Sequel Thread To Holistic Doctors, and medicine

Exactly. Like when your pancreas is inflamed, and you think that Morphine is as effective as Kool Aid, and that Willow Bark is much better....

Message 242Message 242Message 304Message 300Message 304Message 22Message 304Message 304Message 304Message 304I could find at least another dozen remarks.You are all over the place.You contrast natural vitamin E with synthetic vitamin E ...When, in truth, both versions of vitamin E are synthetic/manmade/unnatural by your own definition (natural = man had nothing to do with it).You claim that "most" vitamin C is synthetic, when, again by your own definition, it is synthetic/manmade/unnatural.You insist you have made no comments re: natural or synthetic, when you have done so on numerous occasions.You insist it "isn't about natural or unnatural" when you have repeatedly made such distinctions in your posts.You insist that an extraction process can be patented, not the vitamin that has been extracted.And yet. I manage to find half a dozen patents in under 5 minutes and, had I been interested in flogging an already dead horse, could have found 3 dozen more (minimum!).I, on the other hand, have been doggedly repeating the same thing over and over for the last 3 days.There is no difference between:
a molecule of vitamin C that has been industrially produced
a molecule of vitamin C in its source
a molecule of vitamin C that has been extracted from its sourceThey are all the same compound.
They are all identically bioactive.
And a version of each has been patented.Edited by molbiogirl, : typo

Thank you Nator. I'm hoping that when I'm feeling a bit better, I'll write a fiction book. Not sure what about.I can see now that people here want evidence from published scientific studies, preferably in peer-reviewed journals. I'll look for that and give it where I can; though as I've said here, these can be flawed, and their absence does not mean that a particular approach is without merit.I think Dr. Hoffer has done some outstanding work and I hope someone here has a look.

Sources please? Wikipedia, a pretty mainstream site, has a page dedicated to alleged chemical imbalances. Here is what it says at the top: In PubMed (see, I've found my way there) Fred Baughman published an article titled "There is No Such Thing as a Psychiatric Disorder/Disease/Chemical Imbalance." He is talking in the main about ADHD, but his arguments encompass the entire spectrum of mental illness. I have to admit I was delighted to find such an article in PubMed. There's hope yet.

quote:

---

I could go on, but I think it's patently (hah!) obvious that I'm right.

---

Yes, it is patently obvious that you still don't understand the difference between patenting the process or method of creating a synthetic vitamin or extracting a natural vitamin and patenting the natural or synthetic vitamin.Of the examples you provided, the Polyethoxylated vitamin E and the Vitamin B.sub.6-phosphate phosphatase seem to be patents on the vitamins and the process.I'm not sure what you're crowing about. The Polyethoxylated Vitamin E would be considered synthetic and the VB6PP has been isolated and purified. The naturally occurring vitamins have not been patented.Polyethoxylated vitamin E Vitamin B.sub.6-phosphate phosphatase Notice they are also patenting the process for producing these vitamins.You have not shown me that we can patent natural vitamins, but it appears we can patent synthetic vitamins as I said very early in this discussion and you so kindly quoted.Extraction changes the location of the vitamin. So per the patent office we can patent what is isolated and purified.So when those you deem "quacks" say they can't patent a natural vitamin, they are speaking the truth.Bellowing vague absolutes like vitamins can be patented does nothing to help your case. The statement isn't totally true.In our discussion we have discovered that we cannot patent a natural vitamin, but we can patent a synthetic vitamin.This isn't about whether we like the politics of the process or not. It is about what we are allowed to do at this time. What hoops do we have to jump through to get a patent.

Please fix the links to my quotes, so that they are actually to the posts that hold the quotes.I'm not going to rehash these with you, but readers need to be able to get to the correct posts so they can read the quotes in context.Thanks

From the wiki on schizophrenia:There are lots of references to peer reviewed papers within the whole entry, so you can have a looksee at the original research if you like.

Oh, and your claim about 6-week trials was about antidepressants, not antipsychotics, and your claim has already been shown to be wrong in the case of Paxil.Since the American Psychiatric Association recommends that a patient switch to a different drug if there's been no effect after 6-8 weeks, and since it is well understood that these drugs often take a while to have an effect and then even longer for the patient to subjectively assess the effect, trials of more than 6 weeks would seem to be a requirement, and so my expectation would be that if you investigate the clinical trials for antidepressants you'll find that they included some longer than at least 8 weeks. For those where you find that is not the case then in the absence of offsetting information (such as that a particular drug under study is know to work very fast based upon animal trials) I would share your concerns. And I share your concern, but my question was how you know that Zyprexa shouldn't be prescribed for depression. The answer is that you don't really know, it was just a specific expression of your overall skeptical view of off-label prescriptions. "Current methods" means clinical trials, especially double-blind studies. "Old methods" means anecdote.In other words, I was pointing out that you're using the inevitable flaws (and also in some cases misperceived flaws, as with the errors in your criticisms of the STAR*D efforts) in scientific studies to argue for a return to anecdote, a far worse approach with far more flaws.Concerning the claims of Breggin and Hoffer, I can't see how I could object to any conclusions they reach that are based upon replicated clinical trials. Unfortunately for them, none of their conclusions satisfy this requirement, and their conclusions are generally rejected by the broader medical community.The romantic appeal of the lone adventurer braving misguided opinions, antagonism and downright rejection but who trudges on and ultimately triumphs is wonderfully satisfying, but while able to convince those with a mystical, romantic bent who rely upon anecdote, Breggin and Hoffer are unable to convince those for whom well-designed, well-conducted and replicated clinical studies are the gold standard. No, of course not. I'm not criticizing you for questioning. I'm criticizing you for concluding. On the basis of anecdotal evidence. Which is well-known and well-established to have significant reliability problems. It is not the case that you have presented valid evidence and I've declared it insufficient. You have instead presented anecdote as evidence, which it is not. The QuackWatch guy has a great quote, which I'll paraphrase in my own words: "The plural of anecdote is anecdotes, not evidence." Your concerns are legitimate, but your answers pushing solutions based upon anecdote is wrongheaded. Push people like Breggin and Hoffer to perform the clinical studies that would validate their positions, instead of pushing uninformed lay people to accept anecdotal findings.--PercyEdited by Percy, : Grammar.

See the thinking here though. It's parallel to the thinking that because SSRIs have an antidepressant effect, depression must therefore be caused by a serotonin deficiency. It's like saying that because you took aspirin and your headache went away, your headache must have been caused by an aspirin deficiency.The first indication I had that no one really knows about biological causes of depression came with the different kinds of meds my GP wanted me to try. It's just a guessing game, and these meds do different things and focus on different neurotransmitters. It was SSRIs first. Nothing. OK, try an SNRI now -- something that works on norepinephrine as well as serotonin. Still nothing. At that point I didn't want to experiment on my body anymore, but there were other things that they could have tried. Bupropion (Wellbutrin), which works on norepinephrine and dopamine. The old tricyclic ADs. I did try one of those.There are no indications here that these medications really target specific deficiencies. They wanted to find something that "worked" for me, but they didn't understand any better than anyone else why they might "work." They also offered ECT, which I refused wholeheartedly.The medications discussed in your citation have been deemed by someone, at some point, to have a therapeutic effect on schizophrenia. Therefore schizophrenia must be a dopamine deficiency. Or a glutamate deficiency. The truth is that no one really knows; this is all guesswork.The brain is designed to function in a state of homeostasis. Where is the logic in thinking that somehow, for some unknown reason, a deficiency suddenly develops and you are mentally ill? The brain attempts to maintain homeostasis by reducing the numbers of receptors for whatever neurotransmitter is flooding it due to drug intake. This is one reason why it can be so difficult for a person to recover from heroin use. It can take a year or more for the number of dopamine receptors to return to normal after the drug is discontinued. If there were an actual deficiency that needed correcting, why does the brain try to defend itself from what is supposed to be helping it?People won't stop trying to find the magic bullet, because there is pervasive belief in the biological model of psychiatry. Meantime, Dr. Hoffer's work with niacin and vitamin C in schizophrenia is ignored and forgotten.

I think LindaLou's objection is legitimate, but only with regard to terminology. There might be a better term than "chemical imbalance" for referring to the chemical pathways thought to be a factor in some forms of schizophrenia, especially since "chemical imbalance" is a term widely used within the quack community. The Wiki article on schizophrenia doesn't itself use the term.But what you were referring to seemed very obvious to me, and I'd be surprised if LindaLou wasn't also aware of the suspected involvement in schizophrenia of certain chemical pathways.--Percy

It's difficult to know what to say without repeating myself Percy, and you are repeating yourself too. You set up the clinical trial as the gold standard (keeping in mind that studies can be flawed) and seem to want me to be able to back up my position by giving this kind of evidence that my diet-and-supplement regime works. How can I do that if people aren't doing clinical trials on diet? I've seen a number on vitamins. Buzsaw gave a good link a few posts back. These clinical trials in CAM are run by NIH. Why would they be doing that if they thought it was all woo-woo science? Hoffer's work has been published in The American Journal of Psychiatry, The British Medical Journal, The Canadian Medical Association Journal, the Lancet, and others. Are you going to check him out or just keep dismissing him? The mean length of approval trials for 9 antidepressants introduced between 1985 and 2000, including Paxil, was 6.23 weeks, as you can see here. It hasn't been approved for use as an antidepressant. A GP could prescribe it for that reason anyway. But how do they know it's going to work? I have been unable to find a single study on PubMed using Zyprexa to treat unipolar depression. If they prescribe it for this reason they are guessing based on no evidence, which is what you accuse naturopaths of doing.Anyway, what's wrong with being skeptical about off-label prescriptions? I was getting the idea that being called a skeptic is a compliment on this forum.I am not arguing that anecdote ought to be the rule. I would like to see people do clinical trials on nutrition. I'd like to see them done on vitamins, and all kinds of things. There will be little or no progress made, however, until the power to do these kinds of trials rests with a well-financed independent body with a remit to test more than just pharmaceuticals. Why would any pharmaceutical company want to conduct clinical trials on nutrition? Where's the money in it for them?In the meantime, as far as I'm aware, Pauling and Hoffer provide the best empirical evidence for orthomolecular medicine. Both of them have been published in mainstream journals. There's a lot of info in Pauling's book if you want me to share it, including his thoughts on why his vitamin C research went largely ignored. He was a mainstream scientist through and through with a deep love for his work and for humanity, and I think he was shocked and dismayed at the reception his vitamin C work received. I'll provide a bibliography again here. As you will see, his vitamin C work has been published in mainstream journals, including the American Journal of Psychiatry and the New England Journal of Medicine.Never mind that I see my ND's approach working for me and over a thousand other people on her list who have been through the mental health system. Have a closer look at the work of Pauling and Hoffer and then tell me what you think. You've got the information now on the studies they conducted. Hoffer is in his 80s but is still in practice and still the editor of the Journal of Orthomolecular Medicine.Edited by LindaLou, : No reason given.Edited by LindaLou, : It's "unipolar" not "monopolar"

quote:

---

It's like saying that because you took aspirin and your headache went away, your headache must have been caused by an aspirin deficiency.

---

No, it isn't.Glutamine and dopamine are neurotransmitters which are part of brain biochemistry, while acetylsalicylic acid is not a normal part of human biochemistry.

quote:

---

The medications discussed in your citation have been deemed by someone, at some point, to have a therapeutic effect on schizophrenia.

---

Well, no, it doesn't really work like that. Some scientist doesn't wake up one day and decides that the above is true.Again, you seem to not understand the rigor involved in the scientific process. Successful, respected scientists do not just throw unfounded speculations around, willy nilly, and expect their collegues to just accept them. The scientific community is, in general, very conservative when it comes to accepting new claims, and only after replication will a claim start to be accepted.

quote:

---

Therefore schizophrenia must be a dopamine deficiency. Or a glutamate deficiency. The truth is that no one really knows; this is all guesswork.

---

This is a strawman of the information I provided. The actual science is not stated anywhere near as strongly as you just characterized it.The evidence indicates that schizophrenics consistently display very particular differences in their brain biochemistry compared to non-schizophrenics.

quote:

---

The brain attempts to maintain homeostasis by reducing the numbers of receptors for whatever neurotransmitter is flooding it due to drug intake.

---

Your evidence for this is what?

quote:

---

You set up the clinical trial as the gold standard

---

Yes.That's because we have learned

quote:

---

(keeping in mind that studies can be flawed)

---

Yes, but there are systems in place to minimize the incidence of flaws, and also to eventualy weed them out if they do get through.That's why cold fusion, free energy machines, and the canals on Mars were investigated, then rejected by the scientific process.Anecdote, by contrast, has no systems whatsoever to deal with error, or bias, or mistakes, and as such is rife with error, bias, and mistakes.

Hi LindaLou,I think you might be confusing the discussion with me with discussions you're having with others. I'm not questioning your diet-and-supplement regime. As I and others have said, if you've found something that works for you then I think that's great. What I'm questioning is the basis upon which you draw your conclusions, which is anecdote (drawing conclusions from personal subjective experiences, including one's own), a known poor way of reaching valid medical conclusions.Even worse, you're urging others to follow your anecdote-based advice.About Breggin and Hoffman being published in mainstream journals, many, many ideas published in mainstream journals haven't been accepted by the broader scientific community. This evidently includes Hoffer and Breggin. And as has been pointed out, Breggin has had to resort in recent years to publishing in journals he either edits or established himself. Of course you should be skeptical. I believe my very words about this were, "I share your concern."The point I was making was that your declaration that Zyprexa should not be prescribed for depression stemmed from your general skepticism about off-label prescriptions, and not from any scientific evidence that Zyprexa is contraindicated for depression. You ask who's going to invest money in research that has no substantial payoff? Good question. That still leaves anecdote as an extremely poor method of medical investigation. The solution is to figure out ways to overcome this obstacle to nutrition research, not to rely upon anecdote.You still seem unaware of just how poor a method anecdote is. For very obvious things it does just fine. For example, most cultures have identified the hallucinogenics available in their environment, and there are a small number of examples of natural medicines being identified in the environment this way, but for the most part complex and subtle medicinal effects can only be ferreted out by clinical studies.When you in effect say, "Well, conclusive clinical studies aren't available in this area, therefore I'll rely on anecdote," your conclusions are very likely to be wrong. Relying upon personal anecdote, no matter from how many well-meaning people, is known to have severe problems involving many fallacies, most prominently among them the placebo effect and confirmation bias.Further, the opinions of a couple scientists cannot outweigh the preponderance of medical opinion. The likelihood of the majority of a large community being wrong is much smaller than the likelihood that a couple mavericks are wrong. You're just piling fallacy upon fallacy.--Percy

I was assuming you knew that aspirin was originally derived from willow bark.”HM