Corwin

*chuckles*

Oh kal... you don't actually think that ideal is commonly accomplished?

I've never had those tests. They just diagnosed me with hay fever... (easy to do in my case... get me near pollen and I either break out, can't see or breathe, or both.) And from then on I was a little pink pincushion in underpants, to quote Calvin and Hobbes. (I was fairly young when I stopped getting injections... reacted to one and my dad never took me in for another.)

Besides... the basic premise is the same. Expose someone to a small dose of the allergen so that they can build up a tolerance to it.

Mad Kally

I have strong feelings about this subject. (In case you didn't notice)

Why quackery persists

The field of health is extremely complicated. The common man -- whom we shall call John Doe -- has absorbed a great mass of information about it. What he knows, however, is likely a jumble of chance facts learned from a variety of sources, sound and unsound, including the folklore of family tradition and the self-serving pitch of current advertising. Statistically, perhaps, most people may be nearer right than wrong, but few people escape blind spots and areas of error that make them vulnerable to deception under suitable circumstances. This goes even for some John Does of mighty intellect with various degrees after their name.

When an episode of ill health looms, John Doe faces it by self-reliance, by seeking help from a health authority, or by doing both. If he chooses self-treatment, he tries some remedy from folk tradition or from recent reading or television viewing. He may try garlic from the garden, a huge dose of vitamin C, or a trade-named tonic. He tends to judge results by the same rule-of-thumb common sense by which he judges everyday cause-and-effect sequences: Did the axe cut? Did the suit fit? Did the motor run? He asks: Did the symptoms go away? Did my digestion settle down? Did my nerves calm? Did my sniffles stop?

Corwin

You got it kal.

Most of us judge medicine by one simple question. 'Does it work?'

Don't ask us to get all esoteric when it comes to our health.... we don't CARE if a given procedure satisfies some odd abstract esoteric notions in some researcher's head. We care about 'does my back still hurt' or 'is that appendage still falling off.'

Take Bree as an example. What they're giving her is (most likely, I don't know enough about the specifics to be sure) beefing up her immune system to the point where it will actually keep various fungi from growing on her. (Either that or altering her body chemistry so that it doesn't kill off microorganisms that normally feed on such fungi, such as l. Acidopholus.) Can she clearly explain it? I doubt it. Does it work? Clearly. Would something else work as well? Maybe, who knows, who cares? It works.

Mad Kally

I understand what you're saying Corwin. My concern is for the people who are injured or die each year due to quackery.

Kally

Corwin

I share that concern. Thing is it isn't as justified in all cases as a lot of people would have you think it is. Take St. John's Wort as an example... it's being perscribed for people who really don't NEED paxil and shouldn't have to put up with the symptoms. It works as well, just not as powerfully. (Someone who's suicidally depressed should be on paxil/prozac/some other SSRI. However, having BEEN on SSRI's before, I don't reccomend them unless there's no other choice.)

Veil of Fire

If the placebo effect is powerful enough to kill bodily fungus, that's good enough for me. Hell, if I could practice getting my body to react that way without medication, I'd be a walking medical miracle.

By the way... I do hope you all know that a large portion of our drugs, including cancer and AIDS chemotherapy treatments, come from the same places these homeopathic remedies come from; namely, some part of a plant that some shaman 200 years ago told a white guy to use for his [insert problem here]. From Taxol (Pacific Yew extract with amazingly bioactive properties) to Asprin (as you all know Willow Bark extract) to Viagra (Damiana) to Morphine (Opium Poppy) to Vinblastine and Vincristine (Madagascaran annual periwinkle... 80% remission for Hodgekin's Disease and 99% remission from acute lymphocytic leukemia, among others). Heart medication (Foxglove), Birth Control (Feverfew, among others), Antibiotics (too many to name), Toothache (Pine Sap), and about a billion other things I'd have to grope around for my textbooks to name accurately.

The same stuff you poo-poo is what makes your headache go away when you pop two Excedrin, and what makes your tumors shrink.

Why aren't studies done? That question is inextricably linked to this one: Why do doctors and pharmacists degrade/downplay the effectiveness of any and all homeopathic remedies? Quite simply, the answer is "You can't patent a plant." You can patent the extraction process, and any synthetic chemicals you make in a lab based on a plant component, which is why there are thousands of ethnobotanists combing South America, Africa, the Appalachans, and god-alone-knows where else talking to "primatives" and "superstitious" people about what roots they eat to cure diabetes.

My goodness, listening to you people almost makes me wonder how anyone survived illness before we had fancy labs and chemists and microscopes and white coats!

Mad Kally

Try taking some Lanoxin (digoxin), from the foxglove plant without the supervision of a medical professional. It's extremely dangerous and deadly.

Mad Kally

Thank your lucky stars you're even alive. Many people didn't survive. Shall we stop all advances in medicine and start chewing on roots again? What do you think the average life span would be? How about the infant mortality rate?

Gurdur

*snicker*

I once knew a doctor who killed someone with homeopathy.

Patient, a middle-aged man, presented late one evening complaining of abdominal tenderness and vomiting.

This was at a time when homeopathy was all the latest rage.

The doctor on duty, a young intern who was ready to rebel against all that stultifying medical traditionalism, examined the patient, but couldn't find any cause of the patient's symptoms.

So the intern thought,
"Hey, I'll give this patient a tiny, tiny non-dangerous dose of arsenic, to boost the patient's immune system in a revolutionary-approved homeopathic way",
and did so.

The patient dropped dead.

Turned out later that the patient's wife had been feeding him slowly increasing doses of arsenic in his food over a period of time (thus the patient's symptoms), and the last tiny dose the intern gave him was enough to tip the scales in a permanent way.

The later trial of the wife was a bit of a legal mess.

Mad Kally

LOL Gurdur,
Perhaps we should start the practice of bleeding people again? It was all the rage at one time too. Damn that hypovolemic shock!