The Non-Woo of Real Medicine

[Badly Shaved Monkey]

Here is an interesting piece to show your woo friends. It demonstrates how responsible medical practitioners are able to accept objective scrutiny and adjust their views if the objective data contradict their previous opinions. You can still detect the existence of vested interests and subjective opinion, but the point is that a sensible evidence-based debate can be had.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/6061652.stm

Particularly striking is the quote from Michael Baum;

"Michael Baum, professor of surgery at University College London who set up one of England's first screening programme in 1987, told the Daily Telegraph: "This latest evidence shifts the balance even further towards harm and away from benefits. If this report stands up, the NHS screening programme should be referred to the National Institute for health and Clinical Excellence to decide whether it should be closed down.""

This is how real medicine works. Unlike the bizarre cult-member behaviour of the homeopaths and their ilk whose reaction to scrutiny is to invent excuses as to why scrutiny itself is inapplicable.

[Bowser]

Fortunately homeopathy is there to help those who are utterly failed by allopathic medicine.

[fls]

Fortunately homeopathy is there to help those who are utterly failed by allopathic medicine.

What sort of failures are you thinking of?

Linda

[wollery]

Fortunately homeopathy is there to help those who are utterly failed by allopathic medicine.By giving them magical water that has been show to have no effect beyond that expected from a placebo.

[Badly Shaved Monkey]

Fortunately homeopathy is there to help those who are utterly failed by allopathic medicine.

I'm not sure 'fortunately' is the word.

I don't think 'help' is the right word either. Did you mean 'fleece'? Yes. I'm sure you did.

Small point: if homeopathy did work, we wouldn't need anything else, so it wouldn't just be used by the confused and the chronically slightly unwell.

[Cuddles]

Worst article ever. There is no concern that women are being harmed.

But they also discovered it was diagnosing woman with breast cancer who would have survived without treatment

Notice this is not about false results, it is purely that some cancers don't kill people, but since we can't tell this yet we have to treat them as if they will.

The programme saves 1,400 lives every year. Women who are screened are also less likely to have a mastectomy than those who are not screened

So they save thousands of lives, but a few people might not have died anyway, or get a little bit upset and therefore all screening is evil. First the BBC promotes all kinds of utter ******** and now they attack legitimate medicine, despite all the evidence in the article agreeing that screening is good. If I'd had any respect for the BBC left they would have just lost it.

[fls]

Here is an interesting piece to show your woo friends. It demonstrates how responsible medical practitioners are able to accept objective scrutiny and adjust their views if the objective data contradict their previous opinions. You can still detect the existence of vested interests and subjective opinion, but the point is that a sensible evidence-based debate can be had.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/6061652.stm


Honestly, that's not a very good article to choose. First of all, journalists rarely do a decent job reporting on scientific issues. In order to serve as a model, I would choose to reference the Cochrane review directly (http://www.mrw.interscience.wiley.com/cochrane/clsysrev/articles/CD001877/frame.html) or try to find a more knowledgeable source.

Second, the article gives the impression that medical practitioners are willing to let some women die in order to avoid causing some other women anxiety. Does that make any sense to you? Doesn't that suggest that the author of that article somehow got it wrong?

Part of the problem with these discussions is that it is usually a made-up issue born of ignorance that is discussed. I understand your intentions, but articles like that do nothing to help that problem.

Linda

[Badly Shaved Monkey]

Okaaayy...

The point I was making was to show that real medicine can engage in this kind of debate.

As to the particulars of the topic, I think the point is that the morbidity and mortality of unnecessary treatment needs to be set against the morbidity and mortality saved by the screening, and that what was being said, hence the suggestion for a referral to NICE.

This is from the Cochrane review itself;

"This means that for every 2000 women invited for screening throughout 10 years, one will have her life prolonged. In addition, 10 healthy women, who would not have been diagnosed if there had not been screening, will be diagnosed as breast cancer patients and will be treated unnecessarily."

I'm not sure how that matches with the headline figure of "1,400 lives saved each year"

[fls]

Okaaayy...

The point I was making was to show that real medicine can engage in this kind of debate.

I don't get the impression that showing evidence that the various mantras are untrue ("Physicians treat the symptoms, not the cause", "Nutrition isn't taught in medical school") makes any real difference. Objective evidence obviously doesn't mean the same thing to the people you are aiming this at as it does to you and me . And I notice the capacity to make stuff up far exceeds our capacity to counteract it, anyway.

Like I said before, I understand your intention, but I have come to realize, after years of trying this approach, that it is not effective.

Linda

[ponderingturtle]

I'm not sure 'fortunately' is the word.


Of course it is fortunate, it relieves them of excess cash, thus lightening their wallet, and we all know losing weight is good right?

[Eos of the Eons]

Fortunately homeopathy is there to help those who are utterly failed by allopathic medicine.
:rolleyes:


The sarcasm thread can be found under "community"

[Deetee]

My memory tells me that this Goetzcth chappy has published a Cochrane review of this a couple of years ago, when exactly the same points were raised and discussed about possible harm to women.

Is this actually based on any new data??

I've no time to double check now, but will try later. This sounds reminiscent of a Labour propaganda type exercise, where they announce new but identical initiatives or pretend they are providing new funding for something each year.


ETA - a quick search found these:
http://www.abc.net.au/science/news/stories/s394891.htm
http://www.epicentro.iss.it/1/problemi/tumori/commenti.pdf

I see this was 7 years ago, not "a couple".
Ahhh.... How time flies when you are enjoying yourself.

Also found this
http://www.update-software.com/Abstracts/AB001877.htm
which seems to be the same review updated from 2001 with a different coauthor.
Is the latest update based on new data?

[fls]

My memory tells me that this Goetzcth chappy has published a Cochrane review of this a couple of years ago, when exactly the same points were raised and discussed about possible harm to women.

Is this actually based on any new data??

As far as I can tell, it is not. The report is listed as an update. And it mentions the identical number of studies and participants, with identical RR's (compared to the 2001 report). What is different is the conclusion, with a change in emphasis and wording to concede an effect on breast cancer mortality, but now more of a fuss wrt false positives. That is, the information extracted from the studies is unchanged, but the conclusions to be drawn from the information and the concerns to be emphasized have changed.

I have to admit that I find the conclusions for both reviews almost bizarrely biased. It isn't something that I expect to see from a Cochrane review. And it further emphasizes my concern that the lay-practice of presenting the authors' *conclusions* as the *results* often misleads.

Linda