debate@theTimes-alternative medicine

[Deetee]

The Times paper in UK published an extract recently from Professor Tallis' new book (he seems to talk a lot of sense). The most recent offering was on alternative medicine.

As usual, the Times invites reader responses - published in a different section called debate@thetimes.

As I correctly assumed, most of the responses were of the "it works - it did for me!" variety, with plently of anecdotes and testimonials.

I am not sure if the links work at the moment, but if not go to the Times' search page and input "alternative".

http://search.thetimes.co.uk/cgi-bin/ezk2srch?-aSTART#

I particularly liked the response entitled:

"Three times proven"

YES, I believe in alternative treatments. My life has been saved three times by homoeopathy, with various health problems cleared by a combination of nature cure and homoeopathy over a period of 50 years. In the Far East in 1964 I was infected by gonorrhoea which was treated with penicillin, but not all the symptoms disappeared. Back in the UK I went to my GP and other doctors, who seemed to think my problem was psychological, yet I began to feel worse and eventually felt suicidal.

Eventually, I went to a homoeopath who, using a pendulum, identified suppressed gonorrhoea. He prescribed a high-potency cure for the organism, with immediate and remarkable effects.

Some years later I had a successful diagnosis by a homoeopath of inherited tuberculosis of the bones, and later of avian tuberculosis. With treatment these were all cured although without such skilled diagnosis any of the three would, I know, have killed me.


These conditions (suppressed gonorrhoea and inherited TB of the bones) do not exist.

and just for Rolfe.......

"Pet pleaser"


I WOULD like to endorse alternative medicine for animals. My labrador smashed his femur after a hip relacement operation. He had it pinned, infection set in and the bone would not heal. Three months on, the screws were working loose and the vet wanted to remove his leg. I contacted an alternative vet and my dog had acupuncture, homoeopathy and crystals, and his bone healed.

He has also had reiki, bowen and healing and thoroughly enjoys it all. He is so relaxed and happy and seems to know we are trying to help him.

I would never advise anyone to seek a hip replacement for a dog but to treat the joint problem through diet, supplements and swimming.

Lorna Nicholson
lorna.nicholson@virgin.net

[Matabiri]

Quote:

Originally posted by Deetee
Back in the UK I went to my GP and other doctors, who seemed to think my problem was psychological, yet I began to feel worse and eventually felt suicidal.

"I felt suicidal. This proves it wasn't a psychological problem."? Eh?

Dah!

[Matabiri]

I also quite liked this one:

Quote:

COULD Professor Tallis comment on the following extract from the British Medical Journal, dated November 11, 2000: “More than five million people have been killed by Western medical practice in the past decade (Europe, USA, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand) and 20 million killed or permanently maimed. Put another way, the economic impact of deaths due to preventable medical error and deaths from properly researched, properly registered, properly prescribed and properly used drugs is approximately $1 trillion over the past decade.”

... and how many saved?

BTW: fixed link.

[Rolfe]

Quote:

Originally posted by Deetee
I would never advise anyone to seek a hip replacement for a dog but to treat the joint problem through diet, supplements and swimming.

Lorna Nicholson

Gee, thanks Deetee!

OK, Lorna Nicholson, on the basis of your experience of one (1) case, you are now qualified to give advice which is more reliable and better-founded than the advice of the vets treating the animals in question? Nice one.

Well why do any of us bother spending five years at vet school, student loans and tuition fees and then when you qualify it's nothing but CPD (continuing professional development) and lifelong learnng and the next thing will be revalidation....?

Oh I remember, it's because you're not legally allowed to give out advice like that unless you did.

<mode=rant>
It's all about validation by selected anecdote. You pick the case that supports your position, and preferably dress it up with a bit of human (or canine) interest - ".... and thoroughly enjoys it all. He is so relaxed and happy and seems to know we are trying to help him." Like good old Wim again, my daughter's cats are healthy on homoeopathy and for me that means no more needs to be said.

Of course it's perfectly easy to find equally heart-warming stories of recovery on conventional treatment (except that when you post these, H'pathy deletes the posts ), but these aren't news, are they. It's less easy to find the details of the cases where the alternative treatment didn't deliver the goods, because guess what, the alternative practitioners don't keep these records and the pet owners are usually reluctant to point the finger, and anyway that's just one case isn't it, you can't hold up one case to rubbish the entire system! (Why not, these guys seem to think that holding up one case is enough to validate the entire system.)

I've even heard the homoeopaths declare that it's the patients who get better that prove that it works, and the existence of patients who didn't get better, or (in a conrolled trial) of just as many patients in the control group who got better, is irrelevant.

I just don't think the general public is capable by itself of appreciating the need for studies where n = at least several dozen before you can say what is effective and what isn't. What percentage of dogs in that labrador's condition would have recovered without the amputation, either with no other treatment, or with the whole panoply of woo? Who knows?

It's just that a whole string of similar stories one after another can't help but be impressive. However, as BSM said, it's like the lottery winners' club. The people who "believe" and stick around, are the people who had the luck to have a recovery at the right moment. And they'll keep telling you that story even as subsequent trials of the same method progressively fail to impress. Like Xanta - she had one positive experience with homoeopathy, and even though nothing of any great note happened after that, for her that one experience validates everything and no amount of subsequent negative experience will change her mind.

I don't know how it's possible to curb the press's habit of giving publicity to these one-offs. Do I write and say I had homoeopathic treatment for acne when I was 13 and it didn't make a blind bit of difference? Would that have as much negative weight as the regular stories have positive weight? Would they even print it?
</mode>

Rolfe.

[BillHoyt]

"More than five million people have been killed by Western medical practice in the past decade (Europe, USA, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand) and 20 million killed..."

Which is he claiming? Five million or twenty?

[Benguin]

Quote:

Originally posted by Deetee
and just for Rolfe.......

"Pet pleaser"


I WOULD like to endorse alternative medicine for animals. My labrador smashed his femur after a hip relacement operation. He had it pinned, infection set in and the bone would not heal. Three months on, the screws were working loose and the vet wanted to remove his leg. I contacted an alternative vet and my dog had acupuncture, homoeopathy and crystals, and his bone healed.

He has also had reiki, bowen and healing and thoroughly enjoys it all. He is so relaxed and happy and seems to know we are trying to help him.

I would never advise anyone to seek a hip replacement for a dog but to treat the joint problem through diet, supplements and swimming.

Lorna Nicholson
lorna.nicholson@virgin.net

Grrrrrr. I just had tendon grafts because of joint problems, I still have mild arthritis caused by an extended period of dislocation and joint laxity.

I had constant woo-remedies recommended, the odd one or two I tried (for pain-relief). Trying to explain to these people that no medication or remedy or needle sticking or any kind of massage was going to change a basic mechanical fault. Splints or surgery. That's all.

Now I have an understanding well enough to know that, and I'm able to articulate myself. These woos not only exploit the credulous and the desperate, they exploit animals. It's cruel, it's immoral and it should be illegal.

Her dog got better (of its own accord), well that's great. Stating no-one should ever seek a hip-replacement for a dog is condemning many animals to years of suffering unnecessarily.

For what it's worth I don't believe that anecdote, in all these tales of woo-medicine providing miraculous cures when conventional has given up my first instinct is to seek verification of the medical professional's prognosis before the patient wandered off for acupuncture, crystals or rod-waving.

That's my rant .... Rolfe will be far less forgiving ...

[Benguin]

Quote:

Originally posted by Rolfe
I don't know how it's possible to curb the press's habit of giving publicity to these one-offs. Do I write and say I had homoeopathic treatment for acne when I was 13 and it didn't make a blind bit of difference? Would that have as much negative weight as the regular stories have positive weight? Would they even print it?
</mode>

Rolfe.

Maybe send them a little anecdote and press release everytime a patient is cured?

"My day of headache hell cured by miracle aspirin" together with numtie pictures of some sad no mark looking glum with hand on head and them smiling and laughing with a packet of soluble in one hand and a cloudy glass in the other.

1000 of those a week might put the woo stuff into some sort of perspective.


On the doggy tale, how is it possible for loose screws to tighten without surgery? I can see how a loose joint might tighten (ligament rupture, recovery) but if the screws holding a ball onto a femur have worked loose ... ?

[Rolfe]

Quote:

Originally posted by Benguin
On the doggy tale, how is it possible for loose screws to tighten without surgery? I can see how a loose joint might tighten (ligament rupture, recovery) but if the screws holding a ball onto a femur have worked loose ... ?

It really depends on exactly what was wrong, and how bad it was, and even one wonders how serious the suggestion was about the amputation in the first place.

Often when you get to the actual facts of cases like this you find that the situation wasn't nearly as bad as was claimed, and maybe someone had at one point warned that if things went the wrong way an amputation might have to be considered, but no stronger than that. The dog might have formed an artificial joint once the infection cleared up, as they will do if you simply do a femoral head arthroplasty, and do we note that dear Lorna said he was walking and running completely sound and without pain? I didn't see that bit.

Animals have amazing recuperative powers, and lighter animals like dogs and cats have a relatively good chance of sorting out orthopaedic problems. Maybe vets (or some vets) are sometimes guilty of recommending an intervention when maybe letting nature take its course might be as good or better - but on the other hand, how to tell with an individual case? On this one you're often damned if you do and damned if you don't. You could just as easily be in "why didn't you do something!" territory.

Rolfe.

[Rolfe]

You know, we could do it for them.

• It worked for me
• Western medicine kills [insert number of your choice] people every second
• Big pharma is suppressing these cures because it can't make money from them
• Science doesn't know everything

I'm sure there are more that could be added. They just trot the same ones out again and again though.

Funny, I was listening to a radio programme yesterday interviewing representatives of some big drug companies about "bio-piracy", and their habit of sniffing round traditional herbal cures, researching them, and when something actually works, slapping a patent on it.

Not that that's entirely ethical either (though I believe that the Kalahari Bushmen who knew about the houdia (?) cactus are in line to get a nice slice of the profits if that one works out). But then to attack on that front would mean admitting that there is a very good reason Big Pharma isn't slapping patents on arnica all that stuff.

Rolfe.

[Benguin]

Quote:

Originally posted by Rolfe
You know, we could do it for them.

• It worked for me
• Western medicine kills [insert number of your choice] people every second
• Big pharma is suppressing these cures because it can't make money from them
• Science doesn't know everything

I'm sure there are more that could be added. They just trot the same ones out again and again though.

Funny, I was listening to a radio programme yesterday interviewing representatives of some big drug companies about "bio-piracy", and their habit of sniffing round traditional herbal cures, researching them, and when something actually works, slapping a patent on it.

Not that that's entirely ethical either (though I believe that the Kalahari Bushmen who knew about the houdia (?) cactus are in line to get a nice slice of the profits if that one works out). But then to attack on that front would mean admitting that there is a very good reason Big Pharma isn't slapping patents on arnica all that stuff.

Rolfe.

Could you patent pure water? Quick, someone have a go ...