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Skeptic Quote of the Week
“The AVN are anti-vaccination..they should put on every bit of their material that they are anti-vaccination in great big words” — Dick Smith
July 17th, 2009 at 10:47 pm
· Hippocrates is considered the ‘Father of Medicine.’
· Doctors today still take the ‘Hippocratic oath’ – one of the principles of this is to ‘First Do No Harm.’
· Hippocrates taught a number of other principles which unfortunately Doctors today don’t follow. One of these was ‘like cures like’ – one of the core principles of homeopathic medicine.
· Medicine since the beginning of human history was based on use of ‘natural treatments’ including herbs, spices, plants, animal substances, and minerals – many of these substances make up ‘homeopathic medicines.’
· Medicine continued this way right up until world war two. The war period introduced chemicals, synthetic materials and toxins as ‘medicines’. This was because plants, spices, and other natural materials were not easily available at this time.
· Following this, a separation occurred between those doctors believing in the natural way, and those doctors believing in the ‘chemical way.’ The Dr’s using these ‘faux’ chemical based treatments were successful in their legal cases against doctors who practiced the ‘natural way’ and called themselves naturopaths (and homeopaths) – they successfully banned naturopath and homeopathic doctors from practicing for a period of time.
· By the end of the 19th century, with all the focus on ‘chemical’ treatments and miracle vaccines etc, natural medicine came to be seen as ‘superstitious’ or magical. – This view certainly wasn’t based on research or the ‘best evidence’ but still doctors still avoided it for fear that they would be disciplined by their accreditation bodies and colleagues for practicing it. The tradition has continued but is slowly changing…
· Today, homeopaths and naturopaths have accreditation bodies that oversee their practice, just like allopathic doctors, nurses and other allied health professionals. So its pretty unjust to go around calling them a ‘scam’.
· Of studies of homeopathy, some have found it to be effective, some have not. But this is more than goes to be said for modern medicine.
· Most ‘evidence based’ research today on ‘drugs’ and ‘medicines’ is funded by the drug companies themselves. Those same companies are the ones that promote to doctors what they should treat their patients with. You only need to walk into a doctor’s surgery and take a look at the drug companies annual reports and look at who the share holders and stake holders are to know that medicine today is not just about promoting health and curing illness – and I am sure I don’t need to point out who the stakeholders are.
· Most allopathic doctors will oppose natural treatments of any sort and call it ‘quackery’ despite that the use of natural medicines have a much longer history than the use of chemicals and synthetic treatments. They can’t have their ‘patient’s’ turn away from them and risk destroying their patriarchal money making system.
· Homeopathy is highly respected in Germany, some Eastern European countries and India.
· Vaccinations still aren’t totally proven as being the cause for the decline in certain illnesses in the population.
· Homeopathic medicines are zero toxic compared to tamiflu.
· Natural or chemical – it doesn’t take much common sense to figure out which one is better….
· Yes I am university educated. No I am not a naturopath, homeopath or natural practitioner of any sort, just someone who has taken the time to properly ‘educate’ myself and not be ‘brainwashed’ by the mainstream view that Doctors are Gods that has been drilled into me like everyone else since I was a child.. and someone who has experienced the ‘harmful’ effects of modern medicine a number of times. I dare to think outside the box and look for ways to keep healthy and prevent myself from even having to take those ridiculous chemical concoctions.
July 18th, 2009 at 12:06 am
That is what I call a brain vomit!
July 18th, 2009 at 11:22 am
Must of been a good night out then… how many brain cells did you kill in the process?
July 18th, 2009 at 5:27 pm
A lot, all while reading your post. It looks like all you did when you “educated” yourself was read the spin, not actually look at any of the finer details of anything. I don’t have the time to respond to everything right now but the key area where you didn’t look at the finer details were your comments on homeopathic studies.
If you can track down the studies (those of us without full access to pubmed etc do find this difficult) you’ll see that the ones in favour of homeopathy and alternative medicines are always small groups equivelant to a preliminary study (if not less), or they’re not double blinded, or they’re horribly controlled.
The studies that do actually get run properly with double, triple and quadrouple blinding, decent sized groups, and properly controlled against variables that may influence the testing all show, at best, that homeopathy and alternative medicines are equivelant to placebo’s.
I’d also suggest doing a little investigation in to logical fallacies. Your first few points are nothing more than appeal to age and appeal to authority, neither of which actually means anything at all. Just because something was invented a long time ago doesn’t make it correct or the best method — if it did we’d still be making everything out of stone. Just because one person had a certain amount of brilliance that is highly respected and honoured, it doesn’t mean everything that person does should be, we all have our golden calves.
July 19th, 2009 at 11:53 am
You can think what you like about homeopathy and natural medicines in the end.
Your the one who will end up killing yourself or making yourself sick by taking conventional medicines naively because you believe its the only option and probably kill some more brain cells in the process, but hey that’s your choice.
I’m not going to argue with you about it, because I couldn’t care less what you do. All I aimed to do was point a different viewpoint out there which many people are not aware of.
If I could be bothered going through ‘pub med’ right now, I could pull out huge amounts of flawed studies on pharmaceutical drugs…
I have spent 6 years studying at tertiary level and many years working in the ‘conventional’ medical system.. after those experiences and the things I have seen in that time, I have come to my own conclusions about modern medicine. I am also happy with the level of investigation I have done in the alternative health field.
You tend to see after you have gained a certain level of life experience that ‘Evidence’ changes all the time and takes time to build up — in some cases centuries.
I don’t need research to tell me that much of modern medicine makes no ‘common sense’ — and the things I am talking about here is chemical and synthetic patented drugs and in some instances, vaccinations and surgery. I am not arguing that there isn’t a place for it because I believe that there is in some situations, but there is also other options that can and should be explored.
But since you seem to think that modern medicine is the only one scientifically validated most important form of medicine, I repeat my previous point, who do you really thinks funds most of the studies on pharmaceutical products? Do a bit of “research” on that and see what you come up with.. a lot of the research out there on pharmaceutical drugs is in one way or another bordering on fraudulent…
I give you the case of roaccutane — there were never initial concerns about suicide or depression associated with the drug, but now there are tonnes of studies investigating this and people who have experienced problems with the drug. Yet the drug continues to be prescribed daily all around the world and is considered ‘effective’ because it supposedly clears up acne.
And a recent case — genetically modified food — there is supposedly ‘evidence’ that it is healthy, never mind most of it was funded and carried out by Monsanto.
And yes, I did get taught how to read the evidence at university, just like you. I just don’t believe that everything that is written in a scientific journal is ‘truth’ — humans are motivated by many things.
July 19th, 2009 at 12:06 pm
So in other words you have chosen uncontrolled and poorly documented here-say, confirmation bias and anecdotes over properly controlled and documented thorough testing, evidence and facts? You could have just said that in the first place instead of wasting everyone’s time.
July 19th, 2009 at 6:22 pm
Could care less about what we do yet see the need to try and bury us under a mountain of dot pointed assertions. I sincerely wish you hadn’t bothered.
Oh and what was it you studied, not that it has any particular relevance — just interested
July 19th, 2009 at 8:04 pm
Roaccutane? LOL
Fellow skeptics, this is a great example for you of post hoc ergo propter hoc .
I took it as a teen btw, it was brilliant and saved me from a future of horrible scarring. Here is what the experts have to say about these wonderful products -
‘The evidence continues to show there is no definite proven link between isotretinoin (eg, Roaccutane®) and depression or suicide. Several reviews by various international scientific experts (such as dermatologists, psychiatrists, epidemiologists) and government authorities have shown that people taking isotretinoin are not at an increased risk of depression or suicide compared to the normal population. ’
What does happen of course is that teens get depressed over their appearance and horribly some take their own life. Then comes the logical fallacy that the two are linked. And dont you love how the word natural gets co-opted? I guess i could try sulphuric acid on my pimples as a natural alternative.
Keep the fallacies coming Unbelievable, much appreciated.
August 10th, 2009 at 2:45 pm
You are all sheep have fun come swine flu vax time.…
August 10th, 2009 at 4:06 pm
Cheers! We will. Have fun in the stone age