3 ms·

I would say that another huge impediment to some research is the pharmaceutical industry's incredible lobbying power. you bet they want to make gosh darn sure

by gr3yh47 10y ago

I would say that another huge impediment to some research is the pharmaceutical industry's incredible lobbying power. you bet they want to make gosh darn sure that if something is going to help cancer they want to be able to charge thousands of dollars/dose for it

lawless123 10y ago
>you bet they want to make gosh darn sure that if something is going to help cancer they want to be able to charge thousands of dollars/dose for it Special $500 fasting pills which contain only water.
phkahler 10y ago
Yep. Another great one to throw into google is Iodine and apoptosis: https://www.google.com/#q=iodine+apoptosis https://www.google.com/#q=iodine+apoptosis The first two results are NIH papers on the topic.
- zaphods-towel 10y ago
  Hi, can you talk a bit more about this? I have extremely low iodine and have been trying to figure out how to address it, so your mention of iodine caught my attention. Also, when you say iodine and apoptosis my first thought is cancer treatment— is that what you're implying?
  - phkahler 10y ago
    Oh if you try it, ramp up iodine slowly. I had some strange reactions the first two days. YMMV again.
  - phkahler 10y ago
    The RDA for iodine is 150 micrograms. I treated my asthma (lungs use iodine too) with about 1mg of iodine daily and 250mg of magnesium - YMMV of course. I was taking kelp supplements but needed 6 a day to get the amount I wanted. Another source is Lugol's solution - a few drops in a cup of water is several mg. I also use Lugol's for healing cuts, scrapes, and scars. Iodine has also been suggested as a cancer cure for many different types - some strains of breast cancer in particular. This is because there are a couple pathways leading to apoptosis that require iodine to function - turns out your mitochondria need iodine too. The funniest thing I ran across in all this was an article about the link between kelp and reduced breast cancer risk. At the end they said this should be investigated further because the author knew kelp had high iodine content and thought that would be bad for people. In other words, we need to isolate the anti-cancer agent and commercialize it so you don't kill yourself with too much iodine. Funny because the iodine is likely the anti-cancer agent, and is not bad for you in the slightest.
lr4444lr 10y ago
I don't disagree, but academia and government (which I realize are not always separate from corporate R&D) are enormous drivers of scientific progress. There's a lot of quackery out there which I think erroneously magnifies the conspiratorial suppressive power of the pharmaceutical industry. My argument is simply this: doctors need more leverage to use cutting edge research in their practice. I am not in the medical field, and I don't know exactly how to accomplish this, but must surely lose a lot of organic ground-level experimentation at individual doctor-patient mutual consent, which would generate a wealth of epidemiological data with which to move medicine forward. It deprives patients of certain medical alternatives, and doctors of part of their scientific capacity as experimentalists. The entire field of vaccinations began from an observation of smallpox immunity in the Turkish country side where folk wisdom was to rub scabs into superficial wounds of healthy children. When western doctors observed a stark decrease in the infection rate, this began experimentation that became the foundation of the modern practice. I don't think that this could be done today. The extreme counterexample is the Tuskegee experiment, but the key element missing there was patient awareness of their own participation as an experimental control.
digler999 10y ago
At least their remedies work, unlike holistic medicine that charges thousands of dollars to cleanse peoples' chakras.

by gr3yh47 10y ago

lawless123 10y ago

>you bet they want to make gosh darn sure that if something is going to help cancer they want to be able to charge thousands of dollars/dose for it Special $500 fasting pills which contain only water.

phkahler 10y ago

Yep. Another great one to throw into google is Iodine and apoptosis: https://www.google.com/#q=iodine+apoptosis https://www.google.com/#q=iodine+apoptosis The first two results are NIH papers on the topic.

zaphods-towel 10y ago
Hi, can you talk a bit more about this? I have extremely low iodine and have been trying to figure out how to address it, so your mention of iodine caught my attention. Also, when you say iodine and apoptosis my first thought is cancer treatment— is that what you're implying?
- phkahler 10y ago
  Oh if you try it, ramp up iodine slowly. I had some strange reactions the first two days. YMMV again.
- phkahler 10y ago
  The RDA for iodine is 150 micrograms. I treated my asthma (lungs use iodine too) with about 1mg of iodine daily and 250mg of magnesium - YMMV of course. I was taking kelp supplements but needed 6 a day to get the amount I wanted. Another source is Lugol's solution - a few drops in a cup of water is several mg. I also use Lugol's for healing cuts, scrapes, and scars. Iodine has also been suggested as a cancer cure for many different types - some strains of breast cancer in particular. This is because there are a couple pathways leading to apoptosis that require iodine to function - turns out your mitochondria need iodine too. The funniest thing I ran across in all this was an article about the link between kelp and reduced breast cancer risk. At the end they said this should be investigated further because the author knew kelp had high iodine content and thought that would be bad for people. In other words, we need to isolate the anti-cancer agent and commercialize it so you don't kill yourself with too much iodine. Funny because the iodine is likely the anti-cancer agent, and is not bad for you in the slightest.

lr4444lr 10y ago

I don't disagree, but academia and government (which I realize are not always separate from corporate R&D) are enormous drivers of scientific progress. There's a lot of quackery out there which I think erroneously magnifies the conspiratorial suppressive power of the pharmaceutical industry. My argument is simply this: doctors need more leverage to use cutting edge research in their practice. I am not in the medical field, and I don't know exactly how to accomplish this, but must surely lose a lot of organic ground-level experimentation at individual doctor-patient mutual consent, which would generate a wealth of epidemiological data with which to move medicine forward. It deprives patients of certain medical alternatives, and doctors of part of their scientific capacity as experimentalists. The entire field of vaccinations began from an observation of smallpox immunity in the Turkish country side where folk wisdom was to rub scabs into superficial wounds of healthy children. When western doctors observed a stark decrease in the infection rate, this began experimentation that became the foundation of the modern practice. I don't think that this could be done today. The extreme counterexample is the Tuskegee experiment, but the key element missing there was patient awareness of their own participation as an experimental control.

digler999 10y ago

At least their remedies work, unlike holistic medicine that charges thousands of dollars to cleanse peoples' chakras.