Originally Posted by Muireann

Dopadoc,

You say that you are not making a judgement on Coleman, but in locating your discussion of him here, by name, in the very negative semiotic neighbourhood of 'charlatans' and 'quacks', you are certainly not lending any credibility to him.

Even more questionable, you are creating these negative associations from a position of a good deal of social capital yourself, as doctor and researcher with PD, though in your own words you admit you "just don't have enough knowledge about what he's doing or what he's claiming to accurately comment." Then why do so?

Coleman does not claim to 'cure' people, as you will see if you familiarise yourself with the foregoing discussion and/or interview with him [transcript and audio link provided above], therefore there is no need to lump him into an exposition on the nature of charlatanism and quackery.

Regarding your concerns about the placebo effect, a placebo effect is only problematic if it is not sustainable indefinitely. Indeed, most medical professionals would accept that an individual's ability to believe in the capacity of one's body to heal itself and a faith in one's carers is a pre-requisite to any sustained recovery, and that its functional mechanism is very much in the realm of placebo, though no less real or organic for being so.

I would argue that we should be a lot more worried about the corresponding nocebo effect of the callous ways in which diagnoses and damning prognoses are meted out by the medical profession, depriving people of hope and leading people to erroneously cede all responsibility for their current and future wellbeing to a biomedical profession whose knowledge agenda is set by the vested interests of the pharmaceutical industry.