Shit Medicine

[Choobus]

Sternwallow wrote

Why do you suggest that nutrition science and related bodies of knowledge, arrived at by testing are not main-stream medicine? Why, contrarywise, would anyone eat herbs and barks and such for reasons other than their (bogus) medicinal benefits?

There are two kinds of medicine: that which works, in the valid statistical tested beneficial sense, commonly known as mainstream-medicine, and that which does not.

Exactly! Very well put sir.

[Eva]

i usually ask the idiots that love everything "natural" and hate wester medicine what the life expectancy of people was at the beggining of the 20th century and what it is now....i ask them what has changed in that century....and they mostly refuse to admit it...

[psychodiva]

and yet another quack remedy

http://www.quackwatch.org/01Quackery.../mentserv.html

"Neuro Emotional Technique (NET)

NET is another chiropractic approach focused on "releasing patients'
emotional blocks stored in the body's memory." Its developer, Scott
Walker, D.C., of Encinitas, California, describes NET as "a body-mind
way, a non talk-it-out way, of dealing with emotional aberrations." [16]
Its proponents claim that everyone has such blocks and that the body
"replays" these old memories, which can adversely affect health [17].
According to a recent article, when chronic patients do not seem to get
better over a course of treatment, and where structure, nutrition and
"toxicity" have been addressed, NET practitioners look for a "Neuro
Emotional Complex (NEC)" that they feel is preventing healing. The
practitioner uses muscle testing (applied kinesiology) to "isolate a
troublesome event"; asks the patient to hold in mind a "snapshot" of the
emotional state while the chiropractor adjusts the patient's spine and
acupuncture points; and prescribes supplement products and homeopathic
remedies. Walker states that during the ten years he has been teaching
the technique, 2,700 health care practitioners (mostly chiropractors but
some physicians, psychologists and dentists) have learned it, and most
use it regularly in their practice. According to Walker, "the reason
homeopathy works so well is that it allows the body to remember what
toxins it needs to get rid of in order to reestablish homeostasis." He
also says that although psychotherapy is valuable, an "emotional memory
locked in the body" can't be resolved through therapy alone [17]. The
ONE (Our NET Effect) Foundation was incorporated in 1993 "to help NET
practitioners scientifically validate their technique, promote their
practices, and bring NET to the world." [18]"

[psychodiva]

And back to the MMR idiocy- this is a good site for those of you who want the ammunition with which to argue about this topic

@psychodiva

I would be most interested in your opinion of two fringe models of therapy,if you know anything about them:

Transactional Analysis

"Radix" aka "Neo Reichian Psychology". I've read Reich,and his loopy "Orgone Theory of Energy". Neo Reichians don't seem as loopy.

[ubs]

Sternwallow wrote

There are two kinds of medicine: that which works, in the valid statistical tested beneficial sense, commonly known as mainstream-medicine, and that which does not.

Nope, nope. The definition of alternative medicine is anything that falls outside the realm of traditional medicine. It includes nutrition, exercise, and meditation - Areas would never have come to light as something worthy of research if there weren't people challenging the establishment.

While I agree that someone who lies about their product - be it medicine or a lawn mower, should be prosecuted, I don't understand the objection to trying new stuff. If it weren't for alternative medicine the only means that we know to extend human life - CRON - would never have come to light.

Incidentally, your doctor is no more qualified to discuss food with you than the lowest nurse. They all take the same one semester nutrition course, and one survey showed that most doctors just quote to their patients what their mother told them. Talk about quackery.

Medical school is difficult to get into, but it is rife with nepotism and has the lowest attrition rate of any graduate program. For fuck sake they're body mechanics that have been working on the same damn model for 6000 years. It's not rocket science.

I'm not saying don't use an MD, but don't understand the reluctance to regard them, and their very narrow area of expertise with a critical eye.

[Sternwallow]

ubs wrote

Nope, nope. The definition of alternative medicine is anything that falls outside the realm of traditional medicine. It includes nutrition, exercise, and meditation - Areas would never have come to light as something worthy of research if there weren't people challenging the establishment.

While I agree that someone who lies about their product - be it medicine or a lawn mower, should be prosecuted, I don't understand the objection to trying new stuff. If it weren't for alternative medicine the only means that we know to extend human life - CRON - would never have come to light.

Incidentally, your doctor is no more qualified to discuss food with you than the lowest nurse. They all take the same one semester nutrition course, and one survey showed that most doctors just quote to their patients what their mother told them. Talk about quackery.

Medical school is difficult to get into, but it is rife with nepotism and has the lowest attrition rate of any graduate program. For fuck sake they're body mechanics that have been working on the same damn model for 6000 years. It's not rocket science.

I'm not saying don't use an MD, but don't understand the reluctance to regard them, and their very narrow area of expertise with a critical eye.

The medical profession does certainly warrant use of a critical eye. That is the way that it improves.

It is fine and honorable to challenge the establishment, but it must be done in such a way that the results are valid and shown to be beneficial.

I take it that you would not submit to an operation by a guy in a hut in the boonies who does nothing about antisepsis or even hygiene, who pulls pieces of rotting meat from a hole in your stomach made by hand. Many people who have survived such treatment, especially for cancer, while they still live, praise the process and the practitioner in the most glowing terms. Should this be considered an alternative to real medicine, just to rankle the establishment? Or should this guy and the many similar quacks in the third world be jailed for the murders they are committing daily?

Meanwhile, Nutrition has had similar scientific evaluation and its main stream falls into the class of methods and materials that "work" by the definition I gave.

Certainly the only way for a proposed medicine or medical procedure to become accepted is to be put to rigorous trials by people trying to make it fail. It is not a good plan for individuals to attempt to experiment with these modes that have not been scrutinized by medical science. If you do try one of these alternatives your results,however miraculous they may seem to you, have no value for anyone else because you are prone to confirmation bias and the placebo effect and gullibility to fraud (as, individually, we all are).

The willow bark (aspirin) that you mentioned has moved from a folk or alternative treatment to a tested, reliable, safe, effective medication whose benefits and potential risks and side effects have been determined by years of research.

All "alternative" treatments deserve study and testing and analysis and evaluation, if there is a body of evidence pointing to some possible benefit (that is other than word of mouth testimonials) so that it can become part of real medicine. For instance, I do not reject Reiki out of hand because it is weird or alien, only because it has not been properly tested under laboratory conditions and produced statistically significant beneficial, effective, safe results.

I would happily submit to ear candling if it had been thoroughly tested and found to actually work. Same for Feng Shui or primal scream therapy etc.

Therefore I repeat, Medicine is that which is known to work and the other treatments are not Medicine.

[psychodiva]

BOF wrote

@psychodiva

I would be most interested in your opinion of two fringe models of therapy,if you know anything about them:

Transactional Analysis

"Radix" aka "Neo Reichian Psychology". I've read Reich,and his loopy "Orgone Theory of Energy". Neo Reichians don't seem as loopy.

Never heard of the second one-I'll get back to you on that once I've looked at it

as for TA- I use the precepts of TA quite a lot as a way of understanding the way a family or group or dyad operates and a way of understanding how I might intervene in it - but I've not heard of it used in the UK as a sole treatment- an a'pproach' yes but what treatment is associated with it?

its like attachment therapy- which is always lumped in with attachment theory to a lot of lay people- the theory I use quite heavily in my work- the therapy- all the 'pinning down' and 're-birthing' is a dangerous load of codswallop- so it depends what you actually mean by TA

[ubs]

Sternwallow wrote

I would happily submit to ear candling if it had been thoroughly tested and found to actually work. Same for Feng Shui or primal scream therapy etc.

Therefore I repeat, Medicine is that which is known to work and the other treatments are not Medicine.

And all I'm saying is that most discoveries originate in the monsters ball outside of the medical community. Their only 100% home grown discovery in decades is erections for 90 year olds. You eliminate the riff raff, you eliminate their major source of golden eggs.

There are 195,000 deaths a year in the US due to physician fuck up. Funny that those never make it to this thread.

[Eva]

i think that the number for deaths due to witch doctors is higher than that...

[ubs]

Eva wrote

i think that the number for deaths due to witch doctors is higher than that...

I doubt that very much, though it only takes a few anticdotes pitched to a reliably racist audience to have you thinking otherwise. Consider that your villains are a group of people whose crime is healing without the machine that goes ping.

This isn't the shit medicine thread, its the hand jobs for Dr Dingleberry thread. "Don't worry Dr. Dingleberry. You won't have to come up with your own good ideas. We'll steal them from other people and marginalize them afterword."

[Eva]

huh?
well, anyways, the body heals, and doctors cure using medicines, modern techniques, and sometimes by doing nothing.


this "doing nothing" is what witch doctors do... like stern said: if it works, it;s medicine. if not, some looney new-agey idiot will practice it.

[psychodiva]

yes- and 'witch doctors' doesn't have to be 'racist' if it is perceived as such then I think it is taken the wrong way- anybody who perpetuates scam medicine on people is in my view a 'witch doctor' altho i would not personally use that term I understand what Eva is getting at.

I also heal without the machine that goes 'ping' I have seen it done many times- but with medicine based on evidence, not on conjecture, belief or anecdote- which is what 'alternative medicine' is based on,

I'm not sure what you are getting at Ubs but I don't think we are talking about the same thing here- if there is a problem with so-called 'big pharma' as some people like to call it then that is not what i am talking about and not what this thread is about..

Sure 'discoveries' are made by people working outside mainstream medicine- but those discoveries will only be applied if they are shown to work through rigorous testing and safety procedures- not just because some guy said it worked for his mum so it should work for your sister cos she has the same colour hair.

This 'Dr Dingleberry' very often makes it his life's work to discover something useful for people who are ill- where are all these discoveries made by people in the 'monsters ball'? compared with real work done by real scientists? Please tell me as I would really like to know - but again this is not what this thread is about.

sure- start another thread about the fuckups made by physicians - and don't forget nurses- after all we make as many fuckups as doctors - oh- and psychologists and psychiatrists- lets look at all those fuckups too - but please- on another thread- this should be here for the fuckups made by the people without the real qualifications maybe? the people who the public thinks are in it out of the goodness of their hearts and not for the money we professionals get

[Choobus]

ubs wrote

This isn't the shit medicine thread, its the hand jobs for Dr Dingleberry thread. "Don't worry Dr. Dingleberry. You won't have to come up with your own good ideas. We'll steal them from other people and marginalize them afterword."

Wow! Off your meds?

[Smellyoldgit]

Yet Another Quackified Example

When the researchers examined treatments for rheumatoid arthritis, they found 13 out of 21 complementary medicines were shown to have no or little effect based on the available evidence.

The 13 were: antler velvet powder, blackcurrant seed oil, collagen, eazmov (a herbal mixture), feverfew (herb), flaxseed oil, green-lipped mussels, homeopathy, reumalex herbal mixture, selenium, the Chinese herb tong luo kai bi, vitamins A, C and E, and willow bark.

The researchers also examined how safe compounds were.
One - thunder god vine, a traditional Chinese medicine - was given a "red" classification, meaning there were serious safety concerns.

I don't want no thunder god vine rubbed into my bones!