[burnte]

> Doctors are pretty much required to follow Establishment medicine. They're not going to tell you about folk remedies, because it could be malpractice for them.

Not in the USA. In the USA doctors can absolutely recommend non-medical treatments like supplements and homeopathy and other crap. Each doctor has their own threshold of comfort in what they will and won't recommend. But as you yourself then followed up, your doctor said when you brought up nasal rinses, "a lot of my patients do this and they seem to like it." Other doctors will go so far as to suggest them, mine has, and he was right. My doctor (same doc for my wife) will bring up lots of things, and explains his position on them all clearly, even explaining risks and things. He even went so far one time as to suggest a Chinese medicine treatment for a rare disorder my wife has. He didn't say it would work, but said he's heard about it and it should be risk free if she wanted to try it.

Doctors are allowed to recommend lots of things, it's the presentation and outcome that define liability. If a Dr says "you should shove bees up your butt to cure this ear infection" then yeah, they're going to get in trouble. But it's a lot less black and white than you seem to feel.

Note: I've worked in real-medicine healthcare for 9 years now.

[banish-m4]

The fact that DOs are treated the same as MDs is absurd. Osteopathy is quackery.

[burnte]

Most osteopathic medical schools teach real medicine these days. They should drop the DO label.

[jtc331]

Doctors in hospital/healthcare systems are generally limited like the GP suggested. Independent doctors are much more able to do otherwise.

[Zenzero]

> But it's a lot less black and white than you seem to feel.

That's the problem. The concept of what is reasonable is too nebulous to rely on.

Also people are quite simply really dumb. You can make some innocuous statement like "others have found nasal rinses to be beneficial", and some idiot will get themselves hospitalized with a draining abscess in their face. It turns out that person decided their nasal rinse was going to be alternating eucalyptus oil and bone broth because someone on Facebook said that was the most healing, and they claim that you as their doctor said it was OK. The case gets escalated to you having to explain to the board that you didn't make any such claim, but because there is a record of you saying that nasal rinses can be beneficial, it can be at the discretion of a "reasonable person" if that skirted too close to their line of culpability for the injury that the person sustained.

The solution is to stick close to what is accepted medicine, and if people want to complain about establishment medicine, then let them. Doctors understand there is safety in the herd.

[AlbertCory]

Do you have an actual instance of something like that happening? I'm not saying it never has. An MD ought to know his/her patients well enough to judge what kind of idiocy they're likely to go off and try.

One thing where I do not have a link is but I recall it happening is: quackery is impossible to kill with research. Someone does a double- blind study showing that peach pits are worthless against cancer, and the peach pit "doctors" just say "studied by legitimate science!" or "more research is needed!"

[Zenzero]

>Do you have an actual instance of something like that happening?

My colleague being dragged in front of the board for a similarly stupid situation. Knock on wood I haven't been, but there are far too many people that hear what they want to hear. The only safe course is to stick well within the non-ambiguous accepted medicine responses as much as possible.

[AlbertCory]

OK. I said "pretty much" which leaves a lot of wiggle room.