An Iridologist's Definition of "Quackery"

Originally posted by DrChuck

Cecil,

Not my name. (See the website under my signature.)

Devolution has a point, biases and confounding data are everywhere and careful steps to eliminate them are taken into account in medical studies. Using anecdotes to validate or presume any type of relationship between risk and disease without critical evaluation can lead to very bad medicine.

I understand that you have a passion for this type of practice, but if iridology was as diagnostically accurate as you have portrayed it I would think that it would be much more widely accepted and practiced. It may be a valid medical art, but its hard to accept as legit practice without peer-reviews, control studies, etc.

First of all, let me tell you a true story--although I fully suspect that you will accuse me of lying.

And then I will explain why your statements are divorced from the 'non-peer reviewed', 'unreproducible' reality in which people actually live their lives.

The year was probably 2005 or 2006 and I was operating a health food store/Iridology practice. A man walked in off the street looking for directions to another local business. He asked me what my business was and I explained that I was an Iridologist focusing my research on the under-acid stomach, which is responsible for stomach ulcers. Then he told me his story:

He had been suffering from an undiagnosed pain in his stomach area for the past several years. First, he took over-the-counter antacids and they seemed to work for awhile. He finally decided to go to a doctor when he was constantly taking antacids. The doctor wrote a prescription for a stronger antacid. The pain did not go away. So the doctor 'scoped' his stomach and found nothing. Then the doctor did an exploratory surgery and found nothing. Over a period of a few years, the man's insurance company had spent $20,000 in tests and other diagnostic procedures but the doctors had found nothing. So, obviously, such a patient was CRAZY; and it was recommended that he go, instead, to a psychiatrist for the 'pain' in his stomach. And, in the mean time, he had lost his health insurance because he was considered to be nothing more than a hypochondriac.

I looked in his iris with my scope and, not surprisingly, found an under-acid stomach ring. But then I saw a very bright, but very small acute sign in his right iris immediately adjacent to the stomach ring at 8:00 o'clock on the iris chart, just interior to the area for the gall bladder--this is described on the Iridology chart as the duodenum--which immediately raised two possibilities for me.

The man had little money because of his medical expenses, so I told him that, as a researcher, I would take pictures of his iris for free (the whole reason for buying my $3500 Iridology camera being to prove to my clients what signs I was looking at). Only after taking the pictures was I able to determine that the acute sign was in his duodenum.

After taking the pictures, I explained what the acute sign means in the iris: in 13 year-old girls, the acute sign signifies growth of breast tissue; in nursing mothers, it signifies increased activity of tissue; in BPH, it signifies proliferation of tissue; in an appendix it indicates inflammation; a snow white acute sign in the stomach indicates helicobacter pylori infection; in people with fibro-myalgia, it indicates pain.

And, then, I had to engage in a circumlocution that every Iridologist must engage in so as not to be prosecuted for practicing medicine without a license and threatened with financial ruin and, possibly, prison time: "You have a hyper-acute sign in your duodenum. That is all that I can say as an Iridologist. It is against the law for me to tell you that you have a duodenal ulcer." And, when they ask for clarification: "Listen carefully: It is against the law for me to tell you that you have a duodenal ulcer."

I then contacted a doctor--an M.D.--specializing in alternative medicine and natural healing modalities, explained my suspicions and referred the client to that doctor for follow-up. The client decided to pay me for taking his pictures after all.

Now, I am an Iridologist, not a doctor. And my peers are other Iridologists not doctors. So, is there a Journal of Iridology Research? Not to my knowledge. Why? Because medical journals are typically under the control of those with interests--for example, thousands of dollars of investments in common stock--in the pharmaceutical companies. And no pharmaceutical company is going to want to fund any research journal whose ultimate goal is natural healing, or which in any way threatens the illusion of competence of the orthodox medical profession.

In any case, would a typical medical journal be interested in this anecdote of mine?

Not merely no, but hell no.

Various doctors had been paid in excess of $20,000 for this person's diagnosis but had found nothing.

And, were it made known that Iridology could assess and narrow down the diagnostic possibilities in this particular case, they would not have been paid that $20,000.

In any case, can you imagine going to an auto mechanic for a problem with your car, the auto mechanic giving you a bill for $1500....

But then saying that he was unable to find out the problem....

And demanding payment anyway?

Only in the medical profession and the theology profession are stupidity and incompetence rewarded.

Now, is this client's pain "reproducible"?

Of course not.

I may very well never see another case like this, which is why I wanted to take his pictures in the first place.

But that does not mean that the pain this client was experiencing was not real.

And, moreover, even that picture--but, of course, this does not apply to a radiograph--you would most probably consider to be nothing more than "anecdotal" anyway.

So, you can live in a reality which is "peer reviewed" and "reproducible", if you want--maintaining this delusion that the pharmaceutical companies and the orthodox medical profession would actually publish information which seriously threatens their lucrative paradigm. But the reality in which I used to practice was a reality in which a significant portion of my clients were diagnosed as having psychiatric problems because the doctors could find NOTHING; for example, thyroid problems, duodenal problems, "ADHD" (really colon toxicity) and what eventually became known as fibro-myalgia.

In any case, this arrogant, upstart "scientific method" and medical-pharmaceutical paradigm that you are so proud of is merely a few hundreds of years old.

Chinese medicine, Indian medicine, herbal medicine, etc. etc. etc. etc.--all anecdotal--have been practiced for at least 3000 years; not without quite satisfactory results.

Oh, by the way, I assessed a chronic to degenerative sign in another client's abdomen as requiring medical intervention; this in a client who had not gone to see a doctor for more than 20 years because he "did not trust" doctors.

He made an appointment for a physical, was diagnosed by a doctor--someone with an M.D.--with an abdominal aortic aneurysm; and was in the hospital the next day for surgery.

Had this client not come to see me, the doctor who diagnosed the AAA would not have been paid the office visit, nor would the surgeon have been paid a surgical fee, such diagnoses often being made only upon autopsy.

Michael

I reread my post from early this morning and it sounded condescending. I apologize for that as it wasn't my intention. I believe we can cite examples endlessly as to why our respective practices are valid so lets agree to disagree.

Originally posted by Jeep4x4
I reread my post from early this morning and it sounded condescending. I apologize for that as it wasn't my intention. I believe we can cite examples endlessly as to why our respective practices are valid so lets agree to disagree.

Nonononononononononono...

Not so easy and not so fast.

When doctors cannot find anything wrong, they accuse the patient of being CRAZY; something that I would NEVER do.

I have seen this more times than I can remember.

What they are doing is denying the reality that their patients are experiencing.

That is not the practice of medicine. That is the pursuit of a religion, in which the patient becomes a 'heretic' if they do not fit into the categories set out in those medical books.

Let me give you an example from orthodox medicine:

A woman goes to the head of a Radiology Department at a hospital, crying that her husband wants to divorce her because she can't have sex with him anymore. She is experiencing too much pain.

The doctors have been unable to find anything; and an X-ray was recently taken of her gall bladder that did not show anything; those X-rays typically being taken in a patient recumbent position.

From the description of the pain, the X-ray technologist determines that it is likely gall stones--here we have an X-ray technician ILLEGALLY DIAGNOSING a condition.

So he decided to try something--take the X-rays with the patient standing up and leaning forward so the gall bladder would fall forward and could be visualized. As I recall, he used the flouroscope for this. And voila, there he saw the problem and got the diagnosis on an X-ray: gall stones, as I recall (and I have to wonder whether they would have shown up first in the iris of the right eye as a chronic to degenerative lesion.)

In any case, the woman no longer believed that she was CRAZY, as all the doctors were telling her. Her husband no longer believed that she didn't love him any more. So they didn't get a divorce. All because of the concern of an X-ray technician who was more concerned about the patient than her doctors were.

My experience with doctors is that they remember only their successes. If people come to them suffering quite severe pain and they cannot find any medical reason for it, they accuse the people of being CRAZY and simply deny that the people are genuinely experiencing any pain at all. Those patients leave their office--and, out of sight, out of mind, live lives of constant pain until they find someone who takes them seriously; and not completely certain that they are NOT crazy.

At least some of these patients come to Iridologists. And, sometimes, I devoted dozens of hours to researching the client's work history, medical history, history of medications and over-the-counter supplements, frequency of bowel movements, etc.etc. etc. in order to address the problems raised by my clients. And one thing they said most often is that their doctor never really had time to talk to them about half of the things that I usually talked with them about in the first hour and a half appointment.

My perspective is that the Western medical paradigm is blood-thirsty, money-thirsty and vicious.

It is pursued more as a religion or a belief system rather than as a sincere effort to help people with their health issues.

Michael

reply to post by Michael Cecil


"Quackery" is refusing to back up a long stream of claims with medical trials.

"Quackery" is refusing to conform to standards of modern science.

"Quackery" is trying to demean the rest of medical science without looking into the papers published and instead relying on a minimal understanding of medicine.

Until well-constructed studies come out that support the validity of iridology I won't sway from my stance. While you cite anecdotal evidence, hearsay, and suppositions, I just found a couple of examples today of how iridology is quackery:

An Evaluation of Iridology (jama.ama-assn.org...)

A Study of the Validity of Iris Diagnosis (onlinelibrary.wiley.com...) Sorry, abstract only...

Iridology: Not Useful and Potentially Harmful (archopht.ama-assn.org...)

Looking for gall bladder disease in the patient's iris. (www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov...) Sorry, abstract only again...