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Author | Topic: Sequel Thread To Holistic Doctors, and medicine | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
AdminBuzsaw Inactive Member |
This thread is a sequel to the lively dialog and debate holistic doctors and medicine thread which ran it's course. Those who wish to continue discussion on the topic and/or respond to late messages in the closed thread may do so here.
Enjoy. {Note: Part 1 of the topic.} Edited by Adminnemooseus, : Per suggestion in message 6, "sequal" spelling fixed. Edited by Adminnemooseus, : Added link to part 1.
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AdminBuzsaw Inactive Member |
Thread moved here from the Proposed New Topics forum.
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AdminBuzsaw Inactive Member |
Thread moved here from the Proposed New Topics forum.
My apologies for the way I went about this action. I'll need to read up on the procedure I should have used. Edited by AdminBuzsaw, : Add statement
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nator Member (Idle past 2200 days) Posts: 12961 From: Ann Arbor Joined: |
Buz, I'd like to address some things you said in the other thread, in Message #302
quote: Enzymes are never alive. Enzymes are protein molecules. Also, the only enzymes that the human body uses for metabolic purposes are produced by the body. Any enzymes that are ingested are denatured the moment they hit the hydrochloric acid in the stomach, just like any other protein. In other words, they are digested. And yes, milk and other foods are molecularly changed when exposed to heat, acid, bacterial fermentation, exposed to cold, exposed to air after picking, etc. etc. Sometimes, cooking food increases its nutritional value in whole or in part, as in carrots and tomatoes. Sauerkraut has far more bioavailable vitamin C than fresh cabbage.
quote: That is an entirely different thing, Buz, and has nothing to do with enzymes. The microorganisms present in unpasteurized grape juice intended for the production of wine convert the sugars present in the juice to alcohol in an anaerobic fermentation process. Once the sugar is all gone or the alcohol content gets to a certain level, they all die. If you've ever had an unfiltered bottle of wine, some of the sediment in the bottle is dead yeast cells. The reason you can't make wine from heated grape juice is because all of the yeasts have died, not because you are damaging any enzymes.
quote: So, how do you know all of this is true, Buz? What sort of professionals figured out all of this stuff was good for health?
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molbiogirl Member (Idle past 2672 days) Posts: 1909 From: MO Joined: |
To isolate and purify is redundant!
Don't ask me to defend the way scientists write. Most of the papers I read are just awful (the writing, that is ... not the science). There are all sorts of goofy cliches scientists use. "Isolate and purify" is just one of many. Here's the original cite: Science 30 May 2003: Vol. 300. no. 5624, pp. 1375 - 1376Natural Substances and Patentable Inventions The Patent and Trademark Office and federal courts now routinely hold discovered natural substances patentable if they are "isolated and purified" or otherwise insubstantially modified (3). Here's the paper referenced as (3): Federal Register/Vol. 66, No. 4/Friday, January 5, 2001/Notices
Patenting compositions or compounds isolated from nature follows well-established principles, and is not a new practice. In a decision finding the patent valid, the court explained that compounds isolated from nature are patentable: ””even if it were merely an extracted product without change, there is no rule that such products are not patentable." Without change, PD. Without change.
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Omnivorous Member Posts: 3992 From: Adirondackia Joined: Member Rating: 7.5 |
Buz, please correct the spelling in the thread title to "sequel" rather than "sequal."
I can't stand it. Thank you. Real things always push back. -William James Save lives! Click here!Join the World Community Grid with Team EvC! ---------------------------------------
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crashfrog Member (Idle past 1497 days) Posts: 19762 From: Silver Spring, MD Joined: |
The reason you can't make wine from heated grape juice is because all of the yeasts have died, not because you are damaging any enzymes. Actually even professional vintners sterilize their grape juice to kill "wild" yeast before fermentation, although they use many techniques (including the introduction of sulfates) to do so, not just heat. Then specific strains of brewer's yeasts are introduced to begin fermentation. You could make wine from pasteurized grape juice, you just have to add yeast. The pasteurization might caramelize some of the grape sugars, so it might have a different flavor, I don't know. I don't think regular purple Concord grapes are used much for wines, fresh or bottled, except for the kosher stuff I see in the Hebrew section sometimes. Some winemakers pasteurize their wine before bottling, but many think that the heat treatment changes the flavor.
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Kitsune Member (Idle past 4330 days) Posts: 788 From: Leicester, UK Joined: |
Pink Sasquatch, you spent a lot of time writing messages to me, so I think it's only fair that I reply. I repeat, I'm not going to win any debating points and I don't intend to persuade anyone, but I'll address your points.
My information covered the results when phases two and three of STAR*D were completed, respectively. I agree, it sounds like I could do with seeing the original info. I'm not sure if it's online anywhere but I'll have a look. When I said AD trials I meant the clinical trials, the ones used for FDA approval. Maybe I should have been more clear. Those are usually about 6 weeks long, and test one drug at a time. Logically they would of course. But no one seems to be interested in finding out how combos of these meds affect the body and brain, though it appears that plenty of studies use these combos (as a look at PubMed reveals). You did ask me to look at PubMed. A cursory glance tells me that ADs are now being recommended for obesity and type II diabetes. I know people who have been prescribed them for sleep problems, and muscle pain. Several of the sources I have referred to here say that you can CURE type II diabetes with diet. No I'm not aware of any clinical trials that prove this. Someone needs to do some. Think about it though. You get type II diabetes from poor diet usually (though if you are taking a psych drug this can also be a cause -- why they are being prescribed for its actual treatment is anyone's guess). Correct your diet by cutting out the things that muck your blood sugar around, eat foods that help you heal, exercise, and see if that doesn't help a little bit more than popping a pill down your throat. Since I started the Paleo diet my own blood sugar has stabilised. I no longer get highs and crashes throughout the day from eating sugar or junk or meals loaded with simple carbs. It's so common-sense that I don't see why anyone should need to wait for a clinical trial to decide to do it themselves. Yet when my neighbour developed the disease, she came home from the GP's office with leaflets telling her to eat crackers and bread with every meal, and a low-fat diet. She could have sugar and cookies as long as she didn't have too many, and she needed to make sure everything she ate was low-fat. I couldn't believe my eyes. No wonder she has to take drugs. She's never going to get better eating like that. The way to manage diabetes is by eating simple carbs with every meal? Sugar is OK?? Also, fat helps to slow the digestion of these things and she's told to restrict it. I don't know what studies, if any, influenced the people who wrote these leaflets, but their ignorance of nutrition is frankly distressing. Studies on PubMed are still using olanzapine (Zyprexa). They claim it "helps." This is the drug that Lilly knew caused a higher incidence of type II diabetes, but hid the information until they were forced to reveal it in a court case -- one of a number of court cases brought by people who developed the disease on the drug. It made headlines. Yet obviously this is seen as an "insignificant" side effect because so many people are "helped" by this drug. I question how they decide that someone has been "helped." Often a standardised test such as the Hamilton is used, though there are others. I've seen the Hamilton myself; I've taken it. In assessing my depression it asked me if I blamed all the ills of society on myself, whether I wanted to kill myself, whether I felt worthless, etc. The fact that I said "no" to all these questions would have influenced my score. I felt utterly awful and it was difficult to function. But I kept things in perspective; I didn't believe that the illness was all my fault, I didn't hate myself for it, and I just wanted to find a way to put it right. OK so that shows I wasn't severely depressed, you might say. Can't you see though, how BIASED these judgements are? There's no objective or biological test for depression. Its presence and degree, and its absence, are purely subjective. Even the criteria in the DSM are subjective. They have to be. Other questions on the Hamilton include how well you are sleeping and how anxious you feel. The doc could knock you out with a strong medication to address these things, whether or not it affects your mood. I tried one that kept me in a zombie state for three days and I could barely stay awake. But my Hamilton score would have improved wouldn't it? Because I sure as hell was sleeping well and I had no anxiety. You said:
your statement is true for most drugs, not just antidepressants. The complex effects on the body of a given drug are generally unknown. Yes, most drugs have side effects. Wouldn't you like to prevent yourself from needing to take any? Try following Buzsaw's regime. What's more there are side effects, and side effects. Psychotropic meds affect the brain. Not one of the places most people would be willing to get side effects in, is it? One of the side effects is tardive dyskinesia. The risk is particilarly high for neuroleptics like Zyprexa. Here is what Peter Breggin says about it in his book, Your Drug May Be Your Problem: How and Why to Stop Taking Psychiatric Medications.
Tardive dyskinesia (TD) is a common yet potentially disastrous reaction to all of the neuroleptic drugs. TD involves irreversible abnormal movements of any of the voluntary muscles of the body. It commonly affects the face, eyes, mouth and tongue, as well as the hands and arms, feet and legs, and torso. It can also affect breathing, swallowing and speech. In some cases, spasms of the eyes are so severe that the person cannot see. One variant of TD is tardive dystonia, which involves painful spasms, often of the face and neck. Tardive dystonia can be disfiguring and disabling, potentially impairing even the ability to walk. Another variant of TD is tardive akathisia. The individual is virtually tortured from inside his or her own body as feelings of irritability and anxiety compel the person into constant motion, sometimes to the point of continuous suffering. We agree with T. van Putten and S. Marder who observe that akathisia, "in the extreme case, can drive people to suicide or to homicide." Neuroleptics actually suppress the symptoms of tardive dyskinesia while the disease is developing. As a result, the afflicted individual, the family, or the doctor may not recognize the impairment until the symptoms break through or until the drug dose is reduced. The rates of TD are extremely high. Many standard textbooks estimate a rate of 5%-7% per year in healthy, young adults. The rate is cumulative so that 25%-35% of patients will develop the disorder in 5 years of treatment. Among the elderly, rates of TD reach 20% or more per year. (Frenkel et al. 1992, p. 111) For a variety of reasons, including the failure to include tardive akathisia in estimates, the actual rates are probably much higher for all patients. (Dilsaver 1990, Lawrence 1985) We have seen the lives of numerous individuals and their families wrecked by tardive dyskinesia. In many cases, patients and their families were not informed by doctors about the dangers of TD. (Schatzberg etal., 1997b, p.8) In other instances, several doctors -- one after another -- ignored obvious symptoms of the disorder. Often the drug dose was mistakenly increased instead of being reduced and stopped. The failure to stop the drugs at the first sign of the disorder resulted, in these cases, in painful, severely incapacitating, disfiguring twitches and spasms. The afflicted individuals were unable to work or to carry on a normal family or social life. often they became depressed, felt humiliated by their physical appearance, and withdrew from loved ones. Breggin defends these patients in court cases. These effects of neuroleptics (and they can be effects of antidepressants as well) have been known for decades. Yet they are still developed and prescribed. I am utterly outraged that any drug that could produce these effects, which are sometimes permanent, should be approved for use at all. I've heard neuroleptics referred to as a chemical lobotomy. Not only is TD common with their use, but the way they "treat" symptoms like psychosis is by tranquilising and depersonalising the patient. The studies in journals like PubMed nevertheless go on recommending them. There are other non-drug treatments for schizophrenia however. Dr. Abram Hoffer has had success in treating it with large doses of niacin and vitamin C. My ND has helped people heal from psychosis through her diet and supplement regime. I belong to other lists besides hers. Some are for people who have been damaged by the drugs, or who have friends or loved ones who have been. Some of them saw their children commit suicide on the drugs. Some of these lists are just general health or mental illness topics. It is again obvious that people are suffering from the drugs and from withdrawal. Not all of them obviously. A number also say they have been helped by them. I ask this though: at what price? Let's say they go on the drugs once, feel they've been helped, and go on to live normal lives. Does that excuse all the other people whose lives have been wrecked by those same drugs? The people who conduct the clinical trials, who are usually the makers of those drugs, seem to think so. As I've said here before, I feel it is the height of callousness to ignore this kind of suffering. You would tell someone to take a drug like Zyprexa, and risk developing TD or diabetes, because it is "tried and tested," whereas a naturopathic approach -- unlikely to do any harm whatsoever -- is not? These drugs damage people. I find that unacceptable when there are better, healthier alternatives to healing.
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Percy Member Posts: 22505 From: New Hampshire Joined: Member Rating: 5.4 |
This is a reply to LindaLou's last message, Message 294, in the now closed Holistic Doctors, and medicine thread.
LindaLou writes: Percy you said:
First, you're advancing anecdote as superior to replicated clinical trials.
In some cases, yes. We're not talking about "some cases," we're talking about methods for best understanding the way the real world really works. Clinical scientific studies are so vastly superior an approach to anecdote there really isn't anything to discuss.
What about these reasons though? Most AD trials only last for a total of 6 weeks. This appears to be a misleading claim, because Wikipedia's entry on Paxil says this:
Trials for Paxil have not lasted more than twelve months. The effectiveness of Paxil in major depressive disorders has been proven by two twelve week clinical trials in which the patients either had flexible doses or a placebo. On to another claim:
And ADs don't have a fantastic track record; they often do not perform significantly better than placebo in clinical trials. This, too, appears to be a misleading claim. Once again from Wikipedia's entry on Paxil:
Both of the studies concluded that Paxil is significantly more effective than the placebo control group. I do not have a medical background and have very little interest in reading reports from clinical studies. My primary interest in this discussion is in pointing out how inferior anecdote is as a way of learning about the natural world, but as Pink Sasquatch pointed out earlier, much of your information appears to be either inaccurate or misleading. But you don't stop at misinformation, you continue on to denigration:
There are a number of ways that studies can be manipulated to achieve a desired result. If a drug company runs its own clinical trials then there's a conflict of interest. They can engage in tactics I'm sure you're aware of, such as cherry-picking the subjects, piercing the double-blind, using an inactive rather than an active placebo, etc etc. Clinical studies are conducted by human beings, and so they are vulnerable to all the frailties the human flesh is heir to. Anecdotes are also the product of human beings, but have none of the scientific rigor.
Someone needs to study EXACTLY WHAT is going on within the body, and the CNS especially, when a person is on one of these drugs. Many of the effects of the drugs are unknown. What is a side effect? An unwanted effect of a drug on the body. People aren't always aware of them occurring. Clinical trials are being used to make psychotropic drugs available to the public with a sheen of scientific approval but the fact of the matter is that no one actually understands how the drugs work or what they are doing to the body. The kind of precise information you're asking for is not available for most drugs, including aspirin.
Until the vast majority of trials are conducted independently, then the pharmaceuticals are going to be laying themselves open to these kinds of criticisms. Human bias is a problem in all research. And so your solution to the problem is...anecdote? Do you think the human bias in anecdote is somehow less than in clinical studies?
Finally, almost all trials are conducted on one drug at a time. Many people are prescribed more than one psychotropic drug. If you are diagnosed as bipolar then you can probably expect a cocktail of at least 3. No one knows what this combo of drugs is going to end up doing to your body because it has never been studied. Drug interaction *is* a very real problem, but when I read the information about a drug it usually has a rather long section about drug interactions. Paxil's list is particularly impressive, for instance see http://www.drugs.com/cons/Paxil.html. No human endeavor is perfect, and pointing out imperfections in current methods in order to argue for the return to less reliable approaches from the stone age of medicine is particularly wrongheaded. The development of methods like double-blind studies that ferret out what is actually true is one of the great advances of modern medicine, and it represents a quantum leap from anecdote, home remedies and old wives tales. --Percy
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Percy Member Posts: 22505 From: New Hampshire Joined: Member Rating: 5.4 |
Hi LindaLou,
You were talking about your neighbor coming down with Type II diabetes, and then you said this:
LindaLou writes: Studies on PubMed are still using olanzapine (Zyprexa). They claim it "helps." Due to the unfortunate juxtaposition with the story about your neighbor's experience with diabetes, I think many people would conclude that you're saying that studies at PubMed are claiming that Zyprexa helps diabetes, which it of course does not, since diabetes is one of risks of Zyprexa. I think what you intended to say is that PubMed contains studies supporting the effectiveness of Zyprexa as a treatment for depression, which no doubt is true. It's not really an antidepressant, though. It's actually an antipsychotic that is most effective with some forms of schizophrenia, and I've seen it work. It's amazing. The delusions and disconnects from reality just disappear. You continue to use anecdote to argue for anecdote and against science. Perhaps you should conduct a double-blind study of the relative effectiveness of anecdote and double-blind studies. You also continue to denigrate medical science. As bad as you think it is, and even if everything you said were actually true, it's still far and away superior to any alternative. For example, world mortality rates have not dropped because of the contributions of alternative medicine, but because of improvements in the delivery of traditional medicine to more regions of the world. --Percy
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purpledawn Member (Idle past 3487 days) Posts: 4453 From: Indiana Joined: |
So show me a patent on a natural vitamin molecule that is unchanged.
You haven't shown me yet. quote:I think I said that it was a way around the system. Like I also said, not my rules. It is the patent office. You'll have to take it up with them. This reference is fascinating to read.
Federal Register/Vol. 66, No. 4/Friday, January 5, 2001/NoticesUtility Examination Guidelines It brings up another requirement of receiving a patent.
The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) is publishing a revised version of guidelines to be used by Office personnel in their review of patent applications for compliance with the ``utility'' requirement of 35 U.S.C. 101. Another example is an early patent for adrenaline. In a decision finding the patent valid, the court explained that compounds isolated from nature are patentable: ``even if it were merely an extracted product without change, there is no rule that such products are not patentable. Takamine was the first to make it [adrenaline] available for any use by removing it from the other gland-tissue in which it was found, and, while it is of course possible logically to call this a purification of the principle, it became for every practical purpose a new thing commercially and therapeutically. That was a good ground for a patent.'' Parke-Davis & Co. v. H. K. Mulford Co., 189 F. 95, 103 (S.D.N.Y. 1911) (J. Learned Hand). A patent on a gene covers the isolated and purified gene but does not cover the gene as it occurs in nature. Thus, the concern that a person whose body ``includes'' a patented gene could infringe the patent is misfounded. The body does not contain the patented, isolated and purified gene because genes in the body are not in the patented, isolated and purified form. It also gives us an idea of how the terms isolated and purified are considered different.
An isolated and purified DNA molecule that has the same sequence as a naturally occurring gene is eligible for a patent because (1) an excised gene is eligible for a patent as a composition of matter or as an article of manufacture because that DNA molecule does not occur in that isolated form in nature, or (2) synthetic DNA preparations are eligible for patents because their purified state is different from the naturally occurring compound. Fascinating as it is, this reference doesn't make your case that natural vitamins have been patented or can be patented. You stated in Message 290.
The fact remains, vitamins have been patented. Show me an example of a patented natural vitamin.Show me an example of a patented synthetic vitamin.
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nator Member (Idle past 2200 days) Posts: 12961 From: Ann Arbor Joined: |
Ah, so I didn't have the full story. Thanks for the correction.
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riVeRraT Member (Idle past 446 days) Posts: 5788 From: NY USA Joined: |
I just wanted to tell you to not feel like any of your input is going to waste. There are many lurkers and readers that come to this site, and do not participate in the discussion, that may benefit from your writings.
I've enjoyed it, you express yourself wonderfully.
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Kitsune Member (Idle past 4330 days) Posts: 788 From: Leicester, UK Joined: |
LOLOL Thanks RiverRat. I kind of got the impression that my writing is a logical mess and that I'm disseminating a lot of misinformation. Unfortunately some of my sources have not been faultless and I have to admit that this is the case. But I'm fine with being made to sharpen up, I'm going to try to work on that.
I'm glad that someone feels they've been helped by this and that it hasn't been a waste of time
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Fosdick  Suspended Member (Idle past 5530 days) Posts: 1793 From: Upper Slobovia Joined: |
Percy writes:
This is a shallow accusation. Most medicine is practiced anecdotally because doctors don't really know what their prescribed drugs do to their patients, other than their patient's anecdotal accounts of them, which are of course subjective. Sure, the drug companies will boast about their clinical trials with double-blind statistical designs. Drug companies want to sell drugs. And right about here is where this thread joins up with the Alan Alda's polio. Taking prescription drugs naively and on the advice of drug-company lapdogs”the commercial physicians”is like drinking the Kool-Aid served up by the Mumbler-In-Chief. But what the hell, it's good for the economy.
You continue to use anecdote to argue for anecdote and against science. Perhaps you should conduct a double-blind study of the relative effectiveness of anecdote and double-blind studies. You also continue to denigrate medical science. As bad as you think it is, and even if everything you said were actually true, it's still far and away superior to any alternative.
Is it? Just how do you measure that? Just how far away and superior is it to any alternative? Why don't doctors routinely prescribe yoga and proper dietary regimes to treat depression instead of anti-depressant drugs? Answer: $$$. If Cho Seung-Hui had been on yoga instead of ADs he might not have shot up the VT campus and killed 32 students. ADs also cost my own cousin her life when she shot herself in the head while dropping those pills. I know, you'll say those are just isolated anecdotes. But they're not. Your touted double-blind tests never screened for that.
For example, world mortality rates have not dropped because of the contributions of alternative medicine, but because of improvements in the delivery of traditional medicine to more regions of the world.
Well, yes, I would excpect "traditional medicine" to help reduce world mortality rates for those out squating in the bushes. But that doesn't prove the sainthood of the medical-pharmaceutal complex. Sure, some progress has been made, but not always without calamity. Here's one possible example: As discussed in the Message 8, the development of the polio vaccine may have unwittingly set off the AIDS pandemic. ”HM
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