3 ms·
Interesting article and I won't dispute the fact that blood-letting was practiced fervently in the past. I'd like to see a few serious double-blind studies bef
by smoyer 11y ago
Interesting article and I won't dispute the fact that blood-letting was practiced fervently in the past. I'd like to see a few serious double-blind studies before I'll jump on the bandwagon.
- GFK_of_xmaspast 11y agoLook at the guy's other articles, he's a loon.
- maxerickson 11y agoThere are significant numbers of people that regularly blood let, blood donors (about 6 times a year for those that keep at it). They tend to have less heart attacks (but it isn't clear if that is due to the health screenings required to donate or if there is some impact from the blood letting). (I do realize there is another group of people that regularly lose iron, but that isn't an optional medical procedure)
- nitwit005 11y agoProbably stating the obvious here, but the reason they stopped the practice was because people did such studies. If bloodletting worked on any common injuries or illnesses, we'd still be using it for those cases. Even then, we'd probably have tried to find medication that produced the same benefit to try to avoid the infection risks.
- theoh 11y agoIt is in fact still used to treat hemochromatosis, which is an "iron overload" disorder. It's relatively common in some populations.
- abecedarius 11y agoI'm not going to look it up now, but there was a post on lesswrong.com summarizing health things-to-do that had evidence behind them. IIRC it recommended for men (but not women) to donate blood every year or two.