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newtboy (Member Profile)

Most Lives Matter | Full Frontal with Samantha Bee

ChaosEngine says...

Well, first off, the part about sterilising and killing was pretty obviously tongue in cheek, although I take your point that some Trump supporters might make the same point seriously.

That said, I have an expectation that the people on this site are smart enough to read what I said as comic hyperbole. As for it being in poor taste, that's up to the listener. I certainly found it in much better taste than Jim Jeffries bit on Bill Cosby, but as you quoted Reginald D Hunter "take it from the rest of us who did laugh--it was fuckin' funny."

All comedy aside, I was being 100% serious when I said that if you really believe in something so much that no evidence will change your mind, then you shouldn't be voting let alone running for office.

As for getting the same response at the DNC.... you're almost certainly right. It would be about different issues (probably vaccines, GMOs and the like), but they would be just as wrong as the Republicans.

That anger is real and not at all misguided. Woolly thinking has held the human race back for millennia and caused untold suffering and horror: racism/slavery, sexism, homophobia, the "war on drugs", climate change, alternative medicine.... do I need to go on?

I'm not saying you can't have a firmly held belief, and I'm not even saying that everything you believe must be fully supported by evidence, but everyone (myself included) should be willing to at least question their own dogma.

"Would you reconsider in the face of new evidence?" should be the simplest question to answer for anyone.

SDGundamX said:

stuff

Brittany Maynard - Death with Dignity

ChaosEngine says...

Actually you said

Cannabis cures cancer. To HELL with western medicine.


Then you posted a bunch of anecdotes from a hemp oil salesman.

Then you talked about Dr Marcia Angell; I presume that's the same Marica Angell that said
It is time for the scientific community to stop giving alternative medicine a free ride... There cannot be two kinds of medicine — conventional and alternative. There is only medicine that has been adequately tested and medicine that has not, medicine that works and medicine that may or may not work. Once a treatment has been tested rigorously, it no longer matters whether it was considered alternative at the outset. If it is found to be reasonably safe and effective, it will be accepted.


and finally a bunch of studies that show that cannabis may affect cancer.

None of which implies that "cannabis cures cancer" (again, your own words).

Cannabinoids certainly have some interesting properties that might well lead to some breakthroughs, but right now, NOTHING cures cancer. As you said, it gets cut, burnt or poisoned (all of which is preferable to dying), or it just goes into remission.

As for your general distain for "western medicine" aka medicine, you continue on with your fairy dust and good wishes. Me, I'll be over here with the scientific method and the single most successful endeavour in the history of humanity.

Sniper007 said:

TONS of things cure cancer. All day, every day. Doctors have no clue what cancer is. All they can do is cut, burn, or poison and cross their fingers.

I didn't say Cannabis was THE cure. It is A cure used by thousands with amazing efficacy. Everyone is different.

ShakaUVM (Member Profile)

ChaosEngine (Member Profile)

ChaosEngine says...

No, if something is tested and works then that is no longer "alternative medicine", it is simply "medicine". The classic example is aspirin, which is derived from the bark of a willow tree. It was then tested and has now been accepted as medicine.

Just because the FDA accepts woo for political purposes, doesn't make it science.

As for FDA approval of St Johns Wort, there is some dispute about the bias of these studies, as it is unexplained why it works so much better in Germany http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/14651858.CD000448.pub3/full#CD000448-sec1-0005.

But for the sake of argument, let's assume there's plenty of evidence to support it. Again the answer is to streamline the approval process, not just let any muppet with some potpourri market it as a miracle cure.

I would much rather people pay 10 times the cost for medicine that actually works, and even better, doesn't kill people.

Of course, if you lived in a country with a sane healthcare system, you wouldn't actually worry about this, because in most of the world, it's considered poor form to let your citizens die from treatable diseases ,just because they can't pay for it.

Again, it's really simple, either you understand and accept the scientific method or you don't. Healthcare is complex and requires a lot of work to determine if something actually works. That costs money. It's unfortunate, but the results don't lie.

ShakaUVM said:

There are plenty of studies and tests done on alt med. What makes something alt med instead of medicine is not if it is efficacious (as you falsely believe) but if it is part of the prevailing medical tradition. This is the definition used by the FDA, the NHS, the WHO, and every other major health organization in the world. So if you don't like the definition of alt med, take it up with them.

We have plenty of studies on the efficacy of St. John's Wort. It is already 'approved'. End of story. Your 'simple answer' would require some company to pony up millions to billions of dollars to get it to pass FDA approval, when it is not patentable and so they would not be able to recover the extreme costs. Your 'simple answer' would mean simply removing all of these supplements from store shelves and forcing people into taking meds that are ten times as expensive with the same efficacy.

Last Week Tonight with John Oliver: Dr. Oz

ChaosEngine says...

No, he's not wrong.

It's pretty simple. Either your supplement does what it claims to or it doesn't. If it does, submit it for testing and approval.

There's no such thing as "alternative medicine". There is only that which has been proven to work (i.e. medicine) and that which has either not been proven to work or been proven not to work.

Besides, it is completely unreasonable to expect the average person to research the efficacy of supplements. Even among intelligent educated people (clearly a minority), most of them do not have time, let alone the ability to conduct this kind of research. That's why we have regulatory bodies. I wouldn't ask an epidemiologist to build a house and I wouldn't ask an architect about the efficacy of drugs.

As for St Johns Wort, the answer is simple. If it works, get it approved. The solution is not "hey, this one thing works! Let's open the floodgates to every supplement!"

ShakaUVM said:

John Oliver is wrong.

Yes, some supplements (say, the milk thistle found in Rockstar Energy Drink) are just snake oil. But other supplements have clinical effects, such as St. John's Wort (http://www.webmd.com/depression/guide/st-johns-wort) for minor depression and, arguably, glucosamine and chondroitin (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clinical_trials_on_glucosamine_and_chondroitin)

Here's the thing though - if the FDA regulates supplements in the same way they do drugs, the price of supplements would go through the roof. It costs 1.3 BILLION DOLLARS to get a new drug approved by the FDA. (http://www.forbes.com/sites/theapothecary/2014/01/24/shocking-secrets-of-fda-clinical-trials-revealed/)

So the supplements market provides a very useful alternative, something that John Oliver simply doesn't understand. You can either pay ten bucks for a 300 pack of St. John's Wort, or you can pay ten times that amount for the FDA approved antidepressant, Zoloft.

The sad truth is that the FDA really does overregulate the drug market, which is one of the major reasons health care is so fucking expensive in this country. John Oliver lives in magical fairly land where regulating supplements would come with no cost, but in reality regulating it would just close down the only inexpensive drug system we have in the world.

Scientific studies do exist for supplements (I read through the studies while my wife was at UCSF Pharmacy School taking their mandatory alt med class), and if you do your research, you can distinguish the snake oil from the supplements that have real effects.

Girl Banned from School for Supporting Friend with Cancer

ChaosEngine says...

@Sniper007, you don't realise how right you are.

It's exactly like the DeBeers video. The "alternative medicine" people have cunningly marketed a bunch of unscientific nonsense as "common sense", and yes, they'll die from it.

Unfortunately, this won't be evolutionarily selected out. First, most (not all) people develop cancer later in life, when they've already had children. Second, choice of medicine is not a genetic trait.

@enoch, I do not believe that sniper is trying to sell snake oil, merely that he's been taken in by it.

As for the disparity between research on causes vs treatment, well, it's somewhat understandable, especially in a market driven environment. Cynical as it sounds, you can pretty much charge whatever you like to dying people and they'll pay it. Convincing people to change their lifestyle is a much harder sell.

And absolutely, people eat way too much processed crap today. No-one is disputing that, neither am I disputing that a bad diet can be the cause of cancer.

We may one day look back at chemo as the 20th century equivalent of bloodletting. I truly hope so. But right now, it's still the best we have.

enoch (Member Profile)

Trancecoach says...

@enoch, thanks for your comments. I thought it better to respond directly to your profile than on the video, about which we're no longer discussing directly. Sorry for the length of this reply, but for such a complex topic as this one, a thorough and plainly-stated response is needed.

You wrote: "the REAL question is "what is the purpose of a health care system"? NOT "which market system should we implement for health care"?"

The free market works best for any and all goods and services, regardless of their aim or purpose. Healthcare is no different from any other good or service in this respect.

(And besides, tell me why there's no money in preventative care? Do nutritionists, physical trainers/therapists, psychologists, herbalists, homeopaths, and any other manner of non-allopathic doctors not get paid and make profit in the marketplace? Would not a longer life not lead to a longer-term 'consumer' anyway? And would preventative medicine obliterate the need for all manner of medical treatment, or would there not still remain a need to diagnose, treat, and cure diseases, even in the presence of a robust preventative medical market?)

I realize that my argument is not the "popular" one (and there are certainly many reasons for this, up to and including a lot of disinformation about what constitutes a "free market" health care system). But the way to approach such things is not heuristically, but rationally, as one would approach any other economic issue.

You write "see where i am going with this? It's not so easy to answer and impose your model of the "free market" at the same time."

Yes, as a matter of fact, it is. The purpose of the healthcare system is to provide the most advanced medical service and care possible in the most efficient and affordable way possible. Only a free competitive market can do this with the necessary economic calculations in place to support its progress. No matter how you slice it, a socialized approach to healthcare invariably distorts the market (with its IP fees, undue regulations, and a lack of any accurate metrics on both the supply-side and on the demand-side which helps to determine availability, efficacy, and cost).

"you cannot have "for-profit" and "health-care" work in conjunction with any REAL health care."

Sorry, but this is just absurd. What else can I say?

"but if we use your "free market" model against a more "socialized model".which model would better serve the public?"

The free market model.

"if we take your "free market" model,which would be under the auspices of capitalism."

Redundant: "free market under the auspices of free market."

"disease is where the money is at,THAT is where the profit lies,not in preventive medicine."

Only Krugman-style Keynesians would say that illness is more profitable than health (or war more profitable than peace, or that alien invasions and broken windows are good for the economy). They, like you, aren't taking into account the One Lesson in Economics: look at how it affects every group, not just one group; look at the long term effects, not just short term ones. You're just seeing that, in the short-run, health will be less profitable for medical practitioners (or some pharmaceuticals) that are currently working in the treatment of illness. But look at every group outside that small group and at the long run and you can see that health is more profitable than illness overall. The market that profits more from illness will have to adapt, in ways that only the market knows for sure.

Do you realize that the money you put into socialized medicine (Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security, etc.) is money you deplete from prevention entrepreneurship?

(As an aside, I wonder, why do so many people assume that the socialized central planners have some kind of special knowledge or wisdom that entrepreneurs do not? And why is there the belief that unlike entrepreneurs, socialist central planners are not selfishly motivated but always act in the interest of the "common good?" Could this be part of the propagandized and indoctrinated fear that's implicit in living in a socialized environment? Why do serfs (and I'm sure that, at some level, people know that's what they are) love the socialist central planners more than they love themselves? Complex questions about self-esteem and captive minds.)

If fewer people get sick, the market will then demand more practitioners to move from treating illness into other areas like prevention, being a prevention doctor or whatever. You're actually making the argument for free market here, not against it. Socialized bureaucratically dictated medicine will not adapt to the changing needs as efficiently or rapidly as a free market can and would. If more people are getting sick, then we'll need more doctors to treat them. If fewer people are getting sick because preventive medicine takes off, then we'll have more of that type of service. If a socialized healthcare is mandated, then we will invariably have a glut of allopathic doctors, with little need for their services (and we then have the kinds of problems we see amongst doctors who are coerced -- by the threat of losing their license -- to take medicaid and then lie on their reports in order to recoup their costs, e.g., see the article linked here.)

Meanwhile, there has been and will remain huge profits to be made in prevention, as the vitamin, supplements, alternative medicine, naturopathy, exercise and many other industries attest to. What are you talking about, that there's no profit in preventing illness? (In a manner of speaking, that's actually my bread and butter!) If you have a way to prevent illness, you will have more than enough people buying from you, people who don't want to get sick. (And other services for the people who do.) Open a gym. Become a naturopath. Teach stress management, meditation, yoga, zumba, whatever! And there are always those who need treatment, who are sick, and the free market will then have an accurate measure of how to allocate the right resources and number of such practitioners. This is something that the central planners (under socialized services) simply cannot possibly do (except, of course, for the omniscient ones that socialists insist exist).

You wrote "cancer,anxiety,obesity,drug addiction.
all are huge profit generators and all could be dealt with so much more productively and successfully with preventive care,diet and exercise and early diagnosis."

But they won't as long as you have centrally planned (socialized) medicine. The free market forces practitioners to respond to the market's demands. Socialized medicine does not. Entrepreneurs will (as they already have) exploit openings for profit in prevention (without the advantage of regulations which distort the markets) and take the business away from treatment doctors. If anything, doctors prevent preventative medicine from getting more widespread by using government regulations to limit what the preventive practitioners do. In fact, preventive medicine is so profitable that it has many in the medical profession lobbying to curtail it. They are losing much business to alternative/preventive practitioners. They lobby to, for example, prevent herb providers from stating the medical/preventive benefits of their herbs. They even prevent strawberry farmers to tout the health benefits of strawberries! It is the state that is slowing down preventive medicine, not the free market! In Puerto Rico, for example, once the Medical Association lost a bit to prohibit naturopathy, they effectively outlawed acupuncture by successfully getting a law passed that requires all acupuncturists to be medical doctors. Insanity.

If you think there is no profit in preventative care or exercise, think GNC and Richard Simmons, and Pilates, and bodywork, and my own practice of psychotherapy. Many of the successful corporations (I'm thinking of Google and Pixar and SalesForce and Oracle, etc.) see the profit and value in preventative care, which is why they have these "stay healthy" programs for their employees. There's more money in health than illness. No doubt.

Or how about the health food/nutrition business? Or organic farming, or whole foods! The free market could maybe call for fewer oncologists and for more Whole Foods or even better natural food stores. Of course, we don't know the specifics, but that's actually the point. Only the free market knows (and the omniscient socialist central planners) what needs to happen and how.

Imagination! We need to get people to use it more.

You wrote: "but when we consider that the 4th and 5th largest lobbyists are the health insurance industry and the pharmaceutical industry is it any wonder that america has the most fucked up,backwards health care system on the planet."

You're actually making my point here. In a free market, pharmaceutical companies cannot monopolize what "drugs" people can or cannot take, sell or not sell, and cannot prevent natural alternatives from being promoted. Only with state intervention (by way of IP regulations, and so forth) can they do so.

Free market is not corporatism. Free market is not crony capitalism. (More disinformation that needs to be lifted.)

So you're not countering my free market position, you're countering the crony capitalist position. This is a straw man argument, even if in this case you might not have understood my position in the first place. You, like so many others, equate "capitalism" with cronyism or corporatism. Many cannot conceive of a free market that is free from regulation. So folks then argue against their own interests, either for or against "fascist" vs. "socialist" medicine. The free market is, in fact, outside these two positions.

You wrote: "IF we made medicare available to ALL american citizens we would see a shift from latter stage care to a more aggressive preventive care and early diagnosis. the savings in money (and lives) would be staggering."

I won't go into medicare right now (It is a disaster, and so is the current non-free-market insurance industry. See the article linked in my comment above.)

You wrote "this would create a huge paradigm shift here in america and we would see results almost instantly but more so in the coming decades."

I don't want to be a naysayer but, socialism is nothing new. It has been tried (and failed) many times before. The USSR had socialized medicine. So does Cuba (but then you may believe the Michael Moore fairytale about medicine in Cuba). It's probably better to go see in person how Cubans live and how they have no access to the places that Moore visited.

You wrote: "i feel very strongly that health should be a communal effort.a civilized society should take care of each other."

Really, then why try to force me (or anyone) into your idea of "good" medicine? The free market is a communal effort. In fact, it is nothing else (and nothing else is as communal as the free market). Central planning, socialized, top-down decision-making, is not. Never has been. Never will be.

Voluntary interactions is "taking care of each other." Coercion is not. Socialism is coercion. It cannot "work" any other way. A free market is voluntary cooperation.

Economic calculation is necessary to avoid chaos, whatever the purpose of a service. This is economic law. Unless the purpose is to create chaos, you need real prices and efficiency that only the free market can provide.

I hope this helps to clarify (and not confuse) what I wrote on @eric3579's profile.

enoch said:

<snipped>

Cracked Chiropractor Commercial: Is This For Real?

hatsix says...

@criticalthud
Yeah, I've been accused of that, but I blame that on the "arguing on the internet" aspect of things, rather than my actual mindset. For instance, as much as I talk up Medical Science, I still don't trust doctors, and in the last 10 years, have only visited to A) get a Physical Examination required by a job, B) get a prescription for a PT, C) Get innoculated for one of the bird/swine flu, as I had been sick for a week after spending a weekend at a "Gamer Convention" (PAX), where there were many confirmed cases.

But, while I don't trust doctors, I actively campaign against "Alternative Medicine", as I've seen many people hurt by it. I've seen one person poison themselves after getting food poisoning, because "like cures like", and I've had one friend commit suicide after they were convinced that the anti-psychotic medicine they were taking wasn't "natural", and quit it.

Whenever I think of alternative medicine practitioners and their criticism of Proper Medicine, I have one quote that sticks in my head, courtesy of The Big Lebowski:
"You're not wrong, Walter. You're just an asshole"

Sure, Medical Science can be improved. But you can't improve it by removing the science. You improve it by removing the politics. Remove the kickbacks from big pharma. Remove the groveling and begging for research funds. Remove the Actual Politics of Insurance and Medicare and Medicaid and VA Benefits. Remove the Actual Politics of the 'War on Drugs".

Those are the problems in our current medical community. But rather than attempting to solve the actual problems that we all agree on, most naturopaths are just treating the symptoms... working on the edges of society, and contributing to the distrust of the individual doctors, rather than the overhaul of the entire system.

And there are certainly many types of naturopaths. Of those that I've met (my wife spent three years in a "Traditional Western Herbalism" school, so I've met quite a few), most have problems differentiating between an idea and a fact. An unsettling amount believed that herbalism is effective because the ancient aliens that brought us to earth also brought us a dramatic and intelligent plant-system which was created to diagnose and treat all of our illnesses.

They believe that through meditation, they are able to connect to this awareness, and this awareness is what will tell them what to give their patients.


It's not the individuals I have a problem with, it's their poor education that I have a problem with. Some NPs can overcome the disadvantage of their environment that de-values scientific method and fact-gathering. Many MDs can overcome the disadvantage of years of de-valuing their own intuition.

But acknowledging the similarities between the two ignores the actual harm that is caused by alternative medicine. Alternative medicine shares the same risks as Proper Medicine, with the same chances of mis-treatment.... but it removes any chance of surgery or active treatment to cure issues. It removes the huge base of shared understanding, and replaces it with a very small base of folklore that has been accumulated through "give the patient this plant, if they don't die, it must have cured them".

Cracked Chiropractor Commercial: Is This For Real?

hatsix says...

I won't argue that Chiro makes your joints feel better, Cracking my knuckles makes my knuckles feel better too... but it doesn't make them better. It doesn't "heal" anything, and that is alternative medicine's "Big Issue" with "Allopathic" medicine. You will ALWAYS, 100% guaranteed, get better care from a Physical Therapist, as they're there to ensure your body gets strong enough to heal itself. They can handle "acute adjustments" as well, but they prefer the holistic solution. The best part is, they have a proper understanding of the body, instead of all of the quackery mumbo-jumbo that Chiropractic Practitioners are taught (note: not all believe it, but they aren't taught anything else).

If you want to boil down how vaccines work into three words, sure, you might pick those three... but if you pick four, you'd get a very different phrase: "learn from dead things". But the main difference between vaccines and homeopathy is that we have an excellent understanding of what and why vaccines work, while homeopathy has never been validated by an impartial study. Sure, the premise started the same, but then doctors and scientists actually put work into verifying and validating how vaccines work. They made up new and interesting phrases to describe what was going on, just like homeopathy and it's "water memory", but unlike homeopaths, they reproduced their findings in labs across the country before they started selling it.

Homeopathy and Proper Medicine are as similar as me and the guy that wins a marathon. We both started the race... Sure, I was distracted after a block because I realized I could take a cab to the nearest restaurant and have a nice dinner and a beer, then I watched some TV, and took a cab back to the finish line and crossed it a couple hours later... But hey, we're both the same thing because we started at the same place, right?

The garbage man? I think you mean sanitation, specifically as it relates to bodily wasted, which has been around for over 5000 years. Of course, there have been many advances over the years, and it was not taken seriously in most of Europe until the industrial revolution. But it's certainly true... this technology that has been developing for 5000 years has had more of an effect on human health in cities than anything Medical Science has done.

Of course, it wasn't until we had a good understanding of biological vectors of diseases (research done by "Natural Philosophers", from which sprung all of modern science) that we understood just how important sanitation is, and started real improvements.


TLDR:

Chiropractic Care: May make you feel better, but at it's very best is the very least of what a PT can do.

Homeopathy: Complete and utter quackery, bearing only the most vague and abstract connection to real science.

criticalthud said:

@hatsix
sure, Chiro is western as much as osteopathy is, but in the general scheme of things, somatic practitioners in the west are considered "alternative" health care. Chiro is good for acute subluxations. Poor for chronic. Most acute subluxations are however a result of a chronic misalignment that has suddenly become acute.

as for, homeopathy. quackery perhaps, but it also operates under the same exact same premise as vaccinations: "like cures like".

PT's operate under a principle of "strong vs. weak" muscles in assessing structure and prescribing treatment. Their general bent is to "strengthen" the weak muscles in order to stabilize the problematic joint. The problem with PT and any other therapy that is primarily concerned with relative length in contractile tissue (muscle and fascia), is that contractile tissue is a "reactive" system in the body rather than control. The control lies within the neurology. PT has thus been shown to be of limited effectiveness.

and, btw, the garbageman has done more for stopping the spread of disease than the doctor.

Cracked Chiropractor Commercial: Is This For Real?

hatsix says...

Just to be clear, Chiropractic care is VERY MUCH "Western" medicine. It is a bit over 100 years old, but just as much pseudo-science as the grand-daddy of quackery, Homeopathy.

There are many practitioners that mix it with non-quackery, like Physical Therapy and Massage Therapy. There are some that mix it with traditional "Eastern" medicine, like acupuncture and herbal medicines. But that doesn't reduce it's quackery.

And certainly, there are many questionable practices in non-alternative medicine, especially with behaviorally-difficult children. But it isn't their fault that there is medication that lessens the severity of these outbursts. Don't blame the doctors for giving parents what they ask (and pay) for. Blame the parents who are looking for a quick fix, rather than spending time with their kids to fix the real issues. These are cultural issues, not specifically issues with the medical establishment, the same as obesity and diabetes.

The true way to tell if someone really understands alternative medicine's issues with mainstream medicine is to bring up Chiropractic care. If they can fault mainstream medicine for treating the symptoms and not the core issue, and they feel like adjusting alignment of bones is better than a PT working to heal your body so it can handle it's own alignment, they're really just being contrarian and anti-authoritarian, Not actually being logical with their choices.

criticalthud said:

are you an md? if you are, the number of patients you see, the treatments you can provide, and what drugs you deal are dictated by insurance and pharmaceutical companies, and you have no choice but to comply while you pay off your 200k in loans.
Do you know what iatrogenic death means, or what the rate of iatrogenic death is? check it out....
There is plenty of quackery in the western md world.

as for Chiropractic, at least they are attempting to address the most glaring hole in western medicine: the rather obvious relationship between the structure of the body and the function of the body.

And when it comes to somatic/structural issues - which make up over 50% of hospital visits, and of which the western world treats with drugs or surgery, the chiro's at least have some of the theory correct, it's just their methodology that is fucked.

But, as for fundamental quackery, let's look at how the western world treats kids. First, hook them on sugar, then call them ADHD and give them methamphetamine salt (Adderol), followed by Ambien cause they can't sleep, followed by Prozac caused they are depressed cause they can't sleep, ...all the while they are raiding mom's medicine cabinet for the oxycontin or whatever opiate derivative they can find.
yeah, it's a JOKE. But we were trained to bow to authority, call the doctor god and worship the white coat and piece of paper on the wall.

I mean, for fuck's sake, listen to the side effect list of any major drug out there. really? that's "health care". bullshit.

Western md's shine in trauma, which was learned from our spirited attempts to have a continual state of warfare. for that they are top-notch. Anti-biotics were a huge deal, but all they've learned to do since the advent of penicillin is to make analogue after analogue, and they've stuffed so many people full of anti-biotics for just about every malady, that we are becoming genetically resistant to them as a species.
health care. yup.
how many of you out there can even afford this type of "health care"?
but please, do some research and go on for hours.

Cracked Chiropractor Commercial: Is This For Real?

shveddy says...

@criticalthud - Pretty much completely eradicating smallpox and polio, rabies is no longer a death sentence, there has been a 55% reduction in cardiovascular disease fatalities since the fifties, there is a 90% childhood leukemia survival rate, transplants, bacterial infections are generally no longer a big deal...

This is just what comes to me off the top of my head, with research I could go on for hours.

Of course there are flaws and in some cases corruption in western medicine just as you would expect with any such massively complex and lucrative human endeavor, but trying to equate it with the blatant quackery of "alternative medicine" only displays your intentional ignorance of reality and makes you the butt of any joke.

I have no patience for this kind of mindless drivel. Somehow, it has become trendy to ignore the benefits of modern medicine. Honestly, I don't care if you die needlessly of cancer because you waited too long to see some western doctors, but when scum like you try to contribute to the general atmosphere of rampant unfounded mistrust of science based techniques that have an astoundingly successful track record, then you are trying to spread your inane poison and I have to reprimand your idiocy.




http://www.oxfordscholarship.com/view/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195150698.001.0001/acprof-9780195150698-chapter-18

http://www.cancer.org/cancer/news/news/childhood-leukemia-survival-rates-improve-significantly

criticalthud said:

altho i would also say it is quite arguable that western medicine, outside of trauma care, is kinda a joke too

Unusual powerlifter? Using the power of Bounce!

Bill Maher Gets Schooled On Vaccines By Bill Frist

peggedbea says...

i agree with everything you just said, but i think you might be over estimating how much of it is science.
it's a great deal business. at least in the US. where medicine is mostly for profit. for huge huge profits.
medical RESEARCH is in fact, science. and i have faith in it. the dispensing of medicine is however, a business.

i'm saying this as someone who has degrees in health science fields. spent 8 years as a health care professional. spent 1/3 of that time doing administrative work. and now owns a business as a CAM practitioner.... which btw, is also a good bit business.

i'd also like to stick up for alternative medicine here.
a good deal of it is bullshit. any results are simply the placebo effect. but i don't think we should discount the placebo effect. it's an amazing mechanism. if you feel less depressed because someone hit you with a tuning fork and you didn't have to take any pills or go to a counselor, then okay. that's awesome. i still think you probably need counseling, but whatever. i also think you should take a good hard look at your diet and how much exercise you're doing. but how much does it cost in the US to go to a counselor, go to a doctor, get your anti-depressants and have a nutritionist and a phsyical trainer help you learn how to excercise and eat right? it's probably cheaper to pay someone $80 to hit you with that tuning fork and convince yourself it's going to work.

I make a decent living practicing complementary health care. but i don't tell anyone they need to be hit with a tuning fork or have someone throw energy beams out of their hands at them. i tell people they need to stretch, and i teach them how. i tell people they need to sleep properly, and i help them do it. i tell people they need to find an effective way to deal with stress, and i give them that. i tell people they need to find a form of exercise that's right for their bodies and lifestyles, and i help them find it. a lot of people just need someone to trust and someone to talk to. and that's why they call me a "therapist". i never tell people to go against their doctor's orders. i never tell anyone to stop taking their medicine or not to be vaccinated. and that's why what i do is COMPLEMENTARY.

we're too quick to dismiss a different approach when it comes to health care.
the same people are also very quick to be able to recognize the problems with our for profit health care systems when it comes to political discussions. the profit motive hasn't just tainted medicine in terms of disparity. it's tainted it in terms of effectiveness. this is where a holistic approach is good. it's not effect to only treat the symptom. if someone is overweight, has high blood pressure, their stress is out of control and they have diabetes. prescribing them pills, while necessary in the short term, is not at all where the "care" should end. i know doctors will also tell their patients to eat right and exercise but they do not teach them how to do it. because for profit health care doesn't think that is profitable. a for profit system does not want you healthy.

soooo... the market has opened up. if the way we practice medicine and viewed health in this country was working, people wouldn't pay to get hit with tuning forks. oh and half of this is a problem with our education system.
>> ^dag:

^Yes, how dare anyone question the all-knowing oracles of medical knowledge.
I think the reason that many geeky type people always toe the main-stream medical line is because they conflate medicine with science (which we all love). Yes, it's almost the same, but if I had to draw it as a venn diagram, there would be a crescent of over-hang. Medicine to me is 80% science and then the rest is filled in with dogma, patriarchy and business ($$).
That crescent of non-science is the part that makes me squirm. I don't think it's that wrong to question medical programs like vaccinations- with the idea that it may be being pushed non-scientifically by the medical industrial complex. (big pharma).
Bill Maher is not a kook.

Duck-pocalypse



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