[tracilicious]

Originally Posted by Alex Stroup

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.