What's eating Stephen Barrett?
by Burton Goldberg
July 1998
Alternative Medicine Digest
He says he's using science to protect the public from expensive fad
diagnoses, but if this "quackbuster" has his way, the public will have
no recourse but conventional medicine for their health problems.
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RECENTLY, I set myself the exercise of trying to understand what
motivates a selfproclaimed "quackbuster" to write a book debunking an
entire field of medicine. A "quackbuster," as we've come to know over
the years, is someone who is dedicated to casting aspersions on
alternative medicine, regardless of whether there is any factual
basis. As alternative medicine continues to grow more popular – an
estimated 42% of Americans now use it – the "quackbusters" are growing
more clamorous in their denunciations of our field. They have to be –
they're almost a minority view.
Highly visible among these selfappointed "quackbusters" is Stephen
Barrett, M.D., a retired psychiatrist, author of numerous books, and
spokesman for the "Quackwatch" community. In his latest book, Chemical
Sensitivity: The Truth About Environmental Illness, coauthored with
Ronald E. Gots, M.D., Ph.D (Prometheus Books, 1998), Barrett goes
after all the illness categories for which diet and chemical exposure
are "falsely blamed."
Multiple chemical sensitivity, sick building syndrome, foodrelated
hyperactivity, mercury amalgam toxicity, candidiasis hyperactivity,
Gulf War syndrome – these are all costly misbeliefs and fad diagnoses,
says Barrett. "Many Americans believe that exposure to common foods
and chemicals makes them ill," he says. "This book is about people who
hold such beliefs but are wrong."
Not only are patients wrong, Barrett says, they are "financially
exploited as well as mistreated." They are duped by "farfetched"
notions and "dubious claims," by headline-crazed media and "toxic
television," and by "physicians who use questionable diagnostic and
treatment methods."
Patients presume they are being made allergic or toxic or even being
poisoned by the mass of modern chemicals, cosmetics, cleaning agents,
drugs, and other human-made substances. They are mistaken, says
Barrett. Their misbeliefs are especially hard to understand, Barrett
says, "at a time when our food supply is the world's safest and our
antipollution program is the best we've ever had."
Patients' symptoms are mental (psychosomatic) in origin – "they react
to stress by developing multiple symptoms." Their symptoms are not
caused by chemicals or dietary factors, he says. In fact, Barrett
suggests that some patients are "hysterical," others are "paranoid,"
and the rest have "certain psychological factors" that "predispose"
them to "develop symptoms" and to seek out "questionable" doctors
(meaning alternative medicine practitioners) who will attach a ("not
scientifically recognized"😉 disease label to them.
Regarding Gulf War syndrome, for example, Barrett declares: "It
provides a feeding trough for serious scientists, since funding is
abundant, and for every charlatan with a newsworthy theory." On the
matter of the dangers of mercury fillings, he states: "The false
diagnosis of mercuryamalgam toxicity is potentially very harmful and
reflects extremely poor judgment."
For the most part, of the illnesses listed above, nearly all are mere
"labels" rather than legitimate illness conditions, asserts Barrett;
they're not caused by foods or chemicals; there are no "scientific""
studies conclusively proving the association of diet, chemicals, and
illness; and we are best advised to dismiss them out of hand, he says.
In most cases and for most of the illnesses commonly associated with
chemical sensitivity, Barrett says the mass of mistaken patients would
be better off seeking "mental help" from a psychiatrist or other
"mental health practitioner." Alternative medicine physicians and
especially "clinical ecologists" (the old name for practitioners of
environmental medicine, which links exposures to toxic substances with
health conditions) should be chastised, investigated, put on notice,
and if possible, put out of business, says Barrett.
Most of what Barrett claims can be refuted, easily and decisively.
That's not my intention here. I'm more interested in looking at the
bigger picture – what is Barrett really saying amidst his quackbusting
bluster, and why?
Barrett appears to be saying that the typical American patient is
stupid, hysterical or paranoid, easily duped, and generally incapable
of making a rational, correct medical decision on their own. The
patient is mistaken and wrong in thinking their multiple symptoms have
any connection to the foods they eat or the environmental chemicals to
which they are exposed. The media is irresponsible and not to be
trusted as an information source about medicine, especially about
alternatives. Doctors who practice alternative medicine are
unscientific, opportunistic frauds or quacks, peddling flawed or junk
science
So who can you turn to – who is not on Barrett's hit list?
Conventional doctors. Barrett doesn't say this outright, but it's the
only logical conclusion. His message is the old and familiar one from
the l950s: the (conventional) doctor knows best.
I next pondered what could be the purpose of this book. What could be
the result of debunking the connection between foods, chemicals,
cosmetics, and drugs with the varieties of environmental illness
(mentioned above) now afflicting millions of patients. Why does
Barrett (and his colleagues) so dislike alternative medicine? What's
eating him that he must disparage the field at every opportunity?
The purpose has to be this: to corral this mass of suffering
"confused" patients into the treatment pen of conventional medicine.
But here Barrett's rationale collapses. The patients end up with
nothing.
Surely no person suffering unexplained allergies or general toxicity
wants to be told they're stupid, mistaken, and ought to have their
head examined. And surely no patient who has abandoned conventional
medicine (because the one or two dozen doctors they consulted hadn't a
clue as to how to help them) would be interested in Barrett's thesis.
It is genuinely hard to imagine how a suffering patient could actually
be persuaded by Barrett to dismiss alternative approaches when the
conventional ones were not useful, or even worse, were harmful.
But let's say, despite these reservations, patients allowed themselves
to be herded into Barrett's allopathic corral. There would be nothing
there for them. Conventional medicine has no cure or treatment for
these illnesses. In fact, as Barrett repeatedly points out, for the
most part, conventional medicine does not even validate the existence
of these illness categories and regards a diagnosis of such illnesses
as bogus medicine. Of course, Barrett does offer patients "mental
help."
Let's look at this setup carefully. Barrett and his "quackbusting"
colleagues say they are working to protect the public against health
frauds. They don't want the public to waste its money on "sham"
treatments that don't work. The false labels of multiple chemical
sensitivity, environmental illness, and the rest, do the public a
"disservice," Barrett says, and seeking treatment for these wastes the
financial resources of insurance companies, employers, and other third
party reimbursers.
But since conventional medicine has nothing to offer patients who
"believe" they are suffering physical distress from these conditions,
the patients, in effect, are left on their own to suffer some more.
Barrett's plan seems to be to corral these misguided patients into the
conventional medicine pen so he can dissuade them of their mistaken
notions regarding their illness and make them "see" that it's all
psychosomatic.
Clearly the patients do not benefit at all from this scenario, so who
does? The makers of drugs, petrochemicals, cosmetics, synthetic food
additives, pesticides, prepared foods – in short, the massive food and
chemical industry of North America benefits. They are no longer held
accountable as causal factors in multiple symptom illnesses. They are
let off the hook. They can proceed with business as usual. There are
no poisons in their products. (See the cartoon about "quackbusters" by
Harley Schwadron in "The Politics of Medicine" section, this issue, p.
106.)
In the paradox of "quackbusting," the quackbusters say they're
protecting public health, but in fact, they're abandoning the public
to their own suffering to protect the financial interests of
conventional medicine, which has no interest in or ability to produce
benefits for these conditions. The "quackbusters" say they're serving
the public, but the truth is they're grossly disserving patients.
Thanks to Barrett's remarkable chemical insensitivity, a great many
patients will be left to suffer on their own without any diagnosis or
treatment, except perhaps another round of Prozac on the house.
Reproduced with permission
Alternative Medicine Digest, July 1998
ALTERNATIVE MEDICINE ONLINE