Salvaging Health

[Roboramma]

Way to be a fundamentalist.

I'm advocating workable medical practices that will work in a post peak world. This doesn not include dumping what you call "medicine". Care to respond to anything I said in specific, or just vague hand waving?

If you are advocating "workable medical practices" then you don't advocate homeopathy.

Unless you advocate "workable medical practices" and some "non-workable medical practices [like homeopathy]".

 

[Roboramma]

Perhaps the main problem with your view is your assumption about how people will respond to challenging times. You have very particular assumptions about what people want, what tradeoffs they'll make, how they'll specialize or generalize. Your assumptions are rooted in blunt ignorance of the physics and economics of energy---which makes your life easy, because your statement "future societies won't X because I can't see people choosing to X amid privation" is immune to any information whatsoever about X.

So: sure, believe whatever you want. Future societies won't have shoes, because tanning leather is energy-intensive---I mean, cobbling is specialized---I mean, who has time to make shoes when you're busy turning the beet-fields with a harrow made from your own ribs? And if you did make shoes no one would buy them because you can't walk to a cobbler's shop when you don't have any shoes. You see, it's all connected to petroleum.

I'd just like to quote this for emphasis. When TFian says "X won't work because it requires too much energy" ben m looks at how much energy it actually requires, and shows that the cost of the thing will not go up significantly even if that energy is supplied by people on bicycles.

Please note that that's probably the most expensive possible form of energy generation: even using mules on a treadmill would probably give you better price at $/joule.

TFian can't respond to that, because it's what the numbers say. So, how does he respond: "Well, that's well and good, but we won't have doctors." Okay, so why did you say modern medicine requires too much energy, rather than "specialization will disappear due to poverty"? or something like that?

Now, I'm happy to agree that we may have to specialize less if your collapse scenario came to pass, but at what point did you run the numbers and figure out that "ah, we'll still have bakers, but we won't have surgeons"? Or, "we'll still have homeopaths, but we won't have cardiologists"? I see that you have some general principle, and perhaps in general there's some truth to it: I'm happy to agree that the more impoverished a society becomes, the less it can afford specialization. But you don't stop at that general claim; you continue to the specific claim about which specialties will become uneconomical, and yet you make it clear that you haven't actually done the analysis necessary to know!

 

[PixyMisa]

Greer's latest piece in his "Salvage" series, this time he takes on Western Healthcare.

His condensed points

Western medicine and alternative medicine are on a pointless ideological battle with one another, where both have merits.

Stop.

"Western" medicine is medicine that has been tested and shown to work.

"Alternative" medicine is medicine that has either not been tested, or has been tested and shown not to work.

That's it. That's all there is to the discussion.

To rewrite your sentence:

Real medicine and fake medicine are in a pointless ideological battle with one another. Practitioners of fake medicine should all be in jail. Battle over.

 

[Gord_in_Toronto]

Which "intelligent" responses? It's mostly been childish hand waving. The few intelligent ones posted I *did* respond to.

So mine. pointing out the results of actual scientific research by believers in AltMed and CAM, was not intelligent? Stop your hand waving.

One thing I can guarantee, neither you, nor your relatives nor, yet anyone else in the World will die of Smallpox.

 

[EdipisReks]

What am I missing here?

some people are willfully stupid. many observed actions make sense if you keep that in mind. see OP for reference.

 

[Dinwar]

Actually in many ways they are.

They're one among a pantheon of diagnostic tools at the disposal of doctors. If MRIs were gone, they'd still be able to diagnose things and treat them. Homeopathy does neither.

Can you produce those locally?

My wife brews mead. My granfather taught me how to brew wine. Take the laws away, and I'll make alcohol out of the stuff we find in our local area. So yes, and the fact that you have to ask implies that you haven't given the thought of sterilization equipment any consideration.

In my opinion, you're leaving an important factor out Ben, humans.

And you've left out all of evidence. And logic. Off-hand, I'd say Ben has it right.

 

[ben m]

I'm happy to agree that the more impoverished a society becomes, the less it can afford specialization.

I wouldn't agree with that at all. It's the opposite of the truth. Even if you're a village of 100 subsistence-farmers, you don't have 100 individuals who are each 80% farmer, 9% amateur-miller, 1% pin-maker, 2% amateur-blacksmith, 5% amateur-doctor/vet, and 3% amateur-agronomist. No, you have 80 farmers, 9 professional millers, 1 professional teacher, 2 professional blacksmiths, etc. If you're a farmer, you'll get more (and better) blacksmithing products by giving food payment to the village blacksmith than by foregoing some of your farming-time to do it yourself.

This is not some locked-in-post-industrial-revolution thinking, this was obvious to Plato and Hume and Adam Smith and his predecessors.

There are indeed economic limits to specialization, having to do with the sizes of markets, none of which TFian is qualified to understand, but which are indeed related to resources/wealth/energy.

 

[Roboramma]

I wouldn't agree with that at all. It's the opposite of the truth. Even if you're a village of 100 subsistence-farmers, you don't have 100 individuals who are each 80% farmer, 9% amateur-miller, 1% pin-maker, 2% amateur-blacksmith, 5% amateur-doctor/vet, and 3% amateur-agronomist. No, you have 80 farmers, 9 professional millers, 1 professional teacher, 2 professional blacksmiths, etc. If you're a farmer, you'll get more (and better) blacksmithing products by giving food payment to the village blacksmith than by foregoing some of your farming-time to do it yourself.

Sure, but I wasn't suggesting anything different: I'm not suggesting that specialization is less efficient (as you say, that's the opposite of the truth), only that it's an efficiency that becomes more available as a society becomes more wealthy. America, for instance, has many fewer farmers per captia than china, because American farmers can afford the technology that allows them to produce more food, which can be used to feed more specialists (or alternatively, which they can trade for the products of more specialists).

 

[lionking]

Why wouldn't the druid be wrong about health when he's been wrong about everything else?

TFian, your hope for an imminent collapse of civilisation and lack of energy sources has been exposed as wishful thinking in many other threads. Now you are claiming that homeopathy works without any evidence at all. Colour me surprised.

 

[Fishstick]

Yeah, more hand waving.

I actually gave a more detailed response to this earlier, care to respond, or just go "wrong because it doesn't fit my scientism dogma?"

Speaking of handwaving.

Got any sources for your claim:

[homeopathy] worked for cholera.

?

 

[Pup]

Speaking of handwaving.

Got any sources for your claim:

Originally Posted by TFian
[homeopathy] worked for cholera.

?

Oh, I would love to see that. Mid-early 19th century medicine is my thing, as one might be able to guess from my previous post upthread.

 

[ponderingturtle]

No, a lot of it does work.

Like my cloak of invisibility that work great as long as no one looks at you.

Sent from my MB860 using Tapatalk

 

[theprestige]

[homeopathy] worked for cholera.

Evidence?