Man cured of Aids, Doctors are Testing Rare Blood

[Deandra]

For what it's worth, my dad's girlfriend's daughter is studying to become a veterinary doctor, and she interned at the Crow Clinic on Sanibel Island where they rescue mutilated wildlife, etc. Apparently, they've had a lot of success managing animals' pain with acupuncture. I can't imagine that there would be any sort of placebo effect in this case--if anything, I'd expect the animal to freak out at having needles shoved into them. I do think the whole qi flow/meridians thing is a pile of horse excrement, but there seems to be something about how needles in general affect our nervous system. Just because people hundreds of years ago came up with un-scientific explanations for something doesn't mean it's not a valid phenomenon.

Still, "alternative medicine" is a mess of superstition and quackery, and I'll take proven medicine over it any day.

[Spiney]

Well the next time I go to a doctor and he prescribes me acupuncture, I'll change my stance.

Other than that, I'll cure stress by not getting stress in the first place.

[DorostheConqueror]

Yeah, you know, stabbing animals with needles is a surprisingly effective way to calm animals down. At first they struggle and hiss and try and bite you, but after twenty or so good stabs, less if you aim for the eyes, they just roll over and stop fighting.

That said, I'd need to see some good, controlled, quantifiable test data before I'm sold on voodoo doll animal surgery... and since most animal physiology is vastly different from human physiology, I'm not sure what that would even prove.

[Wolf]

Well the next time I go to a doctor and he prescribes me acupuncture, I'll change my stance.

Other than that, I'll cure stress by not getting stress in the first place.

That's called a vaccine, not a cure.

[Spiney]

Don't know how you vaccinate against stress.

That'd be interesting.

[DorostheConqueror]

Don't know how you vaccinate against stress.

That'd be interesting.

Whiskey, first thing in the morning, every morning.

[Wolf]

Don't know how you vaccinate against stress.

That'd be interesting.

Whiskey, first thing in the morning, every morning.

This.


RE Alternative Medicine vs Medicine: Let me reiterate that quote. By definition alternative medicine has either not been proven to work or been proven not to work. If there is an alternative treatment that has been proven to work, it becomes known as Medicine.

Frosty, pardon, your point about "getting so caught up in facts that we become ignorant" is absolute [&@%!]. Science adjusts its views based on what's observed. If someone says to me, "Hold these crystals, and you'll be cured of cancer in 5 seconds!" the first thing I'd do is ask him how. That's not being close-minded, it's being logical. If he can somehow prove to me that it actually works on someone, the second thing I'd do is ask him if I can construct a study around curing cancer patients with them to provide corroborating evidence. This is all part of the process that we call the Scientific Method; the one that we use for all things in the medical field, and the very same one that you're accusing of being "too focused on hard-facts". It's a very comprehensive, and yet logically intuitive process that's designed to separate actual, real treatments from the horse manure that is out there. And it's not just used in medicine, either. It's called the Scientific Method for a reason. Anyone who is an actual, real scientist is defined through his use of this method.

Yes, there are some valid treatments that are blocked out through this method-- but it's not from any failure of the method itself. It's because whoever is presenting the medicinal candidate cannot with current technology prove under reasonable testing conditions that the valid method actually works. And if he can't prove something to be true, until such a time comes where he might be able to, there's no reason for me to think that it is-- doing so could be incredibly detrimental. Once again, see Thalidomide.

[DorostheConqueror]

Facts, shmacts.



Facts can be used to prove anything even remotely true.

[Archea47]

There surely are bogus theories proposed throughout all areas of Science, but often the ones that work and are against the norm are also going to be initially rejected if not passionately opposed (see Galileo)

Bogus theories throughout all of science? Uh... what? That's impossible. If something is a scientific theory, that means it's an explanation for natural phenomena which is consistent with current knowledge, and has a lot of evidence supporting it. If a theory was 'bogus', I assume you mean it either wouldn't explain natural phenomena, or it wouldn't have any evidence supporting it. Otherwise, how could it be bogus? However, if either one of those two conditions isn't satisfied, then what you're talking about isn't a theory. A bogus theory in science is a misnomer.

I suppose the term hypothesis would have been more appropriate than theory. For what very little it's been worth I'm academically trained as a scientist and have done my small share of funded research and article authoring. I do appreciate prudent scientific process, but in most of my observation of healthcare - both for myself and in my profession - proper science is not the modus operandi. I suppose we should decide if we want to separate healthcare from Medicine (with a capital m ).

Most of my exposure is with the treatment of chronic ailments and/or pain management by (board certified) MDs, PhDs, & DOs. The patients often have already been given an unfortunate prognosis or are at the level of pain where they feel like they want to die as it is. These are people who have already exhausted what mainstream medicine has to offer - what they need precisely is alternative medicine (in a very general term) as they are still not healed after pursuing the traditional avenues of medical care. These people don't have time to wait for developing medicine to be validated through proper scientific procedure ( nor do people with degenerative diseases - who again wouldn't have them if they could reasonably be treated through medicines formally approved through our sometimes flawed institutions for doing so).

Think about how going to the doctor's office works. In my experience, they gather what data they can from the patient (imaging, blood tests, subjective pain levels, etc) and have to make personal/professional judgement about what treatment to prescribe. And then they observe or ask how that treatment helped. The provider can draw from the body of scientific knowledge, but as I've been trying to say that's going to be limited for as-of-yet incurable diseases. If you've ever gone to a doctor and they say, "well, there's a 25% chance it could help mobility and a 25% chance you'll lose all control of the limb" you would know what I mean (perhaps you have). And then you and your care provider start pursuing alternatives ...

It's still medicine, though perhaps not Medicine. And in treatment of pain you often only have subjective measures; in that case if an alternative treatment (aka alternative medicine) - even if purely placebo - lowers that measure, it's effective medicine.

[Spiney]

I don't think a placebo effect caused by a treatment justifies it as an effective one.

I'd imagine you could treat someone with back pain, who undergoes the placebo effect, heading back to their same life. Shortly afterwards they harm their back once again after believing to be cured and come out worse off than before.

Granted a doctor would recommend said person doesn't do any heavy lifting for a while, people are stupid.

It's not a treatment if it doesn't cure anything, which most "alternative treatments" do, since most have no substantial evidence backing them up.

[Dark Lord Cam]

I've always treated acupuncture as a treatment, not a cure. Whoever thinks it's a cure is a bit of a doofus.

[Spiney]

To me it's neither a treatment nor a cure. Just something to part you from your money.

[Dark Lord Cam]

I'm pretty sure we all got that about 30 or so posts back, Spiney.

[Frost Mage]

It's not a cure by any means, but it's a treatment for some people, a good one at that. It's not some kind of voodoo, it's been used for thousands of years, and it wasn't created by scam artists on cable TV.

[DorostheConqueror]

Whether it's "good" remains to be demonstrated, and seeing as it's been in use for, as you said, "thousands of years", without ever once passing a proper clinical test... well, you'd think acupuncture has had enough time to start showing results.

The scientific consensus is that it's a placebo. Nothing more. "Placebo" is an ancient Latin word for "doesn't actually do anything". Now, the real issue here, I guess, is how exactly you define the word "treatment". If you believe that "doing absolutely nothing except tricking people so that they stop whining so much about their physical problems" counts as a "treatment", then sure, I guess it's a "treatment"! One that'll cost you about a hundred bucks. (sugar pills sure are expensive these days, huh?)

it wasn't created by scam artists on cable TV.

Nope, sure wasn't! You're 100% correct, Frosty. It was actually created by scam artists in ancient China. The scam artists on TV are just modern copycats. Scamming on the shoulders of giants.

[Avron the S'wit]

Well the next time I go to a doctor and he prescribes me acupuncture, I'll change my stance.

Other than that, I'll cure stress by not getting stress in the first place.

This is actually an interesting position I'm surprised no one has picked up on. Have you ever read up on medical anthropology? We have a whole biocultural system (meaning we have our natural biology and our "unnatural" culture, which work together; it's what sort of separates us from other animals), and it totally affects not only the way we perceive treatments and medicines but how they are administered. A lot of medications anyway are not crafted to treat the thing they are intended for strictly, instead covering a blanket area of symptoms, which is also why you get so many side effects from modern medicine. It's also been demonstrated for several things in society that there is a point where our culture is sort of ignoring our biology, and we have not stopped to take it into account. Modern medicine is fantastic and science is great, but it also tends to make room for error by ignoring simple basics about our past as evolutionary creatures. And you have to take into account that we all understand pain in different ways (also based on our culture), doctor-patient relationships, how much time you spend with your doctor, what you believe to work and not work - regardless of whether it does or doesn't; the mind is a powerful tool - and so on and so forth.

I'm at work so I can't cite any examples I read about, but there is a fabulous anthology on medical anthropology texts I would happily recommend. It's a great read.

And good luck not getting stressed. Are you really so in control of your cortisol levels? (This is coming from a person who is constantly stressed - so much so I'm actually in a constant state of stress without realizing it. Huzzah!)