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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

HEY!

;)

I couldn't resist that one.