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Why isn’t CAM mainstream?

I was sort of wondering why you were seeming to be asking for evidence woo was woo. Sorry for the misunderstanding. I think the thread title is confusing, "why isn't CAM mainstream?"
Well, I was sort of going for "cleverly provocative"; and got a bit more than I bargained for!

Thanks for the info, I'd forgotten about Florence Nightingale. One of my children did a project at school on her and showed me the graph that she used for her studies - I may have to steal their homework, should be about my level of understanding.

And in England they apparently have a few members of the royal family who are convinced homeopathy works. That needs addressing, for sure.
The French had the answer to that one.

Yuri
 
One big question you seem to be missing is "how and when are you defining the start of modern medicine?" I'd say that's a doctoral thesis in and of itself!
I'm coming to realise that's the question I was really asking, and by extension when did modern science start as the two go hand in hand. When did scientific testing get clever enough that we were really able to say that blood letting is nonsense whereas injecting cow pox extract to confer immunity is good when both of them must have appeared equally sensible or bizarre by the standards of the day depending on your point of view (in fact bleeding was probably regarded as the more rational of the two).

As Linda and others have pointed out the effects of some of the earliest bits of modern medicine (eg. anaesthetics and antiseptics) were so obvious, given the incredibly low starting point that double blind trials would have been OTT; something I hadn’t really got straight in my head - it is ok to judge things on their direct effects if that effect is strong enough.

Yuri
 
You could try asking Abigail Woods. She's a vet, and the only expert I know in the history of veterinary medicine. She might have some useful insights.

Rolfe.
Thanks Rolfe, I'll try to contact her. I've been interested for some time to know if any proper trials were ever done on the firing of horses; I've always thought firing was the veterinary equivalent to bleeding (I know vets bled as well) - a dangerous, noxious and useless practice, as opposed to homeopathy, a cuddly, fluffy and useless practice, much more suited to the modern age.

Yuri
 
I guess I missed it - what the hell is CAM? And why would any rational person give a Flying Fickle of Fate about it?
"CAM" = "Complementary/Alternative Medicine".

And why anyone should give a Fickle Frisbee of Fate (flies forth felling foes) is that a lot of people trust their lives to it.
 
"CAM" = "Complementary/Alternative Medicine".

And why anyone should give a Fickle Frisbee of Fate (flies forth felling foes) is that a lot of people trust their lives to it.


Thanks. I was wondering what that "C" was.

And I guess I left out "Finger" as well.
 
Yuri is being polite.

Supplementary, Complementary and Alternative Medicine.

Rolfe.
 

Alternative medicine is used in place of standard medical care. An example is treating heart disease with chelation (pronounced "kee-lay-shen") therapy (which seeks to remove excess metals from the blood) instead of using a standard approach.
Just one small omission there, they forgot to mention that doing this is likely to kill you :cool:.

Still, just so long as everyone is being nice and non-judgemental; wouldn't want to get anyone upset. Dead maybe, but definitely not upset.

Yuri
 
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I guess I missed it - what the hell is CAM? And why would any rational person give a Flying Fickle of Fate about it?
They focus on marketing and villifying legitimate medicine.
Every woman I know in my area (I can't say "every woman I know" since I know me and a few other skeptical women who don't live in my area) is into SCAM because of magazines, news articles, and other SCAM marketing. Their mantra is that what THEY offer are "all natural", safe, non-chemical, non-toxic, effective, and therefore TOTALLY BETTER for you and won't poison you to death. When I took my medical office admin courses my teacher drilled it all into our heads how nasty doctors are and how they are only driven to profit by causing only more suffering, while blood readers, chiros, homeopathy, etc. were warm and fuzzy and only had your best interests in mind and would be the only way to be drug free and totally healthy.
Every time I start to make a new friend they start going on about their naturopath and woo woo junk like their magnetic bracelets, and I am left trying to change the subject. But, if you don't join em in their embracement of woodom, they figure you are nuts and don't want to be your friend. Especially *gasp* if you've vaccinated your kids, cuz your kids can "spread" the NASTY vaccine to theirs omigosh.

Everyone gives a flying fickle fate because it is the new thing to do if you are smart and want to be doing the "in" thing. If you don't do it, then you are STUPID AND CRAZY. Cuz flower remedies have their molecules in flowery shapes and that makes you magically perfect in every way! If you take drugs with NASTY CHEMICALS, well you are tainted and brain damaged and STUPID. If you allow your kids to be vaccinated then you're a BAD parent who has caused them to brain damaged, stupid, more prone to being sick, and now a threat to the health of other children.

You just have to read the letters to the editor, the news articles, magazines, go online, etc. to become part of the SCAM fan club that has taken over in large parts. Our local women's magazine will fill you in quite well with just one month's publication. It's a woman thing afterall, to be in tune with your body and following your intuition about what is best for you and everyone else on the planet because those uneducated magazine writers say so.

Try to find one article anywhere in local media that will explain the science and why MDs aren't all bad, too bad. Doctors are the evil ones, drugs are ALL bad. You must turn to a naturopath to ween off of toxic chemicals and become totally healthy again.

Why did the local folks give money to a family whose son was in hospital with cancer? To buy mannatech and other SCAM stuff. Why did the boy still die? The family ran out of the SCAM stuff that was keeping him alive, so that is why he died. Seriously, this is a huge story, mouth to mouth in my city. When I actually read the fundraising ad though, from another town, it was to raise money for experimental drugs at a legitimate hospital though, and he didn't die because he ran out of SCAM products to take. argh.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v124/sueandray99/brandonreis.gif

I had to dig to find the truth, or just believe what people told me at work. Everyone knew the kid's name, but someone sure twisted the story to fit the SCAM is the only thing that can save you line, and you have to keep taking it to live, which is good for SCAM, since SCAM is non toxic, but if you have to keeping taking nasty drugs to live they will end up killing you because they are toxic. ugh. Well, the kid still died... because he didn't have enough SCAM to keep him alive... *headpalm* Well, the kid had a rare killer cancer that no amount of SCAM could have saved him from, but you are not to believe that, nope nope. Instead you need to believe that taking SCAM would have saved him if he hadn't run out of it. Gah.

So, no matter where I turn there is someone justifying why SCAM is good and regular medicine is bad, to the extreme, even using this boy's tragic story for the spin. It's beyond ridiculous.


Oh, and I have to read this tripe from a local antivaccine crusader nearly every month in the newspaper:

http://www.albertalocalnews.com/red...urt_wrong_to_dismiss_vaccine-autism_link.html

As a result, toxins can remain like a time-release capsule and this toxic buildup can prevent the brain from functioning properly, leading to autism and ADHD. Support for this claim has been found in primates being injected with vaccines.

I've given up trying to respond. It just gets me fired anyways, since I'm the stupid one to disagree with the local antivaccine nutters. There is a reason why our vaccine rates are falling, especially for MMR. Oh, and flouride is causing autism too, so the antiflouride rants on the local radio were flowing every 1/2 hour recently. Drove me up a wall. Every 1/2 hour all day were hysterical sounding sound bites of people ranting how flouride cause Alzheimer's, autism, ADD, ADHD, cancer. I listened, mesmerized by their whole hearted convictions. There was one solitary soundbite by teh evil dentist saying scientific studies showed no causation. He sounded very very boring and unconcerned about the health of your children compared to the other layperson rants.
 
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Thanks. I was wondering what that "C" was.


The word "complementary" was introduced for marketing purposes to imply that "alternative" medicine would be practised alongside real medicine, rather than instead of it. A pity that most of the proponents of CAM appear to hold views on medicine rather like those expressed in this book review.
 
Yuri is being polite.

Supplementary, Complementary and Alternative Medicine.

Rolfe.


Yes, yes, thanks all.

However, one of the reasons I asked is that I have seen several threads with acronyms in the title that are never referenced later - I find that annoying. ;)
 
This is an incredible book which centres around the fraudulent biomedical paradigm that has fooled so many people for so long. McCumiskey shreds all the Medical Myths one by one - Germ Theory, Vaccination, AIDS, Bird Flu as well as the non-existence of viruses! He states that we have not been given any true scientific evidence to prove viruses even exist and quotes the work of Dr. Lanka.

Unbelivable.
 

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