Water does not prevent dehydration......

[One Brow]

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?

Because we are not, on the whole, heartless psychopaths who can look upon human suffering, even humans who are not immediately connected to us, and just shrug our shoulders. Our nature is to be social and empathic. Natural selection is cruel and uncaring.

If I think you are an idiot, should I be allowed to prevent you from breeding? If not, what will stop idiots from breeding? Certainly not natural selection.

 

[babe]

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

Even then, your second source acknowledges this:


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.

The new standard of truth, as promulgated by the Codex Alimentarius folks, requires a consensus supported by controlled double-blind studies, which are practically impossible to do in the case of acupuncture as I noted above. However, there is a sizeable body of professional medical practitioners who make a living off acupuncture in many countries, especially China. Even in the United States, there are some top-ranked doctors with impressive credentials who use acupuncture along with everything else they offer their patients. And there is enough of a following of folks who have experienced or seen or believe acupuncture can help, even the WHO and other health care cartelists are not willing to just shut down this alternative. This just shows that the Codex Alimentarius remains in very human hands and is going to be used as a political tool rather than a scientific one. People, even scientists, are just funny that way.

Predictably, I will use this example as a proof against the efficacy of elitist governance and argue that folks ought to just keep their freedom in the first place.

When we commission a system like Codex Alimentarius and contemplate an absolute food and medicine dictatorship claiming to be based on science and trust, perhaps we should do a controlled double-blind study of the fascist system and see if people are not only still healthy but still free under the regime.

 

[moevillini]

I gotta agree with OB on the point that it seems tough to determine a placebo method for acupuncture.

I also agree that natural selection will not stop idiots from breeding. If anything, I think it will lead to more highly evolved forms of idiocy.


I'm sort of amazed I was actually able to follow a One Brow post, that doesn't happen too often.

 

[LogGrad98]

I gotta agree with OB on the point that it seems tough to determine a placebo method for acupuncture.
I also agree that natural selection will not stop idiots from breeding. If anything, I think it will lead to more highly evolved forms of idiocy.


I'm sort of amazed I was actually able to follow a One Brow post, that doesn't happen too often.

Just from the little research I did earlier, I agree with this too. But the telling point is in how this is expressed. To me this means that there is no way to prove that actupuncture does or doesn't work, other than testimonial evidence. There may be other factors involved (like with my aunt for example) but there is no denying that millions of people feel it does something for them. To me the burden of proof is on science to prove that it does not work. But One Brow says this:

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

2 sides of the same coin. In my opinion, if it does something that someone perceives as positive, especially more positive than doing nothing or whatever they were doing before, that tells me it does something.

It is a lot like the discussion of religion. Prove that God exists. No, you prove that he doesn't exist. Both are, on the surface, equally valid. Fact is you cannot prove that God doesn't exist, and you cannot prove that he DOES exist. Same with the issue with clinical trials for acupuncture. You can't put a study together than proves it does anything, but you also cannot put a study together that proves that it doesn't do anything.

 

[One Brow]

However, there is a sizeable body of professional medical practitioners who make a living off acupuncture in many countries, especially China. ... Predictably, I will use this example as a proof against the efficacy of elitist governance and argue that folks ought to just keep their freedom in the first place.

There are a sizable body of professional practitioners for homeopathy (there is even a professional organization in England), and homeopathy is quite easy to test in double-blind studies, where is does no better than a placebo. Showing that there are gullible people who will buy magic, shaken water or needles sticking from your skin does not make those treatments medically effective.

The only freedom being impinged is on the medical claims that the quacks want to make for their medically useless products. While the government is inefficient in these regulations, it's better than no regulations at all.

As a general response to double-blinding acupuncture: it's simple enough to do by making the providers study recruits, as well. You bring in six-ten college kids with no medical experience and no experience with acupuncture. Half of them are trained by a genuine acupuncturist, half are trained by an actor in sham acupuncture. All of them think they are delivering genuine acupuncture. When I said I didn't know the protocols of the individual studies, I meant that I didn't know how many of them took this extra blinding step.

 

[Jazz Spazz]

Boring.

It's like you people are talking about something and not using one liners.
This used to be a good thread.

 

[LogGrad98]

Boring.

It's like you people are talking about something and not using one liners.
This used to be a good thread.

Go mail a bear.

 

[moevillini]

ok, here's a joke. dedicated to Log and Spazz...

"KNOCK"

"WHO'S THERE?"

"KNOCK"

"KNOCK WHO?"

"KNOCK KNOCK"

OK, so it's a five liner... but they're very short lines.

 

[LogGrad98]

Go mail a bear.

No one got this pop culture reference. Am I so out of touch? No, it is everyone else who is wrong.

 

[moevillini]

As a general response to double-blinding acupuncture: it's simple enough to do by making the providers study recruits, as well. You bring in six-ten college kids with no medical experience and no experience with acupuncture. Half of them are trained by a genuine acupuncturist, half are trained by an actor in sham acupuncture. All of them think they are delivering genuine acupuncture. When I said I didn't know the protocols of the individual studies, I meant that I didn't know how many of them took this extra blinding step.

I'm thinking that sham acupuncture would put sham wow to shame. I'm also thinking that double-blind acupuncture sounds a lot like Pin the Tail on the Donkey! Though perhaps without getting spun around before the pinning. Let's just say I'm having a difficult time grasping the concept.



Anyhow, while it's not the same as homeopathic medicine, osteopathic medicine shares a philosophy that's similar in many ways to homeopathy. Graduates of osteopathic medical schools (DO's) have essentially the same rights and privileges as MD's and are on staff at hospitals, medical schools, clinics and elsewhere.

Also, pain management, particularly chronic pain, is an area where allopathic medicine tends to be a bit more open to alternative treatments and remedies such as hypnosis, electrical stimulation (TENS), biofeedback etc.

 

[babe]

Just for the record. . . .

I know of some folks who have somehow evaded all regulation from government do-gooders, apparently.


Some people working the back pain racket with "innovative" approaches. One I know of has a set of electrical devices for relaxing muscles worked into a system of massage techniques and wonder of wonders, a foot bath. He hooks up his patients to the gizmos while their feet soak in the foot bath. He tells the patients that some proprietary salts in the foot bath will extract all the toxins in their bodies. He has a whole chart of services and their costs along with a slick looseleaf filled with testimonials. I had to work hard to keep one hopeful and otherwise sane backpain sufferer from investing three thousand dollars in colored salt water with some aluminium "sparklies" that would turn into blackish-grey muck, "proving" how much toxins were being extracted from feet which were being tingled by low-voltage current. I asked the receptionist where they dumped all those toxins, and she confessed she would water some shrubs with them.

I sometimes see this quack on TV showing before and after pics and reading testimonials. He's named a whole "research institute" after himself.

backpain is in my observation a primary cause of insanity. My wife has gone through five chiropractors and several mattresses in fervent hope something could be done about it, short of making some changes in her habits. I used to have some backpain, literally crippling lower back spasms. I do a lot of lifting . . . . and tried some homeopathic herbal anti-inflammatory agents. I would take the preparations three times a day, and found the situation improved within three days and usually doesn't return for an extended period. The homeopthatist that supplies this remedy tries to tell me I need to use the herb regularly, but I don't listen. I do listen to advice on how to properly lift heavy stuff, and walk with my eyes and head held up in the right way, and I do sleep on a floor or mat whenever I don't fall asleep somewhere else.

My access to these remedies is being cut off by the implementation of Codex Alimentarius. I guess I'll have to grow some herbs, maybe boil some pineapple and papaya in some wine, or something.