Doing the least to save your life...

[Roadtoad]

Whoa. Wait a loooooong second.

Even if I had unlimited resources of time and money, there's no way in hell I'd ever go with a homeopathic regimen. For one thing, why would you waste any resource, regardless of its supply? That's just plain stupid.

For another, consider that your actions have an impact on others. Prince Charles and his imbecilic remarks about homeopathy have, no doubt, led others to think there's something right with drinking tap water that's had its "memory" tweaked, or taking megadoses of vitamins. Everyone has a certain amount of influence with people, and trying to cure yourself of a fatal disease with psuedoscientific methods only suggests to those same people that there's something acceptable in this.

Ultimately, you wind up creating the wholly false impression that this regimen has any effectiveness against cancer. This will lead some poor schmoo who has even less in the way of resources to you to empty their bank account and ultimately surrender their lives for the sake of someone else's greed. Bad idea.

Sorry. I think homeopathy should be outlawed, or at least parked in the back seat where it belongs.

 

[bruto]

I think homeopathy would be the choice for anyone who has unlimited time to which to experiment.

But if you were ultimately given a death sentence of like 6 months to live, I think you would realize that whole grain breads, organic water, magnets, accupuncture, Vitamin C, Omega -3, etc., etc., is not going to extinguish the raging inferno within you. Perhaps if one lived a life of this stuff before the disease, perhaps no disease. But only perhaps. There are other factors where good diets and excercize aren't going to guarantee you a healthful life of 100 years.

Kevin Trudeau's claim that reversing your ph balance can actually prevent and REVERSE existing cancer is quite the bolsterous claim. Either it can or it can't. But if I had cancer, I would indeed try to look into that claim quite seriously. But, it does sound like a stretch, that something so easy could cure it. I think someone posted regarding this (on an original Kevin Trudeau thread a few months? back), that if you achieved that ph balance reversal, that then you would die of THAT.

I know a neighbor that has cancer in his lungs, liver and shoulder. Any one of these cancers could have killed him. He actually went into remission for quite a while after standard medical treatment. They aren't looking for him to make it though. But, I believe he would have been dead already if it weren't for those standard treatments he has gotten.

I am fascinated by "remission". I can't understand what causes the cancer to shut down for a while, then restart up. You would think that medical science would have found the cause (of remission) and used this to solve the cure, long ago, because of some clue, regarding remissions. Could it be that there is an oscillation effect where the tumors need and get a lot of blood?...and then the blood supply can't keep up with the tumor(s) after a while?...so the tumor stops growing?...but then collaterals develop and the tumor gets more blood once again, and so the cancer takes off once again? I have heard that some of the lastest tumor fighting drugs are those that supress blood flow to the tumor.

I have to agree with Roadtoad on this one. Just because I expect to live another 30 or 40 years, I am not going to spend half of that learning to like the taste of urine either, just because some mystics think it's good for me. Many people have experimented with homeopathy and other quack cures in the long and short terms, and it's not gotten any better. Real scientific medicine, despite its occasional shortcomings, does get better.

In the case of cancer, since early intervention is one of the most important factors in success, I would never waste my time on quackery even if my illness was relatively slow acting.

I also think you have to make a distinction between the healthy living that helps us to fend off disease, and the reverse idea that quacks often tout that presence of a disease like cancer proves that you did something wrong (and of course they know what it is). Those religious meddlers who try to tell you god is mad at you and you should pray the thing away are in the same class. If you live a healthy life and have a good attitude, you will probably improve your odds of not getting some diseases, and you will probably improve your odds of surviving the ones you get, but some people will get these things anyway, no matter what they do.

 

[epepke]

The rate for spontaneous remission from cancer is about 4%

Those are really poor odds.

They're still large enough to convince a lot of reality-challenged people that stuffing beet slivers in your nostrils or learning how to do the Hokey-Pokey backward cures cancer.

 

[Blue Mountain]

A Very Personal Account For Sure

Well, the paper is certainly a personal one! I for one prefer to keep my writing at a more impersonal level. However, I'm not sure which approach makes more of an impact. It may depend on your target audience.

The arguments you make are sound, and the examples drawn from your own experience are powerful. But phrases such as "Are you really such a half-wit, mouth breathing moron as to believe that BS?" could well cause some of your audience to stop reading right there.

You also tripped over "its" vs "it's" on page 6. (Sorry, it's the grammar panda bear in me.)

On a side note, I believe Big Pharma are not so much interested in "keeping us sick" as they are interested in finding new and inventive ways to make us believe we are sick so as to sell us more medication. Very often it seems new drugs are an answer in search of a question rather than the other way around.

 

[brodski]

On a side note, I believe Big Pharma are not so much interested in "keeping us sick" as they are interested in finding new and inventive ways to make us believe we are sick so as to sell us more medication. Very often it seems new drugs are an answer in search of a question rather than the other way around.

You touch on a valid criticism of the pharmaceutical industry here, in that resources are directed to research based on a profit motive rather than actual need. For instance in recent years more has been spent on research into anti impotence drugs than anti malarial drugs, as there is a greater demand for the former in wealth nations, though the impact on overall human well being would be helped much more by the latter.

However there are enough real medical conditions which are currently untreatable to provide a good enough market for real medicine, without inventing new conditions. Also, consider that real medicine, in many countries, has to prove itself effective (as well as safe) in order to be licensed, you'll have a job proving that your treatments is effective against a condition, if you can't show that any of your test subjects actually had the condition in the first place.

The real growth industry for new conditions is in SCAM practitioners, as it always has been. Whereas you can o to your GP and be given a clean bill of health, I don't think a homeopath has ever met a healthy person!
A woo will always be able;l to find a "condition" to "treat", that's the wonderful thing abou placebo, its even more effective against imaginary diseases than real ones!

(edited beceasue I can't type, or spell)

 

[fyslee]

It's when you take the sCAM instead of traditional medicine that is offensive.

Even when you take it at the same time, when it comes to cancer, it'll decrease your survival chances by 30%.

To find this statistic (since I can't post links yet) you'll have to do this Google search:

"The Quack-Files: Cancer Survival & Alternative Medicine"

That will take you to the page on my website.

 

[fyslee]

It's when you take the sCAM instead of traditional medicine that is offensive.

For more about the acronym sCAM (ALWAYS spelled with a small "s"....;-), do this search:

"The Quack-Files" "scam commitment"

 

[brodski]

Even when you take it at the same time, when it comes to cancer, it'll decrease your survival chances by 30%.

To find this statistic (since I can't post links yet) you'll have to do this Google search:

"The Quack-Files: Cancer Survival & Alternative Medicine"

That will take you to the page on my website.

Here you go Fyslee, & welcoem to the forum!

http://www.geocities.com/healthbase/cancer_norway.html

or

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?db=PubMed&cmd=Retrieve&list_uids=12565991&dopt=Citation


I've only read the adstracts, but does the paper claim that Suuplemtary, Complementary and Alternitive Medice (S.C.A.M- its allwasy usefull to ahve an excuse to include the "s") actualy harms you in ways oterh than drainbign your wallet? Or is it that those who fall under teh spell of tehse conmen are either
A) allready desperite in other words they are allready the are the worst cases, or
B) delaying real treatment and plaicign theri fith in whale music and vitimin C?

 

[fyslee]

I've only read the adstracts, but does the paper claim that Suuplemtary, Complementary and Alternitive Medice (S.C.A.M- its allwasy usefull to ahve an excuse to include the "s") actualy harms you in ways oterh than drainbign your wallet? Or is it that those who fall under teh spell of tehse conmen are either
A) allready desperite in other words they are allready the are the worst cases, or
B) delaying real treatment and plaicign theri fith in whale music and vitimin C?

It depends on what form of sCAM is used. Some are definitely harmful, while most are most likely benign. From an ethical and economic standpoint they are unjustified. I suspect that the mentality of many users of sCAM methods leads them to put off seeking proper help, which itself would worsen their prognosis. Whatever the case, it isn't proven that using sCAM improves their prognosis in any way. While feeling empowered, more relaxed, and more peaceful, aren't bad things at all (quality of life is a many factored matter....), they likewise have no proven effect on their prognosis.

 

[fyslee]

Hi Fowlsound,

I have posted a link to your story at "Confessions of a Quackbuster".

Regards,

Paul Lee, PT

 

[Iamme]

I have to agree with Roadtoad on this one. Just because I expect to live another 30 or 40 years................................................ I would never waste my time on quackery even if my illness was relatively slow acting.

But for one to sort thru what is quackery and what isn't, is the $64,000 question.

There is a health center somewheres in the US that believes they can clean out your arteries for you, by chelation. Chelation is used to remove heavy metals from a person also. Yet some, regard the artery cleaning by chelation as quakery. But IS it?

And then you hear of these quack clinics that give statistics claiming high cure rates.

You get to where you don't know who or what to believe, regarding this stuff.

Some have said that coral calcium is quakery. Yet, there is SOME reason why Okanawans live so long. And I'll bet it's not because they are being filled with prescription drugs. If you are eating the right food (whatever that is) and breathing clean air, and drinking food water, and excercizing in some reasonable fashion (I doubt these people run marathons everyday)...I think there is a melding of that line drawn in the sand as to where homeopathy/unusual diets start, and where quakery takes off from there.

If one engages in some natural remedy, it may work because the immunde system is stronger while engaged in this behavior. So it becomes a two-fold process for the good. Not only from the standpoint that you are taking into your body that which nourishes it best, but that you are strengthening the bodies ability to ward off disease..and cancer. Obviodsly, these people must not have a lot of early fatal cancers, etiher. (They probably don't eat foods with injected hormones galore, or eat weiners with nirtrates/nitrites in them, etc.)

Maybe Googling Mexican homeopathic clinics will yield some good reading.

 

[Iamme]

On a side note, I believe Big Pharma are not so much interested in "keeping us sick" as they are interested in finding new and inventive ways to make us believe we are sick so as to sell us more medication. Very often it seems new drugs are an answer in search of a question rather than the other way around.

This is what Kevin Trudeau says. So...do you believe in what he says then?

 

[Mojo]

But for one to sort thru what is quackery and what isn't, is the $64,000 question.

We have a method that can accomplish this: double-blinded placebo controlled trials.

Have any properly controlled trials of the therapies you mention been carried out? If so, what were the results? Anything that is demonstrated to work will be rapidly adopted by the medical profession in general, not just carried out by "a health center somewheres in the US".

Someone* posted a joke on the forum recently:

Q: What do you call alternative medicine that works?
A: Medicine.

*Sorry, I can't remember who it was.

 

[Roadtoad]

But for one to sort thru what is quackery and what isn't, is the $64,000 question.

See Mojo's answer to this.

There is a health center somewheres in the US that believes they can clean out your arteries for you, by chelation. Chelation is used to remove heavy metals from a person also. Yet some, regard the artery cleaning by chelation as quakery. But IS it?

If my doctor wouldn't recommend it, and my doctor is someone I can trust, why would I try this? I'm not sufficient versed in science, unfortunately, but anything that sounds like mumbo-jumbo, I'm checking with someone who is so versed.

And then you hear of these quack clinics that give statistics claiming high cure rates.

When I put a bid out for work to be done, either professionally or personally, the first thing I do is toss out anyone whose bid is too high or too low. Either one will screw you. Anyone making a claim for a high cure rate, without someone operating on the outside auditing those claims, will not have me on their doorstep anytime soon.

You get to where you don't know who or what to believe, regarding this stuff.

It's simple. Find someone you can trust first. They can help you through it.

Some have said that coral calcium is quakery. Yet, there is SOME reason why Okanawans live so long. And I'll bet it's not because they are being filled with prescription drugs. If you are eating the right food (whatever that is) and breathing clean air, and drinking food water, and excercizing in some reasonable fashion (I doubt these people run marathons everyday)...I think there is a melding of that line drawn in the sand as to where homeopathy/unusual diets start, and where quakery takes off from there.

Considering the number of medical researchers and MD's who have said the coral calcium nonsense is BS, and they have the training and skill to know why it's BS, I'd say at that point that knowing where the quackery starts is easier and easier to find. And Homeopathy and Unusual Diets fall well within that range.

If one engages in some natural remedy, it may work because the immunde system is stronger while engaged in this behavior. So it becomes a two-fold process for the good. Not only from the standpoint that you are taking into your body that which nourishes it best, but that you are strengthening the bodies ability to ward off disease..and cancer. Obviodsly, these people must not have a lot of early fatal cancers, etiher. (They probably don't eat foods with injected hormones galore, or eat weiners with nirtrates/nitrites in them, etc.)

Sorry, but your statement ignores the reality that lifespans are growing, and there's little evidence hormones and nitrates/nitrites have caused cancer, from what I can see. I eat natural foods when I can find them because 1.) I like sustainable agriculture, and 2.) I like the taste better. I've yet to run across solid evidence that natural foods and that sort of thing is necessarily better from a medical standpoint.

Maybe Googling Mexican homeopathic clinics will yield some good reading.

So will a visit to an adult bookstore, but I wouldn't take their advice on how to preserve my marriage.

 

[Iamme]

Roadtoad:
If my doctor wouldn't recommend it, and my doctor is someone I can trust, why would I try this? I'm not sufficient versed in science, unfortunately, but anything that sounds like mumbo-jumbo, I'm checking with someone who is so versed.

Iamme:
But coming form Kevin Trudeau's school of thinking...the doctors are taught the way they teach doctors; to use pills and to operate. The status quo, for the last hundred years or whatever.

Your doctor could very well mean well, but be outside the loop in anything that isn't endorsed by the MDA.

I am old enough to have learned within MY occupation that there are a lot of people out there, who you even think are pros...who are specialists, who they themnselves don't have all the answers, or have simply overlooked things. They only work with what they have been taught in and know about. And even THEN they don't know it all.
And some people are just plain sharper than others.

 

[Iamme]

Roadtoad:
Sorry, but your statement ignores the reality that lifespans are growing, and there's little evidence hormones and nitrates/nitrites have caused cancer, from what I can see. I eat natural foods when I can find them because 1.) I like sustainable agriculture, and 2.) I like the taste better. I've yet to run across solid evidence that natural foods and that sort of thing is necessarily better from a medical standpoint.

Iamme:
But common sense will you that anything that deviates from our genetic makeup and it's evolutionary trail of how we got to where we are at (and this don't include eating chickens that are artificially matured in weeks), or nitrates, etc....could very well be a cause for cancer. I think most cancers are caused by irritants at the cellular level. Therefore the idea to stay clear of irritants would be common sense.

If a person had a slow growing cancer, let's say. One where a person had some time to make some deciisons. You mean you would not want to first look at some of the other options besides chemo and radiation which very well may cure you of your cancer, but then cause a new cancer because of THAT some years down the road? Wouldn't you be tempted to get ahold of a quack clinic and see if they had, let's say, some famous clients, who you could personally contact, at least?

Of course I'm not so stupid and gullible to just take the clinics word for their claims.

 

[bruto]

Roadtoad:
Sorry, but your statement ignores the reality that lifespans are growing, and there's little evidence hormones and nitrates/nitrites have caused cancer, from what I can see. I eat natural foods when I can find them because 1.) I like sustainable agriculture, and 2.) I like the taste better. I've yet to run across solid evidence that natural foods and that sort of thing is necessarily better from a medical standpoint.

Iamme:
But common sense will you that anything that deviates from our genetic makeup and it's evolutionary trail of how we got to where we are at (and this don't include eating chickens that are artificially matured in weeks), or nitrates, etc....could very well be a cause for cancer. I think most cancers are caused by irritants at the cellular level. Therefore the idea to stay clear of irritants would be common sense.

If a person had a slow growing cancer, let's say. One where a person had some time to make some deciisons. You mean you would not want to first look at some of the other options besides chemo and radiation which very well may cure you of your cancer, but then cause a new cancer because of THAT some years down the road? Wouldn't you be tempted to get ahold of a quack clinic and see if they had, let's say, some famous clients, who you could personally contact, at least?

Of course I'm not so stupid and gullible to just take the clinics word for their claims.

If I had a slow growing cancer I would certainly not go to some quack clinic and ask for references from survivors. All I would get from that is anecdotal evidence. I would try some research to see if the practices of that quack clinic had been subjected to scientific testing, and if so, what that testing revealed. I would immediately discard any that have refused to do scientific testing or to publish results that can be reviewed and critiqued by other scientists That is not "forbidden science," that's no science at all.

 

[Iamme]

Bruto - You raise a good point. I suppose it's feasible that even the person sent home as being cured, for example, really may not be cured, but just thinks they are. So if I called or wrote that person, I would not really know what the truth is. Hmmmm. I guess I would have to tell the clinic that I have skeptical concerns and I'd have to see how they could show me that all these people are being cured better than the conventional way, and just see what kind of an answer I get. Maybe a legitimate place would say that some independent testing facility verifies some of their most remarkable cases, or something.

You hear an awful lot from the homeopathy field that the reason for going for their approach is so that they can bolster your immune system to help fight the cancer. (As opposed to chemo and radiation that is supposed to destroy it, albeit supposedly they too give you stuff to help your immune system...at least now...but it wasn't always this way, I don't think...so maybe they got this out of the book on homeopathy?) I guess one would have to research if that(immune system building) really does any good or not.

 

[Mojo]

I guess I would have to tell the clinic that I have skeptical concerns and I'd have to see how they could show me that all these people are being cured better than the conventional way, and just see what kind of an answer I get.

What you need for this is properly controlled testing, with properly published results. If the answer you get doesn't include properly controlled trials and peer review, don't trust it.

Maybe a legitimate place would say that some independent testing facility verifies some of their most remarkable cases, or something.

There's no point in asking about "their most remarkable cases". You'll just get a few cherry-picked examples at best.

What you need to find out is whether patients receiving the treatment do better than patients who do not receive the treatment, and if so whether the treatment works better than other available treatments.

For this you need properly controlled trials.

 

[brodski]

Iamme:
But coming form Kevin Trudeau's school of thinking...the doctors are taught the way they teach doctors; to use pills and to operate. The status quo, for the last hundred years or whatever.

Your doctor could very well mean well, but be outside the loop in anything that isn't endorsed by the MDA. .

Thats why research papers are published, after peer review, and then if the results appears significant (in both the statistical and practical sense of the word) the experiments are replicated. anyone who can afford to subscribe to a medical journal can see the research and evaluate it for themselves. Dr's "show their working", quacks don't. Dr's may be stuck in their ways in some respects, but if you can provide proper evidence for your medical claims, then the medical world will change its mind (did you follow the news around the recent Nobel prize for medicine?)
medicine today employs basically the same epistemology as medicine 100 years ago, but i dosent employ the same practical methods, unlike for instance homeopathy or herbalism, which are immune to changes based on newly arising evidence, as they are immune to evidence.

Also remember, when it comes to cancer "big pharma" conspiracy theories really, really, really don't hold up, as there are large well funded charities conducting research in the treatment of cancer, they are not motivated by profit, but by a desire to conquer this terrible disease.

But common sense will you that anything that deviates from our genetic makeup and it's evolutionary trail of how we got to where we are at (and this don't include eating chickens that are artificially matured in weeks), or nitrates, etc....could very well be a cause for cancer. I think most cancers are caused by irritants at the cellular level. Therefore the idea to stay clear of irritants would be common sense. .

Common sense will also tell you that in a vacume a bowling ball will fall faster than a feather, all other things being equal. In fact they fall at the same rate, thats why experimental evidence trumps "common sense".

medicine relies on evidence, not "gut feelings" "common sense" or folklore.

You are making two claims here
1) Cancer is caused by "irritants at a cellular level"
2) "artificial" foods cause said irritation. Can you cite evidence for either?

If a person had a slow growing cancer, let's say. One where a person had some time to make some deciisons. You mean you would not want to first look at some of the other options besides chemo and radiation which very well may cure you of your cancer, but then cause a new cancer because of THAT some years down the road? Wouldn't you be tempted to get ahold of a quack clinic and see if they had, let's say, some famous clients, who you could personally contact, at least?

fyslee has posted evidence that shows that those people who choose SCAM for cancer treatment, even if they start conventional treatment at the same time ARE LESS LIKLEY TO LIVE than those who use only conventional treatments.
SCAM not only wasts your time and money, but using it appease to REDUCE YOUR LONG TERM SURVIVAL RATE. Still seem like a good choice?

Of course I'm not so stupid and gullible to just take the clinics word for their claims

Yet you acknowledge that you respect some aspects of the medical philosophy of a rat-bag who has been convicted for making fraudulent health claims?

You are right not to take the clinics claims for their treatments, ask for citations of published, peer reviewed research from a respectable journal. Abstracts are available for free on PubMed. I've studded no science since I was 16, but I've managed to get a hood ides of how to read a paper and asses werther it reaches trustworthy conclusions or not, most people have the capacity to do this, but many cant be bothered.

thats the difference between skepticism and woo, woos say "trust us", skeptics say "look at the reliable evidence, then trust yourself".