Anyone ever have gout?

[Goshawk]

Much of this conversation seems to be about semantics.

Yes, that is exactly my point. Rouser came in here waving his arms and insisting that...

Drugs are dangerous. And they don't "cure" anything.

...and I would like to pin him down as to what, exactly, he is defining as a "drug".

My point is that many foods have substances in them that, in other contexts and other forms, may rightfully be termed "drugs".

My point is that I want him to *think* about what he's saying in the future, instead of hauling out what is apparently an automatic knee-jerk "whole foods" reaction of, "Drugs are Bad!"

Rouser, my point about turkey is that it contains a substance that in another form of preparation (a pill) the FDA called a "drug" and outlawed. If you're going to say, sweepingly, "Drugs are dangerous", then logically it follows that any substance that contains a drug is dangerous, and that therefore, turkey is dangerous.


And what about chocolate? Which contains caffeine.

 

[TillEulenspiegel]

Goshawk:" Rouser, my point about turkey is that it contains a substance that in another form of preparation (a pill) the FDA called a "drug" and outlawed."

Honest to god? Wow, that about figures. What were the reasons for the classification?
Shoot it would seem to be a good sleep drug...........Uh no cancel that Lilly, Gigy and Searle wouldn't make money.

Theres no Doctor I have heard in an interview that disagrees that aspirin if introduced today would be a prescription drug. Money talks.

 

[Goshawk]

Goshawk:" Rouser, my point about turkey is that it contains a substance that in another form of preparation (a pill) the FDA called a "drug" and outlawed."

Honest to god? Wow, that about figures. What were the reasons for the classification?
Shoot it would seem to be a good sleep drug.........

FDA information paper on tryptophan.

 

[TillEulenspiegel]

Well hell , according to the Data supplied That's as it should be. At least in this case the FDA acted responsibly ( not like the chums they are now with the pharmaceutical industry ).

 

[Rouser2]

Yes, that is exactly my point. Rouser came in here waving his arms and insisting that...
...and I would like to pin him down as to what, exactly, he is defining as a "drug".

My point is that many foods have substances in them that, in other contexts and other forms, may rightfully be termed "drugs".

My point is that I want him to *think* about what he's saying in the future, instead of hauling out what is apparently an automatic knee-jerk "whole foods" reaction of, "Drugs are Bad!"

Rouser, my point about turkey is that it contains a substance that in another form of preparation (a pill) the FDA called a "drug" and outlawed. If you're going to say, sweepingly, "Drugs are dangerous", then logically it follows that any substance that contains a drug is dangerous, and that therefore, turkey is dangerous.


And what about chocolate? Which contains caffeine.

And apple seeds contain cyynide, but all things are relative to context and amounts as/per the vague definition of the word "drug." I stand by the general proposition that few drugs "cure" anything but only mask symptoms and very often the drug "cure" is worse than the disease.

 

[Number Six]

And apple seeds contain cyynide, but all things are relative to context and amounts as/per the vague definition of the word "drug." I stand by the general proposition that few drugs "cure" anything but only mask symptoms and very often the drug "cure" is worse than the disease.

Yes, all things are relative to context and amount, but context and amount alone doesn't determine whether something is classified as a drug. If broccoli didn't exist and it was created in a lab by a drug company it would be classified as a drug with a list of adverse events associated with it, etc.

The fact that some thing does what it does is unrelated to whether that thing is called a "drug." But when you ingest that thing into your body it does whatever it does regardless of whether some agency calls it a "drug."

 

[Goshawk]

And apple seeds contain cyynide, but all things are relative to context and amounts as/per the vague definition of the word "drug."

Big problem with this analogy: people don't normally eat apple seeds. We're talking here about food items that people normally eat that also happen to contain what would, in another form, be termed "drugs".

I stand by the general proposition that few drugs "cure" anything but only mask symptoms and very often the drug "cure" is worse than the disease.

Okay, your agenda is quite clear: you're, generally speaking, anti-"medicine".

Question: What do you advocate as treatment for the following conditions?

1. A headache.
2. A middle ear infection (otitis media).
3. A broken bone with its attendant pain.
4. Diabetes.
5. Cancer.
6. Epilepsy.
7. A baby born with cystic fibrosis.

 

[scribble]

1. A headache.
2. A middle ear infection (otitis media).
3. A broken bone with its attendant pain.
4. Diabetes.
5. Cancer.
6. Epilepsy.
7. A baby born with cystic fibrosis. [/B]

1) Decapitation
2) Decapitation
3) Decapitation
4) Insulin, followed by decapitation
5) Chemotherapy, followed by decapitation
6) Exorcism
7) Decapitation

Edit to add: I am not a doctor. Please consult with your physician before taking any medical advice from me.

 

[TillEulenspiegel]

scribble
I disagree with Your assessment in re case 2.
It should be earwig...FOLLOWED by decapitation.

 

[Rouser2]

Big problem with this analogy: people don't normally eat apple seeds. We're talking here about food items that people normally eat that also happen to contain what would, in another form, be termed "drugs".

Okay, your agenda is quite clear: you're, generally speaking, anti-"medicine".

Question: What do you advocate as treatment for the following conditions?

1. A headache.
2. A middle ear infection (otitis media).
3. A broken bone with its attendant pain.
4. Diabetes.
5. Cancer.
6. Epilepsy.
7. A baby born with cystic fibrosis.

Headache? Self-hypnosis

Middle-ear infection? A good night's rest.

Broken bone with attendant pain? Dope. Hey, drugs are good for pain.

Diabetes??? An ounce of prevention...

Cancer???? Ditto


Epilepsy??? Depends on how severe. Anti-seizure drugs? That could be one exception.

Cystic Fibrosis baby??? I'll get back to you on that one.

 

[Goshawk]

Headache? Self-hypnosis

Middle-ear infection? A good night's rest.

Broken bone with attendant pain? Dope. Hey, drugs are good for pain.

Diabetes??? An ounce of prevention...

Cancer???? Ditto


Epilepsy??? Depends on how severe. Anti-seizure drugs? That could be one exception.

Cystic Fibrosis baby??? I'll get back to you on that one.

[gapes silently in amazement]

You are either joking, or trolling, or simply the most hard-hearted person I have ever met. Or else you're one of those "I never get sick myself, so I am intolerant of illness in others" people.

1. Have you ever personally had a headache? I'm going to bet that your response will be, "I've never had a headache myself, and since most of them don't have traceable organic causes, they must be imaginary, so I don't understand why people don't simply ignore them."

2. Have you ever personally had a middle-ear infection? It means an agonizing earache that doesn't let up. A "good night's sleep" doesn't fix it, either. Antibiotics are what fixes it, and analgesics like Tylenol are what make life bearable while the antibiotics do their work.

You know what does happen if you simply ignore a middle ear infection? You end up with the potential for the following complications:

• a perforated eardrum--as inevitably it gets to the point where the pus simply cannot physically be contained by that flimsy membrane anymore, and it ruptures.
• a perforated eardrum can result in possible long-term hearing loss.
• and it can result in possible contamination of the middle ear by different, and potentially more dangerous bacteria entering from the ear canal.
• and the infection can spread from the middle ear to the spongy part of the skull known as the mastoid bone behind the ear, resulting in mastoiditis, which before antibiotics was the leading cause of deafness in children,
• Permanent deafness, IOW. From an untreated middle ear infection.

And children are the most prone to middle ear infections. You would seriously advocate leaving a child to cry endlessly in pain, simply telling her, "Suck it up, a good night's sleep will fix it"? And sentencing her to possible deafness?

I see.

3. So, it's okay with you if we give the little boy with the broken arm some Tylenol? Gee, that's good to know.

4. Apparently you have a pipeline to some secret information that enables those in the know to "prevent" diabetes. Please be so kind as to share it with us, as I would very much like to be able to tell the parents of two of my kids' school friends, plus two grownup friends of mine, all of whom have juvenile onset diabetes, just where they apparently went wrong. Mason's parents will especially appreciate knowing that by the time he was 5, they had evidently completely screwed up his life by failing to prevent his diabetes, since you can hardly expect a kindergartner to know how to do that.

5. "Prevent" cancer? Pray enlighten us. The AMA and the American Cancer Society would like to talk to you when you're done here. I would also like to know how my grandma, who never smoked a day in her life, and who died of quick-moving lung cancer at age 91, was supposed to have prevented her cancer. Ditto Raedean from church, who is a nice Church Lady, doesn't smoke, drink, or take drugs, who has lung cancer. Ditto both Ruth and Irvin, nice non-smoking, non-drinking church people, who also have cancer. Ditto Debbie, who had uterine cancer, and who is now cancer-free, due to drugs, after the requisite five years. How do you suggest all these healthy clean-living church folks should have prevented their cancers?

6. Gracious of you to allow epileptics their Dilantin.

Question: What gives them a free pass to use "drugs", but the kid with the ear infection and the lady with the migraine can't have any Tylenol? And the folks with cancer and diabetes should have prevented their cancer and diabetes somehow, so no chemotherapy, morphine, or insulin for them?

7. Do you need to get back to me on the CF baby because you don't know how "drugs" are involved?

Happy to answer that: babies with CF get mucus-thinning drugs in order to breathe, and antibiotics to treat the inevitable chronic respiratory infections.

No drugs = dead baby.

 

[Rouser2]

>>5. "Prevent" cancer? Pray enlighten us. The AMA and the American Cancer Society would like to talk to you when you're done here.

No, over the years, they've pretty much turned a deaf ear to that kind of "an ounce of prevention...." talk.

>> I would also like to know how my grandma, who never smoked a day in her life, and who died of quick-moving lung cancer at age 91, was supposed to have prevented her cancer.

Why, she prevented contracting cancer for nearly 91 years. Eventually, everybody's got to die of something.

>>Ditto Raedean from church, who is a nice Church Lady, doesn't smoke, drink, or take drugs, who has lung cancer. Ditto both Ruth and Irvin, nice non-smoking, non-drinking church people, who also have cancer. Ditto Debbie, who had uterine cancer, and who is now cancer-free, due to drugs, after the requisite five years.

Being "cancer - free" in the medical jargon, does not mean you are free of cancer. And many of the so-called 5-year survivals never had cancer in the first place, but rather a pseudo-disease.

As to your other remarks, suffice to say the proposition as stated is that most drugs don't "cure" anything, but only mask symptoms. I stand by that and caution that Tylenol may be hazardous to one's health, but in most cases, most afflictions will be better in the morning no matter what you do.

 

[PixyMisa]

Being "cancer - free" in the medical jargon, does not mean you are free of cancer. And many of the so-called 5-year survivals never had cancer in the first place, but rather a pseudo-disease.

I see. A "pseudo-disease" that acts in every way like cancer except that some people recover from it with the help of those evil drugs.

I smell No True Scotsman:

Drugs can't cure disease. If you were sick, and a doctor gave you drugs, and you got better, then all you had was a pseudo-disease you pathetic malingerer!

 

[Goshawk]

>>5. "Prevent" cancer? Pray enlighten us. The AMA and the American Cancer Society would like to talk to you when you're done here.<<

No, over the years, they've pretty much turned a deaf ear to that kind of "an ounce of prevention...." talk.

So, you're not going to tell us how, in your opinion, cancer may be prevented? I hope I may be forgiven if I go ahead and assume that, given the overall tone and content of your posts, the reason you aren't going to tell us is simply because you don't have any idea yourself, that you were just shootin' from the hip in order to serve your "drugs are bad" agenda, and your "FDA and the medical establishment" conspiracy theory, and that you were just blowin' smoke without any idea what you were talking about.

>> I would also like to know how my grandma, who never smoked a day in her life, and who died of quick-moving lung cancer at age 91, was supposed to have prevented her cancer.<<

Why, she prevented contracting cancer for nearly 91 years. Eventually, everybody's got to die of something.

Nope, not good enough. You beg the question.

Your statement was that the cure for cancer was "an ounce of prevention", and now I'm asking you to back it up. What specific "ounce of prevention" do you have in mind in order to prevent cancer? Or do you once again have no idea what you're talking about, it's all just bull off the top of your head?

>>Ditto Raedean from church, who is a nice Church Lady, doesn't smoke, drink, or take drugs, who has lung cancer. Ditto both Ruth and Irvin, nice non-smoking, non-drinking church people, who also have cancer. Ditto Debbie, who had uterine cancer, and who is now cancer-free, due to drugs, after the requisite five years.

Being "cancer - free" in the medical jargon, does not mean you are free of cancer. And many of the so-called 5-year survivals never had cancer in the first place, but rather a pseudo-disease.

Nope, once again you beg the question.

Again, your statement was that cancer can be prevented, and I am asking you to clarify your statement by telling us how cancer can be prevented.

Do not bring in side issues about the semantics of the phrase "cancer-free". Tell us how to prevent cancer. That is the statement that I am calling you on.

As to your other remarks, suffice to say the proposition as stated is that most drugs don't "cure" anything, but only mask symptoms.

What you are claiming here is that most drugs don't cure anything but only mask symptoms, and that overall, drugs are a Bad Thing.

What we are claiming here is that some drugs cure some things, like middle ear infections and cancer, and that other drugs "alleviate" other things--like gout. And that overall, drugs are a Good Thing.

Indocin is not prescribed as a "cure" for gout--it's a pain reliever, an NSAID, like ibuprofen (Advil, which Number 6 mentioned). And yes, taking painkillers during a gout attack can "mask symptoms", but...what happened in this thread was, you came rushing in here with your massive anti-drug and anti-medical establishment agenda, lecturing Number Six on how you think he was a fool to expect Indocin to "cure" his gout.

But if you had been paying attention, and not been so anxious to weigh in with your agenda, you would have noticed that he wasn't expecting the Indocin to cure his gout.

He was just asking for information on where he could get some more of those nifty painkillers--and on gout in general.

Now, you could have simply told him, along with the rest of us (I count five people ahead of you, including me, who had already posted advice about "diet"), that NSAIDs were only a palliative, and that he needed to make some lifestyle changes in order to get rid of the gout permanently, and left it at that--but you chose to drag in this whole anti-drug/anti-medical establishment agenda.

Drugs are dangerous. And they don't "cure" anything.

< snip >

That "cure" is just about as fast as those dangerous drugs doctors are only too happy to dispense but much longer lasting. Just as in most maladies, the drug cure can be worse than the disease.

< snip >

There are people who are regular gout customers for their foot doctors and their magic pain killing potions. I am not one of them.

< snip >

>>Do you realize that in your first sentence you essentially that every drug that exists is by definition harmful?<<

Yes.

>> To be honest it's hard for me to take anything you say seriously after that.<<

Oh, but that's pretty much the line that any FDA official will give you.

< snip >

>>Just out of curiousity, why do you say that drugs by definition are harmful? <<

Because if they didn't do any harm, they wouldn't be called drugs.

< snip >

It is the very ambiguity of such words that keep the drugs a-flowing.

< snip >

Drugs seldom "cure" anything. What they mainly do is get rid of or hide symptoms.

< snip >

<< what's your stance on alcohol?
What about caffeine--coffee, tea, Pepsi?
Tobacco? Nicotine? >>

All drugs. And they all kill

< snip >

The fact that the FDA is a government agency, exempt from the rigors of scrutiny that the market place would place on a private agency makes its judgements all the more dubious.

< snip >

I stand by the general proposition that few drugs "cure" anything but only mask symptoms and very often the drug "cure" is worse than the disease.

Your mistake in this thread is in taking your success with your self-help treatment for your own gout, and in extrapolating it to all illnesses. "Well," you say to yourself, "I didn't need drugs to deal with my gout, so therefore nobody should ever need drugs to deal with their own illnesses." And then you add to that the "Medical establishment conspiracy theory", and the self-congratulatory "I'm onto them, they won't catch me taking their mysterious potions", and you wind up making sweeping generalizations condemning all drugs as bad.

Now, you are the one who brought this all up.

So, put up or shut up.

1. If "drugs" are bad, as you so loudly proclaim, being according to you worse than useless in that they "mask symptoms" instead of "curing" anything, then why do some "drugs" get a free pass from you, and others don't? Why do the epileptics get Dilantin and the kid with the broken arm can have Tylenol, but the kid with a middle ear infection can't have any Tylenol or antibiotics--and I can't have Pepsi with caffeine in it? Where are you drawing the line? Seems to me that when it comes to "masking symptoms", Dilantin does precisely that--it prevents the seizures that are the symptoms of the condition known as epilepsy. And painkillers for the broken arm mask the symptom of "pain" that indicates a broken bone.

2. How exactly does one "prevent" cancer and diabetes (which I can't help noticing you didn't address at all, as I believe I "gotcha" dead to rights on the subject of Juvenile Onset Diabetes)?

3. Where do you stand on the CF baby? Drugs, and a live baby, or no drugs, and a dead baby?

in most cases, most afflictions will be better in the morning no matter what you do.

Really? "Most" afflictions? Please be so kind as to take a few moments and go through the Medline Encyclopedia and tell us which of the 4,000 afflictions listed therein will be "better in the morning".

In order to qualify for the adjective "most", I think it's fair to ask you to come up with 51% of those, or about 2,000 afflictions, that will be "better in the morning" no matter what you do.

 

[Rouser2]

Originally posted by Goshawk [/i]


>>So, you're not going to tell us how, in your opinion, cancer may be prevented?

Real simple, son. All things in moderation -- except for moderation itself.

>>What you are claiming here is that most drugs don't cure anything but only mask symptoms, and that overall, drugs are a Bad Thing. What we are claiming here is that some drugs cure some things, like middle ear infections and cancer, and that other drugs "alleviate" other things--like gout. And that overall, drugs are a Good Thing.

Have a look at the figures on deaths caused by prescription drugs and then tell me that overall, drugs are a good thing.

>>Indocin is not prescribed as a "cure" for gout--it's a pain reliever

And a dangerous one.


>>Your mistake in this thread is in taking your success with your self-help treatment for your own gout, and in extrapolating it to all illnesses.

Your mistake in this thread is taking an example of a general principle and turning it upside down into the rule itself.


>> If "drugs" are bad, as you so loudly proclaim, being according to you worse than useless in that they "mask symptoms" instead of "curing" anything, then why do some "drugs" get a free pass from you, and others don't?

Because (if you could read) the proposition reads "most" but not all.


>> Why do the epileptics get Dilantin and the kid with the broken arm can have Tylenol, but the kid with a middle ear infection can't have any Tylenol or antibiotics--and I can't have Pepsi with caffeine in it?

I wouldn't recomend tylenol for a broken arm.

>>3. Where do you stand on the CF baby? Drugs, and a live baby, or no drugs, and a dead baby?


That's the old "either or" fallacy. Just like in the 50's touted by certain political groups (the false choice of being either "Red" or "dead").

>>Really? "Most" afflictions? Please be so kind as to take a few moments and go through the Medline Encyclopedia and tell us which of the 4,000 afflictions listed therein will be "better in the morning".

Is "headache" listed?

>>In order to qualify for the adjective "most", I think it's fair to ask you to come up with 51% of those, or about 2,000 afflictions, that will be "better in the morning" no matter what you do.

Define "affliction". Is a headache an afflication? Is a cold an afflication? Flu? Gout? Measles? Mumps? Chicken Pox? etc., etc., etc. Most of those afflications will be better in the morning or in a few mornings, with or without any medications.

 

[Number Six]

Originally posted by Goshawk [/i]
>>So, you're not going to tell us how, in your opinion, cancer may be prevented?

Real simple, son. All things in moderation -- except for moderation itself.

Then explain the people that did all things in moderation (except moderation itself) and got cancer anyway.

 

[Rouser2]

Then explain the people that did all things in moderation (except moderation itself) and got cancer anyway.

A dumb question. Explain all of the people who practiced moderation and did not get cancer.

 

[Number Six]

A dumb question. Explain all of the people who practiced moderation and did not get cancer.

I don't have to explain all the people that practiced moderaton and didn't get cancer because I never said that practicing moderation would prevent people from not getting cancer. You're claiming that cancer can be prevented by people practicing moderation. I'm pointing out to you that although healthy habits decrease the chances that a person will get cancer, there is no magic lifestyle bullet, be it moderation or something else, that will automatically prevent cancer from coming. If moderation prevents cancer then nobody who practiced moderation would ever get cancer, which we know isn't the case.

If you'd take a more moderate tack, such as that _some_ people wouldn't have to worry about how to treat their cancer if they had live a healtheir lifestyle to begin with, you wouldn't run into as much resistance here. But the problem is that you're being dogmatic and absolutist and that is what is getting you in trouble. Some people do everything right and they _still_ get sick.

Saying that if you do X, Y and Z then you won't get cancer implies that we know everything there is to know about what causes cancer, which of course isn't the case.

 

[Goshawk]

Well, I see that Rouser hasn't answered a single one of my questions, evasively posting nothing more than another heapin' helpin' of his anti-drug agenda, being apparently not interested in an actual discussion or debate.

So I am going to invoke the "No More Kumars" rule and refuse to feed this one.

 

[Rouser2]

]Originally posted by Number Six [/i]


>>I don't have to explain all the people that practiced moderaton and didn't get cancer because I never said that practicing moderation would prevent people from not getting cancer. You're claiming that cancer can be prevented by people practicing moderation.

Yes, Indeed. And there is a mountain of research that shows just that. It "may" prevent cancer and it "can" prevent cancer. But it is you who erected the nonexistent strawman of an absolute. And it is you who needs to get out of your immature highschool debate mode and address the actual point being made.


>> I'm pointing out to you that although healthy habits decrease the chances that a person will get cancer, there is no magic lifestyle bullet, be it moderation or something else,

And that is your strawman -- the "magic bullet" is your own construction. The point is, people who live a heatlhy lifestyle, and practice moderation are very much less likely to contract cancer. Thus, the very best "cure" for cancer is to not get it in the first place.