Be Excellent To Each Other

There has of course been a rather famous libel case in this country in the very recent past, the history to which began with the claims by chiropractic practitioners that they could treat children for colic, ear infections, asthma, prolonged crying, and sleeping and feeding conditions by manipulating their spines. I'm also sure I read about them claiming they could CURE AUTISM.

This was not just rogue chiropracters, it was also their "official" body, the British Association of Chiropractictyityityity or whatever they call themselves. If you've got a sore back chiropractic practitioners may be able to crunch bones well on occasion, but they sign up to a frankly bonkers belief system with it. It was invented by a magnet therapist, convicted of practising medicine without a licence, who suddenly decided in 1895 that 95% of all diseases are caused by displaced vertebrae, and compared himself to Christ, Muhammad and Martin Luther.

I'd rather go to a physio or an osteopath.

I went to an osteopath when I hurt my lower back last year. He made me strip to my pants.

I still don't know why.

He has a thing for big heads.

My pants were too baggy for that

So, in summary:

Homeopathy - utter bunkum
Natural 'remedies' - many can be effective, but the 'hows and whys' are poorly understood, and hence can be unsafe
Chiropractic - Can be useful for some things, but has a tedency to stray well beyond its remit

And for JC, foods containing items that are important to our diet are, of course, perfectly sensible.

Sounds like you need a good chiropractor, chap.

(Seriously, that's a fine post there, Lave, but I think there are a number of misunderstandings of where I'm coming from in all this, although you do make some pertinent points and valid criticisms in my opinion. Can I come back to you in the next day or two? A tad busy right now. )

I'd opine 'highly dubious and likely misunderstood' rather than 'total bunkum', personally.

In what possible way is giving people water instead of medicine misunderstood by modern science?

Raincheck mate, but personally I'm reluctant to totally rubbish something as 100% bunkum that has, for whatever reason, withstood the test of time to a large extent and many people find useful - including the NHS, it would appear. (At least, they're happy to fund it, as are private medical insurance companies).

However, I didn't start this thread to have a row about homeopathy; it's not as though I am particularly a proponent of it or anything.

Also, here's a perfect example of my point regarding alternative remedies - it's from Cancer Research UK, about Laetrile, which is what started this conversation:



Note that the original link doesn't mention any of these important precautions at all.

Even by its own description of its "medicines", what you get in a bottle of homeopathic remedy is pure water. Unless we're suggesting that water can cure X Y and Z, then it's classic placebo.

I'd heard about the homeopathic hospital in London which is part of the NHS - not quite sure how that came to be, but I do remember seeing it on one of Dawkin's things and all the proper doctors were very upset that these people were given money.

Dehydration.

Good work, sir.

That was essentially the 'fair point' I was talking about. Whilst my linking that site was entirely well meaning and I further caveated it by saying I had no idea whether effective etc., I do take this point on board. (But there again, you'd have to be doing pretty well to eat 50-60 raw apricot stones; many foods or other natural substances become lethal at very high dosages, afterall).

[quote="Captain Caveman"]That was essentially the 'fair point' I was talking about. Whilst my linking that site was entirely well meaning and I further caveated it by saying I had no idea whether effective etc., I do take this point on board.quote]

Yeah, I wasn't really arguing further, it was just that I'd found an exact example of my main point that referred directly to the original discussion point.

You appear to have missed out a "sometimes".

Based on the dilution amounts, 1 bottle in x000 will have a single molecule of the active ingredient - I think that is statistically insignificant enough to miss out the 'sometimes'.

Aren't they sometimes pure sugar pills or pure water/alcohol mix?

They don't dilute everything in the same way though, do they?

Not sure I have, no. "Homeopathy", as invented by Samuel Hahnemann is about giving highly diluted preparations to treat patients, on the rather insane basis that the dilution increases its efficacy, and the progressive dilution results in none of the stuff being left in there.

I have learned something new today. Carry on.

Indeed - the great insane idea behind it is the more you dilute it, the more effective it is.

Homeopathy banned for pets for not working

If it isn't considered effective for Fido, I wouldn't give it to a human.

Homeopaths are cunts, just like mediums, preying on the weak when they most need reassurance and proper medicine.

It can work though - true, perhaps only as a placebo effect, but the end result is the same.

/that phrase I can't remember about arguing the opposite point for fun

The placebo effect obviously doesn't work on animals, so one can see why it wouldn't exactly be recommended for them. Has no bearing on its suitability for humans though.

No, it doesn't.



Mr Chris.

I don't give much for alternative medicine. However, real doctors don't always fill me with much confidence, either. For decades now, they seem to have been prescribing medicine with no discernible effect beyond placebo, despite same drugs having horrible side effects in some people.

In fact, the entire history of of psychiatry seems to consist of finding fantastical cures by exposing "sick brains" to random treatments (oh! electricity has been invented! let's try that!) and looking for magical effects. Brrrrr.

Yes, I alluded to this earlier. If you're going to take a random drug and feel like it's doing some good anyway, it may as well be something plant based which seems harmless.

Other than in the cases already mentioned where it has been harmful

But for every "St John's Wort made it worse" incident there's probably a similar "SSRI uptake inhibitors made it a LOT worse"?

Eh?

'No better than a placebo' is different from 'operating through the placebo effect'. It's better wording, and, when it comes to shit like this, saying the former is a better phrase to use, as it removes any attempt to show that homeopathy has an actual effect.

And homeopathy can operate through the placebo effect.

Let's not go around shouting about the placebo effect when we can use spontaneous recovery and fluctuating symptoms instead.

Using words like 'placebo effect' panders to these charlatons peddling their snake oil, refined from the hopes and dreams of the people that believed them and then died from using it.

I really want someone in a white coat to tell me that jelly babies will cure the common cold, and strong porters will deal with the rest.

Also, let's sink a drink to Lilly the Pink, the saviour of the human race. For she invented medicinal compounds...

So, hang on - are you saying there's no such thing?

Lydia Pinkham, of course, did sell medicine that gave relief from period pains, and many, many other things.
It was alcohol.

No, he's saying that "Homeopathy can be effective because of the placebo effect" is granting a legitimacy to homeopathy that it doesn't deserve. Instead, say "Placebos can be effective because of the Placebo effect. Homeopathy has no functionality above and beyond that of a placebo - see also ground up monkey poop tablets".

Ah right. That's also the point I was making, of course. If a placebo works because the person taking it believes in a bunch of lies, well then yay, right?

Yes, but in that case we know a fair bit about why SSRI uptake inhibitors can be harmful, know the likely chance, and in theory prescribe something that has a known likelihood of working.

Treatments for mental illness are a rather unfair comparison though, as science will happily hold its hands up and say that it doesn't know anywhere near as much about the brain compared to the rest of the body.

I'm saying that in the better investigations done by science, homeopathy fared worse than the placebo. Although there does exist some publication bias in these studies.

The placebo effect comes up a lot when homeopathy is discussed, which makes people think that homepathy can benefit the patient. I think that that is wrong, and is more of a product of poor understanding of such a thing than any notion of the efficacy of homepathy as a medicine.

But more often than not it doesn't work.

Say an drug X cures Y in 95% of cases.
Say the Placebo cures Y in 25% of the cases

Why would you use the placebo when it obviously doesn't work nearly as well as X?

What if the other 5% of drug X die in horrible pain, and the 75% in drug Y feel nothing?

And the Google Ad right in the middle of that article?

Superb.

Hm. I had a thunk. It's name is Prohibition (also Just Say No The War On Drugs).

To the families of the 1:20 that died I would say "We spent years researching and refining this drug to cure Y. We ran a battery of tests and used both animal models and clinical trials to avoid this sort of thing. Our research is based upon the mountain of knowledge that humanity has garned over the years regarding this sort of thing. Our rivals danced barefoot at midnight and threw their own faeces at the moon before giving their patient their product"

Didnt even wanna get involved here.
Too hard to even scrape the surface.
Suffice to say I beleive strongly in pharmaceutical compounds and the drug development industry.
All these BS remedies Id wager 99.99% dont do anything other than offer a placebo effect on something that was likely to go away anyhow.

If the resources wasted in researching this rubbish were put into genuine biological and chemical research we might one day start cracking some of the harder to beat battles (cancer, HIV, etc) but for the time being we can make do with cash being poured down the drain. God knows enough gets wasted with the best of intentions.

Re: Homeopathy, I cant understand why anyone would sincerely beleive that the less of something you give someone the better.
Naturally, pharmaceuticals have a generally accepted working therapeutic dose, which is calculated based on empirical evidence and much toxicology work, and yes, sometimes less is more when reaching the required dose, but not ever diminishing amounts.

‘Withstood the test of time’ and ‘Won't go away’ aren't even remotely the same, you know

Hah. Yes, quite.

Most people have already raised the same objections I would say. I would like to add that if you think modern pharma is anything like alternative medicine, have a skim though In The Pipeline and ask yourself if alternative medicine vendors do anything like this much research or examination of their products and methods.

Generally, it's not hard to find peer-reviewed studies under controlled conditions of most herbal remedies. If it's not biologically active, then it can't work beyond the placebo affect. If it is biologically active, then "natural" be fucked; I'd like to have some controlled dosimetry in the stuff I am taking please.

Oh, and chiropractors are mental and I cannot fathom anyone who doesn't dismiss homeopathy out-of-hand.

Oh, and Cavey, you're some sort of audio engineer by day, right? What is your opinion of things like this (note $3k/m) and this or any of these then? (Ben Goldacre has a good discussion.)

Edit -- or my favourite example -- a What Hi-Fi review (that I cannot locate online sadly) of a £70 USB cable that, if used to copy mp3 files over to your external player with, would make them sound better when played back. How about that?

Did I hear somewhere that if Aspirin was submitted to the FDA as a new drug, it would be rejected for having too many side effects?

Okay. It's time for me to pass thought on all of this. I didn't have time yesterday due to the Wii, but today I do.

I worked selling natural product for over three years. We were trained to watch the infomercials and had to attend training seminars. I have had first hand experience with the douchebags who make and market these products, and have had to witness the shitstorm that can kick off due to them.

Now I have no problem with 'health enhancing' natural products. Vitamins, supplements (if you need them of course) and fibre formulas. However, the sad truth is that they are not made and marketted in this way and are usually sold to people using any means possible.

As a quick example to that before I outline some serious problems with these products is.

We had a product in once that was a powdered all natural formula. Obviously being natural these products are not governed by the FDA (food & drug admin). This means that people can put a few natural bits and bobs into a sachet and then use the most vile underhand tactics possible in order to get people to buy them. So yes, going back to this product. It was nothing more than a few vitamins in powder form. All of them were good things, all apart from the way they were marketted.

The informercial (both radio and television) spent twenty minutes warning people of their certain impending doom when the bird flu epidemic hit. This product, supposedly, could help to prevent bird flu* (*add disclaimer here) and would keep you healthy. The only problem was bird flu had not even been found in humans. So bad was this informercial that I simply refused to sell the product and got written up for it. Thankfully it wasn't long before the complaints poured in and the product was pulled. However, our 'bread and butter' products came from Irwin Naturals. This is a company owned and ran by a rather greasy slimeball by the name of Klee Irwin. When I began working for our company I decided to research Mr Irwin and it seems he had been to court on numerous occasion and closed down as a company for selling things he should not have. One of the products he used to sell was called Triple Action Joint Formula. This 'formula' weighed in and $110 per bottle on an autoship programme. Our commercials stated that this was an all natural formula. When people recieved it and read the label however they soon discovered that whilst it contained many wonderful things (condroitin and so on) that it also contained paracetemol. Mr Irwin paid an enormous fine and then simply started up shop under a different name (a loophole in the US law).

By far the worst quackery however was the main product we sold, Dual action cleanse.

http://www.dualactioncleanse.com/

Please take the time to have a look around that website. Now with this product it was claimed that it could improve bowel movements. It was also claimed that it was an all natural formula (which was pretty much true) that did not contain laxatives and did not 'liquify' the stool. What it didn't mention, however, was that one of the ingredients was cascara sagrada. Info here.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cascara_Sagrada



Which of course leads us to a big problem. Some of the people buying this product were not buying it because they were bunged up or constipated. They bought it because they had diarreah which our informercial had convinced them was down to parasites and bacteria in their intestines. Needless to say lots of people ended up in hospital suffering from dehydration and blood in their stools.

It also went on. The product (DAC) also caused heart conditions. However, whilst we knew this we were not allowed to tell a customer about it unless they specifically asked the EXACT question.

As an example - "I am pregnant and lactating, can I take this product?" we would have to answer no, or, dodge it by saying "Take the bottle to your doctor and show it to him".

Or, "I suffer with high blood pressure, can I take it" - See the scripted answer above. Now of course the reason we were trained to do this was because our product was automatic shipment. One that cost $70 or so a month to take on, and, was close to impossible to cancel. People would get all of the excuses under the sun. "Sorry, our systems are down, please call later" or simply could not get through.

The biggest problem with natural products is why they are sold.

They are sold because they do not need regulating. They are not formulated by doctors, just some entrepeneur (sic) who has nothing else in mind but to make money. None of them are doctors, they simply hire one to be in their informercials and usually dress them in a white doctor's coat to fool you into thinking they are completely safe. They are not. Out of the entire work force who took these products (I told them to fuck off) a good 30% spent two days in bed with terrible cramps and diarreah.

And then we get to the bottom line, the price.

I used to work nightshifts. This meant that the building was pretty much empty and void of all of our high up staff. Now me being me I would snoop around in office rooms. The above product (DAC) cost 40 cents to make. That included the bottle, box and booklet. It was sold for $69.90 on autoship..

And now for the final part of this.

We held a seminar once with Klee Irwin about his wonderful new product designed for diabetics to help reduce blood sugar levels. It was mostly cinnamon bark.

http://www.herbalremedies.com/blood-sug ... ement.html

Note it is no longer for sale. Any way, at this seminar when the product was first announced we were being videotaped for an infomercial. We were all forced to wear Tshirts with the name of the product on and as the filming went on we were urged to clap and so forth on command. I just sat there bored out of my fucking skull, right up to the point we were asked "Do you have any questions?". And hey, you know old JC, that's an invitation to open the floodgates. So, I asked Klee Irwin to explain to us exactly how this product worked in a scientific manner. He said "Good question !" before pausing for a while and then saying "Does my hair look OK?" and looking over to the makeup artist before saying "OK that's a wrap, I want to thank every one for coming !"

I quit a week later.