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[–]FlippyKing 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (4 children)

This website seems more about trusting researchers who never see patients, and the corporate science that pays them, more than about fixing what's really wrong in medicine or science.

Clinical practice is not science in the same way engineering is not science. The differences between clinical practice and engineering is that you can do want every you want to steel or concrete to find out how best to safely build things. To do such experiments on humans is deeply immoral.

Simple fact of the matter is how some of the simplest and most common OTC pain killers work is not understood by scientists. No one would say do not take them because we don't understand how they work or as they say, creating a new authoritarianism, "the science". Unfortunately, too many times corporate science promotes patented and profitable treatments that are later found in practice (via the evidenced based medicine the "quackometer" is worried about) only after they hit the market and displace established and safe treatments to be unsafe. Women are the most often the victims of this because what they are calling science based medicine finds doing adequate testing on women too expensive, because of all the different states women find themselves in due to their reproductive capacity (pregnancy, ovulating, menopausal, prepubescent for examples).

The website seems to dislike the fact that the placebo effect works. That is a crazy thing about medical studies, you have to account for the placebo effect which many drugs are pushed by "scientists" corporate employees doing corporate science when they barely perform better than placebos but have much more risks and are much more expensive. I had a short gig (over a long life) where I reviewed published medical studies for logical consistency. Many were lacking even after being published and showed the clear influence of the company funding the research. That's "science based medicine". Other people with a lot of lab expertise showed how the methods used, great equipment on one part of a study but old and out-dated equipment on another, create great results where they should not be any good results. A great tactic of corporate science is to scrap a study, say a 6 month study, due to various problems, but really the results were just proving to be against their goals. They look at the data and then propose another shorter study that ends right before the bad results show themselves.

The website also seems particularly focused on Rudolf Steiner, his ideas about schooling, and homeopathy. I've met people attended Waldorf schools, they seem to have their act together and get into great colleges just like anyone else. Maybe their socioeconomic status is the deciding factor. I'll take Waldorf right now over gender BS in schools any day of the week.

The crazy thing about homeopathy is that there are a lot of studies showing it is effective, and more effective than many common but expensive drugs on things like allergies and minor problems, and it out performs the placebo even if people consistently show there is nothing in it. It is cheap and I know of none that have any side effects, unlike the drugs they are compared too. For me, if I could find studies showing a better performance for an allergy from some homeopathic thing than a drug, I took that the mean the drug is lacking and people should look elsewhere. Much like OTC pain killers, where some people benefit from one kind but not another, people who benefit from homeopathy should keep doing it when appropriate.

The biggest "problem" (to those who want power centralized) with evidence-based medicine is that it puts people seeing patients more in the decision making position than their governing bodies who are influenced by drug companies. Many doctors have problems with standards of care promulgated by their governing bodies, but won't speak out.

With Gender, the Tavistock clinic was not keeping track of so many things (ie not doing evidence based medicine). Everyone who is GC realized that because to do so, to practice evidence based medicine, would have shown no (or minimal) evidence justifying their treatments.

That said, this fake dichotomy of science based medicine vs evidence based science are not sufficient checks on each other. Especially when corporate science is not publicly available to be scrutinized, and there are centralized governing bodies intimidating people from performing their roles (either as researchers or clinicians) as they see fit. The recent court cases that were required to force a doctor to use Ivermectin on patients they had declared beyond saving (and who were subsequently saved) says it louder than anything I could type. https://trialsitenews.com/news-roundup-another-new-york-state-supreme-court-justice-issues-ivermectin-order-for-81-year-old/

[–]usehername 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (3 children)

For me, if I could find studies showing a better performance for an allergy from some homeopathic thing than a drug

That may be so, but homeopathic remedies are not regulated by the FDA, so products claiming to contain the compound often simply do not. A professor of mine proved how common it was to the class by taking a whole bottle of something (sorry, can't remember the exact thing) which should have killed him, but it turns out they were literally just sugar pills.

[–]FlippyKing 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

I don't know how a whole bottle of any homeopathic thing could kill anyone. They are very open about how what ever thing they are diluting, it is always diluted to the point where there is nothing of it left. I doubt he took an amount of anything that "should have killed him", I think he was putting on a show and probably knew what was in the bottle before putting on the show. I imagine he was making a point to a class he was teaching, not doing some Houdini version of science where by escaping certain death he proved his point.

I don't know that FDA regulation helps, I don't really trust the FDA after seeing how it and similar regulatory agencies are just run by the industries they should be a check on, and they will always come down on hard any industry or practice that isn't making their patrons money. The biggest problem I see along these lines is when the thing being sold as "x" is not "x" at all. Vitamins and supplements are most susceptible to this. I don't know how a post-manufacture analysis of any homeopathic product could be tested like that because of the extreme amount of dilution involved. I see it in the same league as "Reiki" and "energy" stuff.

I don't want to seem like I'm not very surprised when I see a study, and it's almost always for a remedy/relief for an allergy, that shows a homeopathic product clearly outperform the placebo. I'm not so surprised to see it outperform drugs though. New drugs are always to be viewed with suspicion until their real-world track record can be assessed honestly.

[–]usehername 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

I imagine he was making a point to a class he was teaching, not doing some Houdini version of science where by escaping certain death he proved his point.

Most definitely. Maybe it was just an overdose that would have gotten him sick and made him vomit. It was a while ago.

The biggest problem I see along these lines is when the thing being sold as "x" is not "x" at all. Vitamins and supplements are most susceptible to this.

Because they are simply not required to tell the truth by the FDA, same as with homeopathic remedies.

I don't know how a post-manufacture analysis of any homeopathic product could be tested like that because of the extreme amount of dilution involved.

Even at that level of dilution it still has an effect?

[–]FlippyKing 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Your first point is answered by the point you are asking a question about in the end. Yes, Homeopathy is very open about there being nothing left after all the dilutions they put the compound through. And they say it is effective even though it is so diluted. It is essentially like an "energy" modality as filled with "woo" as any Johnny-come-lately New Age thing even though it predates the Rockefeller investment into medicine and the 'academization' (not a word, I suspect) of the medical profession under the guise of science footnote1 by a lot. The professor might have been relying on his students being ignorant of that fact. I always felt such teaching techniques do more harm than good, like the way "just say no" reduced drug addition to a bad choice made under peer pressure instead reflecting a lot of other more important and socially addressable factors.

Do you think the FDA requires "truth" from those they regulate? Have they started requiring drug companies to do adequate studies on women before selling their drugs to the general public? Do they require all the studies and all the data to be published, included studies that were cut short? You seem to be making light of the revolving door between the companies that are protected by regulation and the closed door, and high costs and fines, to any company trying to do something that might 'reach into their pockets' as they say.

There are independent labs that can check products and offer a seal of approval. This kind of thing is how "organic" produce and organic farming originally marketed itself and protected itself from liars saying their products were not grown in accordance to organic techniques. The Federal government got involved, creating their own certification to undermine independent certification, and we're nearing the point where they will start either: watering down the regulations to the point where it will be meaningless, or make it so expensive that it is not feasible for smallish farms, or find a way to do both. It already is too expensive for a lot of smaller farms, who instead offer savvy customers a tour and somewhat open access (and chances to "volunteer" as free labor) to prove they are on the up and up.

Footnote 1 (and only): You are cordially invited down the rabbit hole which will be very informative and leave you standing alone in a field of conspiracies wondering how you got there and where to go. Enjoy! https://www.corbettreport.com/episode-286-rockefeller-medicine/