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Garzik: An Andre To RememberGarzik: An Andre To RememberPosted Aug 5, 2012 20:23 UTC (Sun) by giraffedata (subscriber, #1954)In reply to: Garzik: An Andre To Remember by acooks Parent article: Garzik: An Andre To Remember
If you're implying that professional counselling will _never_ help, ... He's definitely not. He starts out, earlier in the thread, with, "I would add to the list of suggestions."
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Garzik: An Andre To Remember Posted Aug 12, 2012 17:59 UTC (Sun) by Wol (guest, #4433) [Link]
Also, he never claimed to be a representative example.
He merely said *he* was an example where the professionals were useless and the church helped.
As somebody who wanted to be a doctor (I didn't make medical school), I have a *deep* distrust of modern medicine. Only deepened by my knowledge of medical history and what I call "the arrogance of the modern" - the belief that we are so much cleverer than our forfathers.
Just read some old medical books as far back as even the 1600s. About the only real advance we have is technology that makes surgery safer and easier, and antibiotics (an advance we are in real danger of throwing away soon).
The arsenal of knowledge they had 400 years ago hasn't been improved that much at all! Indeed, the arsenal of knowledge they had 2000 years ago sometimes exceeds todays!
Cheers,
Garzik: An Andre To Remember Posted Aug 12, 2012 19:41 UTC (Sun) by viro (subscriber, #7872) [Link]
Really? Care to show a 17th century textbook that would cover epidemiology? Or some data on life expectancy with diabetes back then... As a bonus question, discuss the impact of antibiotics and surgery on *that*. While we are at it, as you certainly know, antibiotics do not work for viral infections. Are you saying that there had been no meaningful changes regarding those? BTW, where do you put anti- and aseptic methods? Yes, they do fit as "technology that makes surgery safer", but they sure as hell have applications well beyond that. Sigh...
We aren't more clever than we used to be in 1600, but we definitely have learnt a lot since then. Including, BTW, mathematical statistics and data analysis. How much of that gets learnt by students in medical schools is a different question, of course...
Medical procedures Posted Aug 17, 2012 12:59 UTC (Fri) by man_ls (subscriber, #15091) [Link] Not to speak about vaccines, grafts, prosthesis, vitamins, micro-surgery, anti-retro-viral medicines, X-rays, analgesics or monitoring equipment. Saying that nothing but antibiotics and surgery techniques has changed from an era where amputation was the most common surgery (and the tourniquet had not even been invented, figure that) shows a high level of self-delusion.And, as item #6 explains, we actually are smarter than in 1600; at least we don't have all that lead around us any more.
Medical procedures Posted Aug 17, 2012 14:17 UTC (Fri) by boudewijn (subscriber, #14185) [Link] Smarter than in the last century, which is what #6 is about. See also http://www.rachel.org/files/document/Lead_Poisoning_in_Historical_Perspective.pdf
Medical procedures Posted Aug 17, 2012 14:40 UTC (Fri) by man_ls (subscriber, #15091) [Link] Not only last century; please read the pdf you cite and not only the abstract, specifically the section about the preindustrial and industrial ages.
Garzik: An Andre To Remember Posted Aug 13, 2012 7:01 UTC (Mon) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link]
WTF?
Medicine is about the best way to illustrate the progress. Essentially all medical practices from before 1800-s would now be considered actively harmful to patients. Simple surgeries are about the only surviving pieces of the pre-1800-s medical practices.
Consider this - germ theory of diseases has been developed only in late 1800-s! Before that doctors were using the crap like 'humour imbalance' theory, doing things like blood-letting to 'cure' weakness and infection!
Garzik: An Andre To Remember Posted Aug 14, 2012 14:19 UTC (Tue) by giraffedata (subscriber, #1954) [Link] What's happened in medicine since the 17th century is not just progress, it's a fundamental change. Medicine today is based on science, but before the late 1800s it generally was not. Today, we try to deconstruct the internal workings of the human body and develop hypotheses for treatments and test them with experiments. In contrast, before then, medical practicioners did what felt like it ought to work, for any number of reasons.In other words, it was a lot like the religion that was compared to medicine earlier in this thread as treatment for depression.
Garzik: An Andre To Remember Posted Aug 14, 2012 18:48 UTC (Tue) by raven667 (subscriber, #5198) [Link]
While I agree that there is plenty of scientific medical research being done and that this has greatly improved the practice of medicine I would argue that Medical Doctors are not scientists and do not practice science. Medical practitioners still just do what they feel ought to work and those feelings are only tangentially related to the actual science of medicine in many cases.
Garzik: An Andre To Remember Posted Aug 14, 2012 22:36 UTC (Tue) by anselm (subscriber, #2796) [Link] Medical practicioners are to medical researchers what engineers are to physicists – i.e., they apply the results of research to everyday problems. The only difference is that the world of engineering has, on the whole, less tolerance for quacks and charlatans than the world of medical practice.
Diluted sugar Posted Aug 17, 2012 13:02 UTC (Fri) by man_ls (subscriber, #15091) [Link] To be fair, it is much easier to detect quacks in engineering than in medicine: in engineering there are many more controlled variables, while in medicine there is a an enormous variety of conditions and tolerances -- not to speak about interactions. Proteins are much harder to predict and control than screws and bolts, or even than lines of code in large systems.My pediatrician is also a homeopath practitioner and sometimes she prescribes some diluted sugar recipe which we immediately throw to the nearest garbage can. It goes to show how deluded a modern practitioner can be, since she is otherwise a good pediatrician.
Diluted sugar Posted Aug 17, 2012 14:44 UTC (Fri) by jackb (subscriber, #41909) [Link] My pediatrician is also a homeopath practitioner and sometimes she prescribes some diluted sugar recipe which we immediately throw to the nearest garbage can. It goes to show how deluded a modern practitioner can be, since she is otherwise a good pediatrician.I think you're being too charitable by using the word "deluded". I would lean more towards "fraudulent" or, at best, "incompetent". I also couldn't imagine trusting such a person to provide medical care to a child. If she's not blatently prescribing fake cures for financial benefit then it must mean she is incapabable of distinguising between the effectiveness of antibiotics vs. distilled placebo water. In that case she might as well be picking treatements randomly out of a hat.
Diluted sugar Posted Aug 17, 2012 15:08 UTC (Fri) by man_ls (subscriber, #15091) [Link] She is careful to prescribe quack pills only when there is no other treatment, and to explain that they may not achieve the expected results; also there is no direct financial benefit. Perhaps it is the placebo effect she is after, but I think it is just incompetence. Many other things recommended in the alopathic (i.e. non-homeopathic) literature do not work either and they get away with it; avian flu remedies come to mind. It is a strange science indeed.
Diluted sugar Posted Aug 17, 2012 22:46 UTC (Fri) by anselm (subscriber, #2796) [Link] »Allopathic« is a propaganda term homeopaths use for what the rest of the world calls »scientific«. Homeopathy is a form of sympathetic magic that dates from a time when modern medicine basically didn't exist. In spite of vast numbers of trials there is no evidence whatsoever that homeopathy works better than placebos; in fact, if it worked at all it would mean that large, well-established swathes of contemporary physics and chemistry are wrong. That homeopathy works is, in other words, unlikely in the extreme. Modern science-based medicine, on the other hand, has at least a fighting chance of working, because it relies on evidence and our contemporary knowledge of human biology, pharmacology, etc. Medical practitioners who use homeopathy are either not aware of the fact that homeopathy is, with a probability bordering on the absolutely certain, utter BS, which means they are incompetent, or are aware of this fact and are actively misleading their patients, which means they are unethical. As far as I am concerned, either of these would be sufficient grounds for not trusting such a person with something as important as my (or my family's) health. Your mileage may vary.
Diluted sugar Posted Aug 17, 2012 23:10 UTC (Fri) by man_ls (subscriber, #15091) [Link] Yes, sorry for the "allopathic" moniker. I meant "scientific medicine", i.e. non-homeopathic.Last time she prescribed some 30C phony medication, which means it has one ml in a sphere 212 light years long. I wonder if they actually take the time and effort to do the dilution or just skip it and use pure sugar. But of course that would be fraud... The thing is, our pediatrician knows her basic stuff and explains things nicely. We have gone to other (reputed) doctors to get a second opinion and they have all prescribed lots of unnecessary things which have done nothing either, and our child has only had the usual colds and fevers. If she had anything more serious (god forbid) we would go to a specialist, so we just tolerate the quack homeopathic thing as an eccentricity. And double-check everything on MedlinePlus and similar places. Which is not a bad practice anyway.
Diluted sugar Posted Aug 18, 2012 17:40 UTC (Sat) by giraffedata (subscriber, #1954) [Link] In spite of vast numbers of trials there is no evidence whatsoever that homeopathy works better than placebos But placebos work, on some people. Is it possible a practicioner can legitimately heal someone by prescribing a homeopathic treatment that the patient can read about on the web and develop some faith in? There is a recognized ethical quandary over whether prescribing placebos is unethical, especially considering that for them to be effective, they typically have to be expensive. Speaking of placebos, I'll always remember looking at a box of minoxidil hair regrowth medication. It said something like 35% of subjects reported hair regrowth using the drug vs 25% for placebo. It was very expensive and my first thought was, "I'll take the placebo. Sounds like a better deal."
Diluted sugar Posted Aug 18, 2012 20:28 UTC (Sat) by man_ls (subscriber, #15091) [Link] Minoxidil is a funny example of "scientific" medicine: it was discovered by chance, it only works on some people, the mechanism by which it works is unknown, and all of its effects are reversed if the patient stops using it. But still it is used, as it is the only known medicament which stops hair loss effectively.The percentages of success vary, but hair growth is not usual; rather it stops hair loss. It is there where placebos may be some competition and not in growth, since if placebos caused hair growth they would sell like crazy.
Diluted sugar Posted Aug 19, 2012 21:24 UTC (Sun) by anselm (subscriber, #2796) [Link] Placebos "work" for some people because many ailments people suffer from will tend to go away if they are left alone long enough. Consider, for example, the common cold, which so far has resisted the efforts of scientific medicine, but for which your friendly neighbourhood homeopath will be more than happy to prescribe some sugar pills at an outrageous price (for sugar). It doesn't matter if you take the sugar pills because they will neither help or hinder your getting better. However having taken the sugar pills you are likely to give them the credit. It is even likely that your symptoms will get worse after you have started the sugar pills, since they don't do anything, which homeopaths will conveniently explain away as the effect of the medication getting to work inside you. Many other ailments people suffer from (e.g., chronic back pain, which scientific medicine has so far also failed from curing conclusively) tend to come and go, and since people are apt to go to the doctor (or homeopath) when their complaints are worst, even sugar pills will seem to help because of "regression to the mean" (you would have come out of the bad phase into a somewhat better phase, anyway). Then of course there are those ailments that have a good chance of killing you when they remain untreated, like malaria or cancer. This is something that "ethical" homeopaths shouldn't touch with a 10' pole. If only they would. The BBC has found in an experiment that a vast majority of homeopathic pharmacies in London will be more than happy to sell you "homeopathic" malaria "prophylaxis", and one homeopathic remedy for cancer is sugar pills with hyper-diluted extract of mistletoe (i.e., no mistletoe), on the grounds - and I am not making this up - that mistletoe looks like cancer on trees. The problem with stuff like homeopathy is that the placebo effect is a lot less powerful if your medical practitioner tells you that there's nothing in the pills except sugar, that they have not been able to be proven to work in clinical trials, and that indeed they have no conceivable way of doing anything to you as far as our concepts of physics, chemistry and biology go. Which is, perhaps understandably, why most people dealing in homeopathy neglect to explain this to their patients. In effect, they are being knowingly dishonest to their patients, which is unacceptable. Personally, I would have much less of a problem being told that there is no remedy against my cold that has been shown to work, but that the cold will almost certainly get better anyway, than being prescribed very expensive sugar pills or (for that matter) antibiotics (which too many non-homeopathic practitioners are prone to do, but that is a different problem).
Diluted sugar Posted Aug 19, 2012 22:56 UTC (Sun) by giraffedata (subscriber, #1954) [Link] No, that's not the placebo effect. The fact that things get better in time without treatment is a big reason that the control group reports improvement, but it isn't what people refer to as the placebo effect. The placebo effect is where a person's subjective evaluation of his health improves when he thinks he is being treated. The placebo doesn't cause his rhinovirus count to go down, but it makes him feel better. When you consider that the real reason most people go to the doctor is to feel better, not to effect a particular biological change in the body, you have to say a placebo is effective in that case. In fact, you could argue it's unethical to withhold a placebo. The placebo effect is very real. I have a friend who is extremely susceptible to it, not just in medicines, but in everything else. If he installed a new wireless access point, especially if it were expensive, he would report faster web browsing even if the actual speed was unaffected. (He's not the type to measure it, of course).
Sorry for the off-topic Posted Aug 19, 2012 23:10 UTC (Sun) by man_ls (subscriber, #15091) [Link] In fact, you could argue it's unethical to withhold a placebo.That argument could even be a suitable justification for homeopathic medicine. I am not sure if you want to go there. The thing is that the Hippocratic Oath specifically says "never do harm", but not "avoid useless treatments". It could be argued that using the placebo effect can sooth both patients and their families, in cases where there is no known cure. Sugar pills cannot do any harm... On the other hand, spreading unscientific theories is a much worse sin in my opinion.
Sorry for the even-more off-topic Posted Aug 19, 2012 23:28 UTC (Sun) by neilbrown (subscriber, #359) [Link]
> On the other hand, spreading unscientific theories is a much worse sin in my opinion.
You seem to be spreading the theory that "spreading unscientific theories is harmful".
Just curious...
Sorry for the even-more off-topic Posted Aug 20, 2012 0:04 UTC (Mon) by man_ls (subscriber, #15091) [Link] Thanks for the recursive laugh, I always appreciate those :)Anyway, I don't have any scientific basis to dislike unscientific theories, but I am not right now speaking from an office which is (or should be) based on science. If a professor of Astronomy spoke about the horoscope I would start to worry... And I am not a medical practitioner, thank god, since I think it is one of the hardest professions. From medical practitioners I expect to get at least a plausible explanation of the causes, or (as in the case of Minoxidil above) an experimental confirmation. We should require both, but life is tough. With homeopathy there are neither, and therefore the iniquity. To bring this long thread at least a bit back into topic, the psychiatric profession has made wonderful advances both in the determination of the root causes of mental illnesses, and in the experimental treatment of those. If you don't feel well, please go to a doctor (a psychiatrist) in addition to a psychologist.
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