Court forcing 16 yr old with cancer into chemo

[scaeagles]

Anyone else heard this story?

This pisses me off like you cannot imagine. As I understand it, a 16 year old who has been through chemo in he past wants to pursue alternatives treatments. His parents are supportive of that decision. A court has ruled he must undergo chemotherapy and not pursue alternative treatments.

I have no words to express how this sickens me.

[tracilicious]

That's disgusting. Having personally known four people cured of cancer with alternative treatments (one of them being given 12 months to live, now alive six years later and cancer free) this bothers me a lot. I'm not saying chemo never works, but some doctors are so ignorant of other treatments that it is sickening.

[scaeagles]

I'll add that I don't really care if other treatments work. The government should not be able to force someone into medical treatment they don't want.

I will add that I don't think the Christian Science approach with small children not being given any medical treatment is OK. That has to do with the child having no knowledge of what's going on. In this case, the boy clearly has an understanding.

[tracilicious]

Yes, I agree, Scaeagles. It also bothers me that they are treating alternative therapies like he is going to wear crystals and try to walk on water or something.

[Moonliner]

the boy clearly has an understanding.



But Starchild Abraham Cherrix's (yes, that's his name) is also still a minor and not legally responsible for his own life.

He has Hodgkin's disease (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hodgkin%27s_disease). Without proper treatment he will die. With treatment he has a better than 85% of a complete cure.

So what you are arguing for here, is the right of a parent to let their child die while they feed him the "organic diet and herbal supplements" prescribed by a mexican clinic rather than the the standard ABVD chemotherapy regimen.

[scaeagles]

I hear what you're saying, Moon, but it still angers me. This should no be within the purview of the government. Is a crime being committed? I don't know. Perhaps if the kid dies the parents could be prosecuted for negligent homicide.

[Nephythys]

Yes- they could. It's been done before where a parent was held responsible for not allowing or providing appropriate medical care for their child.

Frankly if the guy was 18 this would be moot- for 2 years he may be screwed- it's amazing how the state (social services/courts) can intervene.

[mousepod]

I'm all for people making their own decisions about what to do with their own bodies. I'm also sure that many of the "alternatives" to medicine are pure BS.
However sad this case appears, what Neph brings up is fact: he's a minor, and the reason that these kinds of courts even exist is to try and guarantee the best possible life for minors. To put it another way, I'm not sure I can even see some nefarious reason or hidden agenda behind the judge's decision, other than he thinks that chemo is the best way to pursue this particular type of cancer.

[scaeagles]

I do suppose you and Moon are right, Mousepod. There is just something that doesn't sit right with me about it.

[tracilicious]

Hmm, reading some of the responses I'm not sure where I stand. Yes, I think it sucks that a 16 year old who has an understanding of his disease can't make a decision with his parents as to what treatment to persue. But, on the other hand, if the court decided to let them not get treatment, then they would be setting a precedent. So at what age are we going to say that understanding begins? I think the only choice is to keep the minimum age 18.

On a non-legal issue, if his doctors would simply work with some of the many alternative medicine practitioners here in the states, perhaps they could treat it from all sides instead of getting in a nasty legal battle.

[Nephythys]

I do suppose you and Moon are right, Mousepod. There is just something that doesn't sit right with me about it.


I don't disagree. But for some reason someone has brought this case, and the judge is acting on what they perceive as the best interests of the child.

[tracilicious]

So what you are arguing for here, is the right of a parent to let their child die while they feed him the "organic diet and herbal supplements" prescribed by a mexican clinic rather than the the standard ABVD chemotherapy regimen.

Who says he would die? And did they say they'd be going to Mexico? There are many, many, alternatives to chemo in the US.

[Moonliner]

I do suppose you and Moon are right, Mousepod. There is just something that doesn't sit right with me about it.

It is not an easy case and my initial reaction was in line with yours. Where do you draw the line? Should we be forcing all Amish women give birth in modern neonatal units? Should the state take custody of obese kids? Should smokers be banned from having children at all?

What role should the state play in keeping kids safe from their own parents? Parents that are loving, concerned and looking out for the well being of their child's health and soul no matter how misguided they may be.

[Moonliner]

Who says he would die? And did they say they'd be going to Mexico? There are many, many, alternatives to chemo in the US.

Death is the outcome for untreated (http://www.madsci.org/posts/archives/oct98/906408745.Me.r.html) Hodgkins. From the reports here he is quite far along with the disease and the probability of his recovering without treatment is essentially nil.

and yes, his parents did say they have taken him to Mexico and that their treament plan for him is the organic diet.

[tracilicious]

It is not an easy case and my initial reaction was in line with yours. Where do you draw the line? Should we be forcing all Amish women give birth in modern neonatal units?


I know I shouldn't post this but I just can't not. I'm really not trying to start a fight, Moonie.

Given that the US is 36th on the list of infant mortality, meaning that 35 countries (http://www.geographyiq.com/ranking/ranking_Infant_Mortality_Rate_aall.htm) have better survival rates for babies than we do, I'd say not. The top countries have a birth system completely run by midwives and a huge number of homebirths. My dislike for our sub-standard American medical system is intense.

[BarTopDancer]

Who says he would die? And did they say they'd be going to Mexico? There are many, many, alternatives to chemo in the US.

I saw this on the news. They were seeking treatment in Mexico.

[Moonliner]

I know I shouldn't post this but I just can't not. I'm really not trying to start a fight, Moonie.

Given that the US is 36th on the list of infant mortality, meaning that 35 countries (http://www.geographyiq.com/ranking/ranking_Infant_Mortality_Rate_aall.htm) have better survival rates for babies than we do, I'd say not. The top countries have a birth system completely run by midwives and a huge number of homebirths. My dislike for our sub-standard American medical system is intense.

In an effort to help SCA and myself come to grip with why this case is upsetting, I was posting those concepts as extreme examples of where government interference in our lives could lead us. Evil examples and certainly not as a suggested course of action. So I don't think any fights are brewing over this between us. Unless of course you do think the government should get more involved with our personal heath care decisions. If that's the case then bring it on :evil:

[tracilicious]

Death is the outcome for untreated (http://www.madsci.org/posts/archives/oct98/906408745.Me.r.html)Hodgkins. From the reports here he is quite far along with the disease and the probability of his recovering without treatment is essentially nil.

and yes, his parents did say they have taken him to Mexico and that their treament plan for him is the organic diet.


I don't feel qualified to comment on the proper course for this specific case. Nor do I know anything about Hodgkin's in general. And I should add that out of the people I know that treated their cancer without chemo, only one went to Mexico, and she also got traditional surgeries here in the states.

But most any kind of malignant cancer will kill you if you don't treat it. That's not to say that people that seek alternatives are just marching to the grave. And a cancer diet is much much more than just an organic diet. I eat an organic diet, and it wouldn't cure me of cancer if I had it. It's a complex system of certain foods eaten at certain times of day that takes into account the individual and all systems of the body and the chemical reactions that affect them.

Many herbs can do the exact same thing that synthetic medicines can do, but better and with fewer side effects. The US government is only starting to research it, but Germany has been doing placebo controlled double blind studies on herbs for two decades. It's not as if it's some quack on a beanbag burning incense and willing cancer away.

[tracilicious]

In an effort to help SCA and myself come to grip with why this case is upsetting, I was as posting those concepts as extreme examples of where government interference in our lives could lead us. Evil examples and certainly not as a suggested course of action. So I don't think any fights are brewing over this between us.


Good, and I understood that. But being that the atrocious birth system in our country bothers me a lot, I just couldn't not post those facts.

[tracilicious]

I also wanted to say that if I had cancer, I would probably do both conventional and alternative therapies, so it's not as though I think traditional medicine is useless or anything.

[mousepod]

My dislike for our sub-standard American medical system is intense.

tracilicious - I hear what you're saying, but I'm not exactly sure what you mean by the "American medical system". If you're talking about our fairly lopsided delivery of medical care, the misguided and profit-driven "insurance" business, or the absolute misunderstanding in DC about what Medicare should be, I'm with you all the way. But I think that the medical professionals in the US get a bum rap from all sides. From my own experience, I think that America's doctors and nurses rank among the best in the world.

As far as the thread topic goes, I guess I would try to put myself in the judge's position, and I just don't see how he could have decided otherwise.

I have know many people people who have dealt with cancer, some who beat it and some who didn't - and no matter what, this is a difficult and ultimately sad case.

[Not Afraid]

I understand why the court made this decision and, since the person in question is legally a child, I agree with the decision. However, I don't see why treatment has to be an either/or option. I haven't read about the laternative treatment plan, but if it is anything like my Mother's alternative cancer tretment, then much of it can be done in the US while undergoing chemo.

Chemo is not fun, but neither is dying of cancer. I would think that, at 16, you would try every available option given to you to try and heal and your parents would support you.

[Moonliner]

I also wanted to say that if I had cancer, I would probably do both conventional and alternative therapies, so it's not as though I think traditional medicine is useless or anything.



Assuming you are over 18 and mentally sound, then in my opinion you could treat your cancer by watching a Sponge Bob marathon. That's your choice.

But what if it's your friends 4 year old little boy? Then what? As a society we have decided that 16 is too young to decide your own fate.

[SacTown Chronic]

Next thing you know, the president himself will be shoving feeding tubes down our throats.

[Moonliner]

I understand why the court made this decision and, since the person in question is legally a child, I agree with the decision. However, I don't see why treatment has to be an either/or option. I haven't read about the laternative treatment plan, but if it is anything like my Mother's alternative cancer treatment, then much of it can be done in the US while undergoing chemo.

Chemo is not fun, but neither is dying of cancer. I would think that, at 16, you would try every available option given to you to try and heal and your parents would support you.

If the parents thought that way then yes, this would not be an issue. However they are refusing Chemo altogether. Ironically, if they had avoided all medical care and just let him die naturally this would also probably not be an issue.

[Prudence]

I'm much more concerned about a case local to my area. It hit the airwaves with a blast - Amber alerts everywhere you look, all pleading for the location of a baby boy who was desperately ill and kidnapped by his mother right before his scheduled life-saving surgery.

And then the "truth" trickled out.

Still not sure of the whole story, but after a day or so the authorities and hospital confessed that the boy wasn't actually about to die. Sick and vulnerable, but not the "going to die by morning if he doesn't get the surgery" that was broadcast the night before.

And the kidnapping? Yes, the mom took him from the hospital without permission after the baby had been made a ward of the state. So, she'll have to pay the penalty on that one.

However, why was the baby made a ward of the state? Because the parents wanted a consultation from a naturopath. Not that they had decided on an alternative wacko treatment in a backroads clinic out of the country, but because before going through with the surgery they wanted to see if there were any other viable options. My understanding from subsequent newspaper articles is that the baby has some kidney malfunctions, and the surgery (to prepare him for dialysis) is a form of treatment, but not a cure and with significant risks of its own. The hospital had promised an appointment with a naturopath on several occasions, but had cancelled them all, and the surgery was that morning.

Public sentiment shifted palpably over the several days this was in the news.

Oh, and as of this morning's drive-time news, she's finally allowed to see her child whenever she wants (as opposed to very limited, scheduled visits), but only if the father is there. She can't live with them.

[tracilicious]

tracilicious - I hear what you're saying, but I'm not exactly sure what you mean by the "American medical system". If you're talking about our fairly lopsided delivery of medical care, the misguided and profit-driven "insurance" business, or the absolute misunderstanding in DC about what Medicare should be, I'm with you all the way. But I think that the medical professionals in the US get a bum rap from all sides. From my own experience, I think that America's doctors and nurses rank among the best in the world.


I'm talking about all that and more. I'm talking about the "system" in general and not usually specific doctors. I think often specific doctors are the problem, but that would be the medical colleges fault and not their own. They are doing what they are taught. It's the system that chooses treatment based on insurance, the system that gives you a vicodin for a headache instead of figuring out what's really wrong or even if treatment is necessary, the system that immunizes babies for a disease against a disease acquired from sex and shared needles when the immunization only protects until age 10, the system in which women can schedule elective C-sections and dr.s will induce labor because they are going on vacation.

I think in general Dr.s are good people who want to help others. Nurses too. Their jobs are hard and they even manage to be right sometimes ;) , but if our system were what it should be we would stack up to the rest of the world more favorably. It's truly frightening when you compare survival and disease rates for many things. I think it's getting better. Very slowly.

[Alex]

It depends on what the alternative treatment they were considering was, I suppose, for me to decide how strongly I feel about it.

Courts have been forcing medical procedures on children despite the protestations of the parents for a long time. Christian Scientists and Jehovah's Witnesses are well aware of that.


As you might guess I'm doubtful of most "alternative" methods of treatment. Most are simply bunk, the rest have never been subjected to actual validation and many are actually harmful.

Personally, I am pro-suicide so everybody should be free to choose whatever treatment they want, no matter how stupid. But in our society we have already decided that there are certain decisions of risk that parents are not allowed to make for their children (not wearing seatbelts, for example; or driving cars on public roads; or, frequently, refusing surgery and blood transfusions for religious reasons). The only wrinkle in this one is that the boy is old enough to make a compelling case for himself but legally there is nothing different here than if it were a 10-year-old.

I do wonder, though, if this is the same Mexico clinic that killed Coretta Scott King.

[Betty]

Okay - I can't find it now but read a follow up article in the last day or so that says the courts have backed off.

[scaeagles]

Next thing you know, the president himself will be shoving feeding tubes down our throats.

I see it as a slightly different issue than Schiavo, but poke away.

(BTW, with Schiavo it wasn't that I had a problem with her dying, I had a problem with her being starved to death. Just get some balls and do it without prolonging it.)

[scaeagles]

Okay - I can't find it now but read a follow up article in the last day or so that says the courts have backed off.

Here's a link (http://home.hamptonroads.com/stories/story.cfm?story=108097&ran=203691&tref=po)

[tracilicious]

As you might guess I'm doubtful of most "alternative" methods of treatment. Most are simply bunk, the rest have never been subjected to actual validation and many are actually harmful.


Perhaps we're thinking of different alternative therapies. Acupuncture has certainly been proven effective as has herbal medicine. I'm sure there are some people out there telling people to wear brocolli necklaces are some such nonsense, but in a great deal of alternative therapies there is a great deal of science.

[wendybeth]

I know two people that fought off Hodgkins, and from what I know of it a macrobiotic diet and apricot pits won't cut it. It has a highly successful cure rate when the appropriate conventional meds are used, and while I understand the concerns with regards to the horrible toxins in chemo, it's an alternative to dead. I see no apparent reason why there couldn't be a fusion of both, excepting any possible negative interaction with the alternative and conventional meds. St. Johns Wart is used in many alternative meds, but it doesn't mix well with many conventional. Same with grapefruit or derivitives of grapefruit. The med practicioners would have to check their collective egos at the door and really work together to make it feasible.

[Alex]

By no stretch of the imagination has acupuncture been proven effective. You can't even get various practitioners to agree on which points do what things or which diseases are amenable to treatment.

Similarly with most "herbal" treatments. If they had been proven effective (or more effective than chemo) every doctor would be more than happy to use them. The best that you get with most "alternative" treatments is simple anecdotes or hype from the practitioners. Now, there is certainly more evidence that acupuncture does something sometimes than for other therapies (such as homeopathy; at least acupuncture involves a physical change in the body) but
attempts at scientific validation are extremely muddled and most trials that show significant positive results have been of questionable methodology (not properly double-blinded, for example) or too small to allow for statistically significant results.

This doesn't even begin to exmaine that the underlying theory of acupuncture relies on a mystical energy force that has never been detected (and by some claims is outside the realm of what can be detected).

What I don't understand is that people would throw a fit if Merck put out a drug saying "it does X but we having actually done any tests that prove it" but because some Congressman got the "herbal supplement" market exempted from FDA coverage Spam Emailer X can say "it does X and we'll like about actually having done any tests that prove it" and everybody eats it up.

[scaeagles]

With my achalasia, I tried everything. Chiropractic, herbal, acupuncture...to no avail.

I will say there have been times when chiropractic have helped with other things in my life - for example, my eldest daughter had lots of repeated ear infections for the first year of her life. A chiropractor friend said he could help, and by golly, he did. After about three trips she never got another one.

With acupuncture, I can say that I think it does something.....I was rather tense going in for my first time (not excited about needles being stuck all over me), and the doctoe could tell, so she put some in a couple spots in each ear. Two minutes later I was completely relaxed. Now, it did nothing to help my achalasia during my course of treatment, but I could tell it was doing something.

[Morrigoon]

Slippery slope.

Yes, in this individual case, the world feels like the parents are making the wrong decision and that the patient is not competent to make his own medical decisions.

But where does it end? These same busybodies could easily turn around and say that pregnant women should be jailed in maternity wards for the entire term of their pregnancy and fed state-mandated regiment of healthy foods and vitamins to ensure that they don't medically harm their babies at any stage of the pregnancy. I know that sounds extreme, but it's really a slippery slope once you have the government and doctors being allowed to override the wishes of both patient and parents.

Whatever happened to the right of privacy? Of control over your own body? This boy committed no felony, he has harmed no one. Under what circumstances do we say it is okay to forcibly make him endure a treatment that is universally accepted as being horrible to go through? Whatever happened to DNR requests? Isn't refusing treatment the same thing?

If either the boy or his parents did consent to this treatment, my position might be different, but neither does. The government needs to mind its own damn business at that point, regardless of the result. A result, mind you, selected by both the boy AND his guardians.

If a 16-year old can be tried as an adult for committing murder, why can't he decide what he wants to do with his own body? So what if we don't like the choice he makes... it's HIS choice to make and it affects nobody but himself.

[Nephythys]

why is the slippery slope argument acceptable for some things (that people don't approve of) and is disregarded when it is used against something people do support?

hmmmm

[Not Afraid]

why is the slippery slope argument acceptable for some things (that people don't approve of) and is disregarded when it is used against something people do support?

hmmmm

Because you conservatives are just not consistant, that's why.

[scaeagles]

Because you conservatives are just not consistant, that's why.

HEY!

[Not Afraid]

;)

I couldn't resist that one.

[tracilicious]

By no stretch of the imagination has acupuncture been proven effective. You can't even get various practitioners to agree on which points do what things or which diseases are amenable to treatment.

Similarly with most "herbal" treatments. If they had been proven effective (or more effective than chemo) every doctor would be more than happy to use them.


A few years ago the government started doing acupuncture studies in which one group was given actual acupuncture and the other group were just poked with the blunt end of the needle. Neither group could see what was happening. The one I read about was done on severe arthritis and it was something like 90% effective. Of course, there haven't been enough studies for it to be considered scientifically reliable.

As I said before, Germany has been doing placebo controlled double blind studies on herbs for a long time. Their medicine is much more integrative.

I find it really funny that you think doctors would jump to do something unfamiliar to them just because it's been proven effective. Once the pharmaceutical companies start marketing the herbs, sending the docs on herb seminars and such, and handing out free herbs it might happen.

[tracilicious]

This doesn't even begin to exmaine that the underlying theory of acupuncture relies on a mystical energy force that has never been detected (and by some claims is outside the realm of what can be detected).

I could say the same about my microwave. I certainly can't see (with my eyes) how it, or any other energy works. :p ;)

Here's an acupuncture anecdote for you. The very first time I had acupuncture done (I've only had it a few times), I had broken my toe a few days before. My foot was very black and blue over a huge area. Obviously, they can't fix a broken toe, but they put a few needles in the bruised area for a while to get the circulation going. The next morning I woke up and there wasn't a trace of a bruise on my foot. Even I, was amazed.

[mousepod]

I don't want Alex to bear the brunt of all the skeptical backlash, so I'll just say that I completely agree with his last post.
Perhaps we could start another thread to talk about various opinions on alternative medicines. As a skeptic, I do lots of reading on the subject. For the record, I have no vested interest in keeping alternative medicine out... I just want to know that it works. As far as acupuncture goes, I have heard plenty of stories that claim its efficacy (including my own family members), but I have yet to see a true double-blind study that satisfies my own skepticism. I want to believe, but you'll have to prove it to me...

[tracilicious]

Hmmm...I'll have to do some advanced googling. I'm a skeptic with nearly everything. I suppose I've just read too much about Western medicine. Too many doctors using drugs not proven effective for different conditions and age groups, using the wrong medicines for the wrong things, etc. It seems like the general theory is throw a bunch of pills at something and see what happens. Not too scientific, in my opinion.

[mousepod]

I agree with you, tracilicious. In fact, it's the "not proven effective" part that sticks in my craw, whether it be western medicine or alternative medicine.

[scaeagles]

I have heard that 80% of traditional prescription medicines do not have the desired effect in 80% of the people. Either the side effects are worse than what is being solved, or they are not effective, or they lose potency for an individual over time.

I mentioned my venturing into alternative therapies for my disease. Well, I also tried many conventional therapies and medications that were completely ineffective as well. I won't go into everything I was given to take or the types of procedures I submitted to, but nothing had the desired effect for more than a couple of days.

Medicine is an inexact science. For that reason, I hesitate to say that alternative or conventional treatments are or are not effective. Trial and error is often necessary.

[Alex]

Doctors do not tend to be scientific in their approach to medicine. Most practicing doctors couldn't define statistical significance and are swamped everyday by anecdotal interactions. Researchers try to put into a scientific framework.

There are small studies that show efficacy for acupuncture, but they've all been generally too small for significant to be avialable. A study of 22 people just has too much room for statistical error.

There are two scientific organizations (the Cochrane Collaboration and Bandolier) that attempt to issue reviews concatenating evidence-based medical studies. There has not been a reputed effect of acupuncture that their reviews find overwhelmingly indicate positive effects though in many pain related areas there is enough positive research to indicate further research should be done.

For me, the damning element of acupuncture is that there are competing schools of theory completely at odds with each other. You may not be able to see a microwave but you can see indisputable secondary effects of their presence. You can create a testable framework for how microwaves work and make predictions that can be confirmed or disproved. What exists in the different schools of acupuncture is similar to if you want to two traditional physicians and said "I'm having a heart attack" and one immediately went to work on your knee while another immediately began massaging your buttocks. There is no theoretical framework in which acupuncture exists and relies on theories of a lifeforce that, by definition, can not be detected.

As you Google you will find that the National Institutes of Health have a pretty positive take on acupuncture (and althernative medicine in general) but then they also have a congressional mandate to promote alternative medicine so that isn't too surprising. They are on the far positive side of traditional scientific organizations and even they say there is as yet no generally accepted scientific evidence for acupuncture claims, just that they are confident that with sufficient study they will be found.

Again, I am not saying that acupuncture doesn't do anything. I'm saying that there is no strong evidence that it does anything, what it is doing if it does something, or how it might actually accomplish whatever it is claimed it can do. It is correct to say that there are many things in medicine where there is no framework for how it works, but then in those cases where it is used anyway there is almost always strong clinical evidence that it does work

At its root "throw a lot of pills at something and see what happens" is pretty much the very definition of science as long as you're making some attempt to objectively evaluate what does then happen.

Without that objective analysis you have the world of acupuncture where they just throw a bunch of needles at the person and see what happens.

Further, when it comes to medical treatment, there is a second question beyond "does it help" and that is "does it help better than this other thing that helps." For the sake of argument, let's say that acupuncture can put 8% of lung cancer into remission. That's great, definitely shows that acupuncture has therapeutic value. But is it a reasonable choice of treatment if its is shown that standing on your head and spinning in circles puts 72% of lung cancer into remission?

Almost all the areas where acupuncture shows some promise is in pain management. Claims of actual disease treatment (and there is a huge range of what acupuncture practitioners belief their treatment can heal) have shown almost no positive correlation.

I know, it is silly to argue this so strongly. People will believe what they want to believe. (Though it is still strange to me that Western medicine will - rightly - be condemned for when it fails to live up to an ideal of scientific objectivity but "altnerative medicine" will be embraced for never even trying.)

You should see me on the subject of homeopathy. I can't walk into my mothers bathroom without getting angry.

[BarTopDancer]

As much as it sucks, until the age of 18 parents, or guardians have control over your body. You have to have parental consent to get piercings and tattoos. In some places you have to have consent to certain medical care (abortions) and some places you don't.

At 18 you are considered old enough to vote, to make your own medical decisions, and enlist in the military (but not old enough to drink legally, that is another issue for another time).

So, I can see why this 16 y/o could not make the decision for himself what medical care he wants to receive; however, his parents were supporting him in his choice and that should be where it ends. If the parents wanted him to only have alternative medicine and he wanted convential medicine I could see an issue, and if he wanted alternative and his parents wanted conventional I could see an issue. I could even see a court battle in these cases.

But in the end, the age of adult is 18, and until then his parents should get the final say, not the courts, and not the social services fighting on behalf of the courts to invoke a choice that neither parent, nor child wanted.

[tracilicious]

I agree with a lot of what you are saying, Alex. Upon googling I found out the same things you said about studies, so my memory must have been very rose colored on the arthritis one. My point isn't that acupuncture is a godsend and western medicine is bunk. My point is that I don't think the opposite is true either. I find it annoying that many view anyone that uses or practices alternative medicine as an idiot, or a quack. In reality, it is usually people that want to know all the options.

For the record, I've never heard of anyone treating an actual disease with acupuncture. Mostly it is balancing the body's systems/managing pain.

I do love homeopathy though, for the sole reason that it gets rid of my hayfever and I can't take any over the counter allergy medicine. Homeopathy gets rid of my allergies like no over the counter stuff did anyways. I have to take it all day long when things are blooming, but it helps. I have really severe hayfever. So, it's at least effective sometimes. ;)

[Alex]

On homeopathy, are you taking something that is truly homeopathic or something that misuses homeopathic to mean "herbal" or "holistic."

With true homeopathy you'd be taking nothing but plain water or (if in pill form) neutral filler.

[tracilicious]

It seems to be a combination. But what do you mean?

[Prudence]

I disagree that doctors would naturally jump to include alternative treatments if they were successful. Certainly some would, and there are such partnerships between western and traditional medicine available. However, there are also doctors who won't even consider the possibility.

For example, in the fallout from the "kidnapping" in Seattle, the local paper interviewed various people about alternative medicine and one person reported that he was under treatment from a regular medical doctor, possibly cancer, but wanted to see a naturopath to see if he could alleviate some of the side effects from treatment. The doctor told him that if he saw a naturopath, the doctor would no longer have him as a patient.

Now, it's possible that the doctor had very good reasons for not wanting to involve the naturopath. Perhaps there was a danger of herbs interacting with the conventional treatment. Perhaps he was afraid the naturopath would recommend abandoning the conventional treatment altogether in favor of several incantations and a bowl of sunflower seeds.

However, my experience with conventional medicine - both my own and that of family members - is that many conventional doctors are NOT interested in mitigating unpleasant side effects, pain management, or alleviating chronic, non-lethal conditions. If it's not going to kill you, then live with it. Pain is good for you.

So - why not try something else? If my insurance covered alternative treatments, I'd be all over trying to reduce my allergy symptoms. (Conventional docs don't care - they're not "severe" so no treatment - just learning to live with feeling like I have a cold All. The. Time.)

Obviously you don't go to a naturopath if you think you have a suspicious lump or might be having a heart attack, but in an ideal world you could consult one - with your doctor's blessing - to help manage chemo nausea or arthritis pain.

[Alex]

It seems to be a combination. But what do you mean?
It can't be a combination. Either your stuff has something in it, or it doesn't.

Homeopathy is the theory that if something causes a symptom then consuming a very small quantity of that item will cure that symptom, even if that isn't what is causing the symptom in the specific case. So, if you're exposed to toxin that causes your eyes to water excessively, a minute quantity of onion (perhaps, this is a made up example of a treatment) would cure you of that toxin exposure. The second half of the theoryis that the smaller the dose, the more powerful the medicine.

Now, when talking about minute quantities, I mean truly infinitesimal quantities. Start with 1 ml of the substance and dilute it to 100 ml. Take 1 ml of the diluted mixture and dilute that to 100 ml (one such dilution is called 1C).

When Hahneman first put forward his theory of homeopathy he recommened a dosage of 30C (doing the dilution described 30 times). This means that for every molecule of the original substance you have 10^60 molecules of water.

To put it another way. If you wanted enough of this homeopathic solution to guarantee that you were getting at least one molecule of the "curing chemical" you would need 10^34 gallons of water. That is if you had a glass that could hold 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 gallons of water you would likely on be drinking one molecule of "onion." So, when you take a single capsule or eyedrop or whatever of a homeopathic solution your chances of actually consuming the substance that will supposedly cure you is essentially zero.

To put it yet another way: if you took that one "onion" molecule and dropped it into the Pacific Ocean (and assumed that all water on earth was connected), it would still be too concentrated by a factor of 10^16.

And this is just Hahnemann's original theory. Modern homeopathy frequently uses dilutions of 50,000C (called LM). This means that if you had a swimming pool the size of our galaxy, it likely would still not contain even a single molecule of curative substance.

To counter the obvious bunkness of all this, many homeopathy proponents posit that molecules of water somehow remember the "vibration" of the curative substance. This ignores the fact that most of the water in the dilution was never anywhere near a molecule of the curative and that all water on Earth has been in contact with billions of non-water molecules since the Earth first cooled and how exactly is it supposed to remember the onion molecule but not the time it was in Caesar's bladder?

The great advantage for homeopathists is that since all they are selling is water, their materials overhead is minimal and margins are very high.

[Alex]

For the record, I've never heard of anyone treating an actual disease with acupuncture. Mostly it is balancing the body's systems/managing pain.
Here (http://english.people.com.cn/english/200005/09/eng20000509_40376.html) is a claim of it curing cerebral vascular disease.

Among actual diseases (as opposed to more general discomforts) this site (http://library.thinkquest.org/24206/acupuncture.html) says it can treat psoriasis, exzema, tonsillitis, bronchitis, and emphysema.

This one (http://www.acupuncturist.co.uk/001%20Treatment.htm#Two) says that not only can it cure cancer, it will prevent it from happening in the first place.

On this one (http://www.acufinder.com/articles_news_detail.php?nid=9) it cures asthma and Bell's Palsy.

This guy (http://www.thetole.com/LiverCancer.html) uses it to cure liver cancer.

[wendybeth]

Ewwww..I was taking a swig of water when I read Alex's "Caesar's bladder" comment.

[tracilicious]

It can't be a combination. Either your stuff has something in it, or it doesn't.


I meant a combination of herbs and flower essences. I've never heard of what you are saying, but I've also never researched homeopathy. Perhaps it includes more than that? Anecdotally, the friends I have that swear by it are never sick.

I had a sports medicine doctor give me arnica tablets for a knee problem, and those are in the scope of homeopathy, are they not? It is a flower.

With the disease acupuncture thing, I simply meant that no one I know that goes to acupuncture does so to cure disease. Although, I suppose arthritis is a disease, and they do cure that.

[Motorboat Cruiser]

Anecdotally, the friends I have that swear by it are never sick.


I never get sick either. I suspect it is my strict regimen of coffee and cigarettes.

;)

[Alex]

I meant a combination of herbs and flower essences. I've never heard of what you are saying, but I've also never researched homeopathy. Perhaps it includes more than that?

No, the essential element of homeopathy is the extreme dilution and like curing like. If you're medicine includes herbs in measurable quantities then it isn't truly homeopathic.

In recent years various other alternative remedies have begun slapping the word homeopathic on things simply because it is a term with cachet.

If homeopathy works, then we should all be perfectly healthy since drinking a glass of tap water is essentially the same thing as taking a megadose of every homeopathic elixir.

Anecdotally, my mom is a big believer in homeopathy and other altnerative supplements and she is constantly sick. I don't take even "Western" medicines and I'm very rarely sick.

Also anecdotally I have a friend in high school who raced the train at a nearby crossing every day after school. He's still alive so I guess that's safe too. He also has seven kids now so it maybe train racing is good for fertility.

What I am curious about is you have problems with Western medicine because sometimes it seems like they don't know so well what they are doing. But you are ok with homeopathy though you haven't looked into it enough to know what it is. You also said you are skeptical on most things.

What methods do you use to to decide which altnernative methods you are ok with? Obviously you exclude brocolli necklaces. But on what basis is that obvious quackery but blowing ozone up your ass (http://www.appliedozone.com/colonics.html) isn't? Acupuncture is ok without any real validation but presumably you'd cast an eye askance at paper remedies, a modern variation on homeopathy, where they simply write your problem on a piece of paper, along with the homeopathic cure and you carry it in a pocket on the left side of your body with writing towards the body (this is real (http://www.otherhealth.com/archive/index.php/t-1962.html)).

When it comes to medical claims, I have a certain toolkit of bull**** detectors:

1) Claims that there are no side effects. That there can be no negative impacts. Or that dosage is not important. Honestly, if it is impossible for a treatment to do damage then it probably doesn't do anything at all.

2) Does the claimed affect appear to violate the known physics of our universe? Such appearance is not, ipso facto, evidence of falsity but it should creates a pretty large burden of evidence. Homeopathy does this because its theories of dosage violates everything we understand about biology and chemistry while its theory of vibrational memory violates what we know about chemistry and physics. It is the pharmaceutical version of a perpetual motion machine.

3) Do its proponents rely on conspiracy theories for why their ideas aren't widely accepted in the mainstream. Yes, conspiracies happen and scientists can be just as dogmatically rigid as anybody else but most scientists really do want to find the closest answer to the truth and it almost always wins out in the end. The skeptical version of Godwin is "They laughed at Galileo." Well, they also laughed at Lysenko.

4) Do you have to "believe strongly enough" for it to work? Tylenol will get rid of my headache whether or not I believe in it. Lipitor will reduce my cholestorol. Applying electricity to water produces hydrogen and oxygen gasses whether I believe in the atomic structure of minerals. When I asked a friend who just graduated some Chinese medicine school (and is a licensed acupuncturist) he said that there isn't really anything he could do for me if I wasn't inclined to believe that it could work.

5) Can evidence of efficacy be argued without resort to simple anecdote?

None of these things is an absolute indicator of fraud, deception, or inefficacy. But they are all signs that scientific examination is being resisted for some reason.

As I've said, what I marvel at is that so many people toss aside "Western" medicine when it fails to live up to there expectations only to grasp at things that don't even try to meet those expectations.

[wendybeth]

But how do you really feel about it, Alex?;)

Actually, I agree. I'm too much of a realist not to. Show me as many facts as you can, and I'm a happy consumer, but don't tell me that your best friend's brother's MIL ate nothing but brown rice and tofu for a year and is now cured of her uterine cancer. I'm real happy for her, but not quite convinced that it's enough proof for me should I land in the same boat. I'm also very skeptical of meds that have been subjected to studies, in that studies are like statistics- any company with enough motivation can warp them to show whatever the hell they want. (Some experience in that area).

Let's face it- I trust no one....

[mousepod]

...and just to help fan the flame that Alex is doing such a good job building, much of the recent medical acceptance of alternative medicines is due to the fact that insurance companies love love love cheap alternatives and pressure doctors and hospitals to offer them. An HMO telling you that a treatment is OK is not the same as a doctor saying it, but unfortunately with "managed care", the doctors are essentially in the employ of the insurance companies.

[tracilicious]

What methods do you use to to decide which altnernative methods you are ok with? Obviously you exclude brocolli necklaces. But on what basis is that obvious quackery but blowing ozone up your ass (http://www.appliedozone.com/colonics.html) isn't? Acupuncture is ok without any real validation but presumably you'd cast an eye askance at paper remedies, a modern variation on homeopathy, where they simply write your problem on a piece of paper, along with the homeopathic cure and you carry it in a pocket on the left side of your body with writing towards the body (this is real (http://www.otherhealth.com/archive/index.php/t-1962.html)).


I find it extremely amusing that the only time I can recall you showing any emotion is over homeopathy. :p

I'm ok with most any alternative treatment. I don't believe in a lot of them, but if others want to then that's ok. At worst they do nothing in most cases.

I really like acupuncture. To the point that I've considered becoming an acupuncturist (which takes six years, so it may not happen). It's been around for over a thousand years, so I think if there were nothing to it, it would have faded away. Plus the bruise thing. I think it works. I believe in chi/meridians, but I have no proof. I'm going to assume that there is some factual/logical basis in there somewhere. Someday I'll do the actual research to confirm it.

As for homeopathy, I think I've been using the term wrong, as I commonly see it used in conjunction with any remedy that comes from flowers. But google defines it as you did. So I think you are correct in assuming it's becoming catchwordish.

As far as anecdotes go, what isn't an anecdote? Don't many studies consist of giving a medicine and asking patients how they feel? Thus, a great deal of science is based in anecdote. I don't feel that anecdotes automatically disqualify anything.

I think some things work and I can't explain why. We know little about thee body, even less about energy of any sort, and almost nothing about the mind. If you compare what we don't know to what we do, we're practically in the dark ages.

Honestly, I don't practice any kind of medicine. If I get a cold or the flu, I simply ride it out and wait for my body to heal tself. I've done the same with walking pneumonia and strep. I'd love to see a naturopath, as I feel it's the best of both world's, but they're painfully expensive. I find all kinds of medicine interesting, natural or otherwise.

[tracilicious]

...and just to help fan the flame that Alex is doing such a good job building, much of the recent medical acceptance of alternative medicines is due to the fact that insurance companies love love love cheap alternatives and pressure doctors and hospitals to offer them. An HMO telling you that a treatment is OK is not the same as a doctor saying it, but unfortunately with "managed care", the doctors are essentially in the employ of the insurance companies.


In what world is alternative medicine cheap? Other than the putting a piece of paper in your pocket of course. :p

[Alex]

I'm ok with most any alternative treatment. I don't believe in a lot of them, but if others want to then that's ok. At worst they do nothing in most cases.

And, for many things (such as cancer), nothing is a pretty horrible result. Which is why courts have long interceded (to address the original topic) when treatments that have been shown to be at least minimally effective are disregarded in favor of nothing or things that have no scientific support.

At least when it is a minor. The question is a very tricky one in deciding what parents are not allowed to decide for their children, but this recent decision is hardly precedent setting.

I believe in chi/meridians, but I have no proof. I'm going to assume that there is some factual/logical basis in there somewhere. Someday I'll do the actual research to confirm it.

I'm honestly ok with people (adults) deciding to follow faith-based approaches to life and health. Just call it that. It is when claims of scientific support are made for faith-based decisions that my back gets up a bit.

If you believe in forms of energy that can not be detected or tested then who am I to argue otherwise, but this is essentially the same view as Christian Scientists praying for God's intervention. Now, I am of the view that if those faith-based approaches actually do any good then the results will show up pretty clearly in standard evidence-based analysis. If people would prefer such analysis not be done, or not believe the results when they are done, then what can be done.


As far as anecdotes go, what isn't an anecdote? Don't many studies consist of giving a medicine and asking patients how they feel? Thus, a great deal of science is based in anecdote. I don't feel that anecdotes automatically disqualify anything.

Of course anecdote isn't automatically disqualifying and frequently it is indicative of something real. But it is also frequently indicative of misperception, false positives, selection bias, etc.

There are procedures for creating studies that remove those biases. In a properly double-blinded study, neither giver nor receiver of care knows what type of care was given. Therefore, biases of perception can't easily influence results. Particularly in the area of pain and discomfort it is important to remove these because perception of pain is so subjective. What is intolerable to one person is hardly noted by another and there is no way to measure it other than self-evaluation.

There are also statistical models for evaluating results that are truly significant. And the one things missing from evidence labelled "anecdotal" are control groups. An important element of non-anecdotal evidence is looking for a differential between two courses of action. Let's say I feed each of my 11-year-old triplets a pesto of oak leaves every morning for a year. After that year they are all about 2.5 inches taller.

Anecdotally, oak pesto promotes growth. (and a tendency to hide acorns in bedding). Obviously, that probably isn't the case. The kids were very likely to get taller in that year regardless of what you did with them. Did they get taller than they otherwise would have? Maybe they actually grew less than they already would have and the actual impact of oak pesto is the opposite of the observation.

So, if you were trying to do a non-anecdotal study of the impact of oak pesto on growth in pre-adolescent children, ideally you would take something approaching these steps:

1) You would only give oak pesto to some of the children. You'd have a control group that receives no oak pesto so you have something to compare to.

2) You'd try to otherwise make the pesto-receiving group and the non-pesto receiving group as identical as possible. If you, for example, split the group based on gender this would likely introduce confounding factors since girls that age are more likely to see a large growth spurt than boys.

3) You'd blind the children as to whether they were eating oak pesto or not. So, all the children would consume something that looked like oak pesto and tasted like oak pesto but only half of it would actually be oak pesto. This prevents the children from behaving differently in ways that might affect growth (perhaps, kniwng that they are receiving what may be a growth proponent and being focused on the idea of growing taller they subconsciously start drinking more milk).

4) You'd blind the researcher so that they wouldn't know which children were receiving oak pesto and which were receiving the faux-pesto. So a different person would prepare the dishes than gives it to the kids. The real pesto always goes in Bowl A, but the person who puts it in Bowl A doesn't know which kid eats Bowl A. The person who gives Bowl A to the kid doesn't know whether it has real pesto in it or not. This prevents the researchers from treating differently the kids receiving what they hope is a growth proponent (researchers always want their theory to be right, or they probably wouldn't persue it; so perhaps they'd subconsciously give the pesto-kids larger portions of their other food items).

5) You'd pre-determine what is a significant result. This isn't actually done anew with each experiment but there are standard statistical models. If, after a year of this study the pesto group, on average, saw an additional 0.73 inches of growth? Is this significant? You can't say based on just that number (but many pseudoscientists do; they don't care a whit for confidence intervals). Sample size and measurement method is important here. If there were only 10 kids in the study that difference could be generated by a single child experiencing a very large growth spurt that had nothing to do with pesto. If there were 500 kids in the sample than random distribution of natural growth has less impact. Also, what is the method used to measure height and how accurate and precise is it? With growth it is easy to be very precide, but on a different topic, such as perception of pain, measurement is accurate only for the moment (the exact same pain might feel like an 8 today but tomorrow when you learned you just became an aunt it may only feel like a 5) and precision is impossible (nobody is going to say, today the pain is a 7.352). These factors introduce the margin of error to the result. So, a 0.73 inch differential with only ten participants probably isn't significant and a 0.73 inch differential when the margin of error is plus or minus 0.75 inches also isn't significant. But it is important to predetermine what measure of significance is going to be used because the natural humna instinct is to grasp any indication of significance to support the year (or frequently in large scale medical studies many years) of work you put into the examination.

To summarize more bluntly: No, proper scientific research is not essentially anecdotal in nature.

Yes, there is a lot of anecdote in our scientific understanding because proper double-blinding and other techniques for removing the anecdotal element are frequently impossible or unethical. This particularly can make it difficult to create properly homogenous cohort groups.

However, when done properly, these confounding factors are reported up front, everybody does their best to minimize them, and the results are understood to be fuzzy. This is why sometimes it feels like you get contradictory health information every week. Study A find a minor heart health benefit to Vitamin Whatever and the media is all over it, not properly passing along the hedges that are likely in the paper about to be published. And then Study B finds that Vitamin Whatever increases the chances of cancer, and the media is all over it, not properly passing along the hedges that are likely in the paper about to be published. And certainly they won't attempt to do any kind of analysis of relative risk. Is a 2% reduction in heart disease risk outweighed by a 4.5% increase in the risk of melanoma?


I think some things work and I can't explain why. We know little about thee body, even less about energy of any sort, and almost nothing about the mind. If you compare what we don't know to what we do, we're practically in the dark ages.

This is what I don't get. We know so incredibly much more than we used to, but because we don't know everything all things are essentially equally believable.

To think our current knowledge is essentially the same as in the dark ages is to not show a proper understanding of just how little we knew about the body back then (when people weren't exactly sure of what role the heart played, it was believed that each sperm contained a full miniature person just waiting to grow, and the shape of your bowel movement indicated your future).

I am just baffled that one can look at the last 100 years of medical advancement and doubt that it has been vastly more effective than all the ancient alternative methods combined.

Yes, we've gone too far in depersonalizing medicine and that turns a lot of people off. But I'll without hesitation take the quality of life offered by modern Western medicine over the quality of life that has been historically provided by alternative medicines.

[Gemini Cricket]

Longest. Post. Ever.

[Prudence]

What's up with the either/or paradigm?

[scaeagles]

But I'll without hesitation take the quality of life offered by modern Western medicine over the quality of life that has been historically provided by alternative medicines.

All one has to do is look at the increases in average life expectancy and it is relatively easy to attribute it to medical advances.

However, I have performed no double blind studies, so what do I know? (since this is in reply to Alex I'll refrain from posting a smilie.)

[SacTown Chronic]

Yeah, spare us the anecdotal evidence of your life expectancy until after you have died, Leo. :D <smilie

[Alex]

What's up with the either/or paradigm?

Like I said, I don't really care if people want to belief in faith based approaches to medicine. I don't join in, but I don't care.

I do care when faith-based is wrapped up in the cloak of scientific support. If you want to do both, so be it (though I'll want to subject claims of real world affect to objective analysis most people don't actually like that).

What I'm responding to in tracilicious's posts are, I think, two things:

1) Using terms without knowing what they mean. And I don't mean that in any way maliciously, she is hardly alone. But they are terms and ways of examining the world that are very important to me and I'll admit I get excessively pedantic in seeing them used correctly.
2) A fundamental misunderstanding of how scientific evidence-based research is done ("Acupuncture evidence is anecdotal and I see a lot of anecdote in Western medicine so the evidence is essentially the same").

While I'll go so far as to bluntly say that homeopathy is nothing but a placebo, I won't go that far with acupuncture. For all I know, properly administered acupuncture could cure all the ills of the world. But if so, it is an effect that is strangely resistant to validation.

For me it personally is either/or. Either I rely on scientific investigation to suss out the truth (though it may be slow and initially incorrect) or I have no mechanism other than some kind of intuition for deciding upon a course of action. As I said, if evidence isn't what you rely on, how do you distinguish "obviously wacky" treatments from "obviously not wacky but still unsupported" treatments?

If evidence isn't important and one wants to rely on intuition then I'm fine with that so long as it isn't then claimed that there is evidence of a generally scientific nature.

[Alex]

All one has to do is look at the increases in average life expectancy and it is relatively easy to attribute it to medical advances.

However, I have performed no double blind studies, so what do I know? (since this is in reply to Alex I'll refrain from posting a smilie.)
For the record, I don't attribute increased life expectancy purely to medical advances. I do attribute specific reductions in mortality to specific medical advances. There are many non-medical causes for our increased life expectancy.

Also to be clear, I am not claiming that all research on all topics needs to be double-blinded. That is obviously not the case. But most pharmaceutical and medical procedure research benefits greatly from it because perception biases so easily impact results and independent confirmation is generally not easily achieved.

(And I know your kidding around, but it is kidding around that parralels common failures in understanding of good methodology.)

[scaeagles]

I think there are far too many variances in the human genome for all medicines/herbs/treatments/whatevers to be the same for all individuals. While some are certainly proven more effective overall, the fact is that medicine is an inexact science. A cure for one may not be a cure for all or even most. A cure of most may not be a cure for a few. I see alternative methods as being a great option when the common treatment is ineffective. With my disease, alternative methods did squat to help.

[Prudence]

I used to work for people doing NIH-funded research on alternative treatments and integrating them into nursing practice. If researchers working on the study suggest to me that a naturopath might be able to help mitigate some of my chronic symptoms, I do give that weight. If actual bench scientists and people who do things to rats tell me that they think some alternative medicine treatment methods are efficacious, I give that weight.

[Alex]

So do I. With the caveat that the NIH has been congressionally mandated to promote alternative medicine.

Again, I am not saying that all alternative treatments are bunk. I am saying that very few have been subjected to rigorous examination and many that have show benefits that are difficult to discern from statistical noise. Unlike most FDA approved medications very few "altnerative treatments" show overwhelmingly positive results when subjected to objective study.

A doctor that says "some people say that herb X makes them feel better so you might try that is no different than the throwing pills at the problem and seeing what happens, an approach that was condemned earlier.

I'm sure many alternative treatments work, particularly "herbal medicines." I'm just arguing against excessive evidentiary claims. And double standards of evidence between so called alternative treatments and Western medicine. If Merck used the evidentiary standards and lax quality controls of the herbal supplement industry it would be driven bankrupt by lawsuits in a matter of weeks.

Hell, the current craze for hoodia (however that is spelled) seems to be based entirely on the scientific theory of "hey, I've never seen a fat bushman so it must work."

[Prudence]

I think that there are some smaller studies going on in my own department, but I've been out of the loop now for long enough that I can't remember. They'd be actual, real-life studies. Oooh! I remember one now. One of the post-docs was doing something with orange oil and chemo nausea, I think. But I don't remember details.

I think part of what makes alternative medicine popular is that it often addresses that which conventional medicine won't - which is, I think, also why the nurses were getting into it. Obviously there are exceptions, but docs tend to be about fixing the big, immediate problem. Tumor, heart failure, gaping wounds - all attractive doctoring opportunities.

The less exciting stuff? Not so much interest. Get cramps so bad you miss work one day a month and going on the pill didn't help? Oh well - not life threatening. Chronic fatigue that leaves you nodding off when you should be watching baby and exciting causes ruled out? Oh well - drink some coffee. Mystery non-migraine yet debilitating headaches and nothing showed up on the MRI? Oh well - pull down the shades and wait it out. Rare non-lethal condition that causes chronic respiratory problems and giant purple skin lesions? Take some prednisone for the coughing and go away.

None of those people are actually seeing alternative medical providers, because insurance doesn't cover that sort of thing, but maybe they should.

Pharmaceutical companies don't fund research into the non-exciting stuff. Docs aren't interested in getting patients from "okay, but...." to "healthy." That leaves a choice of putting up with not being totally well or going alternative for some treatments.

[Alex]

Ok, but again, how do you decide, lacking any real evidence one way or the other, which alternative methods are simply too wacky to consider and which are worth spending money on despite no real evidence one way or the other. Because no matter who whacked out a proposed treatment, I will be able to find you a person in a position of apparent authority who endorses it (just as I can find you PhD geologists who believ the earth is only 6,000 years old).

And I want to be clear that I have absolutely zero problem with research being done on alternative methods. If orange oil helps with chemo nausea, I want to know. Orange oil helping nausea is no weirder than bread mold helping with infections.

[tracilicious]

Hahahahaha I got Alex riled up. [/singsong voice]

More later...

[Alex]

Pure coincidence but since I mentioned hoodia earlier one of the science blogs I read posted this (http://www.sciencebase.com/science-blog/hoodia-gordonii-faq.html). A FAQ about hoodia.

It shows the way reputable "alternative treatments" tend to work. A double blind study was done, safety tests are being done and dosage studies.

I also found it interesting that there is currently no legal source of the hoodia ingredient so all of those suppliers you're getting spam from (and Dateline investigations) must be using somehting else or illegally exported plants.

The efficacy of the plant is stronger than I figured it was since my only exposure has been through those spammers and infomercials.

[Prudence]

Ok, but again, how do you decide, lacking any real evidence one way or the other, which alternative methods are simply too wacky to consider and which are worth spending money on despite no real evidence one way or the other. Because no matter who whacked out a proposed treatment, I will be able to find you a person in a position of apparent authority who endorses it (just as I can find you PhD geologists who believ the earth is only 6,000 years old).


Well geeze, you can always find a wacked out person to endorse anything. I don't think that condemns alternative medicine any more than it condemns geology.

I think a great deal of common sense applies, as with anything else. Who do I trust? Well, Bastyr manages to have a whole little University that affiliates with reputable conventional medical and nursing schools, so that would be a start. Bastyr's website links to this (http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/health/276897_hospice08.html) recent article describing a current UW/Bastyr study on providing care to the dying. Sounds to me like an example of working on that "real evidence". Maybe it's because I worked in a health care school for so long, but I saw lots of "real" studies that involved alternative therapies. Whether light therapy calmed elderly demented patients. (If I recall correctly, it didn't.) Various ways to treat and manage fibromyalgia. I think my former boss lady is involved with some CAM research being done in Korea that might actually involve acupuncture. (Maybe with Seoul National University? I can't remember.)

I think you proceed the same way you proceed when checking out any specialist. Are they affiliated with reputable institutions? What does their CV look like? Are they currently involved in research? Same questions I asked myself when I checked out the bio of the specialist recommended for my brother's conventional treatment.

[Alex]

Then we're arguing the same side of the coin here.

Again, I am not saying there is no value in alternative medicine. Of course, once those values have been objectively determined they're not really "altnernative" any more. I'm not a big fan of the Bastyr University curriculum because while parts of naturopathy reek of common sense the core is still extremely quacky and the modern practitioners haven't done much to cleanse that taint (naturopathy grew out of Sebastian Kneipp's belief, back in the 1890s that soaking the Danube River cured tuberculosis and other original thinkers of the time, such as John Tilden who believed that the core of all illness was excrement spending too much time in the intestines. But I'll also admit to a personal bias against the school because of a woman I knew once who attended and also taught a UW extension course on how to talk to dolphins. A greater dingbat I've never known and yes it isn't fair to taint the whole institution because of her.)

But to the extent that they are engaging in valid research, that is great and I hope it helps them slowly scrape the silliness out of the field of naturopathy as, slowly, allopathy has mostly done.

Again, I don't mean this with any derogatory intent but in this thread tracilicious claimed more scientific support for acupuncture than exists and that homeopathy works for her but it turns out she didn't know what homeopathy is. When you look into alternative medicine it is great that you look into the ongoing research, CVs, and reputable sources. But in my experience (and yes, that is anecdotal) very few people I know who use them do so, instead relying on the reports of someone they know how says "it worked for me!"

Unless you're saying, and I don't think you are, that merely the fact that someone is studying it scientifically is reason to use an alternative treatment. That would be the equivelant of Pfizer putting the new heart drug on the market while they're still doing the clinical studies and seeking FDA approval.

On the original topic is worth noting that this kid and his family aren't saying that the alternative treatment in Mexico will help with chemo ralated nausea or pain management. They are claiming (presumably because the clinic told them that they have strong evidence of it) that the treatment will cure the cancer. I am willing to go out on a limb and guess that the Mexico clinic is not affiliated with a reputable institution, that the head of the clinic has probably been denied license to practice in the United States (if s/he'd even qualify), and that there is no clinical evidence of efficacy other than what the doctors tell the patients.

[Alex]

Well geeze, you can always find a wacked out person to endorse anything. I don't think that condemns alternative medicine any more than it condemns geology.

On this one, my point wasn't that it condemns it, just that calls to authority don't necessarily endorse it. One of the tools of pseudoscientists is reliance on pedigree put to misuse.

The guy responsible for the whole face on Mars lunacy was also one of the most brilliant planetary scientists of the '60s. His claims (Richard Hoagland, by the way) are obviously beyond stupid but a lot of people buy into them simply because he has an impressive resume.

Having a wacko proponent is certainly not dispositive evidence. But neither is a string of letters after your name positive evidence.

[Prudence]

My impression is that Bastyr is making deliberate efforts to be more "legit". They've been actively pursuing research relationships with both the school of nursing and the school of medicine here. So it's likely changed somewhat since you left the area.

(Oh - and extension will hire just about anyone to teach just about anything. They're self-sustaining, so anything that brings in dollars is fine by them.)

I think most of the stuff I'd consider is on the boundary of alternative/conventional. It's been proven to have some success, but not embraced broadly as routine treatment.

For example: I don't buy into the theory that chiropractors can cure anything that ails you. But I've had a diagnosed curvature of the spine since I was in about the fourth grade. Not severe enough to merit "conventional" treatment, so nothing was done. Except prescribe some bizarre and painful exercises my mom was supposed to make me do. Stuff like trying to force my back flat against the wall. Even if it did work, doing it without supervision from even a physical therapist made it useless. And that was the conventional doc! Can chiropractors fix scoliosis? Probably not. But damn I'd want to see if they could improve anything.

Although come to think of it, that's about when they added ballet to my dance schedule. Ballet as alternative treatment? Who knows?

[Alex]

Yeah, I know the extension isn't a bastion of scholarship. Just explaining how I knew she taught dolphin talking.

[tracilicious]

And, for many things (such as cancer), nothing is a pretty horrible result. Which is why courts have long interceded (to address the original topic) when treatments that have been shown to be at least minimally effective are disregarded in favor of nothing or things that have no scientific support.

I should point out that I really am not thinking of cancer and serious diseases when I talk about alternative therapies. I'm sure loads of people get alternative treatment for these things, and as I said before I've known four people cured of cancer by them, but for me, and most people I know it's for minor to moderate things, or simply keeping the body in balance.

That being said, if people want to research all their options and in the end decide on one that isn't scientifically proven, I think they have every right to do so. Maybe they'll die, maybe they won't. It's as good a guarantee you'll get with anything.

I'm honestly ok with people (adults) deciding to follow faith-based approaches to life and health. Just call it that. It is when claims of scientific support are made for faith-based decisions that my back gets up a bit.

I really don't see how acupuncture is faith based. Or perhaps you are using the term differently than I do. I think miraculous healing and such when I hear that phrase. I've seen it work, studies are being done that at the very least prove it's possibly scientific. For me (and no I don't have a study to back this up), the bruises in my foot disappeared, therefore there must be some basis in logic and science for it. I didn't will them away.

If you believe in forms of energy that can not be detected or tested then who am I to argue otherwise,

I never said I believe in forms of energy that can't be detected. I think it's possible though. On discovery channel last year I watched a crop circle thing. It was about microwave like energy found near crop circles. Now, I don't believe in aliens, and it's too complex for a conspiracy, so an otherwise unknown natural energy source seems likely to me. If you were talking about chi, it's not really a believe not believe thing. It's the term in Chinese medicine used to describe the life force of all things. I believe it runs along meridians simply because a guy put needles in my foot at the right points and got rid of severe bruising in twelve hours. A double blind study couldn't have convinced more than that did.


Of course anecdote isn't automatically disqualifying and frequently it is indicative of something real. But it is also frequently indicative of misperception, false positives, selection bias, etc.

Agreed.

There are procedures for creating studies that remove those biases. In a properly double-blinded study...

Thank you so much for the education. I had no idea how a double blind study really worked. That would have been so helpful to know when I was reading all those medical journals/studies when I did my vaccine research. Me SO stupid!!!

To summarize more bluntly: No, proper scientific research is not essentially anecdotal in nature.

I'm going to stipulate that some of it is. There is research that gives a drug to patients and then asks them how they felt, what side effects they experienced, whatever. It's just a really large group of anecdotes taken at the same time and compared. Then the results can be twisted whatever way they want them to be depending on who's funding the study. Of course, most research isn't anecdotal. And mainly, I was just being a pain in the ass. I put little stock in many studies though, for the above reason.

However, when done properly, these confounding factors are reported up front, everybody does their best to minimize them, and the results are understood to be fuzzy. This is why sometimes it feels like you get contradictory health information every week. Study A find a minor heart health benefit to Vitamin Whatever and the media is all over it, not properly passing along the hedges that are likely in the paper about to be published. And then Study B finds that Vitamin Whatever increases the chances of cancer, and the media is all over it, not properly passing along the hedges that are likely in the paper about to be published. And certainly they won't attempt to do any kind of analysis of relative risk. Is a 2% reduction in heart disease risk outweighed by a 4.5% increase in the risk of melanoma?

All very frustrating. It seems impossible to be an informed consumer/patient with all that going on.

This is what I don't get. We know so incredibly much more than we used to, but because we don't know everything all things are essentially equally believable.

Not at all what I said. I just think a lot of things have yet to be proved, but someday will be as our knowledge and technology increases.

To think our current knowledge is essentially the same as in the dark ages is to not show a proper understanding of just how little we knew about the body back then (when people weren't exactly sure of what role the heart played, it was believed that each sperm contained a full miniature person just waiting to grow, and the shape of your bowel movement indicated your future).

No, I was simply comparing the two. I think it's highly possible that in the future there will be things that we believe to be correct that will be laughable to our descendents. There's so much more to learn, is what I'm saying.

I am just baffled that one can look at the last 100 years of medical advancement and doubt that it has been vastly more effective than all the ancient alternative methods combined.

Effective in some ways. Emergency medicine, absolutely. Definitely surgery. I'm sure there are others. I don't know about anything else. I would say that in general we are less healthy, have higher rates of disease, cancer, obesity, etc. I'm not crediting old medicine for that or faulting western medicine, but it seems to be the case.

I should add that I am grateful for the medical advances we've gained. Should I ever come down with something really serious, there will definitely be a western doctor on my care team. That may even be my main form of treatment. I really couldn't say.

Yes, we've gone too far in depersonalizing medicine and that turns a lot of people off. But I'll without hesitation take the quality of life offered by modern Western medicine over the quality of life that has been historically provided by alternative medicines.

What quality of life is it that it's provided? Most problems have been solved by better hygeine, good nutrition, better economy and the like. I don't dispute that the quality of life is better, but I don't give western medicine all the credit (some though).

Regardless, I'm not saying, and never have said, that one must choose alternative over western. But the automatic discounting of alternative medicine that goes on is annoying.

[tracilicious]

Although come to think of it, that's about when they added ballet to my dance schedule. Ballet as alternative treatment? Who knows?


There is music and movement therapy. ;)

Also, I agree with Prudence. She just says things better than I can.

Alex, about the homeopathy thing, every mom I know loves Hyland's Teething Tabs (http://www.hylands.com/products/teething.php). Do those fall under the category of a molecule in a swimming pool, or the mislabeled category. If those are true homeopathy, then sign me up. They take a cranky baby with swollen gums to a happy mouthed baby in minutes.

[Ghoulish Delight]

There is music and movement therapy. ;)

Also, I agree with Prudence. She just says things better than I can.

Alex, about the homeopathy thing, every mom I know loves Hyland's Teething Tabs (http://www.hylands.com/products/teething.php). Do those fall under the category of a molecule in a swimming pool, or the mislabeled category. If those are true homeopathy, then sign me up. They take a cranky baby with swollen gums to a happy mouthed baby in minutes. In a base of Lactose (milk sugar) NF.Lactose (and other sugars) have been shown to have mild analgesic (pain relieving) effect on infants.

[Prudence]

Also, I agree with Prudence. She just says things better than I can.


Is this the point where I discuss using my bowel movements to predict my future? Or was that recall my past? I get so confused.

Ooooh! Corn!

[Alex]

I just think a lot of things have yet to be proved, but someday will be as our knowledge and technology increases.

That is what I mean by faith based. Despite a lack of evidence now, you believe it to be true and that evidence will come along somewhere down the road. You have faith that the things you believe are true and while eventual supporting evidence would be nice, it isn't necessary for your current belief. This is true of Christian Scientist and Filipino faith-surgeons as well.

Sorry for the unnecessarily lecture on double blinding but you're the one who said that science is mostly anecdotal, which it is not; it begins with anecdotes but properly treated the data becomes something greater than the individual points. I didn't realize you were just trying to be a pain in the ass, I'll admit to being gullible in assuming the conversation to be earnest. You also said you're skeptical of most things but I have seen any indication of that either.

I'm curious though, if you have four friends whose cancer has been cured by herbalists, why you wouldn't use it yourself? That's seems like a lot more evidence than you had for acupuncture (which was established by the diminishment of a toe bruise).

I'm not sure why you think crop circles are too complex for a conspiracy. I've personally been involved in the creation of two of them. They really aren't that hard to make. And are you aware that the most prominent theory (which, obviously, I think is wacko) for the microwave radiation (which, strangely, can only be detected by special machines in the hands of wackos) is that it is from a secret U.S.-owned weapons satellite and that the circles are the products bored technicians.

You say you don't believe in a form of energy that can't be detected but the altnerative treatment you say works believes in it. But you also say this energy form you don't believe in travels through meridians that also can't be detected.

As for the baby tabs, they aren't diluted to infinitesimal solutions. The dilutions are on the home page and indicate dilutions of 1:10,000,000 for the stronger stuff and 1:10,000,000,000,000 for the weaker stuff (though according to the theories of homeopathy the second is by far the stronger medicine.

This means that for 10,000 liters of solution, one mililiter of that will be the dissolved agent (for the irritability, wakefulness, and inflamation treatments). So odds are that in the microliter dissolved into a tablet of lactose you would get a few molecules). For the dentition stuff you will have one milliliter of dissolved substance in 10 billion liters of solvent. A billion gallons would be a swimming pool 50 feet wide, ten feet deep, and 216 miles long. But keep in mind that by modern standards these are really weak medicines appropriate for infants. To get the full effect you'd have to dilute that down to galactic proportions.

I know we're just talking in circles. The way you view the world is fundamentally different from the way I view it. But this is the paragraph that sums it up for me:

Then the results can be twisted whatever way they want them to be depending on who's funding the study. Of course, most research isn't anecdotal. And mainly, I was just being a pain in the ass. I put little stock in many studies though, for the above reason.

Medical science is not perfect and it takes side trips down wrong paths. But I fail to see how this failure you describe is avoided by alternative treatments. Imprecision and manipulation damns "traditional" medicine but somehow acupuncturists and homeopaths (but not brocolli wearers) avoid it? They aren't somehow interested parties in promoting their preferred results?

Vive la difference. It is obvious you think my take on this is amusingly something or other and vice versa. There'll be no convincing of anybody and we'll just go on being perplexed in the other. I do have to ask, though. Are you one of the people who listens to Coast to Coast late at night and finds themselves nodding their head a lot whispering "yeah, that makes sense; that explains everything?"

[wendybeth]

I can't believe my own eyes- Alex just confessed to being a crop-circle jerk....

;):p

[innerSpaceman]

Ah, but I'm waiting for the admission that he participated
in a crop circle-jerk.

[Alex]

No, but I did once pass a law requiring political disputes to be resolved with a circle jerk.

[tracilicious]

That is what I mean by faith based. Despite a lack of evidence now, you believe it to be true and that evidence will come along somewhere down the road. You have faith that the things you believe are true and while eventual supporting evidence would be nice, it isn't necessary for your current belief. This is true of Christian Scientist and Filipino faith-surgeons as well.

I concede.

Sorry for the unnecessarily lecture on double blinding but you're the one who said that science is mostly anecdotal, which it is not; it begins with anecdotes but properly treated the data becomes something greater than the individual points. I didn't realize you were just trying to be a pain in the ass, I'll admit to being gullible in assuming the conversation to be earnest. You also said you're skeptical of most things but I have seen any indication of that either.

I don't think I said mostly, I said some. I was being serious, but tongue in cheek at the same time. I tend to post either late at night, or in between jumping up and down and singing the alphabet and pretending to be a snake, so if it seems like I'm posting with a quarter of a brain, I probably am.

As for the skepticism, I really like most things, and I think they are fun to learn about. My full belief is limited to diet, acupuncture, and herbs. Just the other day my sister in law was saying that she was going to give her son clay baths to cure him of autism. I didn't believe that for a second. Happy? ;)

I'm curious though, if you have four friends whose cancer has been cured by herbalists, why you wouldn't use it yourself? That's seems like a lot more evidence than you had for acupuncture (which was established by the diminishment of a toe bruise).

First of all I said I've known four people. Only one of those is a friend. For all I know these four people could be anomalies. Perhaps it's cured them but every other person has died. I don't believe that to be true, but my life is too important to me to take that chance. I definitely would use an herbalist, a naturopath, an acupuncturist, a piece of paper in my pocket, or anything else that has even an infinitesimal chance of helping me survive. I would use a western doctor as well though. What anyone else wants to do is ok with me though, and I won't think they are crazy or stupid for it.

I'm not sure why you think crop circles are too complex for a conspiracy. I've personally been involved in the creation of two of them. They really aren't that hard to make. And are you aware that the most prominent theory (which, obviously, I think is wacko) for the microwave radiation (which, strangely, can only be detected by special machines in the hands of wackos) is that it is from a secret U.S.-owned weapons satellite and that the circles are the products bored technicians.

Way to ruin that wacky theory for me. Thanks a lot.

You say you don't believe in a form of energy that can't be detected but the altnerative treatment you say works believes in it. But you also say this energy form you don't believe in travels through meridians that also can't be detected.

Chi isn't a form of energy in the way microwaves are and such. It's simply the word to describe the life force present in all things. I see how I'm being confusing in that area, and not properly conveying what I'm trying to say.

As for the baby tabs, they aren't diluted to infinitesimal solutions. The dilutions are on the home page and indicate dilutions of 1:10,000,000 for the stronger stuff and 1:10,000,000,000,000 for the weaker stuff (though according to the theories of homeopathy the second is by far the stronger medicine.

This means that for 10,000 liters of solution, one mililiter of that will be the dissolved agent (for the irritability, wakefulness, and inflamation treatments). So odds are that in the microliter dissolved into a tablet of lactose you would get a few molecules). For the dentition stuff you will have one milliliter of dissolved substance in 10 billion liters of solvent. A billion gallons would be a swimming pool 50 feet wide, ten feet deep, and 216 miles long. But keep in mind that by modern standards these are really weak medicines appropriate for infants. To get the full effect you'd have to dilute that down to galactic proportions.

Thanks for the info.

I know we're just talking in circles. The way you view the world is fundamentally different from the way I view it.

True. I'm quite a bit less serious.

Medical science is not perfect and it takes side trips down wrong paths. But I fail to see how this failure you describe is avoided by alternative treatments. Imprecision and manipulation damns "traditional" medicine but somehow acupuncturists and homeopaths (but not brocolli wearers) avoid it? They aren't somehow interested parties in promoting their preferred results?

Please show me where I claimed any of the above. (Which I'm sure you will, with a cleverly disguised, ha so there type post attached.) On the whole I think reputable alternative medicine is less corrupt, in part, I'm sure, due to the fact that it is smaller and less commercial. I personally prefer it because it takes into account the health of the entire body rather than treating symptoms. I.E. the osteopath that gave my niece a steriod inhaler for asthma when what she actually had was a dairy allergy. If even half of traditional doctors that work with kids knew off the top of their head that dairy allergies mimic asthma I'd be happy. They don't though, because many of them don't bother getting to the root of problems.

Vive la difference. It is obvious you think my take on this is amusingly something or other and vice versa. There'll be no convincing of anybody and we'll just go on being perplexed in the other. I do have to ask, though. Are you one of the people who listens to Coast to Coast late at night and finds themselves nodding their head a lot whispering "yeah, that makes sense; that explains everything?"

Haha! Alex Stroup does have a sense of humor! Good for you. No, I'm really not one of those people. I get the sense that you are combining every person you've ever met that's believed in anything beyond the scope of what you are comfortable believing in and projecting the combined personality onto me. Here is what I claim: there is scientific proof that herbal medicine works, which is yet to be disputed; and I like acupuncture. I thought I had more proof of it's validity than I actually do, but I conceded that back on page one. That's all. Other than that, I believe I said I'm interested in all kinds of alternative medicine. I just don't like the system of western medicine that we have in this country. That doesn't mean I don't think it works for many things.

I do find this discussion amusingly a great deal of things. I'm glad you feel the same way. (Insert wink here.)

[scaeagles]

Are you one of the people who listens to Coast to Coast late at night and finds themselves nodding their head a lot whispering "yeah, that makes sense; that explains everything?"

What? You mean the guests interviewed by Noory should not be trusted? Wow...I need to rethink my world view now........I may have to stop looking for those Nazi built skyscrapers on the moon with my telescope.

[€uroMeinke]

No, but I did once pass a law requiring political disputes to be resolved with a circle jerk.

When were you a law making body? and for whom?

[Not Afraid]

He who shoots first, wins?

[€uroMeinke]

He who shoots first, wins?

Really, I was wondering how one did that "competitively"

[CoasterMatt]

For some reason, this reminded me of...
http://members.dslextreme.com/users/coastermatt/images/Pookaliscious.jpg

[wendybeth]

When were you a law making body? and for whom?

It was probably in his fraternity.

[€uroMeinke]

It was probably in his fraternity.

Hmm, in those circles, isn't it known as a sorority?

[innerSpaceman]

Hehehe, back in the day when we really did that, shooting first was winning.

Now that it would be infinitely more fun, shooting first would be losing.

[Alex]

It was probably in his fraternity.

I can't really imagine me pledging a fraternity.

It was at Boy's State Washington (1991). We also passed a law demanding that China deliver all pandas to the Port of Tacoma so that we could summarily execute them in front of an assembly of western Washington second grade classes.

Needless to say we weren't taking our mock government very seriously. We had more important stuff to do like gamble all night and watch porn rented by our chaperones (first, last, and only time I've watched porn in the company of other males).

Our American Legion taskmasters weren't too pleased with us.

[wendybeth]

I can't really imagine me pledging a fraternity.

It was at Boy's State Washington (1991) .....We had more important stuff to do like gamble all night and watch porn rented by our chaperones (first, last, and only time I've watched porn in the company of other males).

I guess that answers the circle-jerk thing,

(I knew you weren't a frat boy, Alex- I was just calling you out!);)

[Alex]

As I recall, one of the fews boys present who was taking it all seriously was the one who got himself elected governor. One of the tasks of this role (why, I don't know since it has no equivelant in actual government) was to read each bill passed aloud prior to signing or vetoing it. Pretty much all week we were trying to pass laws that he would find embarrassing to read out loud. Because of course we had to humiliate the guy who was actually taking seriously what our sponsors back home spent thousands of dollars shipping us to Ellensburg (oh god, what punishment) to do.

[Prudence]

Some of us have in-laws in Ellensburg and are therefore required to put in an appearance at regular intervals.

Generally during rodeo.

Not on purpose - just tends to be an available weekend.

[Alex]

I'm sorry.

Presumably your spouse kept this information hidden from you until it was too late for you to call off the nuptuals. That may be grounds for annulment.

[Prudence]

Actually I have no excuse. He lived in Eburg when we met.

Although I did tell him he had to move over to the west side before the first snow or we were through.

[Alex]

Not really on topic at all, but didn't want to start a new thread.

I just read this take (http://www.twopercentco.com/rants/archives/2006/07/you_might_need.html) on all the illnesses supposedly treated by just one homeopathic remedy. I enjoyed it anyway. (via the 40th Skeptics Circle (http://www.daylightatheism.org/2006/08/skeptics-circle-40.html))

[tracilicious]

Not really on topic at all, but didn't want to start a new thread.

I just read this take (http://www.twopercentco.com/rants/archives/2006/07/you_might_need.html) on all the illnesses supposedly treated by just one homeopathic remedy. I enjoyed it anyway. (via the 40th Skeptics Circle (http://www.daylightatheism.org/2006/08/skeptics-circle-40.html))

That was hilarious! I had no idea that arnica was homeopathic. I use arnica lotion with glucosamine to take away bruises. Yes, anecdotal, but it is freaking miracle cream. Perhaps it's the glucosamine? A Sports Medicine doctor once gave me arnica tablets for a knee injury. No clue if it worked.

I'm glad you resurrected this thread because I have a hilarious (to me) story to put here. I subscribe to this guy's (http://www.mercola.com/) newsletter. Lord knows why, as he is an affront to alternative medicine. He's a blood sucking money grubber who will latch onto anything that will make him money. Never quote him in a legitimate discussion of anything alternative because you'll just look ridiculous. There was a link to this (http://www.emofree.com/) in one of his newsletters. You basically visualize an emotion while tapping on acupressure points and repeating an affirmational expression.

Now, you can do this for anything. You can even do it for other people. Or animals! Over at my sister's house tonight she was telling me that ever since her cat got spayed she's been leary of strangers. We had a frollicky time tapping on her cat while saying, "Even though you had a horrible experience at the vets, you still deeply and completely love yourself." The cat was not amused.

[Capt Jack]

Update on this story. (http://www.cnn.com/2006/LAW/08/16/cancer.teen.ap/index.html)

[Morrigoon]

Interesting!

[Moonliner]

This case was difficult because the parents are essentially choosing to let their minor child die. If he was an adult then this would be a non-issue.

Hopefully the judge in the case listened to the boy and decided that he was adequately cognizant of the fate he is choosing. It's sad but it's also his life. Plus it looks like he will at least get radiation therapy, and there the chance that radiation and alternative treatments might do some good.

[Alex]

Wikipedia page on the Hoxsey Method (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoxsey_Therapy). Here's the part I find most relevant:

The Hoxsey Method is not supported by the American Cancer Society (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Cancer_Society) or National Cancer Institute (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Cancer_Institute), as neither have found objective evidence that the treatment provides any tangible benefit to cancer victims. A controlled experiment using lab mice found no difference in tumor growth between untreated mice and those given the Hoxsey tonic. The FDA (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_%26_Drug_Administration) investigated 400 people claiming to have been cured by the Hoxsey method and found no indication that any had been cured by the mixture.

Here's the part other people might find most relevant:

Hoxsey claimed that his great grandfather, John Hoxsey, developed the first version of the herbal formula in 1840 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1840) when he noticed one of his horses had developed a tumor on its leg. The animal began eating some of the wild plants growing in the meadow, and within a short time the tumor disappeared.

If he ends up taking both the herbs and the radiation treatment I wonder which one will get credit if he goes into remission?

[Morrigoon]

I guess that'll depend on the agenda of the person you ask ;)

I'm just glad to see that the right to determine one's own fate, even stupidly, is still occasionally granted in this country.

(Actually, given his past experience with chemo, his decision is not exactly stupid. Justified would be a better word.)

[DreadPirateRoberts]

(Actually, given his past experience with chemo, his decision is not exactly stupid. Justified would be a better word.)

Sometimes the cure can be almost as bad as the disease.

[Prudence]

Sometimes the cure can be almost as bad as the disease.

Some times it can be worse.

[Alex]

I could go with that if he were expressing the desire to die with dignity. He isn't, he thinks this treatment is more likely to cure him than the traditional treatments.

Since he doesn't want to die (apparently) it is hard to see how the treatment could be worse than the disease, which will certainly kill him.

[DreadPirateRoberts]

Since he doesn't want to die (apparently) it is hard to see how the treatment could be worse than the disease, which will certainly kill him.

I was thinking of his reaction to chemotherapy, and how hard it can be on the body:

He was so debilitated by three months of chemotherapy that he declined a second, more intensive round that doctors recommended early this year.

I agree that his Hoxsey method and radiation probably won't be worse than the disease (I hope).

[Prudence]

I could go with that if he were expressing the desire to die with dignity. He isn't, he thinks this treatment is more likely to cure him than the traditional treatments.

Since he doesn't want to die (apparently) it is hard to see how the treatment could be worse than the disease, which will certainly kill him.

It depends on individual reactions to treatment methods. It is possible that the treatment will kill faster than the disease. That's why my grandmother stopped her chemo. The cancer would kill her over a period of years (turned out to be a decade or so) but one more chemo treatment would have done her in. I'm not suggesting that is the case with this particular boy; I was merely responding to the "sometimes" statement I quoted.

[scaeagles]

The treatments and medications my mom had for lupus were far worse than disease itself, all designed to expand her lifespan only. As Prudence said, this does not necessarily translate to the boy. I suppose I don't think a slow painful death is better than a faster painful death.

[Capt Jack]

its all based on quality of life, personal choice, having some say in ones own life and/or death and not being told "you will (do this) regardless of what you think is best".

with all Ive seen of late, a line from Pet Cemetary has stuck in my mind and undoubtedly always will

"Sometimes, dead is better."

[Moonliner]

I don't know if this made the national news or not, but there is an interesting follow-up to the story of Mr. Starchild.

In Virginia minors are now allowed to refuse medical treatment.

Gov. Tim Kaine has signed into law legislation giving teenagers and their parents the right to refuse doctor-recommended treatments for life-threatening ailments (http://www.wtop.com/?nid=600&sid=1094956)

[Eliza Hodgkins 1812]

I think what disturbs me sometimes is how "minors" are perceived. Under legal age does not mean someone is incapable of making an adult decision about their own life. I believe a 16 year old can be of mature mind *and* body when deciding to have sex with someone, even if they are a minor. I believe a 16 year old can be of mature mind *and* body (sound, etc.) when making a medical decision. And regardless of whether chemo really is the best course of action, he has a right to decide whether he wants to be put through the treatment again. If it was so horrible an experience that he'd risk his own life to pursue alternative (and very likely less effective) treatments, he should have that right. If he'd rather chance dying than live through chemo again, I respect that.

My mother's boss died of colon cancer because he decided that his quality of life would be so degraded after the surgery, he'd rather die than live. He was an older man and so had the legal right to make that decision. I think a mature 16 year old, rational and sane, should be able to make a similar decision. I think I believe that freedom to choose how one lives his life is more important than life itself. And I believe in the right to have some say in how I fight to live or how I choose to die if there's a potential expiration date in clear sight.

If he lives, he'll probably be grateful to those who forced him to undergo the chemo. Maybe someday I'll eat my own words. But I still think it's a horrible thing to do to someone. 16 isn't 6, after all.

[Moonliner]

I think what disturbs me sometimes is how "minors" are perceived. Under legal age does not mean someone is incapable of making an adult decision about their own life. I believe a 16 year old can be of mature mind *and* body when deciding to have sex with someone, even if they are a minor. I believe a 16 year old can be of mature mind *and* body (sound, etc.) when making a medical decision. And regardless of whether chemo really is the best course of action, he has a right to decide whether he wants to be put through the treatment again. If it was so horrible an experience that he'd risk his own life to pursue alternative (and very likely less effective) treatments, he should have that right. If he'd rather chance dying than live through chemo again, I respect that.

My mother's boss died of colon cancer because he decided that his quality of life would be so degraded after the surgery, he'd rather die than live. He was an older man and so had the legal right to make that decision. I think a mature 16 year old, rational and sane, should be able to make a similar decision. I think I believe that freedom to choose how one lives his life is more important than life itself. And I believe in the right to have some say in how I fight to live or how I choose to die if there's a potential expiration date in clear sight.

If he lives, he'll probably be grateful to those who forced him to undergo the chemo. Maybe someday I'll eat my own words. But I still think it's a horrible thing to do to someone. 16 isn't 6, after all.

The law has to apply to all equally, not to just the mature 16 year olds. So where do you draw the line between adult and child? Can an exceptional 10 year old be mature? I certainly know people over 18 who should not be making life changing decisions for themselves. As a society we have to pick some point as the age of adulthood. Where would you place that mark?

[Eliza Hodgkins 1812]

The law has to apply to all equally, not to just the mature 16 year olds. So where do you draw the line between adult and child? Can an exceptional 10 year old be mature? I certainly know people over 18 who should not be making life changing decisions for themselves. As a society we have to pick some point as the age of adulthood. Where would you place that mark?

I know 'legal age' is tricky, Moonliner. It's trying to make black and white something that cannot be black and white. And though I understand the need for rules and laws, I think that there has to be room for exceptions and/or flexibility. In this particular case, didn't the parents support their child's decision? Certainly in the case of abortion, I feel that a minor has the right to make that decision for herself because I don't believe a court of law should be able to force anyone to have a baby that's unwanted.

And, yeah, I realize that opens up a much larger can o' worms.

When it comes to who is an "adult" and who isn't, at least when the law gets involved, I think it needs to be reviewed case by case. Drawing a line makes sense, but being completely inflexible about that line just doesn't make sense to me.

[Alex]

Would feelings be the same if instead of "alternative treatments" the boy and his family had decided on no treatment and certain death (leaving aside whether the alternative treatment he is persuing is essentially the same as no treatment)?

Jehovah's Witnesses and Christian Scientists have faced this many times over the decades as they, for religious reasons, reject medical treatments that are considered the only death preventative for their children.

Is there a substantive difference between "Being 15 and of reasonably sound mind, I am rejecting this potentially life saving treatment in favor of Dr. (in botany) Hornerminer who is doing amazing things with auras and homeopathy" and "Being 15 and of reasonably sound mind, I am rejecting this potentially life saving treatment because god speaks to me and told me to."

What if the only reason the teenager believes in the alternative treatment is because he trusts his altnernative-believing parents more than doctors?

Very murky with big problems to either approach. Should ability to receive a driver's license be handled as part of a case-by-case review so that a precocious 14 year old can drive? Should I have to go through a competency exam to prove that at 23 I'm mature enough to drink legally? A political literacy test to show that I should have been allowed to vote at 15 but my coworker should still be deprived of the franchise at 32?

However, I consider suicide to be an acceptable rational decision and that in most cases the parents rather than the state should be the final arbiters. So while I think that family's decision is wrong I generally think it is their choice to make it while also believing that almost no 16 year old is sufficiently mature to truly make such decisions on their own.

I also find it interesting that they call it Abraham's Law and not Starchild's Law. (I'm sure the kid goes by Abraham but I tend to think that even if he hadn't it would still be Abraham's Law or something else.)

[blueerica]

I'm with EH1812 on this one. It's a big can of worms when there isn't something firm. In my experience, most 16 year-olds can make rational and reasonable decisions regarding their health as much as almost any 32 year-old. 16 year olds and 32 year olds can both be suicidal, stupid, life-loving and intelligent, motivated and unmotivated - I feel as though age hardly plays a role in how much one wants to live, and how much one wishes for a quality of life to their liking.

Unfortunately, I didn't not follow this thread or the news all the way through, so perhaps there's an explained reason that I'm just not going to take the time to research. What I don't understand is, why did the law have to get involved in the first place? With the chemo kid, he'd been through it before and didn't want to go through chemo again. I can't think of a single person who has had an amazingly awesome experience with chemo. If you'd been through it once or twice before, only to end up with cancer again, would you want to give it a third try. It's like getting punched twice, and then going for another hit, just to see if it hurts less.

While I am always in favor of making health care available, I am more-or-less against making it mandatory. In many instances, I'd prefer a final judgment, should something like this ever make it to court, be deferred to the parents or parental guardians with heavy influence from the patient/teenager/kid. What every human wants in terms of their health and their life should be taken into consideration by the law, no matter their age.

[Kevy Baby]

At Disneyland, adulthood starts at 10.

At least if you are buying a ticket.

[Alex]

A bit of a resurrect. But I'm curious on how this story (http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D8P9G0OO0&show_article=1) does or doesn't affect anybody's opinion.

What impact does the fact that the boy was 7 play in how you feel about the story as opposed to late teens in our original discussion?

Does it matter that there isn't an ideological reason for abandoning the chemotherapy (as with Christian Scientists and JW's on blood issues) but rather just being taken in by a quack?

Just to state the obvious, obviously there is no way of knowing that he would have lived any longer (or even as long) had the recommended course been followed.

[Kevy Baby]

...but rather just being taken in by a quack?Do you believe that all holistic treatments are "quack?"

[wendybeth]

I have to admit, I am terribly conflicted on this issue. To me, it's all so ironic because I wanted our MD to perform a very traditional surgery on Tori when it became obvious to nearly all that she wasn't responding to antibiotics. He allowed himself to be pressured by the HMO to not refer her to a surgeon, and by the time I circumvented their asses and got her in the damage was done. Now, we have a case where the parents want to go against traditional medicine, and they get the same fight.:rolleyes:

You brought up a good point, Alex- did the non-traditional treatment help or hinder in this child's case, and what was responsible for the brevity/longevity of his life, post-treatment? I suppose only those close to the case know with any certainty.

[Morrigoon]

The parents put him back on chemotherapy after the cancer returned four months later.

My guess is the chemo might not have saved him the first go-around. Consider he was on chemo for 3 1/2 months, then pulled off, the cancer came back, they put him back on chemo, and he eventually died. So chemo didn't save him either. I know the question will be "What if he'd stayed on chemo the first time?", but I still this his survival was in question either way.

[Alex]

Insofar as they are unscientific, yes. If they have subjected themselves to proper clinical study and been proven effective, then no.

Telling a set of parents that diet and supplements are the way to keep their child in remission from cancer (a remission caused by the chemo), definitely so.

If you claim to know something works without any objective evidence to support that claim, then even if you should later be proven correct you've been engaging in quackery.

[Alex]

My guess is the chemo might not have saved him the first go-around. Consider he was on chemo for 3 1/2 months, then pulled off, the cancer came back, they put him back on chemo, and he eventually died. So chemo didn't save him either. I know the question will be "What if he'd stayed on chemo the first time?", but I still this his survival was in question either way.

Perhaps, and I admitted as much. But the cancer did not recur until taken off of the planned 2 year treatment course.

But regardless of whether he would have died anyway, in the original conversation the fact that the boy was playing a role in making the decision seemed important. So I am curious where we fall when the child obviously is not mature enough to participate in that decision. Is it still entirely the parents' decision? And if so, is there a failure of treatment so egregious to overcome it? For example, what if instead of preferring holistic therapy (whatever that meant in this context) to chemotherapy the parents just said "You know, its kind of like the decision we faced with fluffy last year. $5,000 seemed to much for saving a cat's life and $250,000 is just too much money, as much as we love the boy we may need that money later and we can get a new kid. Want to see a picture of Whiskers?"

As is so often the case, I'm trying to explore whether there is a line, and if so, how fuzzy is it?

[wendybeth]

If anyone has a line drawn, it would be the insurance companies and the bottom line. The decision-making process is often expedited by monetary concerns, although I know of no parents (thank God) that would ever put a monetary value on their child's life. That has always been up to the insurers and providers.

[blueerica]

There's always a fine line between protecting the public and those who may not have a voice for themselves, and meddling in the lives of others, forcing them into decision they don't want to make. While I tend to be against the government making choices for individuals, it gets tricky with the little ones. It's a slippery slope in either direction.

On one hand, if government continues dipping into family decisions, to me it's almost horrific that I may not be in control of mine or my family's medical choices (or otherwise.) By the same token, without government involvement, children are often times in danger for reasons that extend beyond medicine, and into abuse and other horrors that children face regularly.

These sorts of things are difficult when they're placed in a case-by-case situation. After all, precedence influences the next decision, and so on and so forth.

Hmmm..

Its unfortunate the kid died... Not that I knew much about Leukemia, but I just looked up some basic stats from the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society (http://www.leukemia-lymphoma.org/all_page?item_id=9346). The article posted doesn't say what kind of cancer the kid had, but survival rates aren't exactly super high, even if the chances are better for kids and science has come a long way in solving such problems.

I guess what I'm thinking is that the kid had a good chance of not making it anyway.

[Alex]

So, in this case, if you were a judge asked to intercede one way or the other, which way would you go?

[blueerica]

I'm torn.

I'll have to deliberate.

[tracilicious]

I would allow the treatment, were I the judge in question. I think health care decisions should be left up to the family.

[Alex]

So no line for you? There is no decision making by the parents that could be so bad that government should intervene?

[Stan4dSteph]

I would say that the kid should stick with the chemo if I were the judge. As blueerica said, it's a fine line, but in this case I would have sided with the proven treatment versus the unproven, given that the decision was not based on any personal belief system.

[Morrigoon]

So no line for you? There is no decision making by the parents that could be so bad that government should intervene?

Slippery slope right there. Freedom to make your own decisions means being free to make what others perceive as the "wrong" decision. Telling people they're free only to make the government-perceived "right" decision isn't freedom at all.

Yes, some people do make horrible horrible choices. Yes, as parents that negatively affects another human being. But without the freedom to take risks and be innovative, we cannot advance. If someone believes there's a better way, and they believe it strongly enough that they feel it's worth putting their own child's life on the line (or feel the alternative is so horrible that it's worth the risk), then perhaps we take a chance and allow them to try to be innovative. If they're wrong, they suffer the most, so you have to assume they don't take the decision lightly. If they're right, all of society benefits from advances in treatment.

There are drawbacks on either side of the argument, and it's true most people are idiots. But I'd rather be a free idiot making my own decisions than a cared-for automaton living under Big Brother's watchful eye.

[innerSpaceman]

You must spread some mojo around before giving it to Morrigoon again.




Fine. Public mojo then.

[Alex]

And yet we are a society that does imposes itself on all kinds of personal decisions that don't even involve another human being.

If I can't choose to let my child ride in a car without a seatbelt (thereby increasing the risks of death by .01%) why am I allowed to choose a course of treatment that would (for sake of argument) increase the risk of death by 20%?


I believe, Morrigoon, that you are on record as supporting (despite generally libertarian views) criminalization of certain drugs because the idiot damages are just too high? So it would seem you do have a line where the government steps in to prevent "stupid" decisions.

[Morrigoon]

And yet, I see no problem with legalizing prostitution (though, just to continue my trend of incompatible philosophies, it's partly because by legalizing it, they can set restrictions on how it's done, including mandatory screenings, health coverage provided by the cathouse in question, etc.)

I hardly think that the lasting effects of wearing a seatbelt are even remotely close to the possible lasting effects of having someone inject chemicals into your body. Also, someone not wearing a seatbelt can go flying around a vehicle, injuring other passengers who were smart enough to belt themselves, or hurtling out of a car where they could hit god-knows-who/what. Likewise with certain drugs - if you're doing something which can force its way into my body against my will (such as anything airborne like cigarette smoke or pot), then I'm going to have an issue with that, whereas I have no problem with alcohol being legal, in spite of its history of being abused.

[Alex]

So you do have a line on what choices people are allowed to make without government intervention. That is what I was asking.

If the line is direct impact on others then the decisions of parents would seem to fit that criteria pretty well.

And if over the course of a life not wearing a seatbelt increases the chance of death and injury by 0.1% while over the course of the life of a person with cancer switching to treatment B increases the chances of death and injury by 20% I don't really see where you're making the distinction that one is acceptable and one is not. The risk of death for not wearing a seatbelt is really very small, the risk of death from untreated cancer is really very high.

Also, the argument about the kid being ejected from a car and killing a bystander would the same justification for making it illegal for me to keep my laptop case in the back seat or making cars illegal outright.

And the odds of a alcoholic doing something because of alcohol that directly and negatively impacts me is probably much higher than the odds of the same from a pot user.

My recollection was that you support the criminalization of cocaine and heroin. Is that correct? Those would seem to have very low chance of being forcibly introduced into my body.



As for my views, I'm pretty absolutist on the parental right to make almost any stupid decision on behalf of their minor children (including alternative treatments, not wearing a seatbelt, smoking, playing with guns, etc.).


As far as I'm concerned the most harmful thing you can do to a child short of direct violence is raise them within religion. So if I don't get to outlaw what I think are the stupidest decisions parents could make I don't see why others should get to do theirs.

But for the most part society (and I think most of the people on this board) disagree with me and so I'm just exploring the edges of that.

[SzczerbiakManiac]

As far as I'm concerned the most harmful thing you can do to a child short of direct violence is raise them within religion.Sing it brother!
(visible mojo)

[Morrigoon]

I suppose you've got me there, Alex. I do hold some conflicting positions. You could say my 'line' is jagged.

But I think there is a difference between refusing to allow someone to introduce something into their body, and forcing them To introduce something into their body. Refusing to allow entry (eg: drugs) is supporting the body in its "natural" state, versus forcibly introducing something (like chemo) which is forcing a non-naturally occurring disposition. Even if the naturally-occurring one is terminal.

In other words, if they're already dying, not forcing them to live is one thing... taking someone who isn't dying and doing something to them which may kill them is another.

[Morrigoon]

As far as religion is concerned, I think the old adage about everything in moderation holds true. Neither extreme position is ideal. I think the happy middle is that people hold some spiritual beliefs, but that they not be freakazoid about it.

Proselytizers are annoying... whether the religion they're evangelizing is christianity, hare krishna, atheism, or any other form of radical religion.

[Tref]

Proselytizers are annoying... whether the religion they're evangelizing is christianity, hare krishna, atheism, or any other form of radical religion.

Unless, of course, they're right about everything, in which case we're all screwed! Just ask Jack Chick! Whoa! Hey!

[tracilicious]

As far as I'm concerned the most harmful thing you can do to a child short of direct violence is raise them within religion. So if I don't get to outlaw what I think are the stupidest decisions parents could make I don't see why others should get to do theirs.


True that.

As far as the seatbelt/cancer analogy goes, I don't find it incredibly fitting. I'm assuming that with the cancer thing they are researching, thinking, talking to specialists, in general trying extremely hard to make the best choice for their child. With the seatbelt thing they just don't care. I think deliberate intent should count for something.

My line is basically wherever my personal philosophies fall. I'm all for people choosing whatever medical treatment they feel is best, so I would side with the family. My line is wavy and portable.