Group Booted From Veterinarians Convention
By MICHAEL RUBINKAM
.c The Associated Press
PHILADELPHIA (AP) - A dissident veterinarians group was kicked out of the
American Veterinary Medical Association's annual convention after it ran a
full-page advertisement in The New York Times accusing the medical
association of
``betraying'' farm animals.
The Association of Veterinarians for Animal Rights had already paid for its
booth at this weekend's convention in Philadelphia when the advertisement
appeared June 21. The ad accused the medical association of endorsing and
supporting ``some of the cruelest conditions for raising farm animals to be
found
anywhere in the world.''
The medical association, which represents 70,000 vets nationwide, responded
by telling the group that it was no longer welcome at the convention, which
runs from Saturday to Wednesday and is expected to draw nearly 9,000
veterinarians.
``The ad was pretty scathing. It probably embarrassed them,'' Teri Barnato,
national director of the Association of Veterinarians for Animal Rights,
said
Friday from California. ``We did it to expose what they are about.''
The medical association, which was founded in 1863 and is one of the
largest
veterinary organizations in the world, said the animal rights group
violated
rules that prohibit exhibits ``espousing philosophies or actions in
opposition to those of the AVMA.'' The medical association's executive vice
president, Bruce Little, wrote in a letter to AVAR that the Times ad was
``inaccurate
and misleading'' and that the medical association ``cannot support
disruptive
and nonproductive approaches to veterinary issues.''
The ad, which was sponsored by an array of animal rights groups, including
People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, targets farm practices that it
considers abusive, including keeping calves in 2-foot-wide crates and
starving
hens to get them to produce more eggs.
``It is the AVMA policy that all animals should be treated humanely,
including gestating pigs, laying hens and veal calves. The association does
not
endorse inhumane practices,'' the association said in a statement.
The association did allow AVAR vice president Holly Cheever to make a
presentation at a convention delegates' meeting on Friday, but Barnato said
the
group should have been allowed to set up its exhibit, as it has done for
years.
``They are trying to penalize us for speaking out,'' Barnato said.
An AVAR press release can be found on its web page, www.avar.org
You can find the advertisement on the web pages of United Poultry Concerns,
one of the sponsors of the ad:
http://www.upc-online.org/avma/AVMAad.pdf
AVMA and vet school professional organized doctor crime
8 posts
• Page 1 of 1
AVMA and vet school professional organized doctor crime
by malernee » Sun Jul 25, 2004 2:53 pm
Last edited by malernee on Fri Dec 24, 2004 12:58 pm, edited 2 times in total.
- malernee
- Site Admin
- Posts: 462
- Joined: Wed Aug 13, 2003 5:56 pm
new york times ad
by guest » Mon Jul 26, 2004 6:52 pm
Unless there were serious concerns about disruption at the Convention, banning the AVAR from the Convention signals that the AVMA doesn't establish its positions on Animal Welfare issues through a free exchange of information and opinions among the membership. This discredits and thereby weakens the AVMA's positions on these issues.
see
http://www.ari-online.org/cruelavma/
see
http://www.ari-online.org/cruelavma/
- guest
avar gets avma to change
by guest » Wed Aug 04, 2004 8:09 pm
News Release From AVAR
American Veterinary Medical Association Finally Agrees Starving Chickens Is Wrong
New Position Statement Opposing Food and Water Withdrawal Follows
Six-Year Petition by Animal Rights Group
Animal rights advocates are applauding the American Veterinary Medical Association’s (AVMA) decision to take a stand against the forced starvation of laying chickens. The practice, a type of forced molting used by commercial egg producers, increases egg production in chickens but also causes severe physical and psychological damage to the laying hens.
The AVMA’s House of Delegates addressed the issue at the organization’s annual convention, which draws to a close today in Philadelphia. During the convention, the House of Delegates voted to approve a resolution on induced molting of laying hens which states, “Neither water or food should be withdrawn” from the laying hens. The resolution also includes the sentence, “The welfare of birds should be a major consideration in this and any management practice.”
The vote came in response to a petition submitted by members of the Association of Veterinarian for Animal Rights (AVAR). For six years in a row, AVAR has petitioned the AVMA to adopt a position statement opposing food and water withdrawal of laying hens. The AVMA House of Delegates did not adopt the resolution incorporating the AVAR petition. Rather, the group chose to adopt a similar resolution submitted at the last minute by the American Association of Avian Pathologists.
“We are satisfied with this long-awaited step by the AVMA,” said AVAR Vice President Dr. Holly Cheever, who presented AVAR’s resolution to the AVMA Reference Committee, prior to the House of Delegates vote. “The most important point is that the resolution that was adopted takes an official stance against food and water withdrawal. That is the single most important point that AVAR has been trying to make for many years.”
AVAR has been at odds with the AVMA for years on several of its animal welfare position statements. Most recently, the AVMA revoked the AVAR’s booth at the annual convention because the organization signed onto a full-page advertisement in The New York Times which criticized the AVMA for refusing to take a stand against forced molting as well as the use of small crates for calves and pregnant sows. AVAR has exhibited at the AVMA convention for years and had already paid for a booth at this year’s convention when the exhibit space was revoked.
More than 250 million hens are used in egg production in the U.S. each year. In addition to being intensively confined for approximately two years, the majority of hens used in egg production are also subject to being force molted, a practice which involves withholding food for one to two weeks.
Many fast-food chains have now refused to accept eggs from force molted hens. Furthermore, the egg industry has found a way to force molt which does not include either food or water withdrawal and now recommends against food withdrawal. The public finds the practice archaic and cruel.
American Veterinary Medical Association Finally Agrees Starving Chickens Is Wrong
New Position Statement Opposing Food and Water Withdrawal Follows
Six-Year Petition by Animal Rights Group
Animal rights advocates are applauding the American Veterinary Medical Association’s (AVMA) decision to take a stand against the forced starvation of laying chickens. The practice, a type of forced molting used by commercial egg producers, increases egg production in chickens but also causes severe physical and psychological damage to the laying hens.
The AVMA’s House of Delegates addressed the issue at the organization’s annual convention, which draws to a close today in Philadelphia. During the convention, the House of Delegates voted to approve a resolution on induced molting of laying hens which states, “Neither water or food should be withdrawn” from the laying hens. The resolution also includes the sentence, “The welfare of birds should be a major consideration in this and any management practice.”
The vote came in response to a petition submitted by members of the Association of Veterinarian for Animal Rights (AVAR). For six years in a row, AVAR has petitioned the AVMA to adopt a position statement opposing food and water withdrawal of laying hens. The AVMA House of Delegates did not adopt the resolution incorporating the AVAR petition. Rather, the group chose to adopt a similar resolution submitted at the last minute by the American Association of Avian Pathologists.
“We are satisfied with this long-awaited step by the AVMA,” said AVAR Vice President Dr. Holly Cheever, who presented AVAR’s resolution to the AVMA Reference Committee, prior to the House of Delegates vote. “The most important point is that the resolution that was adopted takes an official stance against food and water withdrawal. That is the single most important point that AVAR has been trying to make for many years.”
AVAR has been at odds with the AVMA for years on several of its animal welfare position statements. Most recently, the AVMA revoked the AVAR’s booth at the annual convention because the organization signed onto a full-page advertisement in The New York Times which criticized the AVMA for refusing to take a stand against forced molting as well as the use of small crates for calves and pregnant sows. AVAR has exhibited at the AVMA convention for years and had already paid for a booth at this year’s convention when the exhibit space was revoked.
More than 250 million hens are used in egg production in the U.S. each year. In addition to being intensively confined for approximately two years, the majority of hens used in egg production are also subject to being force molted, a practice which involves withholding food for one to two weeks.
Many fast-food chains have now refused to accept eggs from force molted hens. Furthermore, the egg industry has found a way to force molt which does not include either food or water withdrawal and now recommends against food withdrawal. The public finds the practice archaic and cruel.
- guest
AVMA Guidelines condone and promote unproven health care
by malernee » Sat Dec 04, 2004 6:30 pm
Letter to the AVMA
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
John I. Freeman, DVM
President, American Veterinary Medical Association
Pocomoke Rd.
Franklinton, NC 27525
Dr. Freeman,
A growing number of veterinarians have registered concern over the recently adopted "AVMA Guidelines for Alternative and Complementary Veterinary Medicine." In October of 1997 the National Council Against Health Fraud established a special task force to deal with the issues of pseudoscience, critical thinking, and health fraud in veterinary medicine. The mission of the NCAHF Task Force on Veterinary Pseudoscience is to promote animal health and welfare, to protect consumers from fraudulent, unsafe, and unproven veterinary practices, to promote science-based medicine and the critical examination of medical claims and to provide sound information and leadership to veterinary practitioners and their clients.
We believe the honest and rigorous scientific examination of new and unconventional ideas, claims and therapies is absolutely essential to the sound future of medical practice. Therefore, we support such rigorous investigation. Furthermore, when the preponderance of evidence from properly designed and implemented studies supports the efficacy and safety of a particular "alternative" therapy, said therapy should be embraced by the veterinary profession. Likewise, if it fails to meet this standard, it should be repudiated by the profession.
In keeping with these principles, we hereby request that we be allowed to take an active part in any future consideration by the AVMA of their 1996 "Guidelines for Alternative and Complementary Veterinary Medicine."
We object to the current "Guidelines" on several grounds including the following:
1. They contain inaccurate and misleading statements (several of which are cited below.)
2. The "Guidelines," in fact, condone and promote the general employment of unproven and scientifically untenable therapies without prior, rigorous scientific validation. Therefore, they are not in the best interest of either the consuming public or the veterinary profession. As consumer advocates, we believe they constitute a "breach of contract" by the AVMA with the public interest.
3. While the "Guidelines" emphasize our responsibility as practitioners to employ "alternative" therapies only on the basis of "a valid veterinarian/client/patient relationship," only after obtaining "education in their proper use," no mention whatever is made of our responsibility to base any therapy we employ on the best available science. In fact, the word "science" appears exactly nowhere in the "Guidelines." We believe this is a telling omission.
4. The "Guidelines" state: "Veterinary acupuncture and acutherapy are now considered an integral part of veterinary medicine." They are? "Considered integral" by whom?… by advocates of acupuncture therapy?… by veterinary acupuncturists? How did the "Guidelines" committee or the Board determine that acupuncture is "considered an integral part of veterinary medicine"? We don't believe "rank and file" veterinarians have ever taken a vote on this issue. If the committee means that acupuncture is "considered integral" in the same sense that, in a pre-scientific age, "bleeding," purgatives, and mercurial "therapy" were "considered integral parts" of human medicine merely because they were widely employed, we would have to agree. On the other hand, if they mean that science-based veterinary medicine has embraced acupuncture on the basis of scientific support for its efficacy, we strongly disagree. We object to the notion that, merely because unproven and scientifically untenable therapies have become "popular" among some practitioners, they have "become an integral part of veterinary medicine." The most rigorous scientific data available, based on properly designed and controlled studies, suggest that alleged acupuncture efficacy is due almost entirely to a very potent placebo effect.*
5. The "Guidelines" state: "… sufficient research exists documenting efficacy of chiropractic in humans…" This statement is simply wrong. The best available science strongly indicates that chiropractic "subluxations" are imaginary and that the alleged benefits from chiropractic manipulation are due to the placebo effect.*
6. In several places, the "Guidelines" recommend that "further research be conducted… to evaluate efficacy." We feel it's inappropriate, irresponsible, and against the public interest for the AVMA to condone the general employment of any therapy until and unless its efficacy has been clearly and unequivocally established by means of rigorous, objective science. Most of the modalities cited in the "Guidelines" have, to date, clearly failed to met this criterion.
7. The "Guidelines" state that, in homeopathy, patients are treated "by the administration of substances that are capable of producing clinical signs in healthy animals… These substances are used therapeutically in minute doses." This is not entirely true. According to homeopaths, by virtue of the alleged "Law of Infinitesimals," "medications" which contain not a single molecule of "solute" (i.e. the "substance on the label") constitute the most potent (or highly "potentized") homeopathic "medications." Therefore, the patient is literally being treated by the absence of the ingredient on the label. Homeopathy is clearly a pseudoscientific medical cult based on the "revelations" of 18th Century physician and eccentric Samuel Hahnemann. Its tenets are steeped in mysticism and have no basis in bona fide science. The most rigorous scientific trials have failed to demonstrate any "homeopathic effect" beyond placebo.*
8. In view of these and other points, contrary to condoning unproven and scientifically questionable therapies and practices, we feel the AVMA has a moral and ethical responsibility to take a pro-active stand against their employment outside of formal scientific research programs.
9. We suspect that, in part, the guidelines were adopted to provide some legal protection to practitioners who employ "alternative" and otherwise unproven therapies. We believe this effort is ill-advised, counter-productive, and will ultimately fail. Including unproven and unscientific therapies under the "standard of practice" umbrella, merely serves to lower that standard and make the AVMA, itself, vulnerable to liability. Furthermore, it seems unlikely to provide much protection to practitioners guilty of employing unproven and unscientific therapies, and could be construed as making the AVMA a party to such behavior. The public has a right to expect and to demand that veterinary practice be based on the highest quality science available, and the veterinary profession has a moral and ethical obligation to provide such science-based medicine. We feel the AVMA can best serve and protect both the public, and the veterinary profession by issuing the simple, firm caveat "avoid unproven and unscientific therapies."
10. We believe that rigorous science, rather than popularity, metaphysical appeal, or social/fiscal considerations should be the final arbiter of what is and is not deemed acceptable therapy and/or practice by the AVMA.
11. By "exempting" veterinary practitioners from any requirement for scientific rigor, the AVMA has in effect "exempted" itself from serious consideration by the scientific community. They have, thereby, diminished the scientific standing of the entire profession. Science and the scientific community have little regard for "what is popular" or "what is metaphysically pleasing." A professional organization cannot acquiesce to bad science, pseudoscience, or anti-science, and expect not to be "tarred by the same brush" when the scientific community repudiates the nonsense - as it must inevitably do. We feel the "Guidelines" constitute an effort by the Association to "promote 'inclusiveness' among all practitioners - science-based and otherwise" while at the same time maintaining "scientific respectability." The reality is, you can't have it both ways. We are convinced the AVMA has promoted this "inclusiveness" at the expense of "scientific respectability." As advocates of rigorous Veterinary Science, we find this situation unacceptable.
12. We suspect the Committee on Alternative and Complementary Therapies was unduly swayed by questionable and unreliable information provided by "advocates" of said therapies rather than by objective, scientific investigators of "alternative" therapeutic claims. This is not difficult to understand since the great bulk of existent "alt med" literature has been produced by practitioners and advocates of such therapies. (It seems unlikely that, under any circumstances, a practitioner already employing -- and therefore committed to -- such practices without "prior scientific proof of efficacy" would be inclined to advise the committee that they are a "bad idea.")
A small but growing body of rigorous, critical, and genuinely scientific literature is available on the subject of "alternative" and "complementary" medicine. We hope, in the future, we can help any committee charged with reviewing "alternative" and/or "complementary" therapies by availing them of not only critical literature and the best scientific evidence available, but also expert opinion from "non-advocate" scientists and veterinarians.
The original Committee on Alternative and Complementary Therapies recommended that the Guidelines be reviewed within three years (before mid-June of 1999). We agree whole-heartedly, and look forward to taking part in the review process. We hope that one or more Task Force members might be named to sit on any committee designated to that end. If such a review process has not yet been initiated, we urge you and the Executive Board to address the situation in the near future.
We look forward to your response.
Sincerely,
Robert Imrie, DVM
coordinator
NCAHF Task Force on Veterinary Pseudoscience
David W. Ramey, DVM
equine advisor
NCAHF Task Force on Veterinary Pseudoscience
*references available on request
cc: Harmon A Rogers (Dist. XI Delegate)
Stanley Held (Chairman, Committee on Alt. and Comp. Vet. Med)
J Clyde Johnson (Chairman, Judicial Council)
Robert W Fulton (Chairman, Council on Research)
Janver Krehbiel (Chairman, Committee on Veterinary Informatics)
Samuel E Strahm (Chairman, AVM Foundation Directors)
J Karl Wise (Director of Information Management)
Lyle P Vogel (Director, Scientific Activities Division)
Janis A Audin (Editor-In-Chief, JAVMA)
Craig A Smith (Assistant Editor, Publications Division, JAVMA)
William Jarvis, (Executive Director, National Council Against Health Fraud)
Stephen Barrett, (Co-Chair., Paranormal Health Claims Sub-Committee, CSICOP)
James Randi (Chairman, James Randi Educational Foundation)
Wallace Sampson (Editor, Scientific Review of Alternative Medicine)
Alan Moghissi (Chairman, American Council for Science and Health)
Michael Shermer, (Director, Skeptics Society)
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
John I. Freeman, DVM
President, American Veterinary Medical Association
Pocomoke Rd.
Franklinton, NC 27525
Dr. Freeman,
A growing number of veterinarians have registered concern over the recently adopted "AVMA Guidelines for Alternative and Complementary Veterinary Medicine." In October of 1997 the National Council Against Health Fraud established a special task force to deal with the issues of pseudoscience, critical thinking, and health fraud in veterinary medicine. The mission of the NCAHF Task Force on Veterinary Pseudoscience is to promote animal health and welfare, to protect consumers from fraudulent, unsafe, and unproven veterinary practices, to promote science-based medicine and the critical examination of medical claims and to provide sound information and leadership to veterinary practitioners and their clients.
We believe the honest and rigorous scientific examination of new and unconventional ideas, claims and therapies is absolutely essential to the sound future of medical practice. Therefore, we support such rigorous investigation. Furthermore, when the preponderance of evidence from properly designed and implemented studies supports the efficacy and safety of a particular "alternative" therapy, said therapy should be embraced by the veterinary profession. Likewise, if it fails to meet this standard, it should be repudiated by the profession.
In keeping with these principles, we hereby request that we be allowed to take an active part in any future consideration by the AVMA of their 1996 "Guidelines for Alternative and Complementary Veterinary Medicine."
We object to the current "Guidelines" on several grounds including the following:
1. They contain inaccurate and misleading statements (several of which are cited below.)
2. The "Guidelines," in fact, condone and promote the general employment of unproven and scientifically untenable therapies without prior, rigorous scientific validation. Therefore, they are not in the best interest of either the consuming public or the veterinary profession. As consumer advocates, we believe they constitute a "breach of contract" by the AVMA with the public interest.
3. While the "Guidelines" emphasize our responsibility as practitioners to employ "alternative" therapies only on the basis of "a valid veterinarian/client/patient relationship," only after obtaining "education in their proper use," no mention whatever is made of our responsibility to base any therapy we employ on the best available science. In fact, the word "science" appears exactly nowhere in the "Guidelines." We believe this is a telling omission.
4. The "Guidelines" state: "Veterinary acupuncture and acutherapy are now considered an integral part of veterinary medicine." They are? "Considered integral" by whom?… by advocates of acupuncture therapy?… by veterinary acupuncturists? How did the "Guidelines" committee or the Board determine that acupuncture is "considered an integral part of veterinary medicine"? We don't believe "rank and file" veterinarians have ever taken a vote on this issue. If the committee means that acupuncture is "considered integral" in the same sense that, in a pre-scientific age, "bleeding," purgatives, and mercurial "therapy" were "considered integral parts" of human medicine merely because they were widely employed, we would have to agree. On the other hand, if they mean that science-based veterinary medicine has embraced acupuncture on the basis of scientific support for its efficacy, we strongly disagree. We object to the notion that, merely because unproven and scientifically untenable therapies have become "popular" among some practitioners, they have "become an integral part of veterinary medicine." The most rigorous scientific data available, based on properly designed and controlled studies, suggest that alleged acupuncture efficacy is due almost entirely to a very potent placebo effect.*
5. The "Guidelines" state: "… sufficient research exists documenting efficacy of chiropractic in humans…" This statement is simply wrong. The best available science strongly indicates that chiropractic "subluxations" are imaginary and that the alleged benefits from chiropractic manipulation are due to the placebo effect.*
6. In several places, the "Guidelines" recommend that "further research be conducted… to evaluate efficacy." We feel it's inappropriate, irresponsible, and against the public interest for the AVMA to condone the general employment of any therapy until and unless its efficacy has been clearly and unequivocally established by means of rigorous, objective science. Most of the modalities cited in the "Guidelines" have, to date, clearly failed to met this criterion.
7. The "Guidelines" state that, in homeopathy, patients are treated "by the administration of substances that are capable of producing clinical signs in healthy animals… These substances are used therapeutically in minute doses." This is not entirely true. According to homeopaths, by virtue of the alleged "Law of Infinitesimals," "medications" which contain not a single molecule of "solute" (i.e. the "substance on the label") constitute the most potent (or highly "potentized") homeopathic "medications." Therefore, the patient is literally being treated by the absence of the ingredient on the label. Homeopathy is clearly a pseudoscientific medical cult based on the "revelations" of 18th Century physician and eccentric Samuel Hahnemann. Its tenets are steeped in mysticism and have no basis in bona fide science. The most rigorous scientific trials have failed to demonstrate any "homeopathic effect" beyond placebo.*
8. In view of these and other points, contrary to condoning unproven and scientifically questionable therapies and practices, we feel the AVMA has a moral and ethical responsibility to take a pro-active stand against their employment outside of formal scientific research programs.
9. We suspect that, in part, the guidelines were adopted to provide some legal protection to practitioners who employ "alternative" and otherwise unproven therapies. We believe this effort is ill-advised, counter-productive, and will ultimately fail. Including unproven and unscientific therapies under the "standard of practice" umbrella, merely serves to lower that standard and make the AVMA, itself, vulnerable to liability. Furthermore, it seems unlikely to provide much protection to practitioners guilty of employing unproven and unscientific therapies, and could be construed as making the AVMA a party to such behavior. The public has a right to expect and to demand that veterinary practice be based on the highest quality science available, and the veterinary profession has a moral and ethical obligation to provide such science-based medicine. We feel the AVMA can best serve and protect both the public, and the veterinary profession by issuing the simple, firm caveat "avoid unproven and unscientific therapies."
10. We believe that rigorous science, rather than popularity, metaphysical appeal, or social/fiscal considerations should be the final arbiter of what is and is not deemed acceptable therapy and/or practice by the AVMA.
11. By "exempting" veterinary practitioners from any requirement for scientific rigor, the AVMA has in effect "exempted" itself from serious consideration by the scientific community. They have, thereby, diminished the scientific standing of the entire profession. Science and the scientific community have little regard for "what is popular" or "what is metaphysically pleasing." A professional organization cannot acquiesce to bad science, pseudoscience, or anti-science, and expect not to be "tarred by the same brush" when the scientific community repudiates the nonsense - as it must inevitably do. We feel the "Guidelines" constitute an effort by the Association to "promote 'inclusiveness' among all practitioners - science-based and otherwise" while at the same time maintaining "scientific respectability." The reality is, you can't have it both ways. We are convinced the AVMA has promoted this "inclusiveness" at the expense of "scientific respectability." As advocates of rigorous Veterinary Science, we find this situation unacceptable.
12. We suspect the Committee on Alternative and Complementary Therapies was unduly swayed by questionable and unreliable information provided by "advocates" of said therapies rather than by objective, scientific investigators of "alternative" therapeutic claims. This is not difficult to understand since the great bulk of existent "alt med" literature has been produced by practitioners and advocates of such therapies. (It seems unlikely that, under any circumstances, a practitioner already employing -- and therefore committed to -- such practices without "prior scientific proof of efficacy" would be inclined to advise the committee that they are a "bad idea.")
A small but growing body of rigorous, critical, and genuinely scientific literature is available on the subject of "alternative" and "complementary" medicine. We hope, in the future, we can help any committee charged with reviewing "alternative" and/or "complementary" therapies by availing them of not only critical literature and the best scientific evidence available, but also expert opinion from "non-advocate" scientists and veterinarians.
The original Committee on Alternative and Complementary Therapies recommended that the Guidelines be reviewed within three years (before mid-June of 1999). We agree whole-heartedly, and look forward to taking part in the review process. We hope that one or more Task Force members might be named to sit on any committee designated to that end. If such a review process has not yet been initiated, we urge you and the Executive Board to address the situation in the near future.
We look forward to your response.
Sincerely,
Robert Imrie, DVM
coordinator
NCAHF Task Force on Veterinary Pseudoscience
David W. Ramey, DVM
equine advisor
NCAHF Task Force on Veterinary Pseudoscience
*references available on request
cc: Harmon A Rogers (Dist. XI Delegate)
Stanley Held (Chairman, Committee on Alt. and Comp. Vet. Med)
J Clyde Johnson (Chairman, Judicial Council)
Robert W Fulton (Chairman, Council on Research)
Janver Krehbiel (Chairman, Committee on Veterinary Informatics)
Samuel E Strahm (Chairman, AVM Foundation Directors)
J Karl Wise (Director of Information Management)
Lyle P Vogel (Director, Scientific Activities Division)
Janis A Audin (Editor-In-Chief, JAVMA)
Craig A Smith (Assistant Editor, Publications Division, JAVMA)
William Jarvis, (Executive Director, National Council Against Health Fraud)
Stephen Barrett, (Co-Chair., Paranormal Health Claims Sub-Committee, CSICOP)
James Randi (Chairman, James Randi Educational Foundation)
Wallace Sampson (Editor, Scientific Review of Alternative Medicine)
Alan Moghissi (Chairman, American Council for Science and Health)
Michael Shermer, (Director, Skeptics Society)
- malernee
- Site Admin
- Posts: 462
- Joined: Wed Aug 13, 2003 5:56 pm
chiropractic treatment at USA vet school
by malernee » Fri Dec 24, 2004 12:56 pm
Would you pay for your pet to
undergo chiropractic treatment? ...
http://www.clickondetroit.com/health/40 ... etail.html>>>>>
Well the vet schools in the USA are mostly subsidized by the tax payer not the client that brings in a pet so we all are paying for chiropractic treatment at the vet school.
I would like to see a movie of the vet school teachers trying to adjust a cat or a bird.
****
More Veterinarians Setting Spines For Pets
Chiropractic Treatment May Ease Pets' Pain
UPDATED: 1:27 PM EST December 23, 2004
MADISON, Wis. -- For millions of people with aches and pains, chiropractic care is the answer. Now there's similar help for your pet, big or small.
At the University of Wisconsin School of Veterinary Medicine, Dr. Dawn Mogilevsky uses chiropractic care to adjust the spines of horses, cats and dogs, reported WISC-TV in Madison.
Video: Animal Chiropractor
It's really very gentle," Mogilevsky said. "It feels good to the dogs; they enjoy it."
It's all about removing restrictions in the joints that can lead to pain.
"I focus on joints of the body that are not moving properly," Mogilevsky said. "I work with the joints in the spine and extremities. If joint alignment is altered in any way, it affects the body, and that in turn alters motion and function."
If movement is restricted in one area, the rest of the body must compensate, which often leads to problems in other parts of the body. During a manipulation, the veterinarian feels the joints to determine if they're moving properly. If not, the joint is "adjusted" with a gentle, controlled thrust.
But the adjustment doesn't reverse long-term leg problems, Mogilevsky said.
Adjustments cost $55 a session.
undergo chiropractic treatment? ...
http://www.clickondetroit.com/health/40 ... etail.html>>>>>
Well the vet schools in the USA are mostly subsidized by the tax payer not the client that brings in a pet so we all are paying for chiropractic treatment at the vet school.
I would like to see a movie of the vet school teachers trying to adjust a cat or a bird.
****
More Veterinarians Setting Spines For Pets
Chiropractic Treatment May Ease Pets' Pain
UPDATED: 1:27 PM EST December 23, 2004
MADISON, Wis. -- For millions of people with aches and pains, chiropractic care is the answer. Now there's similar help for your pet, big or small.
At the University of Wisconsin School of Veterinary Medicine, Dr. Dawn Mogilevsky uses chiropractic care to adjust the spines of horses, cats and dogs, reported WISC-TV in Madison.
Video: Animal Chiropractor
It's really very gentle," Mogilevsky said. "It feels good to the dogs; they enjoy it."
It's all about removing restrictions in the joints that can lead to pain.
"I focus on joints of the body that are not moving properly," Mogilevsky said. "I work with the joints in the spine and extremities. If joint alignment is altered in any way, it affects the body, and that in turn alters motion and function."
If movement is restricted in one area, the rest of the body must compensate, which often leads to problems in other parts of the body. During a manipulation, the veterinarian feels the joints to determine if they're moving properly. If not, the joint is "adjusted" with a gentle, controlled thrust.
But the adjustment doesn't reverse long-term leg problems, Mogilevsky said.
Adjustments cost $55 a session.
- malernee
- Site Admin
- Posts: 462
- Joined: Wed Aug 13, 2003 5:56 pm
writing to join with you and other evidence-based veterinari
by guest » Wed Jan 11, 2006 7:56 pm
MVPA Supporting Signatures
Home | Sitemap | Search
_____________________
An open letter to the AVMA Practice Act Task Force
(On AVMA's proposed Model Veterinary Practice Act)
*NOTE: The AVMA Practice Act Task Force (PATF) is accepting comments postmarked no later than March 15, 2003. If you would like to add your name and endorsements to our Open Letter, please email Robert Imrie before March 10, 2003, at which time, we will forward our signatures to the AVMA Practice Act Task Force
Supporting Signatures:
Just as there is no such thing and can be no such thing as "alternative medicine," there cannot be any such thing as "alternative veterinary medicine." The only concern is and ought to be whether a method is effective and safe as substantiated by competent and reliable scientific means. Medical and veterinary medical licensure mean nothing without such a standard.
Timothy N. Gorski, MD FACOG
Arlington, TX
Assistant Clinical Professor, University of North Texas Health Science Center
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Please add my name to your letter. In no uncertain terms, I oppose the inclusion of “complementary, alternative, and integrative therapies” as a part of the practice of veterinary medicine. The advocacy of chiropractic, homeopathy, acupuncture, and other “therapeutic remedies” has not (yet) been supported by the scientific approach. Although these modalities might be helpful in the human field – if only through the effect of psychosomatic phenomena - these techniques offer only false “hope” to our animal-owning clients. Our profession should stand against the provision of (sale of) false hope to the public by veterinarians who are either ignorant of the issue or who prefer to profit from the innocence of the client. The veterinary medical profession must distinguish itself by advocating and presenting scientific-evidence based methods and approaches. As veterinary practitioners, we have an absolute moral and ethical obligation to provide more than “hope” to our clients! If we offer only hope, we cannot represent ourselves as medical professionals and we will (and should) lose the right to be a scientifically-based profession. Remember that anyone can sell “complementary, alternative, and integrative therapies” (DVM license is not required); by embracing (for profit) these practices, we are not distinguishing ourselves in the eye of the lay public! The progressive and insidious acceptance of “complementary, alternative, and integrative therapies” by too many members of our profession has not (hitherto) been rigorously opposed by the silent majority who practice the science of evidence-based veterinary medicine. The time for our profession – through the offices of the American Veterinary Medical Association (our representative body) – to stand against acceptance of broad-spectrum assault by the advocates of quackery is NOW! Alternatively, the AVMA should be referred to as something other than a MEDICAL association.
Philip J. Johnson BVSc(Hons), MS, DVM, Diplomate ACVIM, MRCVS
Professor of Veterinary Medicine and Surgery
College of Veterinary Medicine
University of Missouri
Columbia, Missouri
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I agree with the Task Force for Veterinary Science letter. The AVMA Practice Act should help protect animals and their owners instead of those who wish to practice "alternative" therapies.
Beth Zimmerman
Veterinary Consumer Advocate
Archbold, OH
USA
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Please add my signature to "An open letter to the AVMA Practice Act Task Force."
William M. London, EdD, MPH
Faculty Mentor
Master of Science in Public Health Program
Walden University www.waldenu.edu
Pacific Palisades, CA.
Walden University is based in Minneapolis, MN.
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I wholeheartedly support your letter to the AVMA concerning the Model Veterinary Practice Act. Treatment modalities and agents with no objective evidence of efficacy should not be elevated in public opinion and legitimized by protection under a license to practice veterinary medicine. You may add my name to your letter.
Marie E. Kerl DVM, DACVIM, DACVECC
Clinical Assistant Professor
Department of Veterinary Medicine and Surgery
379 East Campus Drive
Columbia, MO 65251
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I am very disappointed to see any inclusion of alternative therapies in any AVMA document or sanctioned continuing education. I am particularly displeased to see the mention of these diagnostic and therapeutic theories that have not withstood critical review and research in the "Model Practice Act". This movement away from the scientific method and logic will speed the veterinary profession to a position of irrelevance and marginalization in the scientific community. We will see a tremendous increase in our understanding of biology in the coming years only if we continue to expose new and creative theories to trials that are designed to expose flaws in those theories. If we rely on retrospective analysis of uncontrolled clinical experience or extension of current concepts of biologic mechanisms to unproven concepts, we will abandon a systematic and progressive movement toward greater knowledge and understanding that can benefit our patients, our clients, and our profession.
Bob L. Larson, DVM, PhD, ACT
W234 Veterinary Medicine Building
University of Missouri
Columbia, Missouri 65211
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I am writing to join with you and other evidence-based veterinarians who believe that treatment modalities with no objective evidence of efficacy and/or safety should be not be protected, and essentially legitimized in the eyes of the public, through inclusion in the proposed AVMA Model Veterinary Practice Act. It is even more disturbing that the AVMA has chosen to bring attention to these unproven therapeutic modalities by assigning a definition to them, while completely failing to mention therapeutic modalities that have been proven to be effective through rigorous scientific investigation. I fully support the right of every licensed veterinarian to choose a therapeutic modality based on their assessment of their patient and that they have determined is effective and safe, but I strongly object to a Model Practice Act that seems to favor use of certain therapeutic modalities that are yet to be proven effective or safe.
Nat T. Messer IV, DVM
Associate Professor, Equine Medicine and Surgery
University of Missouri, College of Veterinary Medicine
Diplomate, ABVP, Certified in Equine Practice
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I wholeheartedly support your letter to the AVMA concerning the Model Veterinary Practice Act. Treatment modalities and agents with no objective evidence of efficacy should not be elevated in public opinion and legitimized by protection under a license to practice veterinary medicine. You may add my name to your letter, if you wish.
Thank you for your continued efforts to promote evidence-based veterinary care.
C.B. Chastain, DVM
Associate Dean for Academic Affairs
W-203 Veterinary Medicine
University of Missouri
Columbia, MO 65211
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I will very happy to add my signature to the open letter as it stands. What is the motivation of the AVMA - are they really trying to justify a "closed shop" for complementary treatments for the financial benefit of some practitioners?
Robin Gleed
Associate Professor of Anesthesiology
Cornell University, College of Veterinary Medicine,
Ithaca, New York
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Please add my name to your letter as well. From my perspective there is no need to even be discussing this issue. When a treatment modality has been shown to be of benefit in the treatment of disease, it becomes a part of the practice of veterinary medicine. To specifically label something like homeopathy as constituting the practice of medicine in any species lends it a credibility it does not deserve.
Dennis O'Brien DVM PhD
University of Missouri
College of Veterinary Medicine
Columbia, MO
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Please feel free to add my name to your letter.
Jeff Tyler, DVM, PhD
Diplomate, ACVIM, Large Animal Internal Medicine
Food Animal Section Head and Instructional Leader
CVM, University of Missouri
Columbia, MO
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William Moyer, DVM
Head, Department of Large Animal Medicine and Surgery
Texas A&M University
College Station, Texas
Member, 1999 AVMA CAVM Guidelines Committee
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Please add my name to the letter.
Jeff Lakritz DVM, PhD
AVMA Member
Room A341 Clydesdale Hall
379 East Campus Drive
Columbia, MO. 65211
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I totally agree with your letter; ineffective alternative treatments that have no proven efficacy do not belong in standard practice and do not deserve to be labled a "model practice" in veterinary medicine. The proposed MVPA seems loosely written and needs to be more clearly defined for professionals and the public alike. To the AVMA, please don't mislead them by including such a wide variety of ineffective, questionable, unproven alternative modalities and devices and then by definition, calling these practices "veterinary medicine".
Traci Z.
Veterinary Technician
Billings, MT
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Please add my name to your letter to the AVMA regarding so-called alternative methods in veterinary medicine. I have taught the longest running medical school course in North America on the subject of unproved and implausible methods. The course presents the principles of science, rationality, honesty, and ethics that are rejected by advocates of unproved and implausible methods.
The letter summarizes well the challenges faced by the professions in discharging their public trusts and the necessity for rational people to insist on a standard of knowledge and action that is supported by fact.
Wally Sampson, MD, FACP
Editor in chief, The Scientific Review of Alternative Medicine
Clinical Professor of Medicine, emeritus
Stanford University School of Medicine
Formerly Acting Chief
Division of Oncology
Santa Clara Valley Medical Center
Palo Alto, California
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I am in complete agreement with your excellent letter to the AVMA Practice Act Task Force, and fully support your proposals.
Sue Cone and the Katmai Chesapeakes
New Jersey
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I fear the AVMA is making a terrible mistake by including unproven modalities under the definition of "veterinary medicine". As a consumer, I want to be able to rely on my veterinarian's own professional organization to provide guidelines for model practice--and if "model" practice incorporates CAM, then there is no assurance that that the organization has the best interest of my animals' welfare in mind.
You see, I don't want my veterinarian's organization to embrace "alternatives" to scientific, proven therapy in treatment of my animals.
Claire Powell
Hilton Head Island, South Carolina
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Please include my signature on your letter to the Practice Act Task Force.
Eric L. Reinertson DVM
Iowa State University, School of Veterinary Medicine
Ames, Iowa
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I would like to sign on to the open letter to AVMA.
Steven M. Torrence D.V.M
Animal House Veterinary Clinic
Fairbanks, Alaska
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Count me in.
Robert S. Baratz, MD, PhD
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Please add my name to the list of those who endorse this effort.
Saul Green, PhD
Science Editor: Scientific Review of Alternative Medicine
Professor of Biochemistry (emeritus)
Memorial Sloan Kettering Hospital
New York, New York
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I am not a veterinarian but simply an Emeritus Professor of Psychology. For more than 30 years I taught basic courses in statistics, research design and critical thinking at the State University of New York in Oswego, New York (and also as Gastprofessor at two universities in Germany). I have also published several articles critical of various alternative medical therapies.
I am deeply disturbed by the fact that the AMVA would want to include in their section on professional practices the use of various unproven alternative/complementary medical techniques. To me, any profession which serves the health of man or animals would want to deal only with proven and effective techniques. Far too may alternative techniques have either been disproven or have failed to provide evidence of their efficacy.
I would certainly support your efforts on behalf of science and evidence-based medicine as the only proper course of professional treatment.
Mahlon Wagner, Ph. D.
Professor Emeritus of Psychology (SUNY at Oswego)
Liverpool, NY
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After reading the letter to the AVMA regarding the model practice act and CAM, please add my name and comments to the list. Thanks.
Acknowledging various complementary and alternative veterinary medicines (CAVMs) in a practice act would seem to give them legitimacy, in my opinion. Do we really want all animal homeopaths, chiropractors, acupuncturists, etc. to be licensed veterinarians? This strikes me as a step backwards.
Ralph E. Werner, V.M.D. DABVP Emeritus
Assistant Professor of Biology
Richard Stockton College of New Jersey
Pomona, New Jersey
Member of the 1999 AVMA Task Force on CAVM
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As a pathologist of long experience, I have seen too many horses lost because of "nontraditional" therapy. We cannot be certain of everything but must do better than guesswork and anecedotal belief.
James R. Rooney
204 Sportsman Neck Road
Queenstown, MD
Veterinary pathologist, ACVP; retired
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I add my signature to the position stated by the Task Force regarding alternative therapies as scientific veterinary medicine. There is not too much to add to the letters sent by other colleagues, only that it is not ethical to speculate with the desperation of a horse owner when he/she has not a problem solved and is prone to accept any way to get results. It is not honest to apply those non-scientific therapies, because the only results the owner will get will be less money in his/her pocket and the colleague will get discredit for his/her profession, veterinary medicine, and his/her own name.
Carlos Espinosa Buschiazzo, DVM
Vice-presidente de la Asociacion Argentina de Veterinaria Equina
Coordinador de la lista de la AAVE
Martinez, Argentina
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I support the content and idea of your open letter. Please add my name.
Linda Rosa, RN
Colorado coordinator, NCAHF
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I support the content of your open letter.
Larry Sarner
Citizens for Science in Medicine
Loveland, Colorado
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I agree.
Ruth V. Sobeck, DVM
Palos Verde, California
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Please add my name to the list of signatory parties to your open letter to the AVMA Practice Task Force. I agree that it is absurdly restrictive to limit to licensed veterinarians the practice of acupuncture, chiropractic, herbal, and other alternative modalities to scientific veterinary medicine.
Mark Zimmerman, DVM
Crosstown Animal Hospital
Stockton, California
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My name is Valerie Pollard and I have been working with dogs professionally as a trainer and behavior counselor since 1979. The majority of my business is through veterinary referrals and I believe it is in the best interest of the clients and their pets that there is communication between these two venues: their veterinarian and other professionals in the community who will work with their pet. Professional dog training has grown and changed radically in the last several years. There are now three major associations which are working on providing professional certification, endorsements and legal identity.
The proposed AVMA guidelines have recently come to our attention. It appears that as written, if passed, these guidelines will make treatment of a dog's "mental" condition something that an owner can only consult with a veterinarian about. For practical reasons, veterinarians can not attend to the training/behavior issues that may also involve a dog's mental condition on a daily basis. Veterinary behaviorists are also not available on an ongoing basis. It is important that clients have other professionals to work with who can provide these services. I am writing to state this as my opinion and hope that these guidelines can be modified to be more realistic and appropriate for the dog-owning public.
Valerie Pollard
Valerie Pollard Dog Training
Orange, California
Professional Member: Association of Pet Dog Trainers
Endorsed By: National Association of Dog Obedience Instructors
Member: Animal Behavior Society
Member: California Handlers Advanced Obedience Society
Member: Schutzhund U.S.A.
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How can we logically, for legal and ethical purposes, distinguish between the application of spurious treatments applied by a licensed veterinarian and the same treatments applied by laity? The AVMA Model Veterinary Practice Act should recognize the existence of "alternative therapies " as being outside of the practice of veterinary medicine and wish those who desire to employ alternative methods the best of good fortune in the verification of mechanisms and efficacy in further defining the use and value of these methods.
V.E.O. Valli DVM PhD Dipl. ACVP (anatomic and clinical pathology)
Dean Emeritus, University of Illinois School of Veterinary Medicine
Member of the 1999 AVMA Task Force on CAVM
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In the attempt to "regulate" questionable and anti-scientific/pseudo-scientific practices, one ends up legitimizing them. Their purveyors will quickly begin to cite the fact that such practices fall under the Act as evidence that the practices are legitimate. It will encourage fringe vets to use such techniques, but it will not effectively stop non-vets from using them outside the Act. Thus, there is nothing to gain from including such practices, and much to lose.
Professor James Alcock, PhD, C.Psych.
Department of Psychology
Glendon College, York University
Toronto, Ontario
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I would very much like to add my signature to your open letter. I find it difficult enough to reconcile the mere existence of chiropractors and osteopaths in the twenty first century (and those are just the "professionals" in the group), I really don't think I could survive seeing them embraced by my own profession. What's next? A dozen free leeches with each case of Clavamox drops? Put me down for two dozen and throw in a couple of those healing crystals while you're at it.
Jim Walters DVM
Blue Cross Pet Hospital
North Hollywood, California
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I subscribe to your protest against the official introduction of non-proven medical acts into veterinary medicine. The acceptance of this will mean the end of any quality control and anything will go. All kinds of quacks will be immune to any kind of disciplinary action or correction.
Willem Betz, MD
Professor of Medicine
Head of Dept. of General Practice Teaching
University of Brussels VUB
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I wholeheartedly support this endeavor to keep the practice of veterinary medicine free of nonsense and quackery. An attempt to regulate such diverse ideas and practices as are found in the woo woo world of so-called "Alternative Medicine" (sCAM), is outside the bounds of any science-based profession, such as veterinary medicine. There is medicine, and that which pretends to be, but is not, medicine:
"There is no alternative medicine. There is only scientifically proven, evidence-based medicine supported by solid data or unproven medicine, for which scientific evidence is lacking. Whether a therapeutic practice is 'Eastern' or 'Western,' is unconventional or mainstream, or involves mind-body techniques or molecular genetics is largely irrelevant except for historical purposes and cultural interest. . . . As believers in science and evidence, we must focus on fundamental issues - namely, the patient, the target disease or condition, the proposed or practiced treatment, and the need for convincing data on safety and therapeutic efficacy." - Fontanarosa P.B., and Lundberg G.D. "Alternative medicine meets science" JAMA. 1998; 280: 1618-1619.
"There cannot be two kinds of medicine -- conventional and alternative. There is only medicine that has been adequately tested and medicine that has not, medicine that works and medicine that may or may not work. Once a treatment has been tested rigorously, it no longer matters whether it was considered alternative at the outset. If it is found to be reasonably safe and effective, it will be accepted. But assertions, speculation, and testimonials do not substitute for evidence." - Angell M, Kassirer JP, "Alternative medicine--the risks of untested and unregulated remedies." N Engl J Med 1998;339:839.
Keep your act clean, and you won't have to keep looking over your shoulder. It will save you a lot of grief, and protect the AVMA from justified accusations for being a party to nonsense. Only after a method has been conclusively proven to be effective should it be considered legitimate to use it in practice. Until then it should, at best, be considered experimental, and then only as part of carefully controlled experiments with non-paying and consenting subjects. Therefore this work should first be approved on human subjects, before moving on to non-consenting animals, with their easily mislead owners being the victims.
The present move, if not stopped, will only bring miscredit to the practice of veterinary medicine. I therefore support this effort to stop the proposed formulation in the proposed Model Veterinary Practice Act. It is a step in the wrong direction, and will only dumb down the profession. It will also set a dangerous precedent for other professions to do the same. The AVMA will never be forgiven for doing such a thing.
Please add my name to your letter.
Paul Lee, PT
Soro
Denmark
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Please add my name to your letter. I have taught a course on alternative medicine to medical students since 1992. I am concerned with increasing efforts to include methods which have not been shown to be safe and effective within the practice of medicine, or to be otherwise included in the healthcare system through licensure, insurance coverage, etc. Veterinarians should similarly be concerned with efforts to weaken the scientific integrity of their profession through inclusion of unproven and irrational therapies.
Thomas J. Wheeler, PhD
Associate Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology
University of Louisville School of Medicine
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Please add my signature to "An open letter to the AVMA Practice Act Task Force."
For many years I have been fascinated by the fact that so many colleagues - otherwise competent and intelligent - have been become adepts of alternative medicine. Scientific arguments remain unheard by the advocates of alternative veterinary medicine and the simplest principles of objectivity and common sense are not accepted. I have finally understood that, in essence, systems such as homeopathy, etc. are religions: knowing is replaced by believing. As we all know, there is no point arguing against religious beliefs. While repressing such beliefs would be clearly against our principles of freedom and democracy, we still have to ask the question: should we (or the AVMA) embrace them? We should not. Not because alternative medicine is not consistent with our scientific world of evidence-based medicine but simply because it poses a threat to animal health and welfare. I'm speaking from my own experience. Treatment of epileptic dogs with magic necklaces or intervertebral disk prolapse by powdering stone dust on a dog's back may perhaps be amusing and from the point of view of science based medicine certainly embarrassing. Unfortunately, when such animals die from status epilepticus or have to be killed because of irreversible spinal cord damage, amusement and scientific embarrassment are replaced by deep concern and sadness. Thus, alternative medicine is by no means harmless because it can actively deprive animals from appropriate medical treatment. Therefore, I could not understand that a powerful and influential professional organization such as the AVMA would provide legitimization for esoteric types of veterinary medicine which are known to potentially inflict damage to animals.
Marc Vandevelde, Dr. med.vet. Diplomate ECVN
Professor and Director
Department of clinical veterinary medicine
University of Bern
Bern Switzerland
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Please include my name on the open letter to the AVMA PATF. I would like to see the AVMA taking more of a leadership position by sticking to what is scientifically acceptable in modeling its proposed MVPA around what is known, and not trying to please everyone by including what is merely speculative.
Is the MVPA to include animal communicators and pet psychics? There is certainly as much available evidence to support these modalities, as there is to support homeopathy.
Edward L. Thompson, DVM
Conejo Valley Veterinary Hospital
Thousand Oaks, CA
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Veterinary medicine cannot be both scientific and non-scientific at the same time. Practitioners need to understand that while they may choose to treat animals with any method that they choose, not all methods are equal, and they may be responsible for their choices, accordingly.
James S. Corley, DVM
Lafayette, LA
Member, 1999 AVMA Committee on CAVM
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Please add my name to your letter to the AVMA Practice Act Task Force.
Robert Judd DVM, Dipl. ABVP(Equine)
Judd Veterinary Clinic
Hewitt, Texas
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I would like to add my comments to the AVMA. In my 30 years in this profession (including 21 years in solo practice), I have seen a gradual loss in the level of professionalism that had been attained through great efforts in the early days of the previous century. Today I see with alarm the wide acceptance, and more recently the teaching by universities, of any method or mode of generating income for the practitioner regardless of its necessity or advisability. It should be the goal of both the AVMA and our accredited schools to produce graduates with scientific judgment who can both treat a patient and protect that patient with sound judgment; indeed that is what I was taught it was to be a "professional." The AVMA should under no circumstances add to the creditability of the alternative therapists by acknowledging any association with education. This move is entirely focused on the reprehensible concept of monopoly of service and the maximization of fees. I call upon the AVMA to stand for proven therapies and against quackery in any of its ramifications.
James E. Benson, DVM, MS, PhD
Animal Disease Laboratory
Galesburg, Illinois
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I have been appalled at the lack of critical reasoning that has recently been displayed as too many veterinarians embrace empirically ungrounded New Age therapeutic modalities.
Bernard E. Rollin
University Distinguished Professor
Professor of Philosophy
Professor of Animal Sciences
Professor of Biomedical Sciences
Colorado State University
Fort Collins, Colorado
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I strongly support the Task Force’s open letter to the AVMA!
N. C. Nielsen, DVM
Professor Emeritus, The Royal Veterinary and Agricultural University Copenhagen
Director, The Kingdom of Denmark’s Horse Insurance Company
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I certainly do wish to sign the letter against AVMA proposals. When I first read the guidelines of the Model Veterinary Practice Act that AVMA is trying to introduce I felt somewhat as though we were back in the Middle Ages. I consider that the proposed AVMA Model Practice Act is against our rights as owners, breeders and even as simple civilians. Moreover, instead of aiming at truly scientific and altruistic principles it clearly hides behind the shield of "client protection" the real goals: marketing, commerce and luck of ethics. I´m definitively against this policy, and feel that we are undergoing difficult times that should lead us to a change for good that would quickly and effectively restore the lost principles that should rule our lives.
Claudia M. Rusconi
Chemist
Horse trainer
Dog and horse owner
member of the Eye study Group of the DCA
Buenos Aires, Argentina
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I wish to support your open letter regarding the AVMA standards of practice proposed legislation.
Linda L. Laun
Happy Tails Pet & Obedience School
Louisville, Kentucky
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I support the removal of all intent and specific language prohibiting other than licensed veterinary professionals to practice and communicate, by whatever means, those therapeutic modalities not yet proven scientifically safe. The absence of such language leaves a broad range of topics available to the general public, does not elevate them nor their advocates to the realm of the veterinary professional and thus legitimize and denigrate a scientifically based profession. I join with you and the evidence based veterinary professionals in your letter to the AVMA.
George K. Hobson, Ltc. (Ret.) USA
Eastwood Kennel
Columbia, Missouri
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Please add my name to your list.
Debbie Benson
Wyndam Hills Welsh Ponies and Cobs
Carlton, Oregon
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I wish to support your open letter regarding the AVMA standards of practice proposed legislation.
Lorri Elkington
Dry Creek Ranch
Milton Freewater, Oregon
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Please add my name to your response to Dr. Sabin of the AVMA. Also, the names of my office mates.
Ginger Walsten
Kirsten Henry
Judy Spoonhoward
Carol Lang
Janice Fron
Santa Fe, New Mexico
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I wholeheartedly support your letter to the AVMA.
Linda Eisenach
Willow Hill Ranch
Hollister, California
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The Board of Directors of the National Council against Health Fraud has voted, unanimously, to endorse the TFVS open letter to the AVMA MVPA Task Force. As an organization devoted to consumer protection and the advancement of science-based medicine, the NCAHF realizes that, insofar as it attempts to define unproven, disproved and/or irrational "alternatives" to science-based therapies as "the practice of veterinary medicine," the AVMA's proposed Model Veterinary Practice Act is detrimental to the interests of both consumers and the veterinary profession.
Robert Baratz, MD, DDS, PhD
President, NCAHF http://www.ncahf.org
Newton, Massachusetts
Vice President: Stephen Barrett, MD
Allentown, Pennsylvania
Secretary: Janice Lyons, RN
Arden, North Carolina
Treasurer: Daniel Oliver, DDS
Leucadia, California
Clara Lawhead, RD, Chair
New Port Richey, Florida
Paula Benedict, MPH, RD
La Mirada, California
Paul E. Brown, MD
Waconia, Minnesota
Ellen Coleman, MPH, RD
Riverside, California
Charles E. DuVall Jr, DC
Akron, Ohio
Tim Gorski, MD
Arlington, Texas
Saul Green, PhD
New York, New York
Robert Imrie, DVM
Seattle, Washington
William T. Jarvis, PhD
Loma Linda, California
James Kenney, PhD, RD
Miami, Florida
Melvin H. Kirschner, MD, MPH
Van Nuys, California
James Lowell, PhD
Tucson, Arizona
Loren Pankratz, PhD
Portland, Oregon
Linda Rosa, RN
Loveland, Colorado
Wallace I. Sampson, MD
Los Altos, CA
Russell Worrall, OD
Colfax, California
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I am in strong support of your letter to the AVMA regarding supplementary,complementary and alternative medicine (SCAM) in relation to the Model Veterinary Practice Act. Veterinary professional organizations, universities and veterinary journals should be the beacons leading veterinary practitioners to steer a safe (professional) course, rather than misleading the veterinary profession into the maelstrom of veterinary quackery. It is unbelievable how these organizations, through lack of a sufficient critical approach, have been instrumental in the infiltration of proponents of SCAM and pseudoscience in all branches of our profession.
Veterinary students should not be educated in treatment modalities which have no scientific basis. The often uncritical attitude to 'new' developments by veterinarians emphasizes the need for appropriate time spent on veterinary (and medical) history, the principles of experimental design, especially placebo controlled randomised clinical trials, and practical experience in the critical evaluation of scientific articles in the veterinary curricula.
J.T. Lumeij DVM,PhD, Diplomate ABVP-certified in Avian Practice
Diplomate ECAMS
Associate Professor in Avian and Exotic Animal Medicine
Department of Clinical Sciences of Companion Animals
Faculty of Veterinary Medicine
Utrecht University
The Netherlands
J.T.Lumeij@vet.uu.nl
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Interested parties wishing to add their signatures to our Open Letter to the AVMA Practice Act Task Force may do so by emailing us directly, or by using our contact form. Please include your full name, city, state and country. Submissions should be sent before March 10, 2003
Robert Imrie, DVM
Director, Task Force for Veterinary Science
David Ramey, DVM
Co-founder, Task Force for Veterinary Science
Back to our Open Letter to the AVMA Practice Act Task Force
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_____________________
An open letter to the AVMA Practice Act Task Force
(On AVMA's proposed Model Veterinary Practice Act)
*NOTE: The AVMA Practice Act Task Force (PATF) is accepting comments postmarked no later than March 15, 2003. If you would like to add your name and endorsements to our Open Letter, please email Robert Imrie before March 10, 2003, at which time, we will forward our signatures to the AVMA Practice Act Task Force
Supporting Signatures:
Just as there is no such thing and can be no such thing as "alternative medicine," there cannot be any such thing as "alternative veterinary medicine." The only concern is and ought to be whether a method is effective and safe as substantiated by competent and reliable scientific means. Medical and veterinary medical licensure mean nothing without such a standard.
Timothy N. Gorski, MD FACOG
Arlington, TX
Assistant Clinical Professor, University of North Texas Health Science Center
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Please add my name to your letter. In no uncertain terms, I oppose the inclusion of “complementary, alternative, and integrative therapies” as a part of the practice of veterinary medicine. The advocacy of chiropractic, homeopathy, acupuncture, and other “therapeutic remedies” has not (yet) been supported by the scientific approach. Although these modalities might be helpful in the human field – if only through the effect of psychosomatic phenomena - these techniques offer only false “hope” to our animal-owning clients. Our profession should stand against the provision of (sale of) false hope to the public by veterinarians who are either ignorant of the issue or who prefer to profit from the innocence of the client. The veterinary medical profession must distinguish itself by advocating and presenting scientific-evidence based methods and approaches. As veterinary practitioners, we have an absolute moral and ethical obligation to provide more than “hope” to our clients! If we offer only hope, we cannot represent ourselves as medical professionals and we will (and should) lose the right to be a scientifically-based profession. Remember that anyone can sell “complementary, alternative, and integrative therapies” (DVM license is not required); by embracing (for profit) these practices, we are not distinguishing ourselves in the eye of the lay public! The progressive and insidious acceptance of “complementary, alternative, and integrative therapies” by too many members of our profession has not (hitherto) been rigorously opposed by the silent majority who practice the science of evidence-based veterinary medicine. The time for our profession – through the offices of the American Veterinary Medical Association (our representative body) – to stand against acceptance of broad-spectrum assault by the advocates of quackery is NOW! Alternatively, the AVMA should be referred to as something other than a MEDICAL association.
Philip J. Johnson BVSc(Hons), MS, DVM, Diplomate ACVIM, MRCVS
Professor of Veterinary Medicine and Surgery
College of Veterinary Medicine
University of Missouri
Columbia, Missouri
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I agree with the Task Force for Veterinary Science letter. The AVMA Practice Act should help protect animals and their owners instead of those who wish to practice "alternative" therapies.
Beth Zimmerman
Veterinary Consumer Advocate
Archbold, OH
USA
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Please add my signature to "An open letter to the AVMA Practice Act Task Force."
William M. London, EdD, MPH
Faculty Mentor
Master of Science in Public Health Program
Walden University www.waldenu.edu
Pacific Palisades, CA.
Walden University is based in Minneapolis, MN.
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I wholeheartedly support your letter to the AVMA concerning the Model Veterinary Practice Act. Treatment modalities and agents with no objective evidence of efficacy should not be elevated in public opinion and legitimized by protection under a license to practice veterinary medicine. You may add my name to your letter.
Marie E. Kerl DVM, DACVIM, DACVECC
Clinical Assistant Professor
Department of Veterinary Medicine and Surgery
379 East Campus Drive
Columbia, MO 65251
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I am very disappointed to see any inclusion of alternative therapies in any AVMA document or sanctioned continuing education. I am particularly displeased to see the mention of these diagnostic and therapeutic theories that have not withstood critical review and research in the "Model Practice Act". This movement away from the scientific method and logic will speed the veterinary profession to a position of irrelevance and marginalization in the scientific community. We will see a tremendous increase in our understanding of biology in the coming years only if we continue to expose new and creative theories to trials that are designed to expose flaws in those theories. If we rely on retrospective analysis of uncontrolled clinical experience or extension of current concepts of biologic mechanisms to unproven concepts, we will abandon a systematic and progressive movement toward greater knowledge and understanding that can benefit our patients, our clients, and our profession.
Bob L. Larson, DVM, PhD, ACT
W234 Veterinary Medicine Building
University of Missouri
Columbia, Missouri 65211
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I am writing to join with you and other evidence-based veterinarians who believe that treatment modalities with no objective evidence of efficacy and/or safety should be not be protected, and essentially legitimized in the eyes of the public, through inclusion in the proposed AVMA Model Veterinary Practice Act. It is even more disturbing that the AVMA has chosen to bring attention to these unproven therapeutic modalities by assigning a definition to them, while completely failing to mention therapeutic modalities that have been proven to be effective through rigorous scientific investigation. I fully support the right of every licensed veterinarian to choose a therapeutic modality based on their assessment of their patient and that they have determined is effective and safe, but I strongly object to a Model Practice Act that seems to favor use of certain therapeutic modalities that are yet to be proven effective or safe.
Nat T. Messer IV, DVM
Associate Professor, Equine Medicine and Surgery
University of Missouri, College of Veterinary Medicine
Diplomate, ABVP, Certified in Equine Practice
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I wholeheartedly support your letter to the AVMA concerning the Model Veterinary Practice Act. Treatment modalities and agents with no objective evidence of efficacy should not be elevated in public opinion and legitimized by protection under a license to practice veterinary medicine. You may add my name to your letter, if you wish.
Thank you for your continued efforts to promote evidence-based veterinary care.
C.B. Chastain, DVM
Associate Dean for Academic Affairs
W-203 Veterinary Medicine
University of Missouri
Columbia, MO 65211
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I will very happy to add my signature to the open letter as it stands. What is the motivation of the AVMA - are they really trying to justify a "closed shop" for complementary treatments for the financial benefit of some practitioners?
Robin Gleed
Associate Professor of Anesthesiology
Cornell University, College of Veterinary Medicine,
Ithaca, New York
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Please add my name to your letter as well. From my perspective there is no need to even be discussing this issue. When a treatment modality has been shown to be of benefit in the treatment of disease, it becomes a part of the practice of veterinary medicine. To specifically label something like homeopathy as constituting the practice of medicine in any species lends it a credibility it does not deserve.
Dennis O'Brien DVM PhD
University of Missouri
College of Veterinary Medicine
Columbia, MO
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Please feel free to add my name to your letter.
Jeff Tyler, DVM, PhD
Diplomate, ACVIM, Large Animal Internal Medicine
Food Animal Section Head and Instructional Leader
CVM, University of Missouri
Columbia, MO
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William Moyer, DVM
Head, Department of Large Animal Medicine and Surgery
Texas A&M University
College Station, Texas
Member, 1999 AVMA CAVM Guidelines Committee
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Please add my name to the letter.
Jeff Lakritz DVM, PhD
AVMA Member
Room A341 Clydesdale Hall
379 East Campus Drive
Columbia, MO. 65211
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I totally agree with your letter; ineffective alternative treatments that have no proven efficacy do not belong in standard practice and do not deserve to be labled a "model practice" in veterinary medicine. The proposed MVPA seems loosely written and needs to be more clearly defined for professionals and the public alike. To the AVMA, please don't mislead them by including such a wide variety of ineffective, questionable, unproven alternative modalities and devices and then by definition, calling these practices "veterinary medicine".
Traci Z.
Veterinary Technician
Billings, MT
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Please add my name to your letter to the AVMA regarding so-called alternative methods in veterinary medicine. I have taught the longest running medical school course in North America on the subject of unproved and implausible methods. The course presents the principles of science, rationality, honesty, and ethics that are rejected by advocates of unproved and implausible methods.
The letter summarizes well the challenges faced by the professions in discharging their public trusts and the necessity for rational people to insist on a standard of knowledge and action that is supported by fact.
Wally Sampson, MD, FACP
Editor in chief, The Scientific Review of Alternative Medicine
Clinical Professor of Medicine, emeritus
Stanford University School of Medicine
Formerly Acting Chief
Division of Oncology
Santa Clara Valley Medical Center
Palo Alto, California
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I am in complete agreement with your excellent letter to the AVMA Practice Act Task Force, and fully support your proposals.
Sue Cone and the Katmai Chesapeakes
New Jersey
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I fear the AVMA is making a terrible mistake by including unproven modalities under the definition of "veterinary medicine". As a consumer, I want to be able to rely on my veterinarian's own professional organization to provide guidelines for model practice--and if "model" practice incorporates CAM, then there is no assurance that that the organization has the best interest of my animals' welfare in mind.
You see, I don't want my veterinarian's organization to embrace "alternatives" to scientific, proven therapy in treatment of my animals.
Claire Powell
Hilton Head Island, South Carolina
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Please include my signature on your letter to the Practice Act Task Force.
Eric L. Reinertson DVM
Iowa State University, School of Veterinary Medicine
Ames, Iowa
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I would like to sign on to the open letter to AVMA.
Steven M. Torrence D.V.M
Animal House Veterinary Clinic
Fairbanks, Alaska
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Count me in.
Robert S. Baratz, MD, PhD
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Please add my name to the list of those who endorse this effort.
Saul Green, PhD
Science Editor: Scientific Review of Alternative Medicine
Professor of Biochemistry (emeritus)
Memorial Sloan Kettering Hospital
New York, New York
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I am not a veterinarian but simply an Emeritus Professor of Psychology. For more than 30 years I taught basic courses in statistics, research design and critical thinking at the State University of New York in Oswego, New York (and also as Gastprofessor at two universities in Germany). I have also published several articles critical of various alternative medical therapies.
I am deeply disturbed by the fact that the AMVA would want to include in their section on professional practices the use of various unproven alternative/complementary medical techniques. To me, any profession which serves the health of man or animals would want to deal only with proven and effective techniques. Far too may alternative techniques have either been disproven or have failed to provide evidence of their efficacy.
I would certainly support your efforts on behalf of science and evidence-based medicine as the only proper course of professional treatment.
Mahlon Wagner, Ph. D.
Professor Emeritus of Psychology (SUNY at Oswego)
Liverpool, NY
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After reading the letter to the AVMA regarding the model practice act and CAM, please add my name and comments to the list. Thanks.
Acknowledging various complementary and alternative veterinary medicines (CAVMs) in a practice act would seem to give them legitimacy, in my opinion. Do we really want all animal homeopaths, chiropractors, acupuncturists, etc. to be licensed veterinarians? This strikes me as a step backwards.
Ralph E. Werner, V.M.D. DABVP Emeritus
Assistant Professor of Biology
Richard Stockton College of New Jersey
Pomona, New Jersey
Member of the 1999 AVMA Task Force on CAVM
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As a pathologist of long experience, I have seen too many horses lost because of "nontraditional" therapy. We cannot be certain of everything but must do better than guesswork and anecedotal belief.
James R. Rooney
204 Sportsman Neck Road
Queenstown, MD
Veterinary pathologist, ACVP; retired
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I add my signature to the position stated by the Task Force regarding alternative therapies as scientific veterinary medicine. There is not too much to add to the letters sent by other colleagues, only that it is not ethical to speculate with the desperation of a horse owner when he/she has not a problem solved and is prone to accept any way to get results. It is not honest to apply those non-scientific therapies, because the only results the owner will get will be less money in his/her pocket and the colleague will get discredit for his/her profession, veterinary medicine, and his/her own name.
Carlos Espinosa Buschiazzo, DVM
Vice-presidente de la Asociacion Argentina de Veterinaria Equina
Coordinador de la lista de la AAVE
Martinez, Argentina
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I support the content and idea of your open letter. Please add my name.
Linda Rosa, RN
Colorado coordinator, NCAHF
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I support the content of your open letter.
Larry Sarner
Citizens for Science in Medicine
Loveland, Colorado
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I agree.
Ruth V. Sobeck, DVM
Palos Verde, California
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Please add my name to the list of signatory parties to your open letter to the AVMA Practice Task Force. I agree that it is absurdly restrictive to limit to licensed veterinarians the practice of acupuncture, chiropractic, herbal, and other alternative modalities to scientific veterinary medicine.
Mark Zimmerman, DVM
Crosstown Animal Hospital
Stockton, California
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My name is Valerie Pollard and I have been working with dogs professionally as a trainer and behavior counselor since 1979. The majority of my business is through veterinary referrals and I believe it is in the best interest of the clients and their pets that there is communication between these two venues: their veterinarian and other professionals in the community who will work with their pet. Professional dog training has grown and changed radically in the last several years. There are now three major associations which are working on providing professional certification, endorsements and legal identity.
The proposed AVMA guidelines have recently come to our attention. It appears that as written, if passed, these guidelines will make treatment of a dog's "mental" condition something that an owner can only consult with a veterinarian about. For practical reasons, veterinarians can not attend to the training/behavior issues that may also involve a dog's mental condition on a daily basis. Veterinary behaviorists are also not available on an ongoing basis. It is important that clients have other professionals to work with who can provide these services. I am writing to state this as my opinion and hope that these guidelines can be modified to be more realistic and appropriate for the dog-owning public.
Valerie Pollard
Valerie Pollard Dog Training
Orange, California
Professional Member: Association of Pet Dog Trainers
Endorsed By: National Association of Dog Obedience Instructors
Member: Animal Behavior Society
Member: California Handlers Advanced Obedience Society
Member: Schutzhund U.S.A.
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How can we logically, for legal and ethical purposes, distinguish between the application of spurious treatments applied by a licensed veterinarian and the same treatments applied by laity? The AVMA Model Veterinary Practice Act should recognize the existence of "alternative therapies " as being outside of the practice of veterinary medicine and wish those who desire to employ alternative methods the best of good fortune in the verification of mechanisms and efficacy in further defining the use and value of these methods.
V.E.O. Valli DVM PhD Dipl. ACVP (anatomic and clinical pathology)
Dean Emeritus, University of Illinois School of Veterinary Medicine
Member of the 1999 AVMA Task Force on CAVM
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
In the attempt to "regulate" questionable and anti-scientific/pseudo-scientific practices, one ends up legitimizing them. Their purveyors will quickly begin to cite the fact that such practices fall under the Act as evidence that the practices are legitimate. It will encourage fringe vets to use such techniques, but it will not effectively stop non-vets from using them outside the Act. Thus, there is nothing to gain from including such practices, and much to lose.
Professor James Alcock, PhD, C.Psych.
Department of Psychology
Glendon College, York University
Toronto, Ontario
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I would very much like to add my signature to your open letter. I find it difficult enough to reconcile the mere existence of chiropractors and osteopaths in the twenty first century (and those are just the "professionals" in the group), I really don't think I could survive seeing them embraced by my own profession. What's next? A dozen free leeches with each case of Clavamox drops? Put me down for two dozen and throw in a couple of those healing crystals while you're at it.
Jim Walters DVM
Blue Cross Pet Hospital
North Hollywood, California
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I subscribe to your protest against the official introduction of non-proven medical acts into veterinary medicine. The acceptance of this will mean the end of any quality control and anything will go. All kinds of quacks will be immune to any kind of disciplinary action or correction.
Willem Betz, MD
Professor of Medicine
Head of Dept. of General Practice Teaching
University of Brussels VUB
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I wholeheartedly support this endeavor to keep the practice of veterinary medicine free of nonsense and quackery. An attempt to regulate such diverse ideas and practices as are found in the woo woo world of so-called "Alternative Medicine" (sCAM), is outside the bounds of any science-based profession, such as veterinary medicine. There is medicine, and that which pretends to be, but is not, medicine:
"There is no alternative medicine. There is only scientifically proven, evidence-based medicine supported by solid data or unproven medicine, for which scientific evidence is lacking. Whether a therapeutic practice is 'Eastern' or 'Western,' is unconventional or mainstream, or involves mind-body techniques or molecular genetics is largely irrelevant except for historical purposes and cultural interest. . . . As believers in science and evidence, we must focus on fundamental issues - namely, the patient, the target disease or condition, the proposed or practiced treatment, and the need for convincing data on safety and therapeutic efficacy." - Fontanarosa P.B., and Lundberg G.D. "Alternative medicine meets science" JAMA. 1998; 280: 1618-1619.
"There cannot be two kinds of medicine -- conventional and alternative. There is only medicine that has been adequately tested and medicine that has not, medicine that works and medicine that may or may not work. Once a treatment has been tested rigorously, it no longer matters whether it was considered alternative at the outset. If it is found to be reasonably safe and effective, it will be accepted. But assertions, speculation, and testimonials do not substitute for evidence." - Angell M, Kassirer JP, "Alternative medicine--the risks of untested and unregulated remedies." N Engl J Med 1998;339:839.
Keep your act clean, and you won't have to keep looking over your shoulder. It will save you a lot of grief, and protect the AVMA from justified accusations for being a party to nonsense. Only after a method has been conclusively proven to be effective should it be considered legitimate to use it in practice. Until then it should, at best, be considered experimental, and then only as part of carefully controlled experiments with non-paying and consenting subjects. Therefore this work should first be approved on human subjects, before moving on to non-consenting animals, with their easily mislead owners being the victims.
The present move, if not stopped, will only bring miscredit to the practice of veterinary medicine. I therefore support this effort to stop the proposed formulation in the proposed Model Veterinary Practice Act. It is a step in the wrong direction, and will only dumb down the profession. It will also set a dangerous precedent for other professions to do the same. The AVMA will never be forgiven for doing such a thing.
Please add my name to your letter.
Paul Lee, PT
Soro
Denmark
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Please add my name to your letter. I have taught a course on alternative medicine to medical students since 1992. I am concerned with increasing efforts to include methods which have not been shown to be safe and effective within the practice of medicine, or to be otherwise included in the healthcare system through licensure, insurance coverage, etc. Veterinarians should similarly be concerned with efforts to weaken the scientific integrity of their profession through inclusion of unproven and irrational therapies.
Thomas J. Wheeler, PhD
Associate Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology
University of Louisville School of Medicine
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Please add my signature to "An open letter to the AVMA Practice Act Task Force."
For many years I have been fascinated by the fact that so many colleagues - otherwise competent and intelligent - have been become adepts of alternative medicine. Scientific arguments remain unheard by the advocates of alternative veterinary medicine and the simplest principles of objectivity and common sense are not accepted. I have finally understood that, in essence, systems such as homeopathy, etc. are religions: knowing is replaced by believing. As we all know, there is no point arguing against religious beliefs. While repressing such beliefs would be clearly against our principles of freedom and democracy, we still have to ask the question: should we (or the AVMA) embrace them? We should not. Not because alternative medicine is not consistent with our scientific world of evidence-based medicine but simply because it poses a threat to animal health and welfare. I'm speaking from my own experience. Treatment of epileptic dogs with magic necklaces or intervertebral disk prolapse by powdering stone dust on a dog's back may perhaps be amusing and from the point of view of science based medicine certainly embarrassing. Unfortunately, when such animals die from status epilepticus or have to be killed because of irreversible spinal cord damage, amusement and scientific embarrassment are replaced by deep concern and sadness. Thus, alternative medicine is by no means harmless because it can actively deprive animals from appropriate medical treatment. Therefore, I could not understand that a powerful and influential professional organization such as the AVMA would provide legitimization for esoteric types of veterinary medicine which are known to potentially inflict damage to animals.
Marc Vandevelde, Dr. med.vet. Diplomate ECVN
Professor and Director
Department of clinical veterinary medicine
University of Bern
Bern Switzerland
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Please include my name on the open letter to the AVMA PATF. I would like to see the AVMA taking more of a leadership position by sticking to what is scientifically acceptable in modeling its proposed MVPA around what is known, and not trying to please everyone by including what is merely speculative.
Is the MVPA to include animal communicators and pet psychics? There is certainly as much available evidence to support these modalities, as there is to support homeopathy.
Edward L. Thompson, DVM
Conejo Valley Veterinary Hospital
Thousand Oaks, CA
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Veterinary medicine cannot be both scientific and non-scientific at the same time. Practitioners need to understand that while they may choose to treat animals with any method that they choose, not all methods are equal, and they may be responsible for their choices, accordingly.
James S. Corley, DVM
Lafayette, LA
Member, 1999 AVMA Committee on CAVM
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Please add my name to your letter to the AVMA Practice Act Task Force.
Robert Judd DVM, Dipl. ABVP(Equine)
Judd Veterinary Clinic
Hewitt, Texas
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I would like to add my comments to the AVMA. In my 30 years in this profession (including 21 years in solo practice), I have seen a gradual loss in the level of professionalism that had been attained through great efforts in the early days of the previous century. Today I see with alarm the wide acceptance, and more recently the teaching by universities, of any method or mode of generating income for the practitioner regardless of its necessity or advisability. It should be the goal of both the AVMA and our accredited schools to produce graduates with scientific judgment who can both treat a patient and protect that patient with sound judgment; indeed that is what I was taught it was to be a "professional." The AVMA should under no circumstances add to the creditability of the alternative therapists by acknowledging any association with education. This move is entirely focused on the reprehensible concept of monopoly of service and the maximization of fees. I call upon the AVMA to stand for proven therapies and against quackery in any of its ramifications.
James E. Benson, DVM, MS, PhD
Animal Disease Laboratory
Galesburg, Illinois
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I have been appalled at the lack of critical reasoning that has recently been displayed as too many veterinarians embrace empirically ungrounded New Age therapeutic modalities.
Bernard E. Rollin
University Distinguished Professor
Professor of Philosophy
Professor of Animal Sciences
Professor of Biomedical Sciences
Colorado State University
Fort Collins, Colorado
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I strongly support the Task Force’s open letter to the AVMA!
N. C. Nielsen, DVM
Professor Emeritus, The Royal Veterinary and Agricultural University Copenhagen
Director, The Kingdom of Denmark’s Horse Insurance Company
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I certainly do wish to sign the letter against AVMA proposals. When I first read the guidelines of the Model Veterinary Practice Act that AVMA is trying to introduce I felt somewhat as though we were back in the Middle Ages. I consider that the proposed AVMA Model Practice Act is against our rights as owners, breeders and even as simple civilians. Moreover, instead of aiming at truly scientific and altruistic principles it clearly hides behind the shield of "client protection" the real goals: marketing, commerce and luck of ethics. I´m definitively against this policy, and feel that we are undergoing difficult times that should lead us to a change for good that would quickly and effectively restore the lost principles that should rule our lives.
Claudia M. Rusconi
Chemist
Horse trainer
Dog and horse owner
member of the Eye study Group of the DCA
Buenos Aires, Argentina
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I wish to support your open letter regarding the AVMA standards of practice proposed legislation.
Linda L. Laun
Happy Tails Pet & Obedience School
Louisville, Kentucky
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I support the removal of all intent and specific language prohibiting other than licensed veterinary professionals to practice and communicate, by whatever means, those therapeutic modalities not yet proven scientifically safe. The absence of such language leaves a broad range of topics available to the general public, does not elevate them nor their advocates to the realm of the veterinary professional and thus legitimize and denigrate a scientifically based profession. I join with you and the evidence based veterinary professionals in your letter to the AVMA.
George K. Hobson, Ltc. (Ret.) USA
Eastwood Kennel
Columbia, Missouri
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Please add my name to your list.
Debbie Benson
Wyndam Hills Welsh Ponies and Cobs
Carlton, Oregon
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I wish to support your open letter regarding the AVMA standards of practice proposed legislation.
Lorri Elkington
Dry Creek Ranch
Milton Freewater, Oregon
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Please add my name to your response to Dr. Sabin of the AVMA. Also, the names of my office mates.
Ginger Walsten
Kirsten Henry
Judy Spoonhoward
Carol Lang
Janice Fron
Santa Fe, New Mexico
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I wholeheartedly support your letter to the AVMA.
Linda Eisenach
Willow Hill Ranch
Hollister, California
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The Board of Directors of the National Council against Health Fraud has voted, unanimously, to endorse the TFVS open letter to the AVMA MVPA Task Force. As an organization devoted to consumer protection and the advancement of science-based medicine, the NCAHF realizes that, insofar as it attempts to define unproven, disproved and/or irrational "alternatives" to science-based therapies as "the practice of veterinary medicine," the AVMA's proposed Model Veterinary Practice Act is detrimental to the interests of both consumers and the veterinary profession.
Robert Baratz, MD, DDS, PhD
President, NCAHF http://www.ncahf.org
Newton, Massachusetts
Vice President: Stephen Barrett, MD
Allentown, Pennsylvania
Secretary: Janice Lyons, RN
Arden, North Carolina
Treasurer: Daniel Oliver, DDS
Leucadia, California
Clara Lawhead, RD, Chair
New Port Richey, Florida
Paula Benedict, MPH, RD
La Mirada, California
Paul E. Brown, MD
Waconia, Minnesota
Ellen Coleman, MPH, RD
Riverside, California
Charles E. DuVall Jr, DC
Akron, Ohio
Tim Gorski, MD
Arlington, Texas
Saul Green, PhD
New York, New York
Robert Imrie, DVM
Seattle, Washington
William T. Jarvis, PhD
Loma Linda, California
James Kenney, PhD, RD
Miami, Florida
Melvin H. Kirschner, MD, MPH
Van Nuys, California
James Lowell, PhD
Tucson, Arizona
Loren Pankratz, PhD
Portland, Oregon
Linda Rosa, RN
Loveland, Colorado
Wallace I. Sampson, MD
Los Altos, CA
Russell Worrall, OD
Colfax, California
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I am in strong support of your letter to the AVMA regarding supplementary,complementary and alternative medicine (SCAM) in relation to the Model Veterinary Practice Act. Veterinary professional organizations, universities and veterinary journals should be the beacons leading veterinary practitioners to steer a safe (professional) course, rather than misleading the veterinary profession into the maelstrom of veterinary quackery. It is unbelievable how these organizations, through lack of a sufficient critical approach, have been instrumental in the infiltration of proponents of SCAM and pseudoscience in all branches of our profession.
Veterinary students should not be educated in treatment modalities which have no scientific basis. The often uncritical attitude to 'new' developments by veterinarians emphasizes the need for appropriate time spent on veterinary (and medical) history, the principles of experimental design, especially placebo controlled randomised clinical trials, and practical experience in the critical evaluation of scientific articles in the veterinary curricula.
J.T. Lumeij DVM,PhD, Diplomate ABVP-certified in Avian Practice
Diplomate ECAMS
Associate Professor in Avian and Exotic Animal Medicine
Department of Clinical Sciences of Companion Animals
Faculty of Veterinary Medicine
Utrecht University
The Netherlands
J.T.Lumeij@vet.uu.nl
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Interested parties wishing to add their signatures to our Open Letter to the AVMA Practice Act Task Force may do so by emailing us directly, or by using our contact form. Please include your full name, city, state and country. Submissions should be sent before March 10, 2003
Robert Imrie, DVM
Director, Task Force for Veterinary Science
David Ramey, DVM
Co-founder, Task Force for Veterinary Science
Back to our Open Letter to the AVMA Practice Act Task Force
© Copyright Task Force For Veterinary Science - All Rights Reserved
- guest
Has the American Veterinary Medical Association Threatened ?
by malernee » Sat Jan 16, 2010 9:58 am
Has the American Veterinary Medical Association Threatened Veterinarians?
By
Michael J. Blackwell, D.V.M., M.P.H.
Assistant Surgeon General, USPHS (Retired)
Immediate Past Dean, College of Veterinary Medicine, University of Tennessee
January 2010
Objective
This message is intended to stimulate discussion about authority over “therapeutic practices”
with animals. Should there be a different definition for companion animals versus farm animals?
Background
In an August 2009 report to Congress, the American Veterinary Medical Association (AVMA)
discussed “therapeutic” uses of antimicrobials in food animals. Their comments included the
following:
“Antibiotics labeled for feed efficiency or growth promotion often prevent or treat subclinical
disease, and therefore, the animal’s overall health is improved resulting in
increased growth ……
It is important to recognize that there are circumstances in both human and veterinary
medicine wherein therapeutic antimicrobial therapy must be initiated based on clinical
judgment and in the absence of a laboratory-confirmed microbial diagnosis. In addition,
clinical signs are often more apparent in an individual long before they are apparent in
the entire herd or flock…
Therapeutic uses include treatment, control, and prevention as defined by the Codex
Alimentarius, FDA, and the AVMA. Sometimes therapeutic antimicrobial therapy must
be initiated based on clinical judgment and in the absence of a laboratory-confirmed
(documented) microbial diagnosis.” [Underlining added for emphasis]
Also, AVMA gave the following response to a recommendation of direct veterinary oversight of
all antimicrobial uses in animals:
“The AVMA believes the Pew Commission’s recommendation to restrict producer
access to all FDA-approved products is an unnecessary reaction to over-the-counter
availability of antibiotic products. Not all antibiotics are the same, and thus, not
all antibiotics have the same impact on resistance…” [Underlining added for emphasis]
AVMA’s Report to Congress does not make clear the difference between producers and
veterinarians concerning therapeutic authority. I believe this may dangerously blur the legal
line that separates our profession from others.
Page 2 of 2 Has the American Veterinary Medical Association Threatened Veterinarians?
The Model Veterinary Practice Act states in Section 2:
19) “Practice of veterinary medicine” means:
a) To diagnose, treat, correct, change, alleviate, or prevent animal disease,
illness, pain, deformity, defect, injury, or other physical, dental, or mental
conditions by any method or mode; including:
i. the prescription, dispensing, administration, or application of any drug,
medicine, biologic, apparatus, anesthetic, or other therapeutic or
diagnostic substance or medical or surgical technique, or
ii. the use of complimentary, alternative, and integrative therapies, or
iii. the use of any manual or mechanical procedure for reproductive
management, or
iv. the rendering of advice or recommendation by any means including
telephonic and other electronic communications with regard to any of the
above.
b) To represent, directly or indirectly, publicly or privately, an ability and
willingness to do an act described in subsection 19(a). [Underlining added for
emphasis]
All State veterinary medical practice acts utilize the same or very similar language to define the
practice of veterinary medicine. Essentially, any therapeutic action directed at animals is the
practice of veterinary medicine.
The legal dilemma and threat posed to veterinarians
AVMA regards all on-farm uses of antimicrobials as therapeutic uses for treatment, prevention,
or control of disease. This includes producers who have direct access to seven important
categories of antimicrobials (i.e., penicillins, tetracyclines, macrolides, lincosamides,
streptogramins, aminoglycosides, and sulfonamides). Most of these producers may utilize
veterinary services, but they are not required by law to do so in order to acquire and use these
drugs. Consequently, veterinarians AND producers have therapeutic authority. This seems
inconsistent with the Model Veterinary Medical Practice Act.
Chiropractors, lay equine dentists, massage therapists, and others, continue to challenge the
definition of the practice of veterinary medicine. Their interests present few if any public health
or food safety concerns. In the future, it could be argued that since AVMA does not object to
producers engaging in antimicrobial therapy for food animals, veterinarians should not object to
physical therapy being performed on a dog by a non-veterinarian. This opens the door to a new
line of attack on our profession.
Please find the time to review this issue and discuss whether we need to make changes in the
definition of the practice of veterinary medicine. We should be clear and consistent.
I maintain that all uses of antimicrobials in animals should be with the oversight of a licensed
veterinarian. This is our “value added” as a profession.
By
Michael J. Blackwell, D.V.M., M.P.H.
Assistant Surgeon General, USPHS (Retired)
Immediate Past Dean, College of Veterinary Medicine, University of Tennessee
January 2010
Objective
This message is intended to stimulate discussion about authority over “therapeutic practices”
with animals. Should there be a different definition for companion animals versus farm animals?
Background
In an August 2009 report to Congress, the American Veterinary Medical Association (AVMA)
discussed “therapeutic” uses of antimicrobials in food animals. Their comments included the
following:
“Antibiotics labeled for feed efficiency or growth promotion often prevent or treat subclinical
disease, and therefore, the animal’s overall health is improved resulting in
increased growth ……
It is important to recognize that there are circumstances in both human and veterinary
medicine wherein therapeutic antimicrobial therapy must be initiated based on clinical
judgment and in the absence of a laboratory-confirmed microbial diagnosis. In addition,
clinical signs are often more apparent in an individual long before they are apparent in
the entire herd or flock…
Therapeutic uses include treatment, control, and prevention as defined by the Codex
Alimentarius, FDA, and the AVMA. Sometimes therapeutic antimicrobial therapy must
be initiated based on clinical judgment and in the absence of a laboratory-confirmed
(documented) microbial diagnosis.” [Underlining added for emphasis]
Also, AVMA gave the following response to a recommendation of direct veterinary oversight of
all antimicrobial uses in animals:
“The AVMA believes the Pew Commission’s recommendation to restrict producer
access to all FDA-approved products is an unnecessary reaction to over-the-counter
availability of antibiotic products. Not all antibiotics are the same, and thus, not
all antibiotics have the same impact on resistance…” [Underlining added for emphasis]
AVMA’s Report to Congress does not make clear the difference between producers and
veterinarians concerning therapeutic authority. I believe this may dangerously blur the legal
line that separates our profession from others.
Page 2 of 2 Has the American Veterinary Medical Association Threatened Veterinarians?
The Model Veterinary Practice Act states in Section 2:
19) “Practice of veterinary medicine” means:
a) To diagnose, treat, correct, change, alleviate, or prevent animal disease,
illness, pain, deformity, defect, injury, or other physical, dental, or mental
conditions by any method or mode; including:
i. the prescription, dispensing, administration, or application of any drug,
medicine, biologic, apparatus, anesthetic, or other therapeutic or
diagnostic substance or medical or surgical technique, or
ii. the use of complimentary, alternative, and integrative therapies, or
iii. the use of any manual or mechanical procedure for reproductive
management, or
iv. the rendering of advice or recommendation by any means including
telephonic and other electronic communications with regard to any of the
above.
b) To represent, directly or indirectly, publicly or privately, an ability and
willingness to do an act described in subsection 19(a). [Underlining added for
emphasis]
All State veterinary medical practice acts utilize the same or very similar language to define the
practice of veterinary medicine. Essentially, any therapeutic action directed at animals is the
practice of veterinary medicine.
The legal dilemma and threat posed to veterinarians
AVMA regards all on-farm uses of antimicrobials as therapeutic uses for treatment, prevention,
or control of disease. This includes producers who have direct access to seven important
categories of antimicrobials (i.e., penicillins, tetracyclines, macrolides, lincosamides,
streptogramins, aminoglycosides, and sulfonamides). Most of these producers may utilize
veterinary services, but they are not required by law to do so in order to acquire and use these
drugs. Consequently, veterinarians AND producers have therapeutic authority. This seems
inconsistent with the Model Veterinary Medical Practice Act.
Chiropractors, lay equine dentists, massage therapists, and others, continue to challenge the
definition of the practice of veterinary medicine. Their interests present few if any public health
or food safety concerns. In the future, it could be argued that since AVMA does not object to
producers engaging in antimicrobial therapy for food animals, veterinarians should not object to
physical therapy being performed on a dog by a non-veterinarian. This opens the door to a new
line of attack on our profession.
Please find the time to review this issue and discuss whether we need to make changes in the
definition of the practice of veterinary medicine. We should be clear and consistent.
I maintain that all uses of antimicrobials in animals should be with the oversight of a licensed
veterinarian. This is our “value added” as a profession.
- malernee
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