The Naturocrit Podcast - Episode 015b1 [s02e05b1] Script and Annotations [Part 4 of 5]

  this is the script and annotations for the multi-part Naturocrit Podcast Episode 015, aka s02e05, titled “The JACM 2019 Special Issue on Naturopathy”. 

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in this first third of Episode 015 Part 2, I will take a break from the SIN proper and share my 2021 Master's degree capstone product, which asks and answers this question:

"Is care founded upon epistemically unwarranted medical claims and methods an appropriate publicly-funded remedy for America's underserved and vulnerable populations' rampant healthcare inaccessibility and inequality issues? The case of Bastyr University’s Center for Natural Health and BU’s satellite community clinics":

001. Episode 015b1 Script and Annotations [Part 4 of 5]:

 

Table 8. 

Winners and Losers.

 

Stakeholder	Winning	Losing	Principal Condition [all stakeholders are presumed to suffer from falsehood].
Vulnerable and underserved patients			The benefit of access at the cost of gross poor quality and gross inefficiency.
Students			Miseducation.
The public purse			Abuse, fraud, waste.
Collegial health care relations			The pollution of the health professions peer-reviewed literature.
The accreditation apparatus			The meaninglessness of accreditation assurances.
Bastyr University			Unfettered and unpunished academic absurdities.
Washington State and State of California naturopaths			The furtherance of the ND project and its sectarianism.
Science standards of national and local academies, foundations, consortia, institutions			A precedent is set that annuls preponderant definitions, methods, procedures, and authorities.

[continues in next post]

 

 

Therein, An Answer to the Topic Statement:

The topic statement is:

Is care founded upon epistemically unwarranted medical claims and methods an appropriate publicly-funded remedy for America's underserved and vulnerable populations' rampant healthcare inaccessibility and inequality issues?

The answer:

No.

The harms are vast and to many, the benefit little and for a few.

Remedies:

The following Table 9 lists proposed actions to counter the principal conditions listed in Table 8.  Additionally, inaction or omission is also accounted for:

Table 9.

Stakeholder	Actionable Framework Remedies [Normal, Fair, Usual, Customary, Reasonable Treatment in the Context of the EW.]	Status Quo [An Extrapolation Maintaining Chauvinistic Epistemic Charity Towards the EU.]
Vulnerable and underserved patients	Get provided actual modern health care with its requisite rigorous standard of care [Medicaid’s requirements].	BU grows in its Medicaid funding.
Students	Be provided with the full context of naturopathy in order to make valid, informed, voluntary career decisions.	BU business model continues expanding.
The public purse	Is protected from nonsense therapeutics.	Accommodation continues.
Collegial health care relations	The naturopathy-authored literature is audited and appropriately labeled/annotated.	Accommodation continues.
The accreditation apparatus	Assurances are authentically applied.	Accommodation continues.
Bastyr University	Massive audit and restructuring.	Further nuttiness is added.
Washington State and State of California naturopaths	Licensure is rescinded.	Scope of practice increases.
Science standards of national and local academies, foundations, consortia, institutions	Are honored thus preventing the circumstance in the first place.	Continue to diminish.

 

An Assessment Plan:

A Statement of Desired Outcome.

To ensure that epistemically warranted, ethical, high-quality, high-performance health care is provided to all Medicaid participants particularly in the context of collegially respectful and truthful educational settings.

A Statement Regarding the Current Situation.

The clinics of BU are, in fact, centered around epistemically unwarranted, unethical, low-quality, low-performance health care that employs Medicaid funding to foster a continuation of an erosive project of disoriented esotericism and miseducation.

Criteria for Success.

The criteria for success includes fulfillment of the conditions within the actionable framework remedies in Table 9.

A Means to Formally Collect Necessary Background Information and Data.

The information necessary to gauge all the issues at BU could be acquired by a small version of a Flexner Report [FR2] as administered by an impartial, nonconflicted body of scientists, health care professionals, academics [particularly historians], administrators, and citizens.

Plan and Execute Improvements.

The findings of the FR2 body would then dictate the methodologies needed to achieve the specific solutions that have been suggested with an overall mandate of achieving justice and remediation.

Collect Additional Information and Data to Determine the Success of the Improvement in Relation to the Desired Outcome.

Custom-tailored parameters set up by the FR2 would be continually monitored for fulfillment particularly through on-site observation, broad stakeholder surveys, and consortia curriculum audits.

[End of paper.]

01.22.54

Applying the Capstone Epistemic Model of Naturopathy.

So, can the epistemic modelling I presented in the capstone aid in understanding naturopathic verbiage?

The raw material I’ll put through such a test is a YouTube video by AANMC executive director ND Yanez from December 2021.

The video is “What is Naturopathic Medicine?” and it is part of a career fair titled “Naturopathic Medical College Virtual Fair.”

Now, you would think that a truthful definition would actually occur in such a named video and in such a context.

After all, ND Yanez is the top executive at a colleges and universities consortia inducing future applicants towards a healthcare career.

And that career can happen in either Canada or the United States, which is the AANMC’s geographic footprint.

What’s offered should be concise, transparent, non-pernicious.

Yanez in fact says “we’re here today to help you really make the most of this day and find the things that you are looking for so that you can make an informed decision.”

Really.

But what happens instead is coded vitalism as is typical: as healing power of nature, self-healing, and vis medicatrix naturae.

And then there’s this remarkable statement by ND Yanez:

“this is not a belief system this is medicine and science […with one of the listed schools] National University of Health Sciences […and it is] primary care training […with an offered comparison between] ND, MD/DO, NP […] medical assessment and diagnosis [yes for all…] professionalism [yes for all…] practice-based learning, research and scholarship [yes for all].”

So, the broad or categorical claim of science, of medicine, of physicianship, of typical academic rigor and integrity.

Yet, the vitalism and supernaturalism at the heart of naturopathy are beliefs, and they are codified into a belief system.

Homeopathy is mentioned as one of the unique naturopathic therapies and that “woven throughout the curriculum are the naturopathic principles, the therapeutic order and each of the therapies that make naturopathic medicine unique [such as homeopathy…these] holistic therapies […of] the holistic approach.”

Again, that is a claim, essentially, that nonscience is science and that’s all academically above board.

And we’re also told by ND Yanez “NPLEX I and II are required for regulated practice in the United States.”

That’s the NPLEX that falsely labels homeopathy a clinical science, minimally.

As I’ve often joked, naturopathy is actually best described as metaphysicianship not physicianship, as in metaphysicalisms and beliefs at its core as opposed to the claimed ‘science not belief’.

And the whole shebang is termed a philosophy, holistic, of learning, research, and scholarship.

Well, if we truly are going to embrace all that, lets plug this in to the capstone’s epistemic models.

This is a table [Table 10. for the the purposes of organziation here].

Yanez Claim	Disoriented esotericism	Occult sectarian preconceptions	Aggregation	Epistemic conflation	False categorizations
categorically science and medicine not belief
coded vitalism
homeopathy and kind woven throughout
truth and explanation towards informed decisions
philosophy, research, scholarship
professionalism
holistic

In sum I had as total categories that could be checked off: disoriented esotericism, occult sectarian preconceptions, aggregation, epistemic conflation, and false categorizations.

As you can see, the EU is the overall naturopathic project because, after all, nonscience cannot be termed science in any legitimate way.

So, in some manner, all the boxes are checked in terms of the models from the capstone.
One final mention is in relation to ND Yanez’s claim ‘not a belief system but science and medicine’.

A similar false statement basically sent me down the rabbit hole of naturopathy way back in the mid-to-late 1990s by the AANP Alliance.

 
On the archive.org saved page “The Alliance Legislative Workbook” we are told in 1998:

“Naturopathic physicians are the modern day science based primary care doctor […] naturopathic medicine […] is not a belief system […] the Alliance, which sponsors this site, is a cooperative effort among the AANP, Bastyr University, National College of Naturopathic Medicine and the Southwest College of Naturopathic Medicine & Health Sciences.”

SCNM is ND Yanez’s alma mater and currently, on their page “The Tenets of the Naturopathic Physician” we’re told naturopathy is:

“Based on the same biomedical science foundation that conventional practice is […] naturopathic physicians cooperate with all other branches of medical science” while true to form vitalism is coded there.

Yet, you can presently find that vitalism, explicitly stated at scnm.edu, within their 2021-2022 catalog.
 
So that’s almost 25 years of the same bullshit.

Marching on, unchecked, unrepentant, unnoticed.

SCNM just posted its 45th commencement, including their graduating NDs from their “School of Naturopathic Medicine, Doctorate of Naturopathic Medicine” on YouTube this December, 2021.

I will, in the next, middle section of this Episode 015 Part Two, delve into that quite useful video first and then share the smaller 2019 ethics paper I’d mentioned.

Thank you for boldly listening…

[Continues and ends in next post, which is the paper's references].