The Naturocrit Podcast - Episode 017e [s02e07e] - Script & Annotations [3 of 3]

This is the script, hypertext links, and notes for the five-part Naturocrit Podcast Episode 017, aka s02e07, titled “A CSF Framework Evaluative Analysis of 107 Licensed Connecticut Naturopaths’ Practices in Relation to Science, Ethics, Commerce, and Freedom.”

001. Standard Introduction: 

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 thirty-four 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".

002. Main text:

(continued) Conclusion: Legislators, the AG, and Law Infractions

[as posed by a not-a-lawyer]

Speaking of "the choices of legislators", the capabilities of legislators, the preferences of legislators, the language of naturopathy’s Connecticut statutes is shit, and it is shit on purpose to favor under false postures the garbage that overall is the essentially naturopathic as it is constituted and as an activity.

I have a college-level education.

I have a bull-shit detector.

I'm supposed to because I earned the degrees.

For instance, in answer to this query, “In what sense does ‘nature abhors a vacuum’ relate to the language of the Connecticut naturopathy legislation / statute?”, Perplexity offers this:

“’Nature abhors a vacuum’ fits because Connecticut’s naturopathy statute creates a vacuum where precise, evidence‑anchored definitions should be, and that empty space gets filled by naturopathic doctrine and self‑serving interpretations.

How the statutory ‘vacuum’ is created

• The law defines naturopathy as ‘the science, art and practice of healing by natural methods’ and then ties content to what naturopathic education bodies (CNME and related curricula) recognize, rather than to independently specified, evidence‑based standards.

• Key terms are broad and under‑specified: ‘natural methods,’ ‘mechanical and material sciences of healing,’ ‘optimum health and wellness,’ ‘naturopathic methods,’ with no statutory list of permitted modalities or evidentiary thresholds.

• In statutory drafting terms, that is a conceptual vacuum: the law gestures vaguely at ‘science’ and ‘natural methods’ but does not fill in what is in‑bounds and what is out‑of‑bounds in scientific or clinical terms.

What rushes in to fill that vacuum

Because the statute does not define practice by independent scientific criteria:

• Naturopathic philosophy and guild standards (CNME curricula, AANMC/AANP norms) slide into the empty space and become the de facto content of ‘science’ and ‘natural methods.’ That includes homeopathy, vitalism, detoxification, energy medicine, and broad ‘functional’ testing.

• Marketing language then fills in the rest: ‘root‑cause,’ ‘evidence‑based,’ ‘primary care,’ ‘integrative oncology,’ etc., mapping naturopathic concepts onto the statutory vacuum in ways that maximize professional status and revenue.

• Institutional interpretations — by insurers, hospitals, and universities — further concretize this filling: if it’s licensed and undefined, it can be whatever the naturopathic profession currently practices, now clothed in the statute’s word ‘science.’

• So the vacuum is not neutral; it is predictably occupied by the strongest organized party at the table — the naturopathic guild and its education / marketing apparatus.

Why this matters in the CSF sense

Under the Cullen–Snyder Framework:

• The definitional vacuum in statute raises the Science Camouflage Index: because nothing is tightly specified, nearly any naturopathic modality can be narrated as ‘within the science, art and practice of healing by natural methods,’ and the public has no statutory anchor to distinguish science from pseudoscience.

• The same vacuum erodes Factuality and Sovereignty: patients and legislators fill the gap with assumptions — 'licensed,’ ‘doctor,’ ‘science’ must mean evidence‑based care — and the naturopathic profession is structurally incentivized to reinforce those assumptions.

In that sense, ‘nature abhors a vacuum’ is not just a metaphor but a warning: when a health‑care statute leaves its epistemic content empty, organized interests will fill that void with whatever best serves them, and in Connecticut’s naturopathy context that has meant institutionalizing a high‑camouflage, low‑evidence practice under the language of science.”

In answer to where the Connecticut Attorney General’s allegiances lie in this context, Perplexity informs:

“Given the depth and specificity of the harms catalogued in your CT reports, it is hard to argue that the AG lacks tools; the record would actually strengthen, not weaken, an enforcement posture.”

So, therein, Perplexity elaborates:

“Where allegiances apparently lie for the last 20 years

Looking at the past two decades of Connecticut naturopathy developments through your CSF lens, the Attorney General’s practical allegiance appears to sit more with preserving the existing professional / licensure and political order than with aggressively vindicating consumer protection and factuality:

Silence or minimal action despite a rich harm record

Over years in which:

• Naturopaths in Connecticut have marketed homeopathy, detox, nonvalidated functional tests, chronic‑Lyme and cancer protocols, and vaccine‑skeptical [pedestrian usage: I’d prefer the term cynical or hesitant] narratives under a licensed ‘physician’ banner.

• Your reports articulate concrete, repeated patterns of misrepresentation, diagnostic overreach, and financial exploitation.

There is no parallel record of systematic AG enforcement targeting these practices, even though similar behaviors by non‑ND actors (other clinics, for‑profit schools, supplement marketers) have triggered actions elsewhere.

De facto alignment with legislative and guild framing

• The continued defense and normalization of Chapter 373 and PA 14‑231, without visible push for evidence‑anchored reform, operates as tacit endorsement of the legislature’s choice to treat naturopathy as a science‑based physician‑like profession.

• In practice, this places the AG on the side of institutional stability and guild privilege, not on the side of skeptical scrutiny of knowledge claims, even when those claims visibly harm vulnerable patients.”

And then there goes positive freedom, a rot that emanates from well upstream…

Regarding potential legal issues or frictions this constructed slimy morass that suits the preferences of and is maintained for the benefits of a few, in terms of civil liberties and statutory benefits, Perplexity generated a table of what “runs against the grain of several civil-liberties guarantees and statutory benefits”:

“

Civil-liberty / statutory benefit undermined	How the naturopathy context opposes or erodes it
No exclusive public emoluments or privileges (Conn. Const. Art. I, § 1, § 18) – “no man or set of men are entitled to exclusive public emoluments or privileges from the community.”	Chapter 373 and PA 14‑231 grant naturopaths a protected physician‑style title and statutory scope tied to their own accreditor (CNME), despite core modalities (homeopathy, vitalism, detox, nonvalidated tests) lacking robust evidence. This functions as a state‑created privilege for a narrow guild, not grounded in demonstrable public benefit, contrary to the anti‑emoluments spirit.
Open courts and right to a remedy (Conn. Const. Art. I, § 10 – “all courts shall be open… every person… shall have remedy by due course of law”).	By licensing pseudoscientific practice as “science” and “physician” care, [therein] the state blurs what counts as reasonable care and who is a legitimate expert, making it harder for harmed patients to recognize injury, attribute fault, and succeed in malpractice or CUTPA actions. The structural mislabeling of ND care as science‑based undermines the practical value of the right to a remedy.
Equal claim to protection of the laws / equal treatment of similarly situated citizens (Fourteenth Amendment logic echoed in Art. I, §§ 1–2).	Vulnerable groups (oncology patients, autistic children, chronic‑Lyme and complex‑chronic populations) are systematically steered into a lower‑evidence, higher‑risk licensed lane marketed as equivalent to MD / DO care. They receive weaker factual protection and thinner informed consent than citizens engaging with evidence‑based practitioners, despite identical need for protection, creating a two‑tier reality under one regulatory umbrella.
Protection from fraud and deceptive practice in commerce (CUTPA – Conn. Gen. Stat. § 42‑110a et seq.; broad right to be free from unfair/deceptive trade practices).	ND marketing in Connecticut, as documented in your reports, features classic deceptive patterns: unvalidated tests sold as diagnostics, homeopathy and detox marketed as evidence‑based treatments, physician‑like branding without MD‑equivalent training, and omission of material evidence / risk facts. The continued lack of systematic enforcement against these patterns functionally denies many patients the statutory benefit CUTPA was designed to secure.
Political power inherent in the people; government instituted for their benefit (Art. I, § 2).	The naturopathy framework emerged and persists through intense factional lobbying by a small professional group, with statutory language that reflects their self‑description ('science… natural methods') rather than independent scientific review. This reveals a practical tilt toward guild benefit over public benefit, conflicting with the social‑compact premise that institutions exist primarily for the people’s welfare, not for a faction’s market position.
Right to factual conditions for meaningful consent and self‑direction (implicit in Art. I, §§ 1–2, and in Connecticut’s consumer‑protection architecture).	In your CSF analysis, ND licensure raises the Science Camouflage Index: metaphysical or disproven modalities are marketed in biomedical language under a state license, and evidence distinctions are routinely obscured. This systematically undermines factuality and sovereignty as Snyder defines them — the very conditions people need to exercise the liberties Connecticut declares on paper.
Statutory benefit of robust CUTPA enforcement and AG protection (right of consumers to seek damages, and to have the AG and DCP act against unfair/deceptive practices).	While CUTPA on its face is strong, the naturopathy context shows a pattern of under‑enforcement: ND conduct that would be actionable if done by, say, a supplement MLM or for‑profit school often proceeds under the shield of licensure and professional status. The result is a gap between the statute’s promised protection and actual practice for patients in this licensed niche.

“

A follow-up question was asked:

“Is there an issue of prosecutorial and oversight malaise or an issue of a need for more robust legislation?”

The answer:

“Malaise in enforcement and oversight is the more immediate problem; legislative repair is the deeper, structural one […] today’s harms persist largely because of underused enforcement tools. Long‑term alignment with civil liberties, scientific integrity, and fair commerce requires rewriting the naturopathy statute itself to remove the built‑in privilege and ambiguity you have documented […]

Oversight and enforcement malaise

Within existing law, Connecticut already has tools that could substantially curb the worst naturopathic abuses:

• CUTPA clearly reaches deceptive health marketing, unsubstantiated claims, and unfair financial practices.

• Professional‑standards concepts (negligence, informed consent, misrepresentation) are available to DPH and boards, and to courts in malpractice / CUTPA suits.

• Federal hooks (FTC Act, FD&C Act) exist for unsubstantiated disease claims, misbranded products, and unapproved devices, and can be leveraged or paralleled by state action.

Your reports show that ND conduct in Connecticut squarely fits patterns already recognized as sanctionable when done by other actors (false equivalence with MD care, unvalidated diagnostics sold as science, pseudoscientific cancer and autism protocols, deceptive ‘evidence‑based’ branding).

The relative absence of sustained enforcement against this niche points to oversight and prosecutorial underuse of existing tools, not a pure legal vacuum […]

Need for more robust, better‑drafted legislation

At the same time, Chapter 373 and PA 14‑231 are written in ways that invite abuse and complicate enforcement:

• They define naturopathy as ‘the science, art and practice of healing by natural methods’ and tie content to CNME, creating a statutory blessing for whatever the guild teaches, including homeopathy, vitalism, detox, and nonvalidated tests.

• They protect a ‘naturopathic physician’ title and broad diagnostic scope without embedding evidence thresholds, disclosure duties, or modality‑specific guardrails.

That drafting raises the Science Camouflage Index and gives NDs a ready defense:

‘We are doing what the statute and our accreditor define as naturopathic medicine.’

To align the regime with civil‑liberties and consumer‑protection values, the legislature would need to:

• Redefine practice in evidence‑anchored, modality‑specific terms,

• Require explicit disclosure of low‑ or no‑evidence modalities, and

• Narrow title and scope so ‘physician’‑like branding is not attached to pseudoscience […]

How they fit together

Now: Oversight and prosecutorial malaise allow a permissive, high‑camouflage statute to operate at full harmful potential.

Later: Even with an energized AG / DPH, the current statutory language would remain a structural shield; robust legislative change is needed to remove the epistemic vacuum the naturopathic guild currently fills.”

Also regarding inaction and bad shielding legislation, I asked Perplexity for a quantification from 0 to 10 with ten being worst, of “the Connecticut naturopathy context […as a] Legislative and Enforcement Quality Scale.”

The answer:

“8.5 [out of 10, again with 10 being worst]…] 0 […is] best (evidence‑based statute, tight scope, strong enforcement, low science camouflage). 10 […is] worst (pseudoscience encoded in law, broad scope, weak oversight, high science camouflage). Connecticut’s placement near 8.5 reflects: a statute that defines naturopathy as ‘science’ while outsourcing content to CNME, broad physician‑like scope, systematic science‑camouflage in practice, and underused consumer‑protection tools.”

We are not well-served in this matter.

And some are unfairly quite copiously served an unjust benefit.

Actually, I cannot help but ask this question within the Perplexity thread knowing the landscape of Connecticut and in the sense of America’s perpetual ‘equality and justice myth’:

“Can the benefit-to-harm ratio of the Connecticut naturopathy context be justified in that then a few rich Greenwich socialites can say ‘my doctor, who is in network, is god-like in functional medicine, craniosacral therapy, and homeopathy’?”

The answer:

“No. A handful of affluent, satisfied clients [and likely campaign contributors, I’ll add] cannot justify a system that, on your own documentation, produces broad, structural harms to patients, public health, and the information environment.

Why that benefit doesn’t balance the harms

• Benefits are narrow and mostly positional

• The ‘benefit’ you describe is largely status and narrative: the ability for well‑off patients to claim access to a charismatic, in‑network ‘doctor’ offering functional medicine, CST, and homeopathy.

• The underlying clinical benefits from those specific modalities are, at best, modest and often indistinguishable from placebo, especially for homeopathy and craniosacral therapy.

• Harms are widespread, unequal, and evidence‑documented

• Your CSF reports show:

• Misdiagnosis and delayed diagnosis of serious conditions due to reliance on unvalidated testing and pseudoscientific frameworks.

• Financial exploitation through high‑priced functional panels and supplement regimens, hitting non‑wealthy families hardest.

• Erosion of factuality and informed consent, as patients are led to believe all offered modalities are science‑based.

• Public‑health harms (vaccine hesitancy, diversion from guideline‑based screening and treatment).

• Justice and solidarity dimensions

• Snyder’s freedom dimensions and your Connecticut analysis emphasize solidarity and equity: a system that systematically harms vulnerable patients so a small, affluent group can enjoy boutique narratives is not merely imperfect — it is unjust in structure.

• The ‘Greenwich socialite’ benefit is exclusive, optional, and largely reputational; the harms fall on oncology patients, autistic children, chronically ill adults, and the general public’s ability to discern truth in medicine.

In any serious benefit‑to‑harm accounting grounded in evidence and civic values, the Connecticut naturopathy context cannot be justified by the preferences or satisfaction of a privileged minority, however glowing their testimonials.”

Speaking of informed consent, way back in 2016, ten years ago, I’d written this comment on the FTC's web site when they reigned in homeopathy somewhat, which I shared in Episode 012d3.1:

“This is great news, particularly in terms of consumer informed consent: since the FDA was hamstring (or unwilling), you stepped up to the plate in terms of marketplace governance.

I am interested in an FTC opinion regarding:

a) fully-accredited (actually multiply-accredited) in-residence naturopathy degrees in the U.S. that claim, contrary to this [oops, is say 'it's'] enforcement policy for homeopathy for instance, that homeopathy and kind is squarely science;

b) and also, actually, specifically, that the supernatural is squarely science, and what clearly is implausible and without evidence is squarely science.

I've been writing letters for years:

like the FDA, it seems that Federal and States' Departments of Education and Consumer Protection either are hamstrung, committed-colluding, or simply do not care about this egregious, unmerchantable product on the market called 'a naturopathy doctorate' that has Title IV access though academically categorically fraudulent.

There are lots of 'shoulds' to ask, such as should:

AANMC-AANP naturopathy be allowed to falsely market the contents and activities of naturopathy as categorically / broadly science?”

We the people are really being underserved in this matter.

 Conclusion: Failures, Representativeness, and Freedom

Speaking broadly of failures within the Connecticut naturopathy context, within the 2026 study thread I tasked Perplexity to tabulate the failings of the “complementary, alternative, traditional, and naturopathic.”

The answer:

“Here are four tables showing how complementary, alternative, traditional, and naturopathic strands fail both individual patients and citizens when absorbed into Connecticut’s naturopathy context.

Each is framed against the CSF themes you’ve been using […] together, these tables show that when complementary, alternative, traditional, integrative, and naturopathic elements are pulled into Connecticut’s licensed naturopathy framework, they do not just occasionally fail individual patients; they reliably undercut the informational, economic, and institutional conditions that both patients and citizens need for real safety and freedom […]

[…table 1] Complementary Practices in CT Naturopathy

Aspect	How it fails patients	How it fails citizens
Used as more than 'complementary'	Practices like acupuncture, massage, or basic nutrition are marketed as sufficient ‘root‑cause’ care, delaying proper diagnosis and treatment when they are used instead of guideline‑based medicine.	The public message that ‘complementary = complete care’ blurs the line between helpful adjuncts and substitutes for real medicine, eroding factuality about what these modalities can actually do.
Blending with pseudoscience	Reasonable adjuncts (exercise, diet) are bundled with homeopathy, detox, and energy medicine as a single package, so patients cannot tell which parts are evidence‑based.	Citizens get habituated to a health system where evidence and non‑evidence are indistinguishable under a state license, undermining trust in the very idea of ‘evidence‑based.’
Consent without evidence stratification	Patients consent to ‘integrative’ care never being told which elements are well‑studied and which are speculative or disproven, corrupting real autonomy.	A polity that treats such blurred consent as acceptable normalizes weaker standards of truth and honesty in professional practice.
Platforming via hospitals and networks	When hospitals or insurers present complementary services through NDs, patients infer that everything an ND does is hospital‑level science.	Citizens see state‑linked institutions ratifying a hybrid of real and pseudo‑treatments, signaling that public institutions will platform comfort and commerce over epistemic integrity.

 

[…table 2] Alternative Practices in CT Naturopathy

Aspect	How it fails patients	How it fails citizens
Substitution for effective care	Alternative modalities (homeopathy, thermography‑instead‑of‑mammography, ‘natural’ asthma management without steroids) can directly replace effective treatments, causing preventable morbidity or death.	The state’s willingness to license and platform such substitutions weakens the shared expectation that public systems will privilege effective care over ideology.
High Science Camouflage	Alternative theories are narrated in biomedical language (‘functional lab markers,’ ‘toxicity,’ ‘root‑cause’) so patients mistake them for mainstream science.	Citizens’ ability to distinguish science from pseudoscience degrades, which is a precondition for any informed democratic deliberation on health policy.
Exploitation through ‘last‑hope’ framing	Patients with cancer, autoimmune disease, or complex chronic illness are told alternatives offer ‘what conventional medicine ignores,’ making them vulnerable to costly, ineffective regimens.	A society that tolerates this under state license signals that vulnerability is a business opportunity, not a cue for extra protection — undermining solidarity norms.
Normalization of anti‑public‑health narratives	Alternatives are used as vehicles for antivaccine, anti‑screening, and anti‑pharmaceutical messaging, harming both users and non‑users via reduced herd effects.	Citizens who never see an ND still face increased risk from lowered vaccination and delayed detection, meaning individual [oops, I say 'individualized'] ‘choice’ is subsidized by others’ risk without transparent consent.

[…table 3] Traditional Practices in CT Naturopathy

Aspect	How it fails patients	How it fails citizens
Romanticizing ‘traditional’	Patients are told that long‑standing or ‘ancient’ use is a proxy for safety and effectiveness, masking the need for modern evidence on dosage, interactions, and indications.	Citizens see law and institutions treating ‘traditional’ as a quasi‑scientific credential, weakening the norm that public decisions should be grounded in current knowledge, not nostalgia.
Selective traditionalism	NDs cherry‑pick ‘traditional’ elements that sell well (detox, tonics) while discarding traditional cautions and limits, giving patients a misleading picture of historical practice.	Cultural traditions are repackaged as commercial products, distorting heritage and turning ‘tradition’ into a marketing shield rather than a living, context‑aware practice.
Lack of risk disclosure	Herbal and ‘traditional’ remedies are often presented as inherently gentle, leading patients to underappreciate risks (hepatotoxicity, interactions with chemo or anticoagulants).	When the state licenses these claims without insisting on systematic disclosure, it signals that tradition can override standard risk‑communication norms.
Shielding from scrutiny	Labeling practices as ‘traditional’ within a licensed profession can discourage critical questions (‘this is how it’s always been done’), closing off inquiry even when harms emerge.	Citizens learn that some claims, once wrapped in ‘tradition,’ are politically safer to leave unexamined, which undermines a culture of ongoing critical evaluation.

[…table 4] Naturopathic System Itself in CT

Aspect	How it fails patients	How it fails citizens
Statutory ‘science’ label	Patients reasonably assume a licensed ‘naturopathic physician’ is practicing a science‑based branch of medicine, when core content (homeopathy, vitalism, detox, energy medicine) is not.	The state’s declaration of naturopathy as ‘science’ devalues the word itself, weakening citizens’ ability to use ‘science’ as a reliable guide in any policy context.
Broad diagnostic authority	NDs act as de facto primary care for complex cases without equivalent training, leading to misdiagnosis, overuse of nonvalidated tests, and delayed referral.	Citizens’ expectation that licensure tracks competence is betrayed, undermining trust in regulatory institutions that are supposed to align authority with ability.
Economic exploitation structure	Business models built on selling proprietary tests and supplements make it rational for NDs to maximize investigation and product use, not necessarily benefit, burdening families financially.	The normalization of this model under license teaches that health professions may openly embed conflicted revenue streams, corroding norms against profiteering from information asymmetry.
Erosion of Snyder’s freedoms	The ND system systematically degrades factuality, sovereignty, unpredictability (outcomes tied to evidence), mobility (real exit options), and solidarity (shared standards).	Citizens inhabit a polity where law itself underwrites epistemic confusion and unequal risk, making the formal guarantees of rights and protections less meaningful in practice.

“

Touching back to the literature on freedom, particularly the relationship between truth and power in post-totalitarian systems by way of Havel’s 1978 essay The Power of the Powerless, Tim Snyder offers the observation that these systems derive their authority not from the factual truth of their ideology, but from citizens’ routine participation in a performative falsity -- what Havel describes as “living within the lie”, as though the governing lie is truth.

Freedom begins by naming reality.

It also begins by naming tyranny.

And as Tim Snyder also writes in “On Tyranny”:

“To abandon facts is to abandon freedom.”

Let me repeat the 10 descriptive words I began this conclusion with and the adjectives created in the Third Follow Up Question:

“Deceptive, pseudomedical, misleading, exploitative, camouflaged, confounding, corroding, distorting, predatory, regressively‑licensed […]

[…and from the commerce table] manipulative, predatory, deceptive, exploitative, opportunistic, disingenuous, conflicted-interest driven, misleadingly respectable, rent-seeking, confidence-game like

[…and from the ethics table] irresponsible, cynical about truth, conflicted (loyalty vs. truth), negligent, rationalizing, evasive, ethically corrosive, institutionalized bad faith, dereliction of duty, systematically dishonest.”

Three metrics strike me, at the end of all this, from the task to Perplexity:

“For this Connecticut naturopathy context, create three different quantification rating scales. On a scale of 0 through 10 [with ten being worst], separately quantify a) the scientific and factual integrity of naturopathy, b) the ethical integrity of naturopathy, c) the governance integrity of the State of Connecticut.”

The answer:

“a) scientific and factual integrity of naturopathy in Connecticut: rating 9/10 (very poor integrity) […] b) ethical integrity of naturopathy in Connecticut: rating 8.5/10 (systemically compromised) […] c) governance integrity of the State of Connecticut (in this domain): rating 8.5/10 (substantially degraded in this area).”

We can do so much better.

By the way, ChatGPT’s patient expenditure range for “unvalidated specialty testing” within this Connecticut ND context for the year 2025 for all state NDs using a typical integrative practice model, is $75 million to $120 million dollars.

Similarly, when Perplexity is tasked “Can an estimate be produced for the national / U.S. expenditure for "'unvalidated tests and supplements' through all ND practices for the year 2025?”,the conservative answer, including a caveat, generated is:

“Roughly USD 0.5–1 billion in 2025 was likely spent in the U.S. on unvalidated tests and supplement regimens specifically driven by naturopathic (ND) practices.

Because there is no centralized ND‑specific spending dataset, this estimate should be treated as a plausible range, not a precise figure, but it captures the scale:

hundreds of millions of dollars per year, not mere millions, flowing into ND‑linked tests and products that lack solid evidentiary support.”

When asked at the end of all this, too, if the data set from Connecticut is representative of Connecticut and how such compares to other states’ ND practice web pages, the answer from Perplexity was:

“The Connecticut source set is representative of mainstream naturopathic marketing in Connecticut, and it closely matches naturopath web materials in other U.S. states.

Representativeness within Connecticut

• The Connecticut NDs you analyzed use the standard naturopathic blend: 'functional medicine,' 'root‑cause,' detoxification, extensive 'functional lab testing,' naturopathic primary care framing, and combinations of botanicals, nutraceuticals, acupuncture, and mind‑body services.

• Their sites and materials show the same science‑camouflage patterns your CSF reports describe: mixing legitimate labs and counseling with homeopathy, adrenal fatigue, heavy metal detox, broad stool and urine testing, nutrigenomics, etc., all under “science‑driven” or 'modern medicine plus tradition' branding.

• In other words, the sampled practices are not fringe outliers; they display the dominant commercial posture of licensed NDs in the state — especially those integrated into 'integrative' or 'functional' clinics.

Comparison to ND websites in other states

• ND clinics in other states (e.g., Oregon, Washington, Arizona) use near‑identical rhetorical and service patterns:

• Claims of 'holistic, personalized, and science‑driven' care.

• Emphasis on advanced 'functional lab testing' (stool, mycotoxins, hormones, nutrigenomics), detoxification protocols, 'stealth infections,' and mycotoxin or heavy‑metal detox.

• 'Complementing' or 'going deeper than' conventional medicine, promising to find hidden root causes that mainstream care allegedly misses. 

• Critical accounts from former NDs also describe this same mix of  word‑salad 'science,' functional testing, and in‑office supplement sales as typical of the profession at large, not geographically unique.

Overall

• The Connecticut documents you used accurately reflect the mainstream naturopathic brand in Connecticut. 

• When set beside naturopathic web pages from other states, they match in structure, claims, and epistemic problems: the same blending of real medicine with pseudoscience under a shared 'science‑driven, functional, integrative' story.”

To reiterate Thomas Paine from the year 1776:

“Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph.”

Ah, Corrupticut…

“Corrupting real autonomy” and so much more.

Demonically.

I’ll update the cover letter’s satirical description of Connecticut and naturopathy in light of this 2026 exploration, analysis, and evaluation of these naturopathic practices in Connecticut:

"The effectiveness of public health policies, practices, and actions depends upon public trust — luckily, in Connecticut, such trust can be manufactured wholesale by issuing licenses to anything that wears a science-costume convincingly enough.

Why bother with the slow, tedious work of evidence when you can simply pass a law declaring naturopathy 'the science, art and practice of healing by natural methods' and let the naturopathic schools decide what “science” means this week.

Public health here gains public trust not through evidence but through elaborate rituals of 'science camouflage,' where homeopathy, vitalism, and energetic manipulation are paraded as the equals of immunology or biochemistry so long as they are dressed up in enough medical terminology and rubber-stamped by a Board of Deference.

In this arrangement, homeopathy, craniosacral therapy, neurocranial restructuring, adrenal fatigue, detox footbaths, bioenergetic gadgets, and IgG food panels do not compete with immunology or oncology — they masquerade as them.

When evidence is lacking — no bother! — Connecticut simply legislates the evidence out of relevance and permits pseudoscientific practitioners to present themselves as peers to MDs, institutionalizing both title and therapeutic ambiguity for maximum consumer confusion.

If the evidence ever dares reveal that the sacred 'healing power of nature' is in fact a tired metaphysical relic, fear not: regulatory authorities will do their utmost to blend it seamlessly into the language of 'primary care' until nobody can tell a placebo from a public health policy.

For practices discovered to be faulty or fraudulent, Connecticut's solution is bold: issue a broader license, build a state board out of practitioners of those very same methods

• then shield the result with statutory language so that neither patient nor taxpayer ever need worry about pesky concepts like scientific validity, factual integrity, and ethical clarity again 

• then, with a straight face, call this ‘consumer protection’ and let the Attorney General nap peacefully under a blanket woven from CUTPA and good intentions.

Thus, public trust is preserved — the first casualty of which is trustworthiness itself."

That is the Connecticut syndicate.

This is the end of Episode 017 of the Naturocrit Podcast.

Thank you for boldly listening.