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