I have to disagree with this. Functional medicine is an important complementary component of primary care. The core principles of functional medicine are a healthy diet of mostly leafy green vegetables and fruits; avoiding sugar; limiting trans fats and omega 6 fatty acids; exercise; reducing the ill effects of stress (especially cortiosol production), and maintaining proper hormone levels as we age.
All of these things are good and promote healthy, active and longer lives, decrease chronic disease (including musculoskeletal) and therefore need for medication hospitalizations, and surgeries and are a benefit for society as a whole
Functional medicine is not a panacea and like all things can be taken to extremes or abused for financial gain. Interestingly there is a strong connection between functional medicine and anti-aging medicine and many of the advances in anti aging have come from functional medicine.
One problem with mainstreaming this area of medicine is that the “treatments” almost all involve diet and exercise plus supplements or medications that long ago aged out of patent protection, so large blinded and randomized trials cannot be done. In many ways it is limited the same way stem cell therapy research is: what pharma or implant company is going to fund a study showing your own cells, plus a $50 bone biopsy needle and an in office centrifuge can save you from a lifetime of daily NSAID or a joint replacement?
The issue here like most things in trumps orbit is extremists are in charge. Functional medicine does not help with infectious disease at the macro level. Vaccines and antibiotics, other than figuring out how to separate drinking water from sewage; are undeniably the two biggest contributors to human life expectancy in history. What is going on on that front is a crime against humanity.