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Salvaging Health

TFian said:
How is that distance from reality?



No, a lot of it does work.
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Hu. No. If there was any evidence it was working the way it is advertised (*), it would be joining the body of treatment as evidence based medicine. But see, there is no evidence , so it is only "alternative" medicine , as in : do not work but still pimped out.

(*) there are some placebo effect and psychological effect which are undeniable, like poking people with fake blunt needle to simulate acupuncture, but this is not what is claimed, neither is it really "working" compared to real medicine.


So then, your claim is modern western medicine is not dependent on supply chains and fossil fuels? If so, why?
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Most organic molecule can be produced with relatively low energy , and are usually in small quantity distributed. Food distribution and heating would be a bigger problem long, long, long before emdicine is one.
 
TFian said:
It worked for cholera.
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*citation needed*

Show us that it was homeopathic preparation, which helped, as opposed to side effect of the excipient or soluté, like water to rehydrate, and as opposed to known actual treatment of cholera today. Hint for you : rehydratation is important for cholera, as to be the primary treatment.
 
TFian said:
All the core alternative modalities were all developed before the age of cheap abundant fossil fuel energy, and require very little in the way of energy and raw material inputs.
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Yes, when a shaman is going to give you a leaf that isn't going to cure you anyway, and that nobody is ever going to follow up on to see, why not pick one that requires very little effort?
 
TFian said:
Homeopathy made its name in the nineteenth century where it proved surprisingly effective against large-scale epidemics such as cholera and yellow fever - even the conventional medical authorities acknowledged this.
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If you're going to argue against the conventional medical authorities of the mid 19th century, the surviving writings of the hygienic sect of the hydropathic movement will provide lots of information.

If you're going to argue against the conventional medical authorities of the early 21st century, you'll need to do a bit better than relying on 150-year-old research that has since been overturned.

Also, I think you guys miss notice that modern medicine is completely unattainable without fossil fuels.
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And how exactly are the plants used in alternative medicine, which grow in different climates, processed and shipped to different locations today? Not many sailboats still crossing the Atlantic or Pacific, nor horse-drawn wagons.
 
TFian said:
Also, I think you guys miss notice that modern medicine is completely unattainable without fossil fuels.
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Utter baloney. Medicine is just about the highest value-per-unit-materials-input stuff you can think of. (Possible exceptions: high-end handcrafted watches; art; microchips). Lots of valuable modern drugs are produced using the same raw materials as a batch of beer---some sugar and some specialized microbes---and patients are willing to pay hundreds of dollars (i.e. the equivalent of a day's manual labor) for milligrams of the output.
 
Aepervius said:
*citation needed*

Show us that it was homeopathic preparation, which helped, as opposed to side effect of the excipient or soluté, like water to rehydrate, and as opposed to known actual treatment of cholera today. Hint for you : rehydratation is important for cholera, as to be the primary treatment.
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And, surprisingly, even as early as the 1840s, allopathic doctors were already showing that intravenous injection of a saline solution produced dramatic improvement in cholera patients.

http://books.google.com/books?id=FZ...ne+vein+injection+date:1852-1856&lr=&as_brr=0

Aside from inexperience and poorly adapted equipment, the biggest problem was their lack of understanding of germ theory and therefore sterilization--another advancement which allopathy produced a few decades later.

As the author wrote a few pages after the link, "I dwell on this remedy [injection of water into the veins] because I think its utility has not yet been fairly tested."

Subsequent testing has proven him right. It has not proven homeopathy right.

The hydropaths may get partial credit for suggesting that cholera patients should forego calomel, blistering, bleeding, etc. from allopathic doctors and just drink water, but it was the allopaths who used the scientific method to move beyond treatments that didn't work, toward treatments that did.
 
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The imminent decline of effective Western medicine, in an overpopulated world, makes it imperative for the world's races to interbreed as much as possible, to spread natural resistances around. "Pure" races are fodder for infectious epidemics. The best chance for your kids to survive is if you give them the widest possible variety of genes.

Respectfully,
Myriad
 
You peddle homeopathy too? It's interesting how one type of woo is typically associated with other types of unrelated woo.
 
TFian said:
...Deaths directly caused by American health care are appallingly common. A widely cited 2000 study by public health specialist Dr. Barbara Starwood presented evidence that bad medical care kills more Americans every year than anything but heart disease and cancer, with adverse drug effects and nosocomial (hospital- and clinic-spread) infections the most common culprits...
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I would not class these types of deaths as due to "western medicine" so much as the malpractice of application and the proper following of our own medical practice standards and guidelines in all cases in western healthcare systems.
 
Myriad said:
The imminent decline of effective Western medicine, in an overpopulated world, makes it imperative for the world's races to interbreed as much as possible, to spread natural resistances around. "Pure" races are fodder for infectious epidemics. The best chance for your kids to survive is if you give them the widest possible variety of genes.

Respectfully,
Myriad
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Does this not also spread and disseminate genetic flaws and weaknesses that are currently limited to some strains/races of humanity (sickle-cell, Cystic fibrosis, Tay-Sachs, etc.,) throughout the more general population?
 
ThunderChunky said:
You peddle homeopathy too? It's interesting how one type of woo is typically associated with other types of unrelated woo.
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Mojo said:
http://scienceblogs.com/denialism/2007/06/crank_magnetism_1.php
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Unified theory of the crank.

  1. Cranks overestimate their own knowledge and ability, and underestimate that of acknowledged experts.
  2. Cranks insist that their alleged discoveries are urgently important.
  3. Cranks rarely if ever acknowledge any error, no matter how trivial.
  4. Cranks love to talk about their own beliefs, often in inappropriate social situations, but they tend to be bad listeners, and often appear to be uninterested in anyone else's experience or opinions.
Hmm.
 
Somewhat over a decade ago the US Congress established the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine. Headed by CAM Woos, staff by CAM woos and funded (in Fiscal Year 2010 to the tune of $128.8 million). (See: http://nccam.nih.gov/about/budget/appropriations.htm)

Its Mission (From http://www.nih.gov/about/almanac/organization/NCCAM.htm)
The mission of the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM) is to define, through rigorous scientific investigation, the usefulness and safety of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) interventions and their roles in improving health and health care.
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Its Vision (From ditto)
Scientific evidence informs decision making by the public, by health care professionals, and by health policymakers regarding use and integration of complementary and alternative medicine.
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It has never managed to prove any CAM actually works. It has managed to prove lots-o-stuff requires more study which it continues to fund. :boggled:


For everyone's amusement check the list at: http://nccam.nih.gov/research/results/spotlight/



:th:
 
Trakar said:
Does this not also spread and disseminate genetic flaws and weaknesses that are currently limited to some strains/races of humanity (sickle-cell, Cystic fibrosis, Tay-Sachs, etc.,) throughout the more general population?
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Sure. But in most cases those are less of a risk than infectious disease.

In fact, being heterozygous for sickle cell confers resistance to malaria, and being heterozygous for CF may confer resistance to cholera. Sucks if the kids turn out homozygous, but heck, when the only medicines available are homegrown herbs and magic potions, life's pretty short for everybody.

Respectfully,
Myriad
 
Myriad said:
The imminent decline of effective Western medicine, in an overpopulated world, makes it imperative for the world's races to interbreed as much as possible, to spread natural resistances around. "Pure" races are fodder for infectious epidemics. The best chance for your kids to survive is if you give them the widest possible variety of genes.

Respectfully,
Myriad
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I'm not familiar with TFian. Are you saying she/he is a bit of a Nazi?

Linda
 
No, actually, if you read the article, you wouldn't come to such an ignorant conclusion.
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I don't need to. The fact that he endorses homeopathy, despite the fact that it's been shown to be nothing more than the placebo effect (others have provided the evidence to support this), tells me all I need to know: he has an agenda, and is twisting facts to fit it. I don't need to read yet another example of this, thanks.

If all the arch-druid has is outdated magical thinking, I think we can safely dismiss him.
 
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