"Knowing more than someone is not self-worship, nor is debating. I know what I know, because I've worked hard at understanding the mountain of evidence...and it is a mountain. (mountain of evidence that ... what?) I know what I don't know, and if there were more time I'd try to know that too. " DMGFriday, June 19, 2009
Is Plantation Medicine Really All That Deep?
"Knowing more than someone is not self-worship, nor is debating. I know what I know, because I've worked hard at understanding the mountain of evidence...and it is a mountain. (mountain of evidence that ... what?) I know what I don't know, and if there were more time I'd try to know that too. " DMG
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20 comments:
Why is it that it only takes 5-10 keystrokes to find that your sources not only have dubious degrees, but are also marketers of snake oil?
This is the second time in a week. Please don't tell me this is all you can muster. It wasn't even worth the time Googling Gary Null, and that took 30 seconds.
Um Um Um ...
That's weak Doc.
You actually trying to attack the messenger? Can't believe you tried to pull that.
Stop trying to win points in a game you lost long ago.
I thought the oath was to Hippocrates not Merck.
In just the first 4 minutes of this video lists 100 facts about the dangers and shoddy science behind the Billion Dollar vaccine BUSINESS.
I challenge you to find 1 that is not true.
Now are you going to play doctor and have an honest discussion about HEALTH.
Or are you going play Company Man and defend a dangerous Multi-billion Dollar BUSINESS masquerading as "science" and public health policy?
Fast forward to 10:00 of the video.
1) The woman says every time a company in the pharmaceutical industry creates a vaccine it is automatically added to the mandatory list of vaccinations for school entry.
Is that true?
2) In the United States the number of mandatory vaccines has risen to 36.
Is that true or not?
Weak? I'm not attacking him. I'm checking out him out like everybody. I want to know if he's falsifying his credentials--which he is! He got his PhD out of a cereal box. That tells me he's dishonest. Why would I believe anything in his video?
That other cat the "ND" you have the video of from a few days ago has the same problem. Why can't you bring folks that are at least credible? There are quite a few out there.
If you want an honest discussion on health then don't waste my time with this guy or is video. Do your homework first. Give me a little bit of respect. I think I deserve at least references who don't lie about their degrees.
By the way. I don't need to win points from you. The 'game' is only in your head. You aren't even a part of any real discussion.
DMG - What do you think about the curative (including cancer) effects of taheebo? Have you ever recommended it to any of your patients?
And if not, why not?
Anon,
Never heard of it, and know of no studies regarding it. Right now it's some plant some marketer is trying to get people to purchase by making claims they can't back up, and without sufficient studies to even see if it's safe. It needs to be proven safe, effective, and efficacious before any real physician would consider recommending it. Testimonials on some guys website don't count.
Anon,
Has someone recommended you or a family member take this substance?
DMG
You are leaving yourself wide open with this comment:
"It needs to be proven safe, effective, and efficacious..."
Cause then the question becomes who establishes the burden of proof? Who establishes what is considered safe?
Why do those people get to establish the standards? How often have does people been wrong about drugs? What conflicts of interest do the people deciding what is safe have?
You have to see that is what's going to happen.
I get your point about peer reviews and clinical trials. I think it's a good point.
But, I also see DV's point about how corporations have co-opted the process to the point where things are being promoted that are not necessarily good for patients.
It reminds me of the argument back in the day about HMOs and their role in the health care. The issue about whether doctor's were making business decisions or health decisions.
Then I remember the recent scandals about doctors steering patients towards certain drugs because of kickback from Pharma companies. Or questions about doctors ordering unecessary tests and procedures in order to generate more revenue.
I think there is a trust issue between some members of the public and the medical profession. It's like black folks and police.
It's obvious that good is being done sometimes, but it's also obvious that bad is being done sometimes.
"Never heard of it
It needs to be proven safe, effective, and efficacious before any real physician would consider recommending it"
So, what if it does live up to all (or even some) of its traditional and current empirical claims?
But no pharmaceutical company ever studies it (because herbs are unpatentable) - and thus no MDs ever hear of it? And so a cheap, potential life-saving herb never gets even known, much less employed, by patients who could benefit from it?
Isn't this a systematic blindspot in pharmaceutical allopathic medicine?
And isn't this the REAL change that our system needs? Allowing a new pathway for unpatentable, but effective, treatments to become part of the medical toolkit?
Yes, there could be people dying from side effects of under-tested treatments. But there could also be many people dying from deprivation of effective treatments that are not widely known to them because they are "under-tested." The question is which is really the higher number in herbal or other natural treatments that already have a long, traditional history of safe usage in various indigenous cultures?
DMG:
1) Based upon the long, cultural usage of taheebo and amount of positive empirical feedback today - do you think that's enough preliminary evidence to warrant clinical testing for it?
2) How can any herb such as taheebo be clinically tested (at the cost of tens of millions) if it is not patentable? Who woudl fund it?
3) So, if it never gets clinically-tested, then how will phsyicians ever learn of it and recommend it to their patients? Where it could potentially save their lives and also immense costs to our healthcare system as a very affordable treatment option?
4) Doesn't the allopathic system then only allow the most profitable treatments - while effectively suppress any cheap, natural remedies? IOW, doesn't it suppress the most ideal treatments - the cheap & natural ones? And isn't this why our healthcare system is going bankrupt, with not the gretest results, either?
5) Taking all this into account, do you agree that many of the best potential cures out there will NEVER reach your patients because our medical system inherently prevents it? And the only way they could access them is by passing the system via holistic healers on their own?
The thing that fundamentalists fail to understand is that science is an approach and not a compendium of irrefutable facts. In other words it's a method not an outcome.
What constitutes scientific knowledge changes all the time and that is a good and necessary thing. For example, much of what scientists knew in the days of Galileo or Copernicus was wrong. Like any human endeavor science is imperfect but the method should remain immutable and consists of three parts: (1) gather evidence, (2) make a hypothesis, and (3) test the hypothesis. That's it.
"It needs to be proven safe, effective, and efficacious..."
Does that apply to all plants, or just some herbs?
Have these herbs all gone through stage IV clinical testing?
Bananas
Apples
Spinach
Oranges
Watermelon
Cashews
Olives
Coconuts
Etc, etc
And if not, should the AMA, FDA, Merck & Monsanto allow doctors to recommend us to eat them?
Why can't you bring folks that are at least credible? There are quite a few out there.
Oh stop playing DMG. Credible, according to you, is only those who say things with which you agree. To date, you've dismissed all others.
Dr. Russell Blaylock is a board certified neurosurgeon, author and lecturer. He attended the LSU School of Medicine in New Orleans and completed his general surgical internship and neurosurgical residency at the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston, South Carolina. During his residency he ran the neurology program for one year and did a fellowship in neurosurgery after his residency. For the past 25 years he has practiced neurosurgery in addition to having a nutritional practice. He recently retired from both practices to devote full time to nutritional studies and research.
According to DMG, however, this guy is a quack and snake oil salesman because of the journal in which some of his pieces have been published. Never mind that DMG didn't bother to read the articles.
Pediatrician Dr. Jay Gordon, M.D. took an unusual step in the middle of his residency training. Deciding that he needed greater knowledge about nutrition, vitamins, and alternative medicine in order to practice medicine the way he wanted to, Dr. Gordon took a Senior Fellowship in Pediatric Nutrition at Sloan-Kettering Institute in New York City. After his residency at Children's Hospital of Los Angeles, Dr. Gordon joined the teaching attending faculty at UCLA Medical Center and Cedars-Sinai Medical Center.
DMG will probably label him a quack and dismiss him without hearing him out because Dr. Gordon dares to express doubt about the vaccine religion -
I don't believe that vaccines are "poisonous" or that the tremendous increase in the incidence of autism is directly and solely linked to the "MMR" or mercury in the shots. I do think that there are adverse impacts on a child's immune system and central nervous system from some immunizations and the preservatives in the solutions, but I don't agree that we have figured everything out.
Or perhaps Board Certified Pediatrician Dr. Bob Sears, M.D. is a quack because he admits that the absence of unvaccinated control groups in vaccine research has probably been the one single factor that has always weighed heavily in my mind regarding vaccines. To date, such control groups have always been infants receiving the current vaccine schedule minus the new vaccine that is being studied. But now there are just way too many vaccines to consider such a group as a placebo control.
"Cause then the question becomes who establishes the burden of proof?
"Who establishes what is considered safe?"Why do those people get to establish the standards?
"How often have does people been wrong about drugs? What conflicts of interest do the people deciding what is safe have?"
You gettin' there Big Man. You gettin' there.
"Right now it's some plant some marketer is trying to get people to purchase by making claims they can't back up, and without sufficient studies to even see if it's safe."
Most medical journal studies are funded by marketers trying to get people to purchase their drugs.
Most artificial drugs are proven unnsafe to some degree, with long lists of side effects disclosed in very fine print. That doesn't keep them off the shelves, though.
Therefore, infomercials are no different in Big Pharma. And herbs really just have to be proven safer than their lab-based alternatives to be considered viable options, no?
DV
I been there.
I just don't agree with you on a lot of stuff.
But, I think you do a good service by promoting an opposing point of view. Everybody should think about what they believe is true on a regular basis. It's just a good practice.
There is too much money involved in this whole endeavor for there NOT to be corruption.
I listen to my doctor when I visit him. I typically take the drugs he encourages me to take. But, I'm aware that he hands out those free samples for a reason. So, sometimes, we disagree.
"I just don't agree with you on a lot of stuff." Big Man
Name 1 thing with which you don't agree with me.
Big Man,
I'm not making statements to argue against MOTI, and his minions. That's the criteria a medication needs to meet before it's deemed ready for public consumption. What you all as citizens need to do is familiarize yourself with the not only the Scientific Method, and peer-review process, but also how clinical trials work. As long as you believe in pejorative terms like "Big Pharma" etc., and all that entails, I'm speaking to the wind.
Take a look at who MOTI touts as his evidence. Do your own search. Look this guy up.
Look at the sources I ask you to review. There's a difference.
Anon I (cause I'm not sure if both of you are the same person),
What you are asking is to allow unregulated human trials on a herb that may or may not be safe or effective. That's unethical.
Anon II,
"1) Based upon the long, cultural usage of taheebo and amount of positive empirical feedback today - do you think that's enough preliminary evidence to warrant clinical testing for it?"
Cultural usage doesn't really tell me anything. If you are saying, peoples that consistently ingest this substance have lower rates of say breast cancer, that might pique my interest, but it's still not evidence. It's anecdote. Factors such as diet, exercise, genetic make up etc, need to be taken into consideration.
"2) How can any herb such as taheebo be clinically tested (at the cost of tens of millions) if it is not patentable? Who would fund it?"
I've not worked in a pharm company nor do I know anything about raising capital. The herb doesn't go straight to clinical testing. First a lab, often university may take an interest and search for a mechanism of action. This may take years. A potential new drug would have to "catch" the attention usually via journals.
Clinical Trial Process comes long after the basic research phase.
"3) So, if it never gets clinically-tested, then how will physicians ever learn of it and recommend it to their patients? Where it could potentially save their lives and also immense costs to our healthcare system as a very affordable treatment option?"
Again, you are getting ahead of yourself.
"4) Doesn't the allopathic system then only allow the most profitable treatments - while effectively suppress any cheap, natural remedies? IOW, doesn't it suppress the most ideal treatments - the cheap & natural ones? And isn't this why our healthcare system is going bankrupt, with not the gretest results, either?"
"Allopathic" (this term is used mostly by osteopaths. We don't call ourselves allopaths). I think you are asking if pharma companies want to make a profit. The answer is yes, of course. If they are going to lay out billions of dollars to sponsor the research, then for marketing etc., they will want a return on their investment. It's necessary to make sure their drug is going to work, and be reasonably safe. I have some problems with this process, as it creates several flavors of new erectile function medications, but no new tuberculosis drugs. But that's another thread altogether.
"5) Taking all this into account, do you agree that many of the best potential cures out there will NEVER reach your patients because our medical system inherently prevents it?"
I don't know if they are the BEST, or if we are missing some good medications. It's only potential until there's evidence that it works to back it up.
"And the only way they could access them is by passing the system via holistic healers on their own?"
This isn't the answer, as the holistic community seems to be more interested in direct marketing to patients than doing the basic and clinical research. Research is expensive.
The system is not perfect, but I have patients to protect, and need evidence before I prescribe something.
I think it needs to be pointed out that the theory behind vaccines is that "we" are to be living in an increasingly adverse (liberal multicultural) environment.
Vaccines are really just trial runs to "see" if the human body can adapt to radically changing environments.
It is not a coincidence that those radically changing our environments are usually the biggest proponents of mandatory vaccine use.
Anon III (come one brother/sister get a name, I'm getting confused),
Those are foods you list. Not medications for use against a particular disease process. "Nutraceutical's" are a nice loop-hole to get around the review process.
For the record, I don't hand out samples.
Gotta go watch my boy play some Lacrosse, my absence is out of enjoyment of the weather not a fear of engagement. I was wondering when Thordaddy would show up.
Medical journals are aimed at getting doctors to PRESCRIBE. There's a difference.
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