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Author | Topic: Holistic Doctors, and medicine | |||||||||||||||||||||||
nator Member (Idle past 2170 days) Posts: 12961 From: Ann Arbor Joined: |
quote: That's where replication comes in, mike. Lots of different stabs at the issue by many researchers, and eventually a picture begins to form. Is it perfect knowledge? No. Is it proven to be a reliable way to figure out what generally works and what doesn't? Yes.
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nator Member (Idle past 2170 days) Posts: 12961 From: Ann Arbor Joined: |
quote: She's a quack then. What she just told you is that it is your fault the "treatment" she prescribed isn't working because you don't have enough faith in it. She also just described her "treatement" as a placebo. I hope you didn't drop too much cash on her herbs and appointment, rat. Real drugs have an effect on the body regardless of if the person believes that they will work or not. Edited by nator, : No reason given.
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nator Member (Idle past 2170 days) Posts: 12961 From: Ann Arbor Joined: |
quote: No. But it has been demonstrated that is will help a majority of people with these problems better than placebo.
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nator Member (Idle past 2170 days) Posts: 12961 From: Ann Arbor Joined: |
quote: Sure, but proper nutrition isn't seperate from conventional medicine at all. In fact, the reason we know the "how and why" of antioxidants' healthful properties is through careful scientific study. If there's anything that doctors and the government health agencies harp on constantly it is to eat properly, exercise, don't smoke, don't drink too much, get enough sleep, and manage stress. Nobody needs an "alternative healthcare provider" to tell them any of this.
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nator Member (Idle past 2170 days) Posts: 12961 From: Ann Arbor Joined: |
quote: There's no way of determining if their testimony is true.
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nator Member (Idle past 2170 days) Posts: 12961 From: Ann Arbor Joined: |
quote: It is kind of like this, Mike. We observe that milkmaids that contracted and survived cowpox seemed to have gained the benefit of an immunity or resistance to the much more deadly smallpox. It eventually occurs to people that maybe getting a weakened form of a similar disease makes a person immune or resistant to that disease. That idea is tested, and it seems to work very well, although not perfectly. Thus, the vaccination was born.
quote: In the above example, what are some "potentially faulty implications" that might occur? Should we discount the effectiveness, overall, of vaccinations due to the exceptions, as you suggest?
quote: I am positive that lots of people, probably the vast majority, prayed to God to cure them of smallpox, or keep them from catching it at all. God ignored the pleas of around 600 million people who died from the disease from the 18th century into the 20th century. Isn't it strange that people's prayers weren't answered until science developed a vaccine to prevent people from getting it?
quote: No, I don't. Stop erecting strawmen. I'll repeat what I already wrote and you apparently never read: Mike wrote: quote: Nator replied: No. But it has been demonstrated that is will help a majority of people with these problems better than placebo. quote: They would not agree with strawmen and faulty logic, mike.
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nator Member (Idle past 2170 days) Posts: 12961 From: Ann Arbor Joined: |
quote: Yes. Allergies are an abnormal immune response, and the immune system can certainly be affected by heredity. In fact, left-handedness is associated with a greater propensity to have allergies, so that tends to support the heredity idea, too.
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nator Member (Idle past 2170 days) Posts: 12961 From: Ann Arbor Joined: |
quote: What kind of crap are you spouting about me now, mike? That has to be one of the worst misrepresentations of my position I have ever read here on EvC, and that is saying a lot. Clearly, being a believer makes you a really dishonest debator.
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nator Member (Idle past 2170 days) Posts: 12961 From: Ann Arbor Joined: |
quote: Really? I'd like to see the stats on that. Mostly, I think that the alternative health people are fleecing the public with expensive, mostly worthless (sometimes harmful, and very occasionally slightly helpful) quack remedies and a lot of woo-woo, feel-good, meaningless jargon.
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nator Member (Idle past 2170 days) Posts: 12961 From: Ann Arbor Joined: |
Mike, it must be nice to be able to do the mental gymnastics neccessary to enjoy all the benefits of science and technology, and at the same time insist that we really don't have any idea whasoever if smallpox hadn't wiped out humanity due to the power of prayer.
What an intellectually bankrupt stance you have chosen. If you weant to believe that God saved some people, but not those 600 million, then fine, believe it, but your belief doesn't equal truth or reality. That is not the point of this discussion. The point of this discussion is the fact that the holistic practitioner riverrat went to is a quack who blamed him for his lack of success becasue he didn't have enough faith that the herbs she prescribed him would work.
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nator Member (Idle past 2170 days) Posts: 12961 From: Ann Arbor Joined: |
quote: That's nice. Are you saying that you have the authoritative word on the Word of God?
quote: And I think you are pulling this assesment out of your ass.
quote: Yeah, people should just consume the poisons that Jesus did, like wine. Alcoholic beverages have never been known to hurt anybody, right?
quote: Of course, prevention is always best, but that is not always possible, so we need to develop ways to deal with effects, too. Edited by nator, : No reason given.
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nator Member (Idle past 2170 days) Posts: 12961 From: Ann Arbor Joined: |
Sure, but proper nutrition isn't seperate from conventional medicine at all. In fact, the reason we know the "how and why" of antioxidants' healthful properties is through careful scientific study. quote: Conventional medicine isn't solely about drugs. And something can be natural and also a drug.
quote: Consult a nutritionist. There are nutritional specialists for both oncology and women's nutrition.
quote: I would say, then, that you had a bad nutritionist. Insead of reading naturopathic (unscientific) books, you could have read science-based books on nutrition, or even done a google search. I just did one on "Bleeding Gums" and the very first informational link was a National Institutes of Health Medical Encyclopedia that listed scurvy (vitamin C deficiency) as a major cause of bleeding gums. There's also a list of questions that the healthcare provider should ask. See more here quote: I don't lump all "alternatives" into one quack box. I only consider something pseudoscientific or a "quack" practice if it isn't based upon good scientific evidence. And regarding competence, there is a HELL of a lot more professional oversight and consumer protections of the conventional medical profession compared to the "alternative" and "natural healer"-type people. There are competency and ethics review boards that can take away licences of incompetant and unethical MD's. The academic rigors of University and medical school are well-known. Implying that there are a similar percentage of incompetent or quack MD's out of all MD's as there are incompetent or quack "natural healers" out of all "natural healers" is just unsupportable. There are not anywhere near the same oversights and legal consumer protections for these "natural healers". I am well-aware of the general limitations of the medical field, and that the individuals that comprise it are not universally competant and brilliant. I don't think, however, that the answer is to abandon reason, science, and evidence in favor of less-rigorous methods or pseudoscience. Edited by nator, : No reason given. Edited by nator, : No reason given.
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nator Member (Idle past 2170 days) Posts: 12961 From: Ann Arbor Joined: |
quote: The same way you tell a good mechanic, or accountant, or contractor, etc., from a bad one. You get references from patients, you ask about their credentials and philosopy, you do as much research as you can on your particular problem(s), and you see how they are to work with, and if what they do and advise you to do works. I have had to go through quite a few poor mechanics before I found a shop that I thought did a good job. One thing I never considered doing is letting some person with little to no training in auto mechanics and who thinks that adding a lot of their own special mixtures to my gas tank will cure the problems with my brakes work on my car.
quote: One "I consider science"? I'm not the arbiter of such things. It isn't difficult, if one is familiar with the basics of scientific method, to determine if a medical information source is science-based or not. The problem is not with this particular problem but with the unscientific approach in general. Sometimes a "natural healing" source is accurate and uses science-based medical knowledge, and sometimes they aren't and don't. Sometimes, they claim things as fact or suggest certain treatments as effective that have no evidence to support them. The rigors of science will simply not allow such things, but folklore and tradition will. The danger is that when they are mixed in a book, especially with no clear indication of which is which, many people begin to believe that the folklore and tradtional treatments have the same weight of evidence behind them as the science. That is simply not the case.
quote: I am glad.
There are competency and ethics review boards that can take away licences of incompetant and unethical MD's. The academic rigors of University and medical school are well-known. quote: Of course humans, and therefore human systems, are not perfect. I am not sure what your point is. Science-based, modern medicine is responsible for the enormous improvement in longevity, general healthiness, elimination or prevention of disease and malnutrition, and plummeting mortality rates of the populations where it had been practiced over the last few centuries. Show me similar, or even marginally close, results for any of the folk and traditional "natural healing" or alternative medical methods, and then I will give them some more respect.
quote: Why? Most of these "natural health" practices are far older than science-based medicine. If we all agree that "alternative" healthcare is, indeed, healthcare, why shouldn't all such healthcare practitioners have to abide by the same laws, have to demonstrate the safety and efficacy of their methods, treatments and drugs, and have the same oversight as the rest of the medical profession?
quote: Sure, but I think you are discounting how vast the gulf is between the liklihood that a given MD is likely to be a quack or incompetant compared to a given "natural healer" or alternative medicine practitioner. Modern medicine is based in evidence. Most of the stuff that falls under "alternative medicine" is not.
I don't think, however, that the answer is to abandon reason, science, and evidence in favor of less-rigorous methods or pseudoscience. quote: Um, castor oil packs? Just the fact that any "healthcare provider", or you, thinks they do anything is evidence of an abandonment of reason and evidence.
quote: But how do you know? How do you know which ND's are spouting pseudoscientific nonsense and which ones aren't when nothing they do has to be based in science?
quote: Sure. And what you think is right for you could very well be wrong. Just so you know, that's what most people who buy into all sorts of pseudoscience and woo-woo say when they can't address the evidence. Edited by nator, : No reason given.
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nator Member (Idle past 2170 days) Posts: 12961 From: Ann Arbor Joined: |
quote: That's not true. You won't probably see small effects but you can certainly detect larger ones. Emily Rosa, the little girl who tested the nurses who claimed to be able to feel people's "energy" (they were Theraputic Touch" practitioners) without touching them tested only 12 subjects, and her JAMA paper caused quite the stir. It also depends a lot on what you are measuring.
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nator Member (Idle past 2170 days) Posts: 12961 From: Ann Arbor Joined: |
quote: My husband is a cognitive psychologist and has a number of papers published in the professional literature. None of them have anywhere close to that number of subjects. I'll ask you, then, to tell us how many subjects is enough and how do you know? And you know that the person you quoted as critical to Rosa's paper is the nurse who co-founded Theraputic Touch? Of course she's going to attack it. The point is, all of the nurses Emily tested said that they could feel a person's "enegy" without touching them. The paper showed they couldn't. And here's what another TT practitioner quoted in your source said about why Rosa's paper was flawed:
She also said a key element of the therapy -- having the intention of doing the greatest good for the person being treated -- was not present in a nonhealing task like choosing between two hands. In addition, Hutchinson said, mainstream medical journals are grounded in money and power and not likely to publish research on alternative treatments that save consumers money. Classic pseudoscience and the persecution complex that often accompanies it.
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