Court forcing 16 yr old with cancer into chemo

[Alex]

Originally Posted by tracilicious

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 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).

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....

[tracilicious]

Originally Posted by Alex Stroup

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 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).

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

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.

[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.

[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]

Originally Posted by 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.

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

[Gemini Cricket]

Longest. Post. Ever.

[Prudence]

What's up with the either/or paradigm?

[Alex]

Originally Posted by Prudence

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.

[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.