#alt-med

[quasi-normalcy]

It occurs to me that the number of formerly legitimate Universities now offering programs in alt-med quackery is probably an inevitable consequence of the commercialization of academia.

When a University’s main goal is to put bums in seats, whether or not the subject being taught is legitimate becomes a secondary concern.

[oni-ona-i-asperger-blog]

Bardzo fajna rozpiska pojęć naukowych, które są zwykle mylnie rozumiane bądź niewłaściwie interpretowane przez ludzi nauką się nie zajmujących. Obejmuje:

"teoria" - która w nauce wcale nie jest ‘losowym pomysłem’, ale efektem wnioskowania na podstawie ustalonych faktów i stanowi kompletną formę wiedzy naukowej na jakiś temat;

“model” - czyli po prostu przybliżony opis jakiegoś np. zjawiska, na który składa się wiele znanych elementów dotyczących tego tematu, a który służy do ułatwienia rozwiązania jakiegoś problemu;

“sceptycyzm” - który nie jest bynajmniej negowaniem wszystkiego, ale przeciwnie, uznawaniem za wiarygodne tylko tych teorii i badań naukowych, które spełniają zasady metodologii i dają powtarzalne wyniki;

“znaczący” - określenie, które nie znaczy tego samego co ‘ważne’, a jedynie stwierdza, że jest mało prawdopodobne, żeby np. wynik badania był dziełem przypadku;

“naturalny” - znaczący po prostu, że coś występuje w naturze, co nie oznacza wcale automatycznie, że to coś jest np. dla nas ‘dobre’ (muchomor sromotnikowy jest całkowicie naturalny na przykład, ale nikt normalny nie będzie go chciał jeść);

“chemiczny” - patrząc pod kątem naukowym, w zasadzie wszystko jest chemiczne, bo składa się z atomów, związków, itd., przy czym to z kolei nie oznacza, że jest dla nas ‘złe’ (tlen jest pierwiastkiem chemicznym, a długo bez niego nie wytrzymamy).

Warto mieć te pojęcia opanowane, bo we wszelkich dyskusjach z alt-medowcami, fanami teorii spiskowych i paranauk, występuje w dużych ilościach właśnie niezrozumienie i zupełnie błędne używanie tych pojęć.

PS.: naukowców proszę o nie czepianie się szczególnie, to wyjaśnienie skierowane do ludzi, którzy zamiast teoriami i modelami, zajmują się raczej życiem codziennym ;-)

[skeptaiwan]

Open Letter to Guanxi Readers

Before you read this article I suggest you get yourself the most recent copy of Guanxi. This is a response piece to the article “Reiki: A holistic approach”

Readers of Guanxi,

My wife and I work different schedules. She leaves before I do, so it is my great pleasure to be woken up by her with a hug. I can feel two dots on her upper arm as we hug and kiss before going our separate ways. When I do get out of bed, I brush and floss my teeth, wash my hands then head out the door to get breakfast. I check the calorie count on nutrition labels and make my selection. As I pay, I notice the various pictures of poor teeth and black lungs displayed on every pack of cigarettes behind the cashier.

I share this vignette with you because it gives you a small window into the large number of preventive medicines that we use everyday. By being so successful and pervasive, western medicine has become common place, invisible. Unfortunately, this has lead some to forget the things we do everyday to stay healthy that come from western medicine.

Those two dots on my wife's upper arm are scars from when she received her vaccinations as a child. I too was required to go to my county's health center to receive vaccinations at various grade levels. Not only am I thankful for this prophylactic against disease, I am thankful that by being vaccinated I can help prevent those around me who can not be vaccinated from getting sick.

If my wife and I are lucky enough, we will have a child one day. It seems like a hard thing to plan for now, but it seemed even harder to keep from happening previously. Luckily, every convenience store and pharmacy in Taiwan sells condoms. Not only did they keep us from having kids we weren't ready to have, they keeps millions of couples and individuals from contracting and spreading sexually transmitted diseases worldwide.

Ironically-Named Family Condoms

So you see, I find it confusing that anyone would say western medicine does not focus on preventive measures, when surely we all use and take advantage of preventive measures everyday. Is it not the success of such things that keep us out of the doctor's office in the first place?

Let me take you back in time. I was playing soccer with my friends. Two of us went for the ball full force. I missed the ball and broke my leg. It didn't look good in front of my friends and it couldn't have been at a worst time with finals only a few days away. Luckily, I received excellent care from my doctor and surgeon. I still have screws in my leg which have given me no trouble to this day.

If doctors ignored the root causes of disease and maladies, one would expect the doctor to just give me some painkillers to help with the symptoms of a broken bone. Instead, I was given a cast and surgery. I can walk, run and ride a bicycle today because my doctors and surgeons treated the root causes of my “dis-ease.”

I am happy that I can take advantage of trained medical professionals and western medicine. Not because they are used in 100 percent of American hospitals, not because treatments used today were discovered centuries ago, and not even because respected universities like the Harvard Medical school, organizations like the NIH or even hospitals such as John Hopkins use and rely upon it every day. In fact none of those things are persuasive to me. The most persuasive reason to use western medicine, and in my opinion the only reasonable standard by which to judge any medicine, is that it works. It works whether or not I believe it works and it even works to me benefit whether or not I take part in it.

Are there valid criticism of this system? Of course. Religious groups have been allowed to take control of large amounts of medical facilities in the USA, limiting the ability of women to control their bodies and the kind of end-of-life decision we should all be allowed to make. Over prescription of anti-bacterial medicine has lead to them being less effective. Though, these are not problems that western medicine is unaware of. Scientists, administrators, doctors, and medical researchers are working on them as we speak.

Has there been an increase in the profit motive over western medicine? Of course, you'd be a fool to not notice it. Of course, you would be just as foolish to ignore the size of Joseph Mercola's mansion or the growth of the supplement industry. Big business has long reached the hallowed halls of alt-med, and I fail to see how criticism of business interests affecting western medicine are not equally valid for them affecting alternative medicine. If alternative medicine were the bastion of charitable healing as many purport it to be one would expect major alt-med promoters like Natural News and Mercola to be giving away large research grants, and the NIH to be running large online storefronts. Instead the opposite is true.

Now does reiki work? I do not say this lightly, but yes. It works just as well as any other placebo at helping people deal with non-specific non-objective symptoms and should be used for treating those things it has been shown to be effective in treating, nothing more or less.

I understand that reiki is a tool used alongside a variety of other tools. Yet I find it duplicitous to ignore the toolbox used in western medicine in favor of focusing on a few poor tools, while ignoring the efficacy of one alt-med tool in favor of the toolbox. Ideally we should consider “both”, “and.” The best tools, should be used in concert with the best methods and parallel treatments. At the same time, ineffective or specialized tools should be abandoned or used only on those things for which they have shown to be effective. To do otherwise is to risk wasting time, money, or health on ineffective treatments. Let me share one more story with you. Not about health or my wife, but about myself. For almost a year a book sat on my shelf. I was afraid to read it. Not because I thought the book was right, but because I thought I might be wrong. That book would have sat on my bookshelf for another year, had I not had the courage to do something that Oliver Cromwell asked the Church of Scotland to do many years ago, “think it possible that you may be mistaken.”

I do not set out to debunk things. I no more think what others believe is bunk than I think what I thought at that time was bunk. I merely find it important to believe the most true things and the least false things possible. I have spent time trying to find the best and most reliable ways to ensure that. Ration, reason, science and empiricism allow me to have consistency and accuracy in thought, while ensuring my beliefs align with reality.

As it turns out, I was wrong about what I believed before, but you know what, one day another book, or another person, or just another piece of evidence may come along that changes my mind. I will be happy to be proven wrong and happy to have one less false idea. That's not flip-flopping, it's not being unreliable, it is nothing more than being honest. It's the way I read this article in Guanxi and the way I will continue to live my life. I hope you consider doing the same.

Thank you,

Wade Kaardal

[oni-ona-i-asperger-blog]

Dobrze wiedzieć, że alt-med nie próżnuje. Oczywiście, choroby przewlekłe (nowotwory, astma, nadciśnienie, cukrzyca) są ważne, podobnie jak zaburzenia (autyzm, asperger, adhd) czy choroby genetyczne (z. downa, z. retta, z. turnera). Ale mamy wielkie społeczeństwo, które dotąd nie miało nic konkretnego zdiagnozowanego, a samymi hasłami o zdrowiu daleko się finansowo nie zajedzie.

No to teraz każdy spokojnie może sobie zdiagnozować boreliozę i lecieć się leczyć ;))

Do obrazka nie pasuje co prawda ta antybiotykoterapia, bo alt-med zasadniczo woli jednak na antybiotyki kląć niż ich używać, ale bądźmy wyrozumiali, być może pan doktor dopiero się uczy.

Myślę, że szybko zrozumie swój błąd i przejdzie do suplementów i sprawdzania efektów leczenia za pomocą różdżki podpiętej do migającego diodami urządzenia robiącego biib-biip.

[oni-ona-i-asperger-blog]

Quantec - komputerowo robi diagnozę na podstawie analizy kwantowej zdjęcia cyfrowego. Według tekstów na tym forum, ze zdjęcia głowy z szyją wykrywa np.:

obciążenie szczepionką skojarzoną - krztusiec, błonnica, tężec

robale (głównie przywra płucna) i drożdzyca pozajelitowa

zatrucie talem

zatrucie rtęcią

zaburzenia jelit -problemy w wchłanianiem z jelita cienkiego składników odżywczych

bakterie "helikobakter pyroli"

problemy z kręgosłupem

Jestem pod wrażeniem. Z dwóch powodów.

Po pierwsze, autor tegoż dzieła diagnostycznego ewidentnie jest fanem StarTreka i potrafi jeszcze na tym nieźle zarobić.

Po drugie, zupełnie przypadkiem wyszedł mu absolutnie cudowny test na inteligencję. Zapłacenie 150zł za zdiagnozowanie bakterii i pasożytów na podstawie zdjęcia niechybnie oznacza, że płacący IQ ma znacznie poniżej średniej. Nawet, jeśli wliczyć do tej średniej pacjentów szpitali psychiatrycznych.

[daurmith]

When we eat clay, the positively charged toxins are attracted by the negatively charged edges of the clay mineral. An exchange reaction occurs where the clay swaps its ions for those of the other substance. Electrically satisfied, it holds the toxin in suspension until the body can eliminate both.

Absolute, undiluted gobbledygook from an article by Jess Ainscough

[chaostica]

And then there was Mercola...

Natural News isn't the only website that attacks science and reason on a regular basis. They are legion.  I could provide long lists, but I won't.

The site that appears most often as "evidence" for questionable health claims is mercola.com.  Dr. Joseph Mercola is not as vile as Mike Adams of Natural News, but he's very much an anti-science, anti-health and pro making-things-up-for-money kind of guy.  When I see anyone using his website to back up their assertions it's pretty clear to me that they don't know what they're talking about.  

The Chicago.com online magazine has a recent article about him:

Some of the articles on Mercola’s site, Barrett and others say, seem to be as much about selling the wide array of products offered there—from Melatonin Sleep Support Spray ($21.94 for three 0.85-ounce bottles) to Organic Sea Buckthorn Anti-Aging Serum ($22 for one ounce)—as about trying to inform. (Your tampon “may be a ticking time bomb,” he tells site visitors—but you can buy his “worry-free” organic cotton tampons for the discounted price of $7.99 for 16.) Steven Salzberg, a prominent biologist, professor, and researcher at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, calls Mercola “the 21st-century equivalent of a snake-oil salesman.”

He's turned himself into a celebrity.  He's been on The Dr. Oz Show twice (which pretty much destroyed what was left of Dr. Oz's reputation as a purveyor of reliable information).  He gets nearly two million hits on his website every month.  Mercola.com and Mercola LLC brought in just under $7 million dollars in 2010 alone.  He peddles fear and misinformation and it's made him a very wealthy man. 

He promotes homeopathy for Autism, is an anti-vaccination warrior and promotes every unproven and disproven nostrum you can think of.  No matter what he writes about you can be sure he has a product on his website that you're going to want once you know the "truth" he's selling.  If a real doctor recommended a treatment and then sold you that treatment he or she would be seen as unethical.    Mercola (he's an osteopathic doctor not an MD) sells you everything he recommends and makes a whole lot of money from it.  All the while he preaches that you can't trust real medicine because, you guessed it, they make a whole lot of money from it.  Does this smell of hypocrisy to you too? Of course medical doctors are meant to base their recommendations on science and evidence.  No such restrictions apply to Mercola, and he makes the most of it.

So if you are tempted to re-post an article from mercola dot com that someone shared on Facebook, think again.  That's a great way to destroy your own credibility.  If you like anything that Mercola says, please do a bit of research and find out if it's actually true.  You may find out what many of us already know.  He just makes it up.

Original Article

[scottcgruber-blog]

They could have seen many more Decembers And been Cancer Survivor Club members But no cure have they found, And they're now underground Cause some quack told them water remembers