Water does not prevent dehydration......

[One Brow]

As usual, babe can't seem to distinguish me from some demon in his mind. I have no interest in telling other people how to live. I do think that people should not have to devote three hours of research into every fifteen-minute interaction with a doctor, just to be safe. You are not protecting people by forcing them to use their own learning to research medicine, especially when their learning are in fields that are not at all medically related. You are throwing them to the wolves. It's not as if we've never had societies with medicine men and a complete lack of medical standards. Such societies were the norm over most of the world for most of history. We created our medical beauracracy as a response to the horrors its lack unleashed.

I don't think governments are particularly compassionate nor competant, but they can provide minimals level of both when the people running the government are interested in so doing. A society with strict construction codes will see fewer house fires and less corporate pollution. A society with strict medical codes will have healthier people per dollar spent. The only liberal thing about it is recognizing that we all impact society with our decisions. If I build my house with substandard conditions, and it catches fire, the whole community is endangered, and the whole community pays to have it put out. If I see some quack and my preventable illness gets worse, I use more sick days at work, and this affects my coworkers and my business's owners. Humans have been living in regulated groups since well before historical times, because we are the sorts of social animals that form interdependent societies.

Your continued, ignorant blather about the nature and purposes of public education is quite offensive, frankly. My parents were both full-time teachers, both sought to inculcate critical thinking as well as class material, both loved the ideals that shaped out country, both believed in liberty and creating self-aware people. As shocking as this may be, you can instill these values without teaching Latin or Greek.

I agree the caseloads of medical professionals are too large. This is the result of market forces on healthcare, the market forces you want to unleash to an even greater degree.If you really want an hour of a doctors time, feel free to pull a grand out of your wallet. Sure, that's three weeks wages for some people, but what the heck? Free markets rule!

The AMA works in a variety of ways to help lower health care costs, but the primary drivers of health care cost increases in this country are (in no particular order) the use of increasingly expensive treatment protocols for otherwise untreatable diseases, technological advancements, an aging population, and the increase in maintenance treatments. Which of those do you think the AMA controls? Your answer is to allow the purveyors of coffee enemas to make the same medical claims as purveyors of chemotherapy (more likely, the purveyors of coffee enemas will make stronger claims, that's what quacks have done in the past). I don't see how spending 10% of the cost to get 0% of the effectiveness is a good strategy, but if people see them be advertised as being equally effective, they will believe it. I'm just not heartless enough to allow people to die because they lack the time or ability to carefully research such decisions.

Scare tactics, fear-mongering, and exploiting ignorance are the very tactics you are using. If you want to dispose of them, I suggest you work on the plank in your own eye. I agree more education is better. If you have a suggestion for a way to separate caqpable professional caregivers from incapable caregivers that is not already alvailable, let's hear it. Right now, your demogoguing and proposing solutions that worsen the problem, instead of improving it.

 

[babe]

As usual, babe can't seem to distinguish me from some demon in his mind. I have no interest in telling other people how to live. I do think that people should not have to devote three hours of research into every fifteen-minute interaction with a doctor, just to be safe. You are not protecting people by forcing them to use their own learning to research medicine, especially when their learning are in fields that are not at all medically related. You are throwing them to the wolves. It's not as if we've never had societies with medicine men and a complete lack of medical standards. Such societies were the norm over most of the world for most of history. We created our medical beauracracy as a response to the horrors its lack unleashed.

I don't think governments are particularly compassionate nor competant, but they can provide minimals level of both when the people running the government are interested in so doing. A society with strict construction codes will see fewer house fires and less corporate pollution. A society with strict medical codes will have healthier people per dollar spent. The only liberal thing about it is recognizing that we all impact society with our decisions. If I build my house with substandard conditions, and it catches fire, the whole community is endangered, and the whole community pays to have it put out. If I see some quack and my preventable illness gets worse, I use more sick days at work, and this affects my coworkers and my business's owners. Humans have been living in regulated groups since well before historical times, because we are the sorts of social animals that form interdependent societies.

Your continued, ignorant blather about the nature and purposes of public education is quite offensive, frankly. My parents were both full-time teachers, both sought to inculcate critical thinking as well as class material, both loved the ideals that shaped out country, both believed in liberty and creating self-aware people. As shocking as this may be, you can instill these values without teaching Latin or Greek.

I agree the caseloads of medical professionals are too large. This is the result of market forces on healthcare, the market forces you want to unleash to an even greater degree.If you really want an hour of a doctors time, feel free to pull a grand out of your wallet. Sure, that's three weeks wages for some people, but what the heck? Free markets rule!

The AMA works in a variety of ways to help lower health care costs, but the primary drivers of health care cost increases in this country are (in no particular order) the use of increasingly expensive treatment protocols for otherwise untreatable diseases, technological advancements, an aging population, and the increase in maintenance treatments. Which of those do you think the AMA controls? Your answer is to allow the purveyors of coffee enemas to make the same medical claims as purveyors of chemotherapy (more likely, the purveyors of coffee enemas will make stronger claims, that's what quacks have done in the past). I don't see how spending 10% of the cost to get 0% of the effectiveness is a good strategy, but if people see them be advertised as being equally effective, they will believe it. I'm just not heartless enough to allow people to die because they lack the time or ability to carefully research such decisions.

Scare tactics, fear-mongering, and exploiting ignorance are the very tactics you are using. If you want to dispose of them, I suggest you work on the plank in your own eye. I agree more education is better. If you have a suggestion for a way to separate caqpable professional caregivers from incapable caregivers that is not already alvailable, let's hear it. Right now, your demogoguing and proposing solutions that worsen the problem, instead of improving it.

No demons here. You're the one who characterizes acupuncture as 0% effective. I've never mentioned it, or tried it. I've heard some reports on how it has worked. That's "anecdotal" evidence, but I see no reason to tell anyone not to try it. I have heard of some medical doctors who use alternative strategies sometimes.

You're the one who characteriszed supplements as ineffective, but there is actually quite a lot of evidence out there, including some double-blind clinical trials. . . . which also find placebos better than no treatment at all. I worked on designing chemotherapeutic agents, the so-called magic bullet that will kill cancer but not cancer patients. I could tell you quite a bit about how they work and what their side effects are.

In researching the literature on cancer I ran across reports done by scientists that don't run with the pack so to speak. I saw how some of these leads died because of actual suppression from pharmaceutical interests. If you can't patent it and won't sell it to the majors, it just doesn't go anywhere, whether it works or not. Established interests have proven to me that they are not working for us.

I see the move towards suppressing information as an unmitigated evil. You assume that the experts are always right, and you are willing to let them make the rules. As things are, pharmaceuticals have a lot of clout through big donations to major universities, endowed chairs and such, and clout with major medical journals as well. They are the standard-makers of the status quo. That needs to be changed.

You could look a little more carefully at what I actually say sometimes and try to distinguish between me and those demons in your own mind.

 

[One Brow]

babe,

Acupuncture has been tested in in blinded clincal trials. It works no betters than a placebo. Anything that only works like a placebo is 0% effective. In general, the reason an alternative medicine is alternative is because it does not work. If it worked, it would just be medicine. For example, eating vegetables ,ad limiting portion sizes is prescribed by family doctors because it works, not because Big Pharma has a stake in the farm commodities market. Walking three-four miles a day is recommended because it works, not because big Pharma has shares in Nike. diet and exercise are medicine because they affect health positively, acupuncture is not medicine because it does not.

A placebo *is* no treatment. It's a sham, a lie, designed to fool a patient into thinking there is a treatment. It turns out that when patients think they are being treated, they feel better even though their medical condition does not change. Placebos are used in clincal trials to help differentiate between the effect of feeling better just from belief, and actual effects of the medicine. Every participant in a clincal trial is supposed to understand at the beginning they may be receiving a placebo. However, if you know it's a placebo, there is no placebo effect. It's irresponsible for a doctor receiving pay from a patient to lie to them by giving them a placebo, and why would you want your doctor to lie to you?

In all my reading, I have never heard chemotherapy described as a magic bullet. The more common term is selective poison.

No one's information is being suppressed. At worst, it's ignored because it doesn't look likely to lead to anything, but no one is stopping quacks from promoting their therapies. They just can claim it has medicinal value. By all means, discuss some of these effective protocals that have been "suppressed". Let's have a good, long look at them. Show us where individual research into therapies, sans the licensing process, will lead.

I assume "experts" are wrong somewhat less often than amatuers. That does not mean always right. However, my understanding is that much of the pure research on pharmaceutical is funded by the NIH and similar governmental organizations, which funding is overseen by scientists not employed by pharaceutical companies, and the the pharmaceutical companies typically get involved when a drug looks promising enough that it justifies investment. In general, testing unproven drugs is a huge money drain. IIRC, TheItinerantSon could say more on the subject than I can.

If you feel I am not addressing what you say, please point out what you think I ahve overlooked. Note that disputing a point is not overlooking it. If you feel I have mischaracterized you, please point out how. Otherwise, return my comment about demons amounts to school-boy taunting.

 

[LogGrad98]

I googled acupuncture just for fun and found this article. Sounds like it is not as cut and dried as it seems.

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/glenn-d-braunstein-md/evaluating-the-clinical-e_b_758343.html

In another study, researchers used "sham" acupuncture controls entirely and compared it to the drug Effexor for relieving hot flashes in breast cancer patients. They found that acupuncture relieved hot flashes as effectively as the drug and with fewer side effects, namely the lack of energy and reduced sex drive.

So which is it? Does acupuncture work or not? Or does it work if you think it works? While some findings support acupuncture's efficacy, especially for post-operative or chemotherapy-induced nausea and vomiting and post-operative dental pain, others posit that its clinical effectiveness depends mainly on a placebo response.

Over the past decade, integrative care has become an accepted element of treatment at many major medical institutions and part of traditional academic curriculums. It combines conventional Western medicine with holistic treatments like acupuncture, massage, biofeedback, yoga and stress reduction techniques to treat the whole person, not just a disease.

I have no idea if it works or not. I know that my aunt received acupressure and acupuncture treatments for about 4 years due to severe RA, and she has not used medication to manage her disease in over 5 years post-treatment, whereas before she was almost crippled by the disease and could barely stand let alone walk. Now she walks a mile every day and does all kinds of stuff she couldn't do before, including driving and tying her shoes. Does that mean it worked for her or her disease simply went into remission (her doctor's explanation) or it was all in her head to begin with? I have no idea, but it sure is interesting.

 

[One Brow]

well, the thread would not be complete without a post from that wretched hive of scum and quackery known as The Huffington Post.

Sham acupuncture is basically like taking toothpicks and twirling them on random points of your skin. If you want to be poked with toothpicks at random places, I'm sure there will be no shortage of volunteers.

 

[LogGrad98]

Author sounds legit to me:

Dr. Glenn Braunstein is professor and chairman of the Department of Medicine at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center where he holds the James R. Klinenberg Chair in Medicine. Board certified in Internal Medicine and Endocrinology, Diabetes and Metabolism, Dr. Braunstein also serves as the Director of the Thyroid Cancer Center at Cedars-Sinai. He is the recipient of numerous awards including the prestigious Distinguished Physician Award of the Endocrine Society, Mastership in the American College of Physicians and was named “Master of Medicine—Top Endocrinologist” by the Los Angeles Business Journal. Los Angeles magazine also named him one of the best endocrinologists in L.A. His clinical and laboratory research interests are in male and female reproductive endocrinology, as well as in thyroid cancer.

Dr. Braunstein received his M.D. degree from UC San Francisco, followed by residency in Internal Medicine at the Peter Bent Brigham Hospital, Harvard Medical School in Boston. He completed his endocrinology training at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Md. and Harbor General Hospital-UCLA in Los Angeles.

 

[LogGrad98]

I don't know, are these any better?

In a similar study, acupuncture was compared with the beta-1-selective beta blocker metoprolol (Selo-Zok®; Hässle AB, Mölndal, Sweden), which is a well-known drug. The side effects of both regimens were also compared. After a 4-week run-in period, 77 patients were randomly allocated to one of two groups. Group A received acupuncture plus placebo pills, while group B received 100 mg of metoprolol per day plus placebo stimulation. Treatments for both groups lasted for 17 weeks. The results from the data show that while both groups show significant reduction in migraine attacks at posttreatment, the side effects experienced from acupuncture were considerably lower than side effects from the drug. Fourteen patients in the metoprolol group had side effects while only three patients had side effects in the acupuncture group. The side effects of the drug were mainly fatigue, dizziness, and gastrointestinal discomfort. The side effects of acupuncture consisted of two cases of nausea and one case of euphoria. The study concluded that acupuncture should be considered as an alternative to drug taking (Hesse, Mogelvang & Simonsen, 1994).

https://www.vanderbilt.edu/ans/psychology/health_psychology/Acupuncture.htm

However, promising results have emerged, for example, efficacy of acupuncture in adult post-operative and chemotherapy nausea and vomiting and in postoperative dental pain. There are other situations such as addiction, stroke rehabilitation, headache, menstrual cramps, tennis elbow, fibromyalgia, myofascial pain, osteoarthritis, low back pain, carpal tunnel syndrome, and asthma for which acupuncture may be useful as an adjunct treatment or an acceptable alternative or be included in a comprehensive management program. Further research is likely to uncover additional areas where acupuncture interventions will be useful.

https://consensus.nih.gov/1997/1997acupuncture107html.htm

That is what I could find in a cursory google search. To me it seems there is enough evidence to cast shades of gray on the black and white.

 

[babe]

babe,

Acupuncture has been tested in in blinded clincal trials. It works no betters than a placebo. Anything that only works like a placebo is 0% effective. In general, the reason an alternative medicine is alternative is because it does not work. If it worked, it would just be medicine. For example, eating vegetables ,ad limiting portion sizes is prescribed by family doctors because it works, not because Big Pharma has a stake in the farm commodities market. Walking three-four miles a day is recommended because it works, not because big Pharma has shares in Nike. diet and exercise are medicine because they affect health positively, acupuncture is not medicine because it does not.

A placebo *is* no treatment. It's a sham, a lie, designed to fool a patient into thinking there is a treatment. It turns out that when patients think they are being treated, they feel better even though their medical condition does not change. Placebos are used in clincal trials to help differentiate between the effect of feeling better just from belief, and actual effects of the medicine. Every participant in a clincal trial is supposed to understand at the beginning they may be receiving a placebo. However, if you know it's a placebo, there is no placebo effect. It's irresponsible for a doctor receiving pay from a patient to lie to them by giving them a placebo, and why would you want your doctor to lie to you?

In all my reading, I have never heard chemotherapy described as a magic bullet. The more common term is selective poison.

No one's information is being suppressed. At worst, it's ignored because it doesn't look likely to lead to anything, but no one is stopping quacks from promoting their therapies. They just can claim it has medicinal value. By all means, discuss some of these effective protocals that have been "suppressed". Let's have a good, long look at them. Show us where individual research into therapies, sans the licensing process, will lead.

I assume "experts" are wrong somewhat less often than amatuers. That does not mean always right. However, my understanding is that much of the pure research on pharmaceutical is funded by the NIH and similar governmental organizations, which funding is overseen by scientists not employed by pharaceutical companies, and the the pharmaceutical companies typically get involved when a drug looks promising enough that it justifies investment. In general, testing unproven drugs is a huge money drain. IIRC, TheItinerantSon could say more on the subject than I can.

If you feel I am not addressing what you say, please point out what you think I ahve overlooked. Note that disputing a point is not overlooking it. If you feel I have mischaracterized you, please point out how. Otherwise, return my comment about demons amounts to school-boy taunting.

Here you go, One Brow. Enjoy the reading.

https://www.healthandhealingny.org/research/accu_clinical.asp

https://apps.who.int/medicinedocs/en/d/Js4926e/

Your statements regarding placebo could stand some correction. To be a placebo, there is a requirement that it appears the same as the treatment being tested in every way to the members of the the placebo cohort. To achieve a true "double-blind" test there is a requirement that neither the doctor/nurse/personnel administering the treatment, nor the subject of the treatment, has any way to know it is in fact a placebo. So a placebo is simply an attempt to establish true control conditions for comparing the efficacy of the medicine. In regard to acupuncture, some researchers have tried to use "sham accupuncture" meaning they don't hit the true accupuncture nodes, but it is impossible for a trained accupuncture practitioner to not know that. So if they want a true double-blind test of accupuncture, you have to train some practitioners for your study, but train them wrong. . . .wrong in some specific way believed to be ineffective. . . .

I could attempt to respond to other items, but this is enough for now.

 

[babe]

OK, so the OP started out kinda fun talking about some EU officials who after serious study ruled that the statement "water prevents dehydration" is not to be allowed on the labels of bottled water, because as a specific medical claim it does not meet the new standard of truth. And of course, the ruling relies on guidelines established by an international conference of experts under the Codex Alimentarius program of the United Nations. The idea there is to establish firm rules for international trade so that products produced anywhere can be legally sold anywhere else in the world. Hence, it is to be applied even to products that may not be shipped across any border.

I have noted a few times that the UN in general is not an elected, representative form of government. There is no direct electoral vote on any UN organization, and it violates the American ideals of a representative republic the is directly controlled by the citizens. It also replaces, generally, the idea of inate human rights with various statements of government-established "rights", fundamentally altering the whole idea of who is in charge.

Rather than let various organized interest groups rule from on high, it is my argument that people can deal effectively with their choices without governance assemblies like those that produced the decision referred to in the OP. Most of us find it somewhat laughable that governing authorities need to make decisions about what can be allowed in print on any product. We once had a constitutional right to Freedom of the Press and Free Speech, as well as the fundamental right to assemble, petition government for redress of grievances, etc. The Codex Alimentarius program makes specific infringements on these rights, and is unconstitutional so far as the original intent of our founders would be concerned.

But above, in responding to One Brow, I even cite a WHO link that leaves the specific benefits of accupuncture held open to actual scientific validity in some ways.

Whether accupuncture is effective or not has little to do with my general point of view here. Actually, whether there is rampant medical fraud that needs government action is not really my point either. My point is how we have departed from an ideal of representative limited government by over a hundred years of progressive government claims and actions of top-down governance. One way to look at it is a trend towards specialization and professionalization, where "We The People" have allowed "experts" to decide a whole lot of things for us.

I don't think it's necessarily bad to do that, but what is bad about the way we have done it is that there has become an attitude of overlordieism that has developed in the process. Respect for human rights does not need to be trashed just to get experts to share their best efforts in our service. Government does not have to issue strict mandates to make sure we are all OK, or all equal, or all right. If they have some kind of a program, they can operate their program their way while leaving us free to choose. How about making Social Security and Obamacare elective things people can sign up and pay for, or not sign up for and keep their money.

How about it being elective for manufacturers to participate in trade/standard programs, maybe a nice little UN logo on their product if they comply, and whatever else they want to print if they so choose? Just so people know the standards that have been used, and are still free to buy what they want, whatever it is. Might be some market-driven price differentials if the UN program is sound, but no need to pay anyone to evaluate the claims of some witch doctor in Timbuktu with his 180-proof extract of lizard guts. Claims not Ta-a-a-a-r-r-u-u-e-e? Maybe we ought to start putting politicians in jail and bankrupting them for broken campaign promises first. People should be free to believe what they want as a precursor to deciding to actually get educated.


Why should we try to stop the inexorable forces of natural selection or survival of the least looserous. Do we really want idiots living long enough to spawn?

Take a look at the whole dog/parvo virus situation. Before we had veterinarians there was not an absolute requirement for parvo vaccines. Now we save all the dogs with immune deficiencies and they propagate the weakness. Nobody vaccinates the coyotes, and they are the only breed of dog that is thriving in the wild.

Blue-haired ladies weeping for their puppies aside, there is a larger consequence to global professional governance. It's a whole world of stupidity.

 

[DutchJazzer]

Idiots ruin the world.
allways stupid idiots who come up with some "great" idea that spoil it for the rest.
it's not only so with water dehydraton thingy.
but with everything else, why should the goverment protect idiots from themselves, let those idiots just die out.
if i am one of those idiots as some may label me that way. let life or evolution take care of me.

 

[DutchJazzer]

if someone is stupid enoug to believe in some magical healer who can heal cancer with just a massage, some needles, or some magical singing.
let them go and pay for that, if they believe in that ******** let them use it. they will die out. we dont need the government to protect the people from their own stupidity.

isnt it my repsonsiblity if i have a disease and for that disease i decide to go to some magical healer or a real doctor.

 

[One Brow]

Here you go, One Brow.

Your pages linked to acupuncture. In what way is acupuncture being suppressed?

Even then, your second source acknowledges this:

Since the methodology of clinical research on acupuncture is still under debate, it is very difficult to evaluate acupuncture practice by any generally accepted measure.

That is, there's no good way or reason to think it does anything.

Due to random chance, high interest, and publicaiton bias, I'm not at all surprised there are studies indicating acupunctutre is effective. However, the rate at repeating these results in larger studies is dismal,almost exactly what you would expect from chance if acupuncture had no effect.

I don't know the protocols of the studies using sham acupuncture. However, saying the providers knew the procedure was a placebo, yet having sham acupuncture still perform as well as regular acupuncture, is not a mark in favor of acupuncture.