TL;DR: Studies show they do the same things as and have the same effects as Medical Doctors.
I don’t understand why an MD would want any association with the pseudoscience that osteopathy is. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osteopathy
Marketing I guess?I don’t understand it as well, they’re quacks here in Germany
E: typo
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
It is distinct from osteopathic medicine, which is a branch of the medical profession in the United States.
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.
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.
