 Good morning, early risers We're gonna get this show started. Welcome to the 10th TAM Sunday paper session and We have a lineup of six speakers for you. I really appreciate you showing up at this hour I don't know if they're thinking eight o'clock in the morning on Sunday in Las Vegas but We're going to get started so Our first speaker is dr. Martha Keller Keller's a dr. Keller's a veterinarian who lives and practices in st. Petersburg, Florida She also founded the Pinellas County Skeptics and organizes their events and today dr. Keller will speak on where these two Her professional and her skeptical passions intersect and that is quackery no longer refers to ducks The growing practice of cam and veterinary medicine, so please welcome to the stage dr. Keller. I thanks everybody for showing up so early I appreciate it When I talk about give you kind of just a little primer on the state of alternative medicine in the veterinary field Veterinary medicine is changed a lot in the last couple decades It's pretty uncommon now for a vet to be able to do everything just because it's such a growing field most vets specialized not only in Individual species, but also in specialties much like physicians nowadays The main organizing body for veterinarians at least in the u.s. Is the American veterinary medical association And they have issued a position statement on alternative medicine and the most important Sentence I think in the statement is that claims for safety and effectiveness ultimately should be proven by the scientific method And while that's a great statement Unfortunately, it pretty much is just a position statement. It doesn't have much effect Veterinarians certainly aren't as large a number as physicians, but there are about 98,000 vets in the u.s. And about 68% of households have a pet so Majority of households in the u.s. Visit the veterinarian at least once a year Now I'm not going to talk about the different modalities and specific I'm sure most of you are very familiar with them, but I'm going to talk more about how they relate to the veterinary field in general This is a screenshot of a Institute where veterinarians can go and learn about acupuncture and they're taught the China a traditional Chinese method learn about Qi various things are taught tongue and pulse diagnosis different acupuncture techniques and Pretty much there is no limit to the species that that Acupuncture is practiced on dogs cats Obviously, that's a porcupine attack not acupuncture, but I'm sure a few points were hit there And Even some of the more exotic species like guinea pigs sea turtles or even fish aren't immune to having needles poked in them So how do they know where to put the needles? well Contrary to what you might they might tell you the acupuncture meridians weren't really even developed until about the 1970s and They basically transposed the known Human points to animals, which is why they have ridiculous points such as the gallbladder point in the horse when horses don't even have a gallbladder the The next modality I'm going to talk about is chiropractic and This one's a little bit different the American veterinary chiropractic Association. Yes, there is one Does credential doctors in veterinary chiropractic? Unfortunately human chiropractors have gotten in the mix. They credentialed both human chiropractors and veterinarians the latest month the they certified 36 total doctors 21 of which were human chiropractics, which means that 58% were not veterinarians This is a map of the US Showing where the different laws affect veterinarians and chiropractors in the blue states only veterinarians can practice chiropractic The red states human chiropractors can practice under supervision and in the purple states chiropractors can practice on animals without any supervision whatsoever The rest of the states are blank because the laws regarding alternative medicine are pretty vague So I'm going to give you just a quick comparison of what it takes for a human chiropractor To be accredited by the chiropractic Association versus say another human type Treater like a like a veterinary or a human dentist Chiropractor needs to attend an approved animal chiropractic course, which is about a month-long course past exit exams at the end of the course Then some written and clinical exams And then they're good to go But if a human dentist decides he wants to extend his practice to include animals the veterinary dental board does have a procedure They have to go to vet school. That's four years Have to complete a one-year internship Then another year of dental practice Then they have to pass their dental boards And only then can they then practice on animals So what's the difference here? All differences is with chiropractic their entire theory is based on subluxation So it doesn't matter whether it's an animal or human. They're going to approach the patient the same way Whereas when you look at the veterinary dental board Amazingly, they actually take a holistic approach They realize you need to have a fundamental understanding of the whole patient whether there's diabetes or renal disease involved and They insist that you go back to vet school Here's the screenshot of a human chiropractic Advertising that he practices on animals Just as an aside, that's about the worst type of x-ray you could possibly take And there are battles between the two groups For instance in Georgia Some veterinary chiropractors are getting cease and desist orders from the Human Chiropractic Association for using the term chiropractic Which they state can only be used when pertaining to the human body They've recommend other terms such as animal adjustment or animal subluxation based care Now homeopathy we're going to talk a little bit about homeopathy and yes Sadly, there is an Academy of veterinary homeopathy and these are veterinarians doing this They do offer a certification in veterinary homeopathy And to be certified Again, it's a 125-hour course at this point only one course exists They have to submit to acute and to chronic case reports love to read those Complete written exam, which you take at home and you have two weeks to complete And then you can call yourself a certified veterinary homeopath Well, what's the benefit of doing this? Well, the organizing body will then back you up in the case of any legal challenges provided that you follow their Standard operating protocols. I like to list a couple for you Here's one Drugs and methods of treatment which are not homeopathic to the case are to be avoided because of the possibility of interference with the progress of cure So basically don't use what works Here's another one symptoms on the skin or surface of the body that have expressed as a localized lesion are Not to be treated in a vigorous way with the intent to cause their disappearance or by surgery So if you have a mass or a lesion that's amenable to surgery, you don't do it And sadly there is a need for homeopaths out there. This is a listing for they're looking for a veterinarian It also has a master's degree four to ten years of experience and a solid knowledge of homeopathic remedies And yes, there are states where only licensed veterinarians can practice homeopathy So if you're in any of these states, don't do this if you're worried about dehydration because you could be Practicing medicine without a license Now pet food if you look on the internet, there's a lot of scary things that you'll find about pet food Too many to list in the in the short talk But here's just a screenshot of one They talk a lot about the horrible things in pet food They like to call out meat byproducts and how horrific it is to have meat byproducts In in the pet food So let's take a closer look and see what what exactly are meat byproducts The Association of American feed control officials has defined it as The non-rendered clean parts other than meat derived from slaughtered mammals It includes but is not limited to lung spleen kidneys brain livers blood bone Partially defy to low temperature fatty tissue and stomachs and intestines free to their contents It's not include hair horns teeth and huffs So the question is when feeding animals is this horrific? Well, what we can do is we can look to the wild animals and see what what do they eat? When we look and see what they're eating they don't seem very opposed to eating meat byproducts They're not just eating the leg of lamb Just because we may not want to eat it doesn't mean they don't There's another screenshot You know roadkills in your food One of the catchphrases they like to talk about is the 4d's this is the 4d's that are in your your animals pet food So what what are these 4d's? Well, the first thing they claim is in your pet food are dead animals The next time you open your bag of food and the cow comes out, please let me know that'd be interesting Dying well, that's pretty vague. Aren't we all dying? What is what is dying mean? Diseased well, perhaps they mean disease, but if that's the case that is not legal disease animals cannot go into the food supply Disabled again not legal especially after boba boba and spongebob encephalopathy Basically if an animal cannot walk into the slaughterhouse it cannot go into the food supply so People against using pet food propose barf and what do I mean by that? Well, that means biologically appropriate raw food They feel that feeding raw food is more natural. You don't destroy the nutrients with the cooking process They claim a lot of health benefits a good coat good skin helps with renal disease Unfortunately, when you look at the studies A lot of these foods are very deficient in certain nutrients and it puts both the animals and the humans at much higher risk of Certain bacterial diseases like salmonella because not only you're handling raw food, but they're shedding it in the feces Here's another screenshot PETA is Advocating meatless meals for dogs and cats. They want animals to go vegan And well that might not be so bad for dogs There's no veterinary nutritionists that I've talked to that would ever recommend a vegetarian diet for an obligate carnivore like a cat So what's going on vet schools? Well, I did a kind of an informal survey of the veterinary websites looking at the teaching hospitals and how they list any Alternative medicine courses and about half of them Do have some type of alternative medicine in the teaching hospitals most of them practice acupuncture some herbal medicine But even one does an elective course in in homeopathy sadly enough So continuing education Most professional groups require members to have continuing education credits in the veterinary field It's handled by race the registry of approved continuing education and the purpose of that That board is to provide uniform standards for the courses that are approved Well the Academy of Veterinary Homeopathy recently Submitted some courses for approval and they were denied Whereas previously they've been approved So what what happened? well, the race standards were recently updated and The they wanted the courses to follow the medically accepted and scientifically supported standards of Experimental design data collection and analysis Well, this didn't make the homeopaths happy because they raised decided that their courses did not meet these standards race countered or the homeopaths countered that this decision was giving weight to publish science rather than homeopathy Yeah What do they do? Well, they make their own a crediting body Rave stands for the registry of alternative and integrative veterinary medical education and its purpose They hope is to certify alternative medicine courses for continuing education Fortunately, no states as of yet Use rave or accept rave credits, but it's certainly something we need to keep in our in our minds and in our radar So future I hope I've given you just a little bit of Insight into what's going on in the veterinary field There certainly is a lot of woo more than I could really talk about completely in the short talk But you know, we have to keep a keep a close eye meetings like this will help education will help And I'd be happy to take any questions that anybody might have Just test ah So thank you for that illuminating if not slightly depressing talk That's great. Do we have any we have time for maybe one or two questions? Ah Homeopathy is based on a placebo effect How do they get a placebo effect out of animals that convinces their owners that the medicine in quotes is working? Well, it's it's commonly stated that there's no placebo in effect in animals and that's that's not true Because when you're measuring the effectiveness of say a pain medication The person is the one that's reporting it to you the owner is reporting it to you So there's a placebo effect in the owner of the owner feels like it's going to work Which anyone using cam often does They're the ones that's going to that will look for the signs that their animals limping glass or seems more comfortable So there there is a placebo effect in animals Heavily involved in the animal industry and I was wondering how we can get in touch with you or get information from you to pass on to people to educate them properly I Mean you can email me I'm on Facebook And there's only you know, I'm not the only certainly the only one there's a lot There's a group good group of veterinarians that want to have science-based medicine The information is out there What can we do if we find out that our veterinarian or veterinary clinic is starting to get involved with cam practices? What I tell people is You know challenge them see what ask them for the evidence ask them for the papers I do the same when I visit clinics and they aren't they're doing it. I ask them for papers I just never receive them and if you don't get the answer that you like Switch to another vet and let them know why because it's it's only when they start to see the effect in the pocket book I think they're gonna finally wake up and ask, you know, what am I doing here?