4 ms·

Your comment history suggests that you've been through medical school. I like to say that sometimes doctors do good work, and sometimes they make work for them

Your comment history suggests that you've been through medical school. I like to say that sometimes doctors do good work, and sometimes they make work for themselves. Please take this response as a gentle and well-intended effort to protest the standard practices that hurt patients by 'missing the forest for the trees', such as I've observed in my own family (who themselves are employed in the conventional approach to medicine), and my girlfriend (who is being harmed by allopathic psychiatry). Did you know that the term 'allopathy' was coined by a homeopath? At the time bloodletting, calomel, and blister agents were the standard of care. Homeopathic medicine held that the body can fix itself when properly supported (diet, clean environment, etc). Allopathic medical practitioners engage in the heroic struggle against disease [0]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heroic_medicine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heroic_medicine Allopathic medicine never went away, it just changed form. While conventional medical practitioners are doing much better than 200 years ago (w.r.t. not killing their patients), from my perspective, conventional psychiatry and conventional cancer treatments leave much to be desired. > To suggest that increased research into the Warburg effect is going to be the thing that leads to an explosion in novel therapeutics for cancer is wishful thinking, as far as I'm concerned. I have some great anecdotes about cheap metabolic therapies. But they're just my non-rigorous anecdotes... The one person who I'd most like to experiment on, trusts her doctors because they wear the halo of 'conventionality'. > Cancer is complex, and while we could stand to learn more about metabolic changes in cancer, there's not going to be a magic pill for this one. Consider the possibility that cancer is much simpler than the geneticists have led us to believe. Sometimes 'we must unlearn, what we have learned'. Edit: google scholar turns up some papers about 'spontaneous remission' of cancer. To figure out how to induce spontaneous remission of cancer cells would be a revolutionary advance.

leereeves 9y ago
> To figure out how to induce spontaneous remission of cancer cells would be a revolutionary advance. There's a lot of work being done on that front, primarily in the form of inducing an immune response to cancer. This work is being done in "allopathic" medical schools and hospitals and in biology labs that are the source of most allopathic medicine. If this work succeeds, it might lead to a cancer vaccine: the kind of treatment sometimes opposed by homeopaths and naturopaths.
- tcj_phx 9y ago
  > This work is being done in "allopathic" medical schools and hospitals and in biology labs that are the source of most allopathic medicine. 'Allopath' is considered a derogatory term by the modern doctors who are aware of its origin. > If this work succeeds, it might lead to a cancer vaccine: the kind of treatment sometimes opposed by homeopaths and naturopaths. The core of the resistance to vaccines is an opposition to the idea that a disease's context doesn't matter. Improved sanitation, refrigeration, insights into adequate nutrition, and other improvements in technology have done just as much as vaccination to vanquish the diseases of antiquity.
  - leereeves 9y ago
    > Improved sanitation, refrigeration, insights into adequate nutrition, and other improvements in technology have done just as much as vaccination to vanquish the diseases of antiquity. I don't understand the relevance. Will sanitation, refrigeration, or nutrition protect you from polio, measles, or other diseases commonly vaccinated against?
epmaybe 9y ago
If one thinks that their ideas on alternative therapies are worth investigating, I would strongly urge them to connect with a scientist that shares similar views, and apply for funding through the NIH. There is a significant amount of funding for complementary and alternative medicine. It's not well known that such funding exists, so I try and let others know about it. I have been tangentially involved with pain researchers that teamed up with chiropractors to study some of their maneuvers in a rigorous manner.
- tcj_phx 9y ago
  I also have some conventional/non-controversial ideas that ought to be verified - interventions that I have personally verified work as expected. I will look into the NIH's programs for funding these investigations. Thanks for the suggestion!
JumpCrisscross 9y ago
> Homeopathic medicine held that the body can fix itself when properly supported “Homeopathy is a pseudoscience” [1]. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homeopathy https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homeopathy second sentence
scottie_m 9y ago
I always notice that when people talk about homeopathy they love to pick and choose which parts most appeal to them, and try to pretend the rest doesn’t exist. The core of homeopathy is the idea of “Water Memory” which is, to put it bluntly, horseshit sympathetic magic. The idea that water can retain a “memory” of a substance that’s been totally diluted out of it is ridiculous, so people tend to lead with some New Age, wish washy “let the body heal itself” crap. Homeopathy is pure, unadulterated garbage, and proof that people will repackage old ideas such as sympathetic magic in new forms. You might as well rub a toad on your head. Homeopathy capitalizes on the same simple fact that most medical scams do, which is that most illness will indeed resolve with time. If you then take credit with placebo interventions for the body’s natural processes, you can fool a lot of people. It’s funny, until someone decides to forgo treatment for a curable illness in favor of that magical thinking.

leereeves 9y ago

> To figure out how to induce spontaneous remission of cancer cells would be a revolutionary advance. There's a lot of work being done on that front, primarily in the form of inducing an immune response to cancer. This work is being done in "allopathic" medical schools and hospitals and in biology labs that are the source of most allopathic medicine. If this work succeeds, it might lead to a cancer vaccine: the kind of treatment sometimes opposed by homeopaths and naturopaths.

tcj_phx 9y ago
> This work is being done in "allopathic" medical schools and hospitals and in biology labs that are the source of most allopathic medicine. 'Allopath' is considered a derogatory term by the modern doctors who are aware of its origin. > If this work succeeds, it might lead to a cancer vaccine: the kind of treatment sometimes opposed by homeopaths and naturopaths. The core of the resistance to vaccines is an opposition to the idea that a disease's context doesn't matter. Improved sanitation, refrigeration, insights into adequate nutrition, and other improvements in technology have done just as much as vaccination to vanquish the diseases of antiquity.
- leereeves 9y ago
  > Improved sanitation, refrigeration, insights into adequate nutrition, and other improvements in technology have done just as much as vaccination to vanquish the diseases of antiquity. I don't understand the relevance. Will sanitation, refrigeration, or nutrition protect you from polio, measles, or other diseases commonly vaccinated against?

epmaybe 9y ago

If one thinks that their ideas on alternative therapies are worth investigating, I would strongly urge them to connect with a scientist that shares similar views, and apply for funding through the NIH. There is a significant amount of funding for complementary and alternative medicine. It's not well known that such funding exists, so I try and let others know about it. I have been tangentially involved with pain researchers that teamed up with chiropractors to study some of their maneuvers in a rigorous manner.

tcj_phx 9y ago
I also have some conventional/non-controversial ideas that ought to be verified - interventions that I have personally verified work as expected. I will look into the NIH's programs for funding these investigations. Thanks for the suggestion!

JumpCrisscross 9y ago

> Homeopathic medicine held that the body can fix itself when properly supported “Homeopathy is a pseudoscience” [1]. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homeopathy https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homeopathy second sentence

scottie_m 9y ago

I always notice that when people talk about homeopathy they love to pick and choose which parts most appeal to them, and try to pretend the rest doesn’t exist. The core of homeopathy is the idea of “Water Memory” which is, to put it bluntly, horseshit sympathetic magic. The idea that water can retain a “memory” of a substance that’s been totally diluted out of it is ridiculous, so people tend to lead with some New Age, wish washy “let the body heal itself” crap. Homeopathy is pure, unadulterated garbage, and proof that people will repackage old ideas such as sympathetic magic in new forms. You might as well rub a toad on your head. Homeopathy capitalizes on the same simple fact that most medical scams do, which is that most illness will indeed resolve with time. If you then take credit with placebo interventions for the body’s natural processes, you can fool a lot of people. It’s funny, until someone decides to forgo treatment for a curable illness in favor of that magical thinking.