Question:
Found this over on sci.med: – Hide quoted text — Show quoted text – Newsgroups: sci.med,sci.skeptic,news.groups There *are* people going there, ordinary folks, looking for medical information. Usually, they’ve had problems with their MDs. For example, last night, I responded to a post by a man looking for help for his daughter who had migranes. The MD gave her a prescription for painkillers and told her to aviod stress. Neither he nor his daughter appreciated the arrogance of the MD. I’ve done a lot of research into chronic pain, because I have it. I can assure you that what the MD did was incorrect. She should have (a) had a neurological work-up. If that work-up confirmed the diagnosis, she should have been either (a) referred to a headache or chronic pain center, where they’ll aggressively treat her, (b) referred to an algologist (expert in the management of chronic pain) or (c) referred to a psychologist who specializes in biofeedback, stress management, hypnosis and cognitive- behavioral psychotherapy. She should have NOT been given a painkiller right off the bat, for many people DO easily become addicted to them. Now, I can fully understand why Dad started looking for help. His daughter’s problem was not taken seriously, nor was she properly worked-up. He wanted someone to treat her that took her problems seriously. I can assure you that there are *a lot* of people like that posting to misc.health.alternative. Yes, it’s a good idea to stay away from the philosphical discussions there. But when some ordinary soul (with probably not that great scientific education–average, in the USA) posts out there, looking for information because he/she had problems and doesn’t like (for one reason or another) what his/her MD advised, we should help. We should help at least explain to the ordinary person WHY what the krew in misc.health.alternative is poppycock. Frankly, most people don’t have enough knowledge to be able to (a) locate applicable articles on MEDLINE and (b) read and evaluate the article (looking for questionable methodologies). Most people are dependent on second and third-hand information and have no idea of how to evaluate the data. One of the problems I’ve had with *some* of my fellow skeptics is that many are unwilling to take on the quacks. Here, in misc.health.alternative, we have a forum where we can take these people on and do the public some good. By *not* commenting on the poppycock, all the ordinary, confused citizen will hear about is the snake-oil purveyed by the quack. They will not hear that there are some people who are pretty sure that the substance being sold is snake-oil and that the purveyor with a degree is most likely a quack. Why do I feel so strongly about this? When I was 6, my parents (upon the advise of my schoolteacher) took me to see a quack optometrist. I have a neurological/ opthamological genetic disorder, that is quite rare. This optometrist CLAIMED that he could improve my vision by having me do eye exercises. My parents had more scientific training than most people. Yet, they didn’t go to a nearby medical library and verify what the quack said. So, these three people put me through a grueling set of exercises (1hr each day) that were supposed to be fun but weren’t, forced me to take up and continue with competitive swimming even though I didn’t want to and basically viewed me as a handicapped kid. They had me see this quack for 10 years. Finally, he gave ME some bad advise. I got burned. Then, I knew enough to go see someone else who is personally interested and is studying my genetic disorder. He explained to me how my genetic disorder progresses, and that my vision would get better as I aged. He also explained to me all the faults in the optometrist’s research and all the damage he knows this man was responsible for. He also explained to me how little he really knew about my problem and that I was one of the least affected patients he’s seen with it. His nurse, who has a daughter with the same problem I have, sat down with my mother and answered her questions. Did my parents have any inkling that the optometrist was a quack? YES. However, they wanted to believe. They were never really presented with skeptical information, until my opthomologist’s nurse talked to my mother. The only way to stop quackery is to confront it and expose it for what it is. Yes, that means sometimes being both cynical and skeptical. I know that many people looking for information about medical problems and not finding it, or finding out that the treatments available are risky, time-consuming or unpleasent OR that there’s no known safe and effective treatment for what they’ve got WILL start looking at alternative medicine. (I did, when I was diagnosed with chronic pain and conventional treatments didn’t work. However, I went to a med school library and read texts on pain management and discovered that accupuncture did provide relief for some patients with intractable chronic pain. I then found an expert medical accupuncturist, with a long track-history of helping people with chronic pain.)
Response:
Found this over on sci.med:
<SNIP There *are* people going there, ordinary folks, looking for medical information. Usually, they’ve had problems with their MDs. For example, last night, I responded to a post by a man looking for help for his daughter who had migranes. The MD gave her a prescription for painkillers and told her to aviod stress. Neither he nor his daughter appreciated the arrogance of the MD.
<SNIP What’s your point? Don’t you think educated second opinions are good? I like to see that someone is peeking in with a more objective view point. There is a tendancey for believers in alternative medicine (not all, but some) to believe in many alternatives. If they see success in one they assume that many alternative are good and just "kept down" by "the establishment(tm)". There is much quackery in alternative medicine and it is good that all claims are at least challenged. I happen to believe that acupuncture works. I also believe a chiropracter can fix back/neck problems. I do not think a chiropracter can help with asthma yet some claim to! A little skepticism is a good thing. The person you reported as a "spy" is trying to help people. Blind faith in fringe science helps nobody. == The above opinions are my own. My employer thinks I am working. 8^) == == == == Perkin-Elmer Corp, Norwalk, CT == == If evolution is outlawed | Never underestimate the power == == only outlaws will evolve! | of the internet Luke. -O W Kenobi- ==
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e Yes, that means sometimes being both cynical and skeptical. I know e that many people looking for information about medical problems and e not finding it, or finding out that the treatments available are e risky, time-consuming or unpleasent OR that there’s no known safe e and effective treatment for what they’ve got WILL start looking at … other quoted material and response deleted … I’m not the person who said all this. I’m just the person who COPIED it to misc.health.alternative for others to see (it was originally posted
I’ll beg the same relief. I don’t use a quoter that puts an inital line on like this. But sorry if I misattributed by accident. I was aware you were forwarding a post, and was only replying to "that" person for rhetorical purposes anyhow. – sent via an evaluation copy of BulkRate (unregistered).
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You said: e Yes, that means sometimes being both cynical and skeptical. I know e that many people looking for information about medical problems and e not finding it, or finding out that the treatments available are e risky, time-consuming or unpleasent OR that there’s no known safe e and effective treatment for what they’ve got WILL start looking at … other quoted material and response deleted … I’m not the person who said all this. I’m just the person who COPIED it to misc.health.alternative for others to see (it was originally posted
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- Hide quoted text — Show quoted text – I am a pharmacist and could also be considered to a member of the "medical establishment". Why do I subscribe to this newsgroup? It’s so that I can learn something and also, hopefully, contribute back some of my knowledge and experience. Not everything that we "established" types do can be considered to be "medically traditional". For example, I recommend using vitamin E or castor oil for removing warts before ever considering using the more traditional treatments of cutting, burning, or caustic chemicals. But at the same time, I also can’t sit on the sidelines and allow somebody to recommend a non-traditional or alternative remedy that is obviously wrong or even dangerous. An example of this might be using any medication in potentially toxic doses. It’s this exchange of information, ideas, and experiences that makes a group like this work.
Hey ya’ll.. Patrick just made a excellent point here. Just because, perhaps, maybe the AMA and the big drug and insurance companies have a vested interest in the "status-quo" doesn’t mean that there aren’t thousands of people in "approved" fields with their heads *not* stuck in the sand. I use Reiki for some things and nobody yet has sufficiently explained just what I am doing or how it works. I’m sure before Asprin(tm) was capsulized you’d feel pretty silly chewing on the bark of some plant and thinking, "Did I just eat that worm?". The point is, we’re all in this together. Let’s share what we know instead of attacking each other (maybe then someone will spend the bucks to make a machine to measure just exactly what Reiki does so my family will talk to me again). Patrick, I’ll gladly take all your wisdom and advice that you care to offer. -steve
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Well, I work for a drug company, so I’m probably one of those "spies" you’re talking about. I must not be doing much of a job sneaking around, though, because here I am out in the open. Was everyone supposed to be surprised at the thought of "establishment" medical types reading this group?
Sure–it’s a gig…but you don’t have to <take the stuff, do you? – sent via an evaluation copy of BulkRate (unregistered).
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Hey guys, if you’re gonna make claims that you can’t back up, you’re gonna get flamed! Particularly if you promote stuff that has basically been discredited. And you deserve it! If you want to go onto a skeptics group and stir things up, go right ahead. Frankly, I think the pot over at sci.skeptics, alt.paranet.skeptic and misc.skeptics could DEFINATELY use some controversy. The posts have been getting SO BORING that I don’t feel like following ‘em. I don’t like flame wars
I welcome sincere skepticism, but I found the following quote from you on sci.med: I go to misc.health.alternative for some amusement. To me, this shows that you are not seeking honest discourse. Rather, you are only hear to stir up crap. Go back to sci.med where you belong. — Robert Greenstein What the fool cannot learn he laughs at, thinking of latent idiocy – M. Corelli
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Roth (816)995-3767) writes:
<long copy deleted If you can stop to THINK for a moment, you might see that all that you presently hold as ‘absolute’ may tomorrow be proven false. The same "tourch" of knowlege which is to light the way toward enlightment, has also been used to hunt those whom the "intellegent" fear. The same flame which can light the darkness, can also burn the books which contain the knowledge. So before you go FLAMING something, please present your credentials. I recently was ‘challenged’. I responded, but with references which could have been checked with just a trip to a library or a phone call. The references were published by a member of the "PH.D. community". But these were ignored in favor of a well written piece in which the term (children – I believe) was used to describe this person. But the writter has NEVER given his credentials – so who should be believed? I find that many people find this medium of interaction a ready outlet for their frustrations. Discussion is welcome, wanted, and needed if we are to grow. But to
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Just to clarify, I copied the original post here not because I was surprised to find establishment medical types lurking here or even because I object to them doing so. I posted it because I think if someone is going to say that misc.health.alternative is primarily filled with uneducated people and quacks, he ought to say so to our face. If you’re not offended by that, good for you. I was. —
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e Yes, that means sometimes being both cynical and skeptical. I know e that many people looking for information about medical problems and e not finding it, or finding out that the treatments available are e risky, time-consuming or unpleasent OR that there’s no known safe e and effective treatment for what they’ve got WILL start looking at e alternative medicine. (I did, when I was diagnosed with chronic e pain and conventional treatments didn’t work. However, e I went to a med school library and read texts on pain management and e discovered e that accupuncture did provide relief for some patients with e intractable chronic e pain. I then found an expert medical accupuncturist, with a long e track-history e of helping people with chronic pain.) Yes, yes, but your hyper-rational approach is not exclusively in possession of truth. There is much that is never going to be testable as far as healing goes, there are many issues outside the general paradigm of science that need healing, your improvement by acupuncture ignores the theoretical basis for that improvement and probably focusses on something like ‘gate theory’ or some other half-crocked explanation, you ignore therapies that aren’t amenable to your reason, and you ignore the fact that qualified, consensual, well-informed MD’s are in fact experimenting on patients every day, entirely outside tradition. You are never going to sell most of us health-alt-ers on the value of this new drug, corporate-driven, stop-gap, short-term therapies that in fact in a huge number of cases <cause the kind of intractable cases that traditional healers are called on daily to treat. This medical paradigm has told people for years that personal responsibility for health is not necessary. Now the studies are in and they’re singing a different tune, but my father’s generation was screwed over by the alternating ruthlessness/diffidence of this approach, with the idea that it is fine to do something non-traditional until we find out that it is in fact very dangerous for you, and you shouldn’t do traditional things that feel good and healing and effective until we put the stamp of our cynical approval on it. Your point-of-view is biased in the extreme toward the paradigm you have bought into. You make no note in your post of the many Traditional Healers who are in fact qualified, effective, well informed healers. Western <Non-Traditional Experimental Drug Medicine is far more dangerous and imbalanced and unholistic a therapy than Traditional Healing has ever been. Now, who’s the quack again? – "All other creatures look into the Open with their whole eyes. But our eyes, turned inward, are set all around it like snares, trapping its way out to freedom." -Ranier Marie Rilke
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Well, I work for a drug company, so I’m probably one of those "spies" you’re talking about. I must not be doing much of a job sneaking around, though, because here I am out in the open. Was everyone supposed to be surprised at the thought of "establishment" medical types reading this group?
I am a pharmacist and could also be considered to a member of the "medical establishment". Why do I subscribe to this newsgroup? It’s so that I can learn something and also, hopefully, contribute back some of my knowledge and experience. Not everything that we "established" types do can be considered to be "medically traditional". For example, I recommend using vitamin E or castor oil for removing warts before ever considering using the more traditional treatments of cutting, burning, or caustic chemicals. But at the same time, I also can’t sit on the sidelines and allow somebody to recommend a non-traditional or alternative remedy that is obviously wrong or even dangerous. An example of this might be using any medication in potentially toxic doses. It’s this exchange of information, ideas, and experiences that makes a group like this work. — Patrick Crawford Snail Mail: 13 Fountain Dr. phone: (902) 894-8095 (home) Canada C1A 6L9 (902) 894-8553 (work)
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Found this over on sci.med:<<
I have read many attacks on allopathic medicine here in misc.health.alternative that the poster was too afraid to put in sci.med….it seems it goes both ways.
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Hey guys, if you’re gonna make claims that you can’t back up, you’re gonna get flamed! Particularly if you promote stuff that has basically been discredited. And you deserve it! If you want to go onto a skeptics group and stir things up, go right ahead. Frankly, I think the pot over at sci.skeptics, alt.paranet.skeptic and misc.skeptics could DEFINATELY use some controversy. The posts have been getting SO BORING that I don’t feel like following ‘em. I don’t like flame wars (and I would like to know where the jerk who flamed TCM unmercefully posted. If he’s from the skeptic side, well it’s OBVIOUS that he hasn’t read the papers on TCM. This guy DESERVES to be flamed. If he said the same garbage in a skeptics area, I’d flame him. If he got to be too much of a pain in the but, I have other rather interesting ways to make life miserable. However, I just prefer posting rebuttals. And alot of people DO come here because they’ve been jerked around by their doctors who acted like experts but weren’t, got bad advise (like this guy’s daughter did), intuitively (and skeptically) questioned it and started asking around. –The anonymous skeptic/cynic from MIT
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Found this over on sci.med:
[quoted article on the value of skepticism deleted] A "spy"? You think people should not hear all sides of a discussion, only the enthusiast’s sales pitch? It’s a poor claim indeed which can’t stand a little scrutiny.
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Roth (816)995-3767) writes:
<long copied post deleted Well, I work for a drug company, so I’m probably one of those "spies" you’re talking about. I must not be doing much of a job sneaking around, though, because here I am out in the open. Was everyone supposed to be surprised at the thought of "establishment" medical types reading this group? Derek Lowe "For every problem there’s a clear, obvious solution that’s totally wrong"
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