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Thank you for saying this. You'd think the HN audience would be smart enough to actually look at evidence in regards to medicine, but there's a lot of Steve Jo

Thank you for saying this. You'd think the HN audience would be smart enough to actually look at evidence in regards to medicine, but there's a lot of Steve Jobs types who'd rather pay for a well placebo-ed death. I wouldn't mind if they weren't so insistent on preaching their bullshit everywhere they go and trying to pass it off as having any basis. It's kinda disheartening to dedicate years and years to studying medicine, only to realize there's more money and satisfied patients to be made in hustling bullshit to new-age fools who will preach your crap right up until they die of an easily treated disease.

sametmax 10y ago
The problem is that we currently oppose the 2 views, and people defending one discard all benefit from the other. But it's true that you are happy to get surgery in case of a grave emergency, with heavy drugs and a strong hopital system. It's also true that the current most used health system is actually very bad at keeping people healthy. But no, all pharma related practice is not a z-serie drug dealer plot. And no, all alternative health practice is not hippie voodoo trying to cure cancer with placing hot stone on your third eye.
- akiselev 10y ago
  No, people are very bad at keeping people healthy. Modern medicine has almost eliminated acute disease as a leading cause of death in the developed world and most of our health problems are now self inflicted. Evidence based medicine has extended the average lifespan by decades despite our best efforts. Alternative medicine may not all be hippie voodoo but it all has one thing in common: all the data all of its salesmen have gathered before profiting hand over fist has amounted to nothing. All of the data gathered since then has amounted to nothing except the rare fortunate placebo effect, early deaths, and needless suffering. Once every few decades we stumble on a gem like meditation because medicine works by testing and gathering data on everything, including folk remedies. Our most common treatment for metastaticized cancers is to inject radioactive material into our bodies in the hope that it kills cancer cells faster than healthy tissue! We will clearly do anything so all any "alternative" medicine has to do is prove its effectiveness. There is lots of value to a variety of traditional remedies that utilize the antimicrobial properties of tea and honey or blood thinners in many herbs but that isn't going to make anyone any money except your neighborhood grocery store or ethnic market. The rest of alternative medicine is just a bunch of snake oil salesmen whose livelyhoods depends on rejecting the foundations of evidence based medicine.
  - sametmax 10y ago
    > all the data all of its salesmen There is no way you can judge "all the data" because "alternate medicine" is as big as saying "languages in the world". It's all that is not sanctioned. It includes a lot of things good and bad, crazy and sane. E.G: calibrated fasting is alternate medicine. Data for fasting has amounted to many things including improving the immunity system response and lowering side effects of heavy drugs. There is nothing magical or mysterious about it. It is "alternate medicine" because you won't see most doctors recommend fasting to your typical patient. There is no moral judgment in that. I'm not saying it's good or bad, it's just a fact. You have one vision of "alternate medicine", and it's limited to a stereotype. I understand why. The louder champions of many alternate medicine are using pseudo science, repeated by stay-at-home mothers on facebook. It does make the credibility of many interesting informations crash. However, dismissing what can be valuable information because of that is missing opportunities. Especially, a lot of chronic diseases have treatments outside of traditional medicine that make living with it much more bearable. Again, it's not exclusive. You don't have to reject one to get the other. But trying a few things outside of ones own bubble can get some wonderful unexpected results. I make a point of trying many such things. I'd say 9 times out of 10 it's a waste of my time and money. Sometime it's even unhealthy. But when you do find out something that brings strong benefits, it's usually really worth it. It's a shame one's have to do it that way. I'd much rather have professionals advice me on those. And it's why it's so important no to close the door.
    - tomhoward 10y ago
      The all alternative medicine is bunk crowd would do well to consider the story of The 2015 Nobel Prize for Medicine 2015 winner Youyou Tu [1], who demonstrated (yes, using modern medical research techniques), the efficacy of a traditional Chinese medicine remedy for treating malaria. Given stories like this, I fully expect that whatever turns out to be the next widely-adopted antibiotic treatment, will be something that has long been used in traditional or alternative medicine. One promising candidate is Pulsed Electromagnetic Fields [2]. [1] https://qz.com/517202/how-traditional-chinese-medicine-finally-won-its-nobel-prize/ https://qz.com/517202/how-traditional-chinese-medicine-final... [2] https://epjnonlinearbiomedphys.springeropen.com/articles/10.1140/epjnbp12 https://epjnonlinearbiomedphys.springeropen.com/articles/10....
gbuk2013 10y ago
Since you studied medicine maybe you (or someone else who reads this) could answer a question which I came across in a debate. Which illnesses has modern medicine definitevely cured? Exclude anything that is prevented through vaccination and treated with antibiotics (since even I as a layman know about those). Someone below mentioned Hepatitis C which is one. What other examples are there? Obviously no need for complete list just 5 or 10 will do for the purpose or argument.
- robbiep 10y ago
  - major traumas - Some strokes (if you reach hospital in time) - some heart attacks (if you reach hospital in time) - 3rd degree heart block (by way of a pacemaker) - serious arthritis of the knees, hips and shoulders (by way of replacement joints) - 80% cure rate of childhood leukaemia, 20-30% cure rate of adult leukaemia - some forms of childhood brain tumours - a high percentage of childhood and young adult myelodysplastic syndromes - pretty much every BCC and almost all SCCs that reach a doctor before they have invaded the whole patient - early melanoma - Benign Prostatic Hyperplasia, through either a TURP or what will become the definitive therapy, interventional radiology ablation - Wolf-Parkinson-white syndrome and other cardiac arrytjmias that consist of accessory pathways - patent foramen ovale - Cervical cancer if discovered early through Pap smear - deep vein thrombosis and it's sequelae, pulmonary embolism - Cataracts - about 100 other surgical problems that will be completely cured through surgery
  - gbuk2013 10y ago
    Thanks - I should have been more specific about purely surgical treatments as I was with the other two groups so as to maximise the benefit of your knowledge :) The context of this thread is more about drugs and there's a lot of discussion about pharmaceuticals so that was what I was really asking about. But I guess radio / chemo therapy is on the list, even though I am uncomfortable with the amount of collateral damage they do to the patient in the process (seen it happen so painful topic)
    - robbiep 10y ago

sametmax 10y ago

The problem is that we currently oppose the 2 views, and people defending one discard all benefit from the other. But it's true that you are happy to get surgery in case of a grave emergency, with heavy drugs and a strong hopital system. It's also true that the current most used health system is actually very bad at keeping people healthy. But no, all pharma related practice is not a z-serie drug dealer plot. And no, all alternative health practice is not hippie voodoo trying to cure cancer with placing hot stone on your third eye.

akiselev 10y ago
No, people are very bad at keeping people healthy. Modern medicine has almost eliminated acute disease as a leading cause of death in the developed world and most of our health problems are now self inflicted. Evidence based medicine has extended the average lifespan by decades despite our best efforts. Alternative medicine may not all be hippie voodoo but it all has one thing in common: all the data all of its salesmen have gathered before profiting hand over fist has amounted to nothing. All of the data gathered since then has amounted to nothing except the rare fortunate placebo effect, early deaths, and needless suffering. Once every few decades we stumble on a gem like meditation because medicine works by testing and gathering data on everything, including folk remedies. Our most common treatment for metastaticized cancers is to inject radioactive material into our bodies in the hope that it kills cancer cells faster than healthy tissue! We will clearly do anything so all any "alternative" medicine has to do is prove its effectiveness. There is lots of value to a variety of traditional remedies that utilize the antimicrobial properties of tea and honey or blood thinners in many herbs but that isn't going to make anyone any money except your neighborhood grocery store or ethnic market. The rest of alternative medicine is just a bunch of snake oil salesmen whose livelyhoods depends on rejecting the foundations of evidence based medicine.
- sametmax 10y ago
  > all the data all of its salesmen There is no way you can judge "all the data" because "alternate medicine" is as big as saying "languages in the world". It's all that is not sanctioned. It includes a lot of things good and bad, crazy and sane. E.G: calibrated fasting is alternate medicine. Data for fasting has amounted to many things including improving the immunity system response and lowering side effects of heavy drugs. There is nothing magical or mysterious about it. It is "alternate medicine" because you won't see most doctors recommend fasting to your typical patient. There is no moral judgment in that. I'm not saying it's good or bad, it's just a fact. You have one vision of "alternate medicine", and it's limited to a stereotype. I understand why. The louder champions of many alternate medicine are using pseudo science, repeated by stay-at-home mothers on facebook. It does make the credibility of many interesting informations crash. However, dismissing what can be valuable information because of that is missing opportunities. Especially, a lot of chronic diseases have treatments outside of traditional medicine that make living with it much more bearable. Again, it's not exclusive. You don't have to reject one to get the other. But trying a few things outside of ones own bubble can get some wonderful unexpected results. I make a point of trying many such things. I'd say 9 times out of 10 it's a waste of my time and money. Sometime it's even unhealthy. But when you do find out something that brings strong benefits, it's usually really worth it. It's a shame one's have to do it that way. I'd much rather have professionals advice me on those. And it's why it's so important no to close the door.
  - tomhoward 10y ago
    The all alternative medicine is bunk crowd would do well to consider the story of The 2015 Nobel Prize for Medicine 2015 winner Youyou Tu [1], who demonstrated (yes, using modern medical research techniques), the efficacy of a traditional Chinese medicine remedy for treating malaria. Given stories like this, I fully expect that whatever turns out to be the next widely-adopted antibiotic treatment, will be something that has long been used in traditional or alternative medicine. One promising candidate is Pulsed Electromagnetic Fields [2]. [1] https://qz.com/517202/how-traditional-chinese-medicine-finally-won-its-nobel-prize/ https://qz.com/517202/how-traditional-chinese-medicine-final... [2] https://epjnonlinearbiomedphys.springeropen.com/articles/10.1140/epjnbp12 https://epjnonlinearbiomedphys.springeropen.com/articles/10....

gbuk2013 10y ago

Since you studied medicine maybe you (or someone else who reads this) could answer a question which I came across in a debate. Which illnesses has modern medicine definitevely cured? Exclude anything that is prevented through vaccination and treated with antibiotics (since even I as a layman know about those). Someone below mentioned Hepatitis C which is one. What other examples are there? Obviously no need for complete list just 5 or 10 will do for the purpose or argument.

robbiep 10y ago
- major traumas - Some strokes (if you reach hospital in time) - some heart attacks (if you reach hospital in time) - 3rd degree heart block (by way of a pacemaker) - serious arthritis of the knees, hips and shoulders (by way of replacement joints) - 80% cure rate of childhood leukaemia, 20-30% cure rate of adult leukaemia - some forms of childhood brain tumours - a high percentage of childhood and young adult myelodysplastic syndromes - pretty much every BCC and almost all SCCs that reach a doctor before they have invaded the whole patient - early melanoma - Benign Prostatic Hyperplasia, through either a TURP or what will become the definitive therapy, interventional radiology ablation - Wolf-Parkinson-white syndrome and other cardiac arrytjmias that consist of accessory pathways - patent foramen ovale - Cervical cancer if discovered early through Pap smear - deep vein thrombosis and it's sequelae, pulmonary embolism - Cataracts - about 100 other surgical problems that will be completely cured through surgery
- gbuk2013 10y ago
  Thanks - I should have been more specific about purely surgical treatments as I was with the other two groups so as to maximise the benefit of your knowledge :) The context of this thread is more about drugs and there's a lot of discussion about pharmaceuticals so that was what I was really asking about. But I guess radio / chemo therapy is on the list, even though I am uncomfortable with the amount of collateral damage they do to the patient in the process (seen it happen so painful topic)
  - robbiep 10y ago