CPSO Still at Odds with Complementary and Alternative Medicine

In the previous issue of Vitality magazine, readers were informed that Ontario’s College of Physicians and Surgeons (CPSO) had responded to the overwhelming public objections to their new draft of the Complementary & Alternative Medicine Policy.

Among the key issues that the public and the profession objected to was the requirement that all medical advice and activities were supposed to be “supported by evidence.” For the unwary reader, this looks fine, but is not so at all.

The Policy was, in fact, amended accordingly and is now a lot less bad. There is very little in all of medicine – standard or alternative – that is, in fact, at all stages supported by evidence because medicine, being a science, is in flux at all times and cannot ever be written in stone.

The more appropriate wording would be “informed by evidence” which correctly introduces plurality of clinician and patient experience.

However, the currently pending draft of the policy governing how doctors may relate on social media still has this unrealistic requirement of only speaking about anything in medical practice if it is supported by science! OK, but whose science? Whose evidence?

The CPSO, infamously known for “preferring” its own evidence (no joke!), stating this in formal decisions in discipline cases, apparently wants to ensure that nobody says anything out of line with arbitrary CPSO doctrine. Debate, different healing approaches, and (God forbid!) patient choice are still considered as heresy.

Witness the case of Dr. Patrick Phillips (Globe & Mail, September 28). He ran into trouble for informing patients (as required by law) about the potential dangers of some COVID vaccines. So, please write to the CPSO and demand that the Social Media Policy be brought in line with the CAM Policy.

For useful resources, links, forums, visit the website of Ontario Patients for Integrative Medicine: https://www.onpim.ca/