Submitted 1 day ago by Aatube@kbin.melroy.org to youshouldknow@lemmy.world
TL;DR: Studies show they do the same things as and have the same effects as Medical Doctors.
A lot of DOs go to Osteopathic medical schools because getting into MD schools is crazy competitive. It’s just another path to becoming a doctor that’s an option if you don’t get into a US MD school. The medicine curriculum is basically the same between the two. Though I’ve worked with a bunch of DOs who believe in osteopathy and practice it.
It’s not even don’t get in. They’re rigorous institutions that are just as competitive. They just make you take a class on those dumb manipulations.
Oh they’re definitely not judged the same. There’s a reason DOs interested in the more sought after specialties rarely try for MD programs. When you have a bunch of alpha nerds who base their self worth on test scores and other stuff like that, you get arbitrary stratification. And I’ve seen good doctors fail STEP tests and shit doctors who graduated from Harvard. There’s always those situations when some happen to be good at the stuff a system deems worthwhile but suck at being a person and vice versa.
So they’re schools of medicine with just enough quackery sprinkled on top to receive a different name. And some of their alumni embrace the quackery while others reject it.
How would you know the DO you’re about to see is a quack? You don’t I guess. If you’re risk averse, you’ll just call them all quacks and find a doctor without the quackery pixie dust.
This might come as a shock, but that “MD” behind their name isn’t a guarantee they dont hold quackish beliefs either.
oce@jlai.lu 1 day ago
I don’t understand why an MD would want any association with the pseudoscience that osteopathy is. en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osteopathy Marketing I guess.
wjrii@lemmy.world 1 day ago
In the US, the AMA has always artificially limited the supply of MDs. Over the last century osteopathic medical schools basically adopted all the same philosophies of evidence based medicine as “regular” medical schools, maybe with a vestigial course or two on spinal alignment. Both have the same licensing requirements.
At this point, DOs in the US are basically just regular doctors with lower MCAT scores and undergraduate GPAs, and indeed, they basically fill the role of providing doctors to less lucrative specialties and regions.
cymbal_king@lemmy.world 1 day ago
The main bottleneck in training new doctors (both MD and DO) is that federal funding for medical residency slots have remained mostly unchanged since 1996. Some hospitals have been able to pay for extra slots out of their clinical revenues, but they’ll be facing more financial pressures because of the Big Beautiful Bill.
Nurse_Robot@lemmy.world 1 day ago
No clue why you’re being upvotes when the very first paragraph of the source you cited contradicts you. DOs are great, and definitely not pseudoscience peddlers
insomniac_lemon@lemmy.cafe 1 day ago
That’s not a contradiction, the fact that that is the page you get from searching the term is exactly their point.
Looking at the page
Doctor of Osteopathic Medicine, it even seems to point to both having the same origin (1874 USA) and later changing:Though also…
and from the related sources:
oce@jlai.lu 1 day ago
Why do they keep a name referring to a pseudo-science then?
It is as if astrophysicists were using the name Doctor of Astrology and then claiming they are not the same as the astrology pseudoscience. Why would they do use this name then?
Successful_Try543@feddit.org 1 day ago
Yet, why do they keep the term ‘osteopathy’ when the don’t do osteopathy, but real, honest osteopathic medicine which would usually be denominated as orthopaedic.
sexy_peach@feddit.org 1 day ago
I don’t understand a it as well, they’re quacks here in Germany