for commerce";

to con, as in grift, as in CONnecticut: as "to acquire money or property illicitly."

This reminds me that in the first audio file of Episode 012, I'd said:

"I consider being trained as a naturopath, to then go out and operate as a naturopath commercially, clinically and academically, as being as socially productive as:

'being trained as a hustler and grifter',

 'being taught how to run people over with a motor vehicle', 

'being given a self-regulating ability to reverse all common values without penalty'."

This Connecticut report only strengthens my opinion.

For the next term, I'm going to use Wikipedia, of all pedestrian of places:

naturopathy as "a form of pseudoscientific, alternative medicine that employs an array of practices [...] the ideology and methods of naturopathy are based on vitalism and folk medicine, rather than evidence-based medicine."

Now, what's really interesting about that Wikipedia excerpt is that that judgment – 'naturopathy as pseudoscience etc.' – comes from a paper that is included in the Report this episode is centered upon.

The paper is, by way of Wikipedia [here is its citation and abstract at pubmed.gov]:

"Jagtenberg, Tom; Evans, Sue; Grant, Airdre; Howden, Ian; et al. (April 2006). 'Evidence-based medicine and naturopathy'. Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine. 12 (3): 323–328" and is Appendix E in the Report.

And as regards that Appendix E, the Report states:

"the Department shared that, in preparation for this committee, finding evidence-based literature on naturopathy is difficult as naturopathy is based more on philosophy compared to conventional medicine, which is based on science and research [...see] Appendix E."

And a second-to-last term I'll touch upon, from the New York Times 2003, is 'corrupticut'.

The article is "The Nutmeg State Battles the Stigma of Corrupticut".

And that article stated:

"for the record, not everyone in Connecticut is a crook [...] the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Internal Revenue Service and the United States attorney's office are still investigating conspiracy and corruption allegations against other current and former officials from Bridgeport, Waterbury and the Rowland administration, including the governor's former top political adviser [...] from Storrs to Stamford, there are jokes about living in Corrupticut [...] or, the new favorite, Criminalicut."

For me, the corruption is epistemic, by way of naturopathy and its co-conspirators:

who are falsely engaging in commerce, in many ways, by way of a 'an untrue categorizing of nonscience as science'.

And that is the great con, the great grift, of CONnecticut.

And it's SO easy to show.

So finally, since I'm talking about knowledge, I'll define epistemic, from Merriam-Webster:

as "of or relating to knowledge or knowing."

I may return to these definitions in this Episode's conclusion.

The Characters:

Let me broadly introduce the entities or player-types this document includes, like the cast of participants of a grifter movie.

 a. 

There's obviously the State of Connecticut, acting as the dealer so to speak, which is the government power that has no moral compass.

 b.

And also at the table, there's mainstream allied health care as a collective preponderance, the heroic protagonists who have no chance to stem the tide of sCAM.

c.

And there are the antagonists to reason, rationality, science and ethicality:

the Connecticut and North American naturopathy apparatus that is 'ingeniously manipulative'.

After all, though full of pseudoscience as ideas, methods and explanations, the naturopathy law in Corrupticut has, ISYN, the root "scien" in its first paragraph at least 5 times.

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Also, in a 2015 Naturocrit blog post "ND Brady 2014 cga.ct.gov Testimony: Wherein Senator Gerratana's PHC Gets a Big Fat Falsehood", I'd written about a UB representative, ND DC Brady,

-- a UBCNM ND graduate and currently its "Vice-President For Health Sciences" --

 testifying before the Connecticut General Assembly.

Senator Gerratana asked:

"do you follow in your curriculum at the University of Bridgeport, do you follow evidence-based science in your studies and your curriculum work?"

ND Brady answered:

"of course [...] our program is an evidence-based curriculum."

Senator Gerratana followed up:

"it's a scientific evidence-based curriculum?"

And ND Brady stated:

"yes, absolutely."

To which the Senator said simply:

great."

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To which ND DC Brady answered:

"yes, thank you."

Except it is not true.

What is true is that that is 'ingeniously manipulative'.

The Report, which I'll excerpt from shortly specifically as regards naturopathy's epistemic category, DIRECTLY states such IS NOT TRUE.

And I can offer this observation:

if this "absolutely" was SO TRUE, then why oh why is UB currently as it has been doing perpetually, mandating that three homeopathy courses be taken within its naturopathy degree which is supposedly "health science"?

And why oh why is UB naturopathy requiring the science-ejected vitalistic as THE essentially naturopathic commitment?

d.

And of course, in the cast of player types, there are the marks, the public and its interests, as:

 taxpayers who permit and fund UB's Title IV access,

who are also patients of these 'intellectual and ethical defectives',

and who are also education consumers trapped in this Connecticut con.

These entities -- government, healthcare, naturopathy and educational institutions, and the public -- interrelate, of course.

For instance, the City of Bridgeport, Connecticut has a naturopathy college at the University of Bridgeport that is endorsed by the State,

and simultaneously Yale University in New Haven, also endorsed by the State and quite 'of mainstream health care',

has a naturopath working for it within its “medical” category.

Plus, the Board of Naturopathy that runs licensed naturopathy in Connecticut has ND members who are appointed by the State's Governor 

-- who supposedly is acting in the public's interest -- 

and that Board regularly meets at the State capital under the letterhead:

“Agenda State of Connecticut State Board of Natureopathic Examiners [...] Department of Public Health 410 Capitol Avenue, Hartford, CT 3rd Floor, Hearing Room” 

with naturopathic there, as is unique to Connecticut, often spelled with an 'e' before the 'o'.

And there's such entities as Connecticut's overseeing Departments of Education and Consumer Protection who have no problem with what UB naturopathy has been and is doing:

I know this because I've complained to them many times in the past twenty years.

Now, specifically, here is the DETAILED cast of characters, which I'll list in the order that they appear in the document:

the State of Connecticut's General Assembly and the State of Connecticut Department of Public Health's Commissioner MD as in medical doctor and MPH Pino;

and “the Committee on the Practice of Naturopathy” which was comprised of the

“American College of Surgeons Professional Association […]

Connecticut Academy of Family Physicians,

Connecticut Advanced Practice Registered Nurse Society,

Connecticut Coalition of Advanced Practice Registered Nurses,

Connecticut Nurses Association,

Connecticut Naturopathic Physicians Association [CNPA],

Connecticut State Medical Society, University of Bridgeport [UB…]

Department of Consumer Protection […]

the Connecticut Urology Society […]

the Connecticut Society of Eye Physicians.”

So, the State of Connecticut government, doctors, nurses, and naturopaths...

oh my!

The specific naturopathy interests are:

CNPA and UB, who employ supporting materials from what I'll term 'organized North American naturopathy'.

Ethically speaking, that's quite a mixture and somehow naturopathy had a seat at the table though it is inherently fraudulent.

The separate letter submitted by the medical and nursing contingent of the Committee for the report confirms this.

This 'together at one table' situation must have been, or rather may have become, a rather uncomfortable situation, because the mainstream allied health contingent of the Committee concluded, as the published Report's conclusion states, and as I'd said QUITE in contradiction to ND DC Brady's "absolutely" in front of the the CGA about two years earlier:

“the physician and APRN committee members unanimously assert that naturopaths do not have sufficient education and training at this time to safely prescribe the medications proposed [...see] Appendix O [...] the rationale for this opinion was the lack of scientific foundation of the profession of naturopathy, and a lack of commitment to evidence-based therapy. However, these professions expressed appreciation for the unique skills and perspective that naturopaths contribute to health care.”

Now, HOW do you sit with naturopaths in an effort to aid them knowing they are NOT what they purport to be?

And end it all on a good note!

Half the battle has been lost due to a false equivalence:

remember, though objectively judged as lacking “a scientific foundation” and a “commitment to evidence-based therapy”, Connecticut naturopathy claims upon itself the false categorization “health science.”

And obviously organized mainstream doctors and nurses organizations put a stake into naturopathy's heart, a well-deserved stake as a broad 'not science based' damnation, but also they coated that assessment dagger with a sweet frosting, which is rather weird.

Because, in sum, if naturopaths as they do, are quite undermining modern standards of health care by grossly allowing ANYTHING to be science, what in the world are medical and nursing stakeholders [sorry, couldn't help myself] talking about when they mention naturopaths' 'unique skills and contributions'?

This is like calling malaria malaria, and then talking about malaria's 'unique skills and contributions'. 

And, that Report conclusion added, that mainstream allied healthcare in Connecticut:

"also commit[s] to working more closely in collaboration with naturopaths to enhance the skills of each profession at the table in ways that will enhance preparation for safe prescriptive authority."

Is an 'epistemic incompetence plague embedded within a falsehood' now a contribution that should be lauded?

Appendix O in Full:

Now, that Appendix O, titled in the Report's table of contents as “Letter from Medical and Nursing Committee Members”, is a letter dated September 27, 2016 and it is addressed to “Chris Andresen, Chief Practitioner Licensing andInvestigations Section” and it begins “Dear Chris”.

I'm going to read it in full, because it says a lot:

"September 27, 2016 Chris Andresen, Chief Practitioner Licensing and Investigations Section 410 Capitol Avenue, MS # 12MQA P.O. Box 340308 Hartford, CT 06134. Dear Chris [semicolon]  On behalf of all of the organizations listed below, we would like to congratulate you and the entire Department of Public Health (DPH) team for doing an excellent job running the committee meetings that explored the conditions under which Connecticut naturopaths might acquire a degree of prescriptive authority. However, we collectively feel it is important to submit this joint statement so nothing is misconstrued by our willingness to participate in the process outlined at the last meeting of the committee.

Naturopaths trained in this state, or any state, do not have sufficient education and training at this time to safely prescribe the medications they have requested. They do not have the scientific foundation, nor even the commitment to evidence-based therapy that must be the cornerstone of all practice, let alone practice that involves risk to life and limb.

Whether they can at some point achieve such capability is open to question and depends to a large degree on attitudinal changes they may or may not be prepared to undertake. Our position at the end of the last meeting was that we are committed to working more closely in collaboration with the naturopaths in ways that will enhance the skills that are unique to each of our groups and constructively toward the effort to achieve a degree preparation sufficient to allow for safe prescriptive authority, but we have not endorsed a specific pathway or time scale under which this may be undertaken. We are united in this position, which we take very seriously and which we hold on behalf of the citizens of Connecticut who deserve only the very best.  Thank you again for your commitment and dedication to fulfilling the requirement of last session’s legislation. We look forward to continued productive interactions with you and our naturopath colleagues.  Sincerely, Connecticut State Medical Society, Connecticut Nurses Association, Connecticut Academy of Family Physicians, CTAPRNS, Connecticut Association of Nurse Anesthetists, Connecticut Dermatologic Society, Connecticut Society of Eye Physicians, Connecticut Coalition of Advanced Practice Nurses, Connecticut Urology Society, [and] Connecticut ENT Society."

A peculiar typo in the letter, from such a WIDELY-learned group, is the salutation "Dear Chris" ending with a semi-colon.

That STRANGELY sticks in my mind as HUGELY odd:

remember, it's NEVER a semicolon!

Perhaps, though epistemologically damning naturopaths, this is a symbol of CT allied health care's willingness to 'slimily, quasiily, semily ASSOCIATE'!

'We judge you as semi-false', as in making deals with devils.

The recipient at ct.gov is the CT DPH and their landing page at ct.gov has a link to “Naturopathic Physician” which takes you to a page of the same name which states:

“most of the frequently asked for services are listed in the left hand margin of this page. Please click the appropriate link below for specific licensing requirements [...with those links being] licensure requirements, reinstatement of a lapsed license, continuing education, practice act [...and in exchange for this licensure or permission to operate, CT lists] fees.”

Let's not let naturopathy's utter falseness get in the way of bureaucratically facilitating naturopathy and reaping the associated levies:

permission to practice quackery and falsehood for a fee is the arrangement, another devilish kind of dealing.

This is the end of the first part of Episode 013 of the Naturocrit Podcast.

In Part Two, I will talk about UB naturopathy and kind, and their horrendous, shall I politely say, 'commerce history' as academic, clinical and commercial miscategorization and I'll conclude this Episode.

Thank you for boldly listening.

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