Cranial Osteopathy

Cranial osteopathy, otherwise known as craniosacral therapy, is a type of osteopathy that involves “manipulation” of the bones of the skull to promote mental and emotional health. It was invented by William Sutherland, an osteopath working in the 1930’s.

It is based on the idea that the human brain and hence the cerebro spinal fluid surrounding it pulses rythmically in a way unrelated to heart-rate, that these pulses can be felt with the fingertips, and that illness can be caused by restricting the flow of cerebro-spinal fluid.

Practitioners claim to be able to gently manipulate the bones in the skull in order to relieve flow blockages and cure or alleviate the symptoms of disease. Because the treatment is so gentle, it is promoted as being especially suited to babies and young children.

The Craniosacral Therapy Association of the UK claims that one of the causes of problems in babies and children is “displacement of things in their bodies” caused by compression of the skull during birth. This can lead to all sorts of problems, including behavioural difficulties. Fortunately, most of these problems respond very well to craniosacral therapy, which it describes as “a subtle and profound healing form which assists the body’s natural capacity for self-repair.”

Stephen Barrett, of the Quackwatch website, says that craniosacral therapy has no therapeutic value. This is for two reasons. One, the underlying theory is demonstrably false: the brain does pulsate, but this is solely for cardiovascular reasons, and no connection has ever been demonstrated between brain pulsation and general health. Two, tests done on practitioners of craniosacral therapy revealed that their examinations of the same twelve patients revealed very different rates of brain pulsation, which Barrett notes are exactly the outcomes one would expect from people trying to measure a non-existent phenomenon.

What does this mean for a mother who is worried about her child’s behavioural problems? If craniosacral therapy is as gentle as its proponents claim, there is little harm to be done to the child, only to the mother’s pocket. More serious is the possibility that there is something genuinely wrong with the child that your average craniosacral therapist wouldn’t spot. Stephen Barrett comments that most such therapists have such poor judgement that they should be delicensed. This is in the USA of course. In the UK, a person working as a craniosacral therapist needs no qualifications at all.

Genetically Modified Food

The Liberal Democrat party’s DEFRA spokesperson has waded into the debate on GM food policy in the UK by commenting on a ministerial statement by the UK Government.

The statement, from Phil Woolas, the minister for the environment, referred to a recent consultation on the coexistence of GM and non-GM crops. The statement simply announced that the government wanted to wait until all the evidence is in before formulating a policy on growing GM crops near conventional crops. The government wants the policy so that the public can be sure that conventional crops are not contaminated by their GM neighbours.

The Liberal democrat spokesman, Chris Huhne , said
“People want to be safe and not sorry on GM foods, as the overwhelming bulk of responses to the Government’s consultation show. Ministers should not give any go-ahead for commercial planting until they can state confidently that GM varieties would not contaminate non-GM foods and that they are safe.”

Why is it important that GM crops not contaminate their non-GM counterparts, for example by cross-pollination? The answer appears to be that the British public thinks GM crops are probably dangerous, or at least have not been conclusively shown to be safe.

Is there any evidence that GM foods can cause harm to human beings? It appears not. An independent review of over 600 scientific papers in 2003 concluded that

“To date world-wide there have been no verifiable untoward toxic or nutritionally deleterious effects resulting from the cultivation and consumption of products from GM crops. However, absence of readily observable adverse effects does not mean that these can be completely ruled out and there has been no epidemiological monitoring of those consuming GM food.”

Consumers in the United States have been eating GM food for more than ten years, and GM foods have been introduced in Canada, India and Australia. Presumably, we can look to these countries for some epidemiological monitoring.

The scientific evidence also seems to show that the negative impact on human health of various manipulations of plant DNA is low. This is unlikely to persuade a British public still aching from the scars of the BSE crisis of nearly twenty years ago, which is the most likely reason for public antipathy towards statements made by governments and scientists about food safety.

Campaigners in this country have exploited the fear that the BSE scare engendered in the public mind to mobilise public opinion to levels unheard of in the rest of the world. Couple this with images of “Frankenstein foods” evoked in the British media and it is no surprise to find that the result has been to hold back British progress in a very promising field of scientific research; to force scientists working in these areas to consider leaving the country to further their careers elsewhere; and to produce nothing of discernable benefit to the British consumer.

Of course,one can’t blame politicians for wanting to react appropriately to the public mood, but would it be too much to ask that they introduce statements like Chris Huhne’s with a caveat such as “There’s no evidence that GM foods are harmful to humans”?

Is organic food better for you?

No less an institution than the BBC recently reported that organic food is “better for you” than the conventionally farmed stuff. You can see the video report here. In it, the reporter says that “organically farmed milk, fruit and vegetables are more nutritious than conventionally farmed produce”.

The BBC does not mention here exactly what is meant by “nutritious”, but reports that up to 40% more antioxidants could be found in organic fruit and vegetables than in non-organic, and quotes the head of the research team, Professor Carlo Leifert, as saying “We have shown there are more of certain nutritionally desirable compounds and less of the baddies in organic foods, or improved amounts of the fatty acids you want and less of those you don’t want.”

The claims stem from research being carried out at Nafferton Farm near Newcastle Upon Tyne where a comparison study is being performed between organically and conventionally farmed vegetables. The research is being coordinated by Newcastle University’s School of Agriculture, Food and Rural Development. It is funded to the tune of 12 million pounds by the European Union, under their Quality Low-Input Food (QLIF) initiative.

The QLIF initiative is a long-term “integrated project” to improve knowledge of the benefits and drawbacks of organic farming – since most of the consuming public seems increasingly fixated on the subject.

The QLIF initiative maintains its own website and publishes its own scientific papers which are available via an on-line archive set up by an umbrella organisation for research into organic methods and based in Denmark.

Before we jump ship and make the switch to organic however, we should reassure ourselves of two things: one is that we are not making the mistake of assuming that because nutritional quality might be higher in one type of food than another, it’s therefore appropriate to switch to the higher quality food. The other is to make sure that the usual, rather basic pre-requisites of science apply: the research the BBC reported on should have been published in a peer-reviewed journal of reputable standing in the field in which the claims are being made, and it should have been repeated, preferably by someone else somewhere else, to ensure that the results found are not artefacts of the experimental design.

The trouble is that hardly any of the scientific papers that appear to relate to the comparisons between organic and conventional foods on the QLIF website have been peer-reviewed. Out of 14 papers on effects of production methods, only two had been peer-reviewed. Of these, one (published in 2007) stated that it was not possible to “draw overall conclusions about the effect of low input production on food quality and safety” unless more research was carried out; the other concerned food that was being fed to rats, and found that the content of lutein was higher in feeds prepared from organic produce. Whilst this second result is certainly positive, it is hardly earth-shattering evidence of benefit to humans.

Also, the BBC report made plain that the results of the current research will not be published until next year. The BBC did not even make clear, in their reports that talked about the higher nutritional content of organic foods, whether they were referring to previous work that had been published, or to the as-yet unpublished results of the current research.

So let’s straighten this out. It looks like the BBC has been reporting on unpublished and incomplete research carried out by a team whose leader claims higher nutritional content in organic food, whilst in possession of no peer-reviewed evidence to make such an assertion. Of course, there may be evidence in hard-to-find places, behind an academic pay-wall for instance. On the face of it, however, this seems to leave the question as to whether organic food is better for us as just that: a question. It certainly does not seem to justify the rather positive spin placed on the news by the media. Indeed, one wonders, given that there seems to be nothing new to report, where the media picked up the idea in the first place.