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Nature VS Modern Medicine and weeding out what truly works.

Do you believe in the farmacy trend?

  • I'm a hippy and I'm proud of it. Also, I have proof it works. No aluminum DO for me!

    Votes: 3 7.7%
  • I'm kind of a hippy, but I was brought up that way, and/or I like moral aspects of the trend.

    Votes: 4 10.3%
  • This is a thing? Who's Jenny McCarthy? I mean, I guess both are fine.

    Votes: 4 10.3%
  • Science trumps turnips all day. Beets and apples won't keep you from having eczema hunny, sorry.

    Votes: 24 61.5%
  • I don't really care at all. I can't afford either of them anyways.

    Votes: 4 10.3%

  • Total voters
    39

kyuuei

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I've seen this really huge trend lately where people just believe what they want to believe. No one looks at studies being done in these areas, no one seems to really care if data exists. Stoners frequently post about how someone claimed they gave their kid cannbis oil on the pacifier and a brain tumor diminished and it must be because of the cannabis.. Jenny McCarthy cries about vaccines.. and modern medicine had to have extensive studies showing that kangaroo care (a cheaper--aka free--, more viable alternative to incubators) beat incubators and analgesia when it came to preterm infants becoming more viable.

There's this wonderful aspect of medicine where it is discovering new things, and trying things out.. and merging old world ideas with new world concepts.

Yet, there are plenty of people that would say they get all of their medicine from eating organic food. That they eat vegan and that cures them of all their ailments. There's this notion from these websites that circulate frequently that doctors are the 'bad guys', as if they go through 12 years of school to put up with grumpy, unappreciative people because they're going to make a fortune off of these people, or as if one bad doctor makes the whole lot of them quacks.

I had a girl the other day talk about how terrible aluminum is for you. When I told her if she's ever taken even one anti-headache medicine even as a baby that she's already had more aluminum in her system than using deodorant for a year will ever cause she thinks I'm going ballistic. I told her vegetables don't "detox" the body like that--aluminum stays forever pretty much.

I find the idea inspiring for an individual--but dangerous for the masses. No one is going to get hurt thinking their deodorant is bad for them. They just aren't. It doesn't hurt anything. But then when they're told they need this hypertension medicine otherwise their heart will fail, and they think it's poison because someone told them there's aluminium in all modern medicines... non-compliance leads to worse issues. There are people using people's terrible cancer stories to push their agenda. Raw vegan eaters saying that cancer can be cured with diet alone... and talking online about how sad they felt for cancer deaths when they could have just eaten more bananas.

Doctors have preached for a long, long time now that sleep, water, exercise, a wholesome diet, and emotional support are all important approaches to health. But clearly they aren't enough.. and they cannot make grown people do any of those things. So they do what they CAN for those people--and frequently that means more medicine. It's not like they're the life police. And that somehow has gotten them a terrible rep the past few years. At the VA they were delighted that I didn't want surgery right away, and instead picked a more rigorous and annoying but less invasive physical therapy option. There are breakthroughs in modern medicine that can only be accounted for with things like medicines and vaccines, though, and the two things I think can work in great order with one another... if people didn't make it such an us vs them thing.

This isn't even counting the fact that I feel all of this detox mumbo-jumbo is just people trying to make bucks off expensive over priced organic food and off of people that want to believe there's a new, cool way of doing things based on ancestors and some Native American rawhide scroll or something.

And there's vague things as well that we don't really know the effects of... people believe x is poisonous and hormone-acting, and it might very well be true.. antibiotics are creating superbugs, and that's true as well.. so there's pushes in the right direction for safer food as a result of people who walk with these 'farmacy' ideals.

Has anyone else noticed this trend lately? Have you gotten caught up in the mix of it all? For those that believe in detoxing.. is it a purely spiritual thing, or do you believe there is evidence for it physiologically? I don't mean you switched from processed food to whole foods and got better.. I mean you stopped all aluminum coming into your body and you noticed that you no longer have headaches, nausea, etc. etc. Or you put a chlorine filter in your shower and started drinking 'alkalizing water' and now your foot fungus is gone. That sort of thing. Do you believe the placebo affect had any power in this?

Anyone want to vent about their stupid, but sweet friend that believes x or y, or brags about how a vaccine has never touched them and they're super healthy because kale is the best thing since dinosaurs can post as well.
 

prplchknz

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diet and lifestyle is good in the prevention of certain diseases, there's science that backs that up. But it's not 100% guaranteed that you won't get those dieseases if you eat certain foods. Once you're diseased you need conventional medicine. like if I had a cancer I'm not going to eat a bunch of blueberries in hopes it get rid of the cancer. I'd go to a doctor get radiation and chemo ect. I might eat a lot of blueberry's because I like blueberries. Oh and I believe detoxing is BS. At least what i've read, your body: if you're a healthy adult which most people who do these detoxes are. your body has a great natural filtration system that gets rid of toxins. detoxes are scams. I'm sorry unless a doctor says to me you have a bad kidney or liver and your body isn't getting rid of toxins properly you need to do a detox I'm not wasting my money.

the problem with everything is there's truths and lies to both sides of everything, and it's really hard to know who to believe
 

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[MENTION=4939]kyuuei[/MENTION] Have you read Do You Believe in Magic? by Dr. Paul Offit?
 

Tellenbach

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kyuuei said:
Jenny McCarthy cries about vaccines.. and modern medicine had to have extensive studies showing that kangaroo care (a cheaper--aka free--, more viable alternative to incubators) beat incubators and analgesia when it came to preterm infants becoming more viable.

It used to be that many vaccines used mercury as a preservative (thimerosal) and mercury is a known toxin. Thimerosal is still used in some flu vaccines. It's also true that vaccines do kill and seriously harm some people. For example:

Sadly, since the Tembenis case, the government has not — at least publicly — done much to answer the questions that it and many others pose: why are the vast majority of kids apparently vaccinated safely, but a minority become seriously ill, brain-damaged or even die?

The Search for Safer Vaccines

A recent paper reports that there is a link between Type I diabetes and vaccines:

"Evidence that vaccines cause type 1 diabetes has been well established. Data from a large prospective clinical trial of the
Haemophilus vaccine [4] as well as epidemiology data [5] support vaccines as a major causative agent for type 1 diabetes. The data from
the clinical trial validates an animal toxicity model [4]. The findings were verified by others [6]. Discontinuation of vaccines has been
repeatedly shown to be followed by declines in the rates of type 1 diabetes [5,7]. Evidence that vaccines cause type 2 diabetes, obesity
and metabolic syndrome has been reviewed recently [2]. Evidence includes the observation that the discontinuation of school age BCG
vaccination in Japan was followed by a decrease in type 2 diabetes in children in Japan [8]."

Source: J Barthelow Classen, Review of Vaccine Induced Immune Overload and the Resulting Epidemics of Type 1 Diabetes and Metabolic Syndrome, Emphasis on Explaining the Recent Accelerations in the Risk of Prediabetes and other Immune Mediated Diseases, J Mol Genet Med 2014, S1:025

My position is to avoid all elements that are not naturally found in the body. I avoid Aluminum, Mercury, Arsenic, and Fluoride by using filtered water.

kyuuei said:
Doctors have preached for a long, long time now that sleep, water, exercise, a wholesome diet, and emotional support are all important approaches to health. But clearly they aren't enough.. and they cannot make grown people do any of those things. So they do what they CAN for those people--and frequently that means more medicine.

My view is that most doctors are ignorant of the link between nutrition and certain illnesses (like eczema, psoriasis) and that good nutrition can help with certain illnesses. They diagnose and then treat the symptom using a drug. They don't identify the underlying cause.
 

gromit

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What really bugs me is the correlation = causality fallacy. Sure some of them warrant further study, but please, don't change your life in dangerous ways just bc two things APPEAR related. There was an amazing/hilarious site circulating around recently wtih some of these ridiculous correlations.

honey-producing-bee-colonies-us_juvenile-arrests-for-possession-of-marijuana-us.png


AHHH HONEY BEES ARE DYING OUT... AND IT'S MAKING KIDS DO DRUGS!!!!!!!!!!!!


q54sO25.png


OMG NICOLAS CAGE CAUSES DROWNING!!!
sorry ... couldn't resist with this one [MENTION=294]The Ü™[/MENTION]




Organic food causes autism.

Fact.


I viewed a graph about that very thing once!

enhanced-buzz-28930-1365534705-8.jpg
 

gromit

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Anyway, I didn't vote bc didn't really agree with any of the options. But I'd say preventative care is at least 50% of health. So many diseases (in developed countries) are "preventative", and we should be placing a greater emphasis on the thigns you mention [MENTION=4939]kyuuei[/MENTION]. In one of my courses I asked why health insurances weren't giving incentives for this type of behavior, and the professor replied that they don't really have much motivation to do that, since people tend to change insurance providers several times throughout their lives, so there isn't as big a payoff to the providers. Bummer...

But I agree there is obviously a time and place for healthcare, surgeries, medications, etc. I'm pretty split between the two approaches.

It is like you say, so many ppl don't do those simple things over the course of their lifetime, so healthcare providers try to do their best with what they have to work with. By the time people come in to see them, they have to resort to drugs, surgeries, etc.
 

kyuuei

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It used to be that many vaccines used mercury as a preservative (thimerosal) and mercury is a known toxin. Thimerosal is still used in some flu vaccines. It's also true that vaccines do kill and seriously harm some people. For example: ....

Vaccines are pretty straight forward in their approach. Each vaccine website will give the list of side effects and frequency of it--and a quick trip to the library will show percentages of success and percentages of side effects shown. In the world of medicine a 80-98% percent success rating is far, far better than the 50% death rates of getting some of the diseases and the even higher percentages of dealing with long term side effects of things like polio.

There are people who feel whooping cough isn't "that dangerous" for children now-a-days because they simply weren't around any children who ever had it or grew up around it.. They read something saying not all children die of it, and they're convinced that things like varicella and whooping cough are diseases we've 'outgrown' and have immunities against.. and that really isn't the case. People still die of the flu all the time.. and we're seeing outbreaks all the time. We can't vaccinate everything, but on a global scale protecting people with vaccines has shown more success rates than any study ever ever done on natural ways of curing rubella or whooping cough.

My position is to avoid all elements that are not naturally found in the body. I avoid Aluminum, Mercury, Arsenic, and Fluoride by using filtered water.

Which, like I said, there's nothing inherently wrong with that for you in particular. You do what you feel is healthy for you... but can you say that you've never, ever had aluminum before? THat your parents did not give you baby aspirins, or children's tylenol when you were a little one? No tap water when you were a kid? No eating stuff you shouldn't have, or no accidentally swallowing coins? Nothing? .. I doubt it. And that stuff is still in your body, aluminum particularly.. and, I suspect, you're healthy enough, and if not, it wasn't caused by a baby tylenol 15-20 years ago.

My view is that most doctors are ignorant of the link between nutrition and certain illnesses (like eczema, psoriasis) and that good nutrition can help with certain illnesses. They diagnose and then treat the symptom using a drug. They don't identify the underlying cause.

Doctors are humans. And people are just as stubborn as you seem to be on your conviction. If people don't want to believe something is causing an illness, they simply won't. You can tell them all day fluoride destroys their teeth. If they don't believe it does.. you're not out of a job by saying, "Well, fuck it then, you can just lose your teeth." You are as a doctor though. You treat it to the PATIENT'S satisfaction. They aren't going to tell you, "well if you don't like my aluminum-laced drugs then gtfo my office" because that's not really the right answer.. And after you hear 80% of your population come in and say, "Doc, it is not feasible for me to buy expensive hippy stuff but I still need to treat my eczema" you stop trying to push things on people. You give them what they want--because that's what they feel they need, and that's all you can do sometimes. Not everyone can avoid tap water.. not everyone can afford all natural expensive medicines and supplements and organic foods. It's not available. You can't leave out a big portion of the population just because you think you have the right answer.

It isn't really fair to aim at the doctors for that. I always tell my hippy friends to become doctors themselves if they think it's such a bullshit field lately.
 

kyuuei

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It is like you say, so many ppl don't do those simple things over the course of their lifetime, so healthcare providers try to do their best with what they have to work with. By the time people come in to see them, they have to resort to drugs, surgeries, etc.

I think what drives me so bananas about the whole movement is that they cherry pick the science. It isn't like modern medicine doesn't do that too.. so disclaimer there.. but it is the science and studies over time that say, "Hey, eating more fibrous greens is great for your body. Here's the proof: all these studies we did, and got peer reviewed on, with objective data collection. You can reduce cancer by like 50%!" And "Hey, we tested kale, and turns out it has far more of these nutrients than lettuce does." And they're okay with all of that.

But then you say, "Hey, you can reduce your chances of getting this disease that could kill your baby if you contract it by like 95%, we proved it in all of these studies" and everyone screams "OMG LOOK AT THAT 5%!? POISON I TELL YOU!" It boggles me that it seems like they REALLY care about evidence and science, but they really feel like those two things are the enemy.. instead of just admitting these are personal/emotional convictions based on spirituality and personal conviction and so the evidence shouldn't matter. At least it would make sense to say vaccines are against a religion.. it makes more sense than bringing up well-reported side effects and talking about them as if they're in the forefront.

And they send that paranoia and personal emotion out into the world as if it were science and backed.. and it's a half-truth that people believe because they don't want to be uninformed and uneducated (despite usually being so.. no offense world.. I'm in that boat too).

Oh, and this girl's video drives me bananas:
 

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kyuuei said:
We can't vaccinate everything, but on a global scale protecting people with vaccines has shown more success rates than any study ever ever done on natural ways of curing rubella or whooping cough.

I'm in support of vaccines, but vaccines should not contain mercury. I think we should thank people like Jenny McCarthy for bringing pressure to the pharmaceutical industry to produce a higher quality product.

You do what you feel is healthy for you... but can you say that you've never, ever had aluminum before?

Of course, I ingested aluminum in the past; every one who likes soft drinks has, and we now know that people with Alzheimers have a higher concentration of aluminum in their brains. Does this mean that aluminum causes alzheimers? No, but it may be involved somehow.

It isn't really fair to aim at the doctors for that. I always tell my hippy friends to become doctors themselves if they think it's such a bullshit field lately.

When there are nutritional approaches to treating hypertension and diabetes, but the doctor only prescribes drugs, that's a problem. When the doctor doesn't understand what causes those illnesses and merely writes a prescription to treat them, that's a problem. The fact is that some of the major diseases like heart disease, diabetes, and Alzheimers can be significantly reduced through proper nutrition and doctors don't know this.

Here's a John Hopkins study which shows a 70% reduction in Alzheimers in people who take vitamin E and vitamin C supplements:

"In the first phase of the study, 200 cases of Alzheimer's were diagnosed, and those who had been taking vitamin supplements were at a 78 percent lower risk of the disease than those who had not. At the end of the study, another 104 participants had developed the disease, and the risk factor was 64 percent lower among supplement users."

Study: Vitamins C, E cut Alzheimer's risk

Source: Zandi et al. Reduced Risk of Alzheimer Disease in Users of Antioxidant Vitamin Supplements: The Cache County Study, Arch Neurol. 2004;61(1):82-88.
 

kyuuei

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I'm in support of vaccines, but vaccines should not contain mercury. I think we should thank people like Jenny McCarthy for bringing pressure to the pharmaceutical industry to produce a higher quality product.

She demands higher quality of product, yet fails to address that the 'toxins' aren't that toxic at all. The toxins in a vaccination are less than you'd ever accidentally ingest as a kid. And there's nothing at all stating that low doses of literally any of the toxins being complained about are dangerous for the body. A little aluminum won't kill you--in fact, you'll never notice it. Yet vaccines are the center of attention? I could see saying deodorant is bad and campaigning against it.. but vaccines don't have near the same amounts to be a 'bad' product in the first place. Considering she's not complaining about tylenol either, I'd say she's just a rich privileged girl looking for attention. And she got it.

If she wanted a higher quality product, why not go fucking make one herself? But no. She expects all those other people--you know the ones that spend endless hours in school learning this shit to do it for her at her will and command. Instead of, ya know, contributing.

You can say she's fighting for ingredients all day long.. but despite the original guy redacting his claim of autism and vaccines having a correlation, and tons of studies being scrambled on all reporting they don't correlate, Jenny says straight out:
"People have the misconception that we want to eliminate vaccines. Please understand that we are not an antivaccine group. We are demanding safe vaccines. We want to reduce the schedule and reduce the toxins. If you ask a parent of an autistic child if they want the measles or the autism, we will stand in line for the f--king measles."

"I do believe sadly it’s going to take some diseases coming back to realize that we need to change and develop vaccines that are safe. If the vaccine companies are not listening to us, it’s their f*cking fault that the diseases are coming back. They’re making a product that’s sh*t. If you give us a safe vaccine, we’ll use it. It shouldn’t be polio versus autism."

She's not founding anything on science. Instead of crying about vaccines, she ought to be crying about apples.. or something else. Literally anything else. Her endorsements got way too many people to quit all vaccines for something that isn't founded in truth. The truth is.. any of the toxins in vaccines are WAY less dangerous for you than any of the diseases they aim to treat. Even with the potential side effects.

Of course, I ingested aluminum in the past; every one who likes soft drinks has, and we now know that people with Alzheimers have a higher concentration of aluminum in their brains. Does this mean that aluminum causes alzheimers? No, but it may be involved somehow.

They also have plaques and tangles, and no one knows why they're caused by it. Aluminum is far too easy and convenient of an answer--and alzheimers has been going on long long before modern medicine and all of its aluminum. I'm not going to hound vaccine companies forever just because of this vague concept. They'd need far more evidence than that.
I mean, to put it in perspective, if I told you "Hey, I went to a restaurant to eat, and I felt sick afterwards..".. You're essentially saying you'd stop eating out at all restaurants solely on the premise that you *may* get sick at one, if it was even the reason for my getting sick in the first place. And then you're telling restaurants, who admit in their menus that undercooked meats might make you sick if you order them, but they won't stop you from doing so, that they need to pick up their standards and stop being douches about making people sick.

When there are nutritional approaches to treating hypertension and diabetes, but the doctor only prescribes drugs, that's a problem. When the doctor doesn't understand what causes those illnesses and merely writes a prescription to treat them, that's a problem. The fact is that some of the major diseases like heart disease, diabetes, and Alzheimers can be significantly reduced through proper nutrition and doctors don't know this.

Most hypertension has an unknown cause. It's well documented that diet and exercise HELP a TON with treating hypertension--it's basic scientific principles. But those alone will NOT stop hypertension completely in all individuals. There are athletes that get it as well. Vegans. And organic eaters. All kinds of people develop it--and food is not the only culprit, even if it is a major competitor. Diabetes I can see your foothold a bit.. but it's hard to tell people, "hey, just stop eating garbage and you'll be fine." No. They won't. They need to control the hypertension RIGHT NOW. And drugs are the fastest, most efficient way of doing that. They'll make sure that heart doesn't die on the person. and that's super important.. like. ya know. for living. Sure they need to have a better lifestyle--but that isn't a quick fix at all, and many people are dancing with death by the time they get their hypertension looked at initially. And, I'm sorry to break this news out, but not everyone takes health seriously. Some people want to be alive, but they don't put health on the top of their shelves. It happens to many people: nurses, moms, business people... it isn't that they don't want to be alive, but they have a different value on health than people like, say, you do.

Doctors pretty much always subscribe to a healthier lifestyle.. they mention it all the time. But nagging people doesn't get them to change. They have to want it. And doctors aren't there to be anyone's damn mother.

Here's a John Hopkins study which shows a 70% reduction in Alzheimers in people who take vitamin E and vitamin C supplements:

"In the first phase of the study, 200 cases of Alzheimer's were diagnosed, and those who had been taking vitamin supplements were at a 78 percent lower risk of the disease than those who had not. At the end of the study, another 104 participants had developed the disease, and the risk factor was 64 percent lower among supplement users."

Where in this study does it make sense to say, that alzheimer's was diagnosed, and then it immediately says "78% lower risk of the disease." Did they have the disease or not? Because if they did, and they cured it with vitamin C in 78% of the people, that shit would be all over the place. So .. I'm not entirely trusting of that source right from the get-go. Entirely misleading way of wording there. I think they're saying people who take vitamin C have lower instances of alzheimer's.. Which, if they take supplements, chances are they're health conscious in general, and that makes sense. There's correlations between healthy living and all sorts of disease prevention. Nothing new at all.

Alzheimer's disease is a complex, horrible disease.. and it has no cure. And sometimes you cannot explain why people got it. You can't even diagnose it truly until after they die still. So we're a long, long way from preventing it truly.
 

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kyuuei said:
She demands higher quality of product, yet fails to address that the 'toxins' aren't that toxic at all. The toxins in a vaccination are less than you'd ever accidentally ingest as a kid.

I don't think you can make this claim since I'm not aware of any human baby/toddler toxicity studies with ethylmercury. What may be a toxic dose for a child may be completely safe for an adult.

If she wanted a higher quality product, why not go fucking make one herself? But no. She expects all those other people--you know the ones that spend endless hours in school learning this shit to do it for her at her will and command. Instead of, ya know, contributing.

But you can make this argument with car safety or melamine laced dog food from China. I don't understand all the anger directed toward her for wanting a safer product.

Aluminum is far too easy and convenient of an answer--and alzheimers has been going on long long before modern medicine and all of its aluminum. I'm not going to hound vaccine companies forever just because of this vague concept. They'd need far more evidence than that.

This is a current scientific controversy. No one can say what role, if any, aluminum plays with Alzheimers.

Most hypertension has an unknown cause. It's well documented that diet and exercise HELP a TON with treating hypertension--it's basic scientific principles.

We do know that essential hypertension (hypertension that's not caused by some other disease) is caused by a high sodium to potassium ratio. There are many papers on this.

Where in this study does it make sense to say, that alzheimer's was diagnosed, and then it immediately says "78% lower risk of the disease." Did they have the disease or not? Because if they did, and they cured it with vitamin C in 78% of the people, that shit would be all over the place.

This was a three year study. They surveyed several thousand people and then divided them into the supplement group and the non-supplement group. After three years, they found that those people taking vitamins C & E had 70% less Alzheimers.
 

prplchknz

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my mom does scientific research and studies people's diets. She actually has been following kids from the time they're fetus til 4 (I think she got permission to follow them longer recently) and they do all these tests like blood, the MEG, urine ect. and seeing how diet and enviroment contributes to development. It's pretty cool. There's a lot of studies being done with nutrition and dieseases.
 

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I am near in complete agreement with what [MENTION=4939]kyuuei[/MENTION] is saying. Rather than quote and just repeat stuff, I am just going to echo with a resounding YES. So, thank you for making this topic, and being a reasonable person on all of this. The world needs A LOT more people like you :hug:.

This is all something I feel very very strongly about. I'll be honest, I am so effing tired of talking about all of this, because it never seems to go anywhere. Nevertheless, having an anti-vaccine, science illiterate mother makes this a sensitive issue for me. Anti-vaccine individuals are causing real, tangible harm to world health by their own ignorance. It might be coming from the best of intentions, but that doesn't make it right, or soften it much. Why? Because we can show, easily, that this is not a problem, claims have been disproven, and the evidence is there. Yet, many reject it for obscure data that doesn't hold the clout of scientific consensus, or just fall for some strange conspircy. The idea of scientific consensus is somemthing that many individuals seem to overlook, and it is one (in particular in medicinal fields) is often very important. Stronger consensus = stronger evidence. Yet, strangely, there are quite a few individuals that see that as "suspicious". I could not tell you why, but it is what often happens, and is a problem.

I'm so worn out by this stuff, politics, and stuff and people just not listening to reason. I am really not patient when it comes to this, because it's so much fucking goddamn work to show people how they are wrong, and even when they are shown they often still won't accept it, and it sends me into internal fits of rage. It's such a waste of my energy. I'm a point where I want to go "I give up! I want to live my life and just be happy please". I do my part when it comes up (in person) but even then I am sort of giving up with that as well. I'll never let this stuff go completely, but I just want to stuff my head in the sand for a while.


I don't think you can make this claim since I'm not aware of any human baby/toddler toxicity studies with ethylmercury. What may be a toxic dose for a child may be completely safe for an adult.

Her claim is valid. If just for the fact that she really does not specify, nor take into account quantity. Toxicology studies are not done on every single compound known. Partly because it's somewhat impractical. However, similar molecular structure imparts (often- but not always) similar activity. This is what is known as the structural activity relationship and is used all the time by the pharmaceutical industry, biochemists, and chemists alike. Nearly all organomercury compounds are toxic, but dimethyl mercury is regarded to be the most toxic mercury compound known. Considering the toxicity of this, and the extremely small doseage of mercury in a different form in the vaccine itself, it really can be dismissed as erronous until evidence appears that it might be a problem (and it's not). This is about making a scientific informed assumption. It seems kind of hand-wavey but this kind of thing is done all the time. The concept of making informed assumptions is alien to a lot of people, and some people outright hate it (I get a lot of organic chemistry students that struggle with this), and refuse to do it. Unsurprisingly, these individuals very often struggle as scientists. It works though, and it's been proven to work. Science would not work if it were not for this.

But you can make this argument with car safety or melamine laced dog food from China. I don't understand all the anger directed toward her for wanting a safer product.

The anger comes from the egregious intellectual dishonesty. Which, ignorant or not, can and often is a serious problem. I'm all for consideration of intention, but the anger is absolutely valid and I completely understand it.
 

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Hard said:
If just for the fact that she really does not specify, nor take into account quantity.

Dose is everything in toxicology. What is the evidence that the quantity (however little it may be) of ethylmercury used in vaccines before 2001 is safe?

Toxicology studies are not done on every single compound known.

Shouldn't they be done on mercury compounds since it's a known neurotoxin? Is that not common sense?

Hard said:
Because we can show, easily, that this is not a problem, claims have been disproven, and the evidence is there.

What evidence are you talking about? I've seen evidence to the contrary. For example:

Fine and Chen reported that babies died at a rate nearly eight times greater than normal within 3 days after getting a DPT vaccination.

Although some studies were unable to find correlations between SIDS and vaccines,22–24 there is some evidence that a subset of infants may be more susceptible to SIDS shortly after being vaccinated. For example, Torch found that two-thirds of babies who had died from SIDS had been vaccinated against DPT (diphtheria–pertussis–tetanus toxoid) prior to death. Of these, 6.5% died within 12 hours of vaccination; 13% within 24 hours; 26% within 3 days; and 37%, 61%, and 70% within 1, 2, and 3 weeks, respectively.

Source: Infant mortality rates regressed against number of vaccine doses routinely given: Is there a biochemical or synergistic toxicity?

Hard said:
Considering the toxicity of this, and the extremely small doseage of mercury in a different form in the vaccine itself, it really can be dismissed as erronous until evidence appears that it might be a problem (and it's not).

How can evidence appear when people don't want to find out? It's all a moot point today because mercury is no longer used in most vaccines thanks to concerned citizens like Jenny McCarthy.
 

á´…eparted

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To summerize for everyone, My point is as follows: Vaccines have some minor problems, they can and should be improved. However as it stands, the benefits they provide, FAR EXCEEDINGLY FAR outweigh the negatives they sometimes can cause.

Dose is everything in toxicology. What is the evidence that the quantity (however little it may be) of ethylmercury used in vaccines before 2001 is safe?

You ignored what I said about informed assumptions. Either way, the fact that no mercury related illnesses arised from it. It's distinct, and easily diagnosed.


Shouldn't they be done on mercury compounds since it's a known neurotoxin? Is that not common sense?

Yes, and I find it hard to believe it hasn't been, but I'll be honest I am not in the mood to look to look it up as it's a meaningless detail here for discussing this with you.


What evidence are you talking about? I've seen evidence to the contrary. For example:

Source: Infant mortality rates regressed against number of vaccine doses routinely given: Is there a biochemical or synergistic toxicity?

That's one study. While I can agree with you that vaccines do have problems and have room for improvement (ALL things in medicine do) the good they provide FAR FAR outweighs the negatives they cause. Many people seem to overlook this.


How can evidence appear when people don't want to find out? It's all a moot point today because mercury is no longer used in most vaccines thanks to concerned citizens like Jenny McCarthy.

Mercury wasn't even a problem in vaccines. The horrible things she has caused GREATLY, by a HUUUUGE margin, outweighs any good she could have caused. I despise what her and others have done, and honestly, your support of her has brought this to a point where I honestly can not talk to you on this matter further, so I am done. Completely.
 

Elocute

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I don't get caught up in "magic" very much at all; however, I've met doctors who were poorly informed and gave me medications that were at very least contraindicated for the symptoms present. This is the problem with medicine, in my experience. While there's a plethora of peer-reviewed journals that are available to even the novice researcher armed with google scholar, some doctors seem to coast through by the grace of their title. This is where it becomes an issue, and it probably is the reason for mistrust. Many serious medication-induced symptoms or disorders can arise in this way.

As such, I go with what what works but what is also the most well-researched. These are often more natural products because whatever properties they elicit have been documented for sometimes centuries. Weeding out what truly works and what truly is harmful is a great feat that a lot of times cannot be done without testing it on the general population. And incidentally, the causaility vs. correlation fallacy is also the reason why the harm of these products goes unnoticed. It may be casually brushed off as being more likely caused by something else.

Actutane, for example, was out for years, and females had a high birth defect rate for newborns in the 85-95 period. They did however also have greatly improved acne and younger looking skin--a fact that would later send many even "naturalist" to select topical retinoids. Many were also probably on other pre-natals. So it was not clear that it was the accutane, until about 15 years later. Now women cannot get pregnant if they take it.

While I definitely agree that we should heed to science, I don't think doctors always stay abreast. And many it is these doctors who do "studies," sometimes solely for the grant money. I had a course in grad school in which we read journals; our professor would give us extra credit if we identified the logical flaw, and there were a good deal in some of them. Although this is in computer science, I'd imagine it to be the same or worse in a field where absolutes such as "Does work" and "Does not work," as there's far more ambituity.

Also, not all of science can be made pre-emptive, which always carries risks. For these reasons, I can't fault many "naturalists;" though, like the under-informed doctors, they probably could benefit somewhat from researching more.
 

kyuuei

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I don't think you can make this claim since I'm not aware of any human baby/toddler toxicity studies with ethylmercury. What may be a toxic dose for a child may be completely safe for an adult.

Testing babies with mercury until they're toxic is probably as unethical as you can get. However.. I'd say that the fact that most babies are doing okay in a world that got vaccines before they were even improved upon highly is evidence enough that babies are going to be okay with a minute amount of literally anything. I've had literally every vaccine that was available to me at my age, and some most people my age do not get anymore. Like.. Me and every other military person out there. There are some vaccines administered at the beginning of life because of how prevalent and persistent diseases are--and the guarantee-y-ness that babies will die from them--that seemed to (and accurately did) outweigh the potential for things like mercury toxicity. Babies are growing up fine and healthy all the time.. and they mostly all get vaccines. So I don't know where your grounds are for wanting studies in areas that aren't only not feasible, but would really waste research money. That'd be like me asking you to study how many pages are in a typical notebook--no one is affected school wise by having to buy more notebooks, it doesn't seem to be a factor in education, so why would you study it with precious research money when it doesn't even make sense to go around counting pages? But by all means, go ahead and try to get funding for testing how toxic you can make babies with mercury. I'm sure that won't get people all pissed off.

But you can make this argument with car safety or melamine laced dog food from China. I don't understand all the anger directed toward her for wanting a safer product.

It's because she throws out, willy-nilly and knowing her celebrity status lends her an audience, an entire classification of drugs. She doesn't want a 'safer product'. She wants attention and something to complain about in her perfect little world to keep herself viable. If she said "Oh, the RUBELLA vaccine causes toxicity in children, I see all these studies that say so." I could MAYBE see her point. But vaccines are vast, with many different ones all containing different ingredients.. and they're ALL bad. It's like saying all carbs are bad just because you don't like processed food. She isn't even focused on her demands--she just hates for the sake of hating. And that's why it's infuriating. Because she lacks any scientific foundations, and her convictions are static even when presented new evidence that contradicts the studies she relied on. She wants studies when they agree with her--and ignores studies that don't, even when they far outweigh the studies she likes. She's not actually aiming for a quality product. She's aiming for attention and blind hatred. Because, like everyone else in the world, admitting you're wrong is hard.. and wanting validation for the way you personally feel about things is more tempting than any evidence.

She's allowed to hate all vaccines for ANY delusions or perceptions that she has. No one's telling her otherwise. But its the stuff she does around that, the fact she tries to pretend its scientific and educated and not personal emotions that puts it all out of whack and angers people.

This is a current scientific controversy. No one can say what role, if any, aluminum plays with Alzheimers.

Exactly. But there is little evidence to support it. Just like someone came out and said "Oh, Carbs are bad for you I think! look!" And it turned out processed foods were what was bad for us.. and carbs are easily converted into processed foods in the shape of breads, cookies, etc. It was a big huge hoopla over NOTHING--carbs were not the criminal. You're literally saying, "I'm avoiding ALL aluminum until I have proof it doesn't cause alzheimers." Fat in food CAN make you fat, but that doesn't mean avoiding all of it entirely it is the most rational thing to do. In the spectrum of things, aluminum hasn't shown near as much dangers as other chemicals -- like all the chemicals that come out of vehicles and cars and that go into them for example -- and yet it's getting uneven focus. The amount of aluminum in vaccines is considerably less than you'd ever need to cause any disease though--up to and including alzheimers even if there were a causation.

I don't avoid all restaurants if I get sick at one. I might avoid that restaurant. It would have to take something insanely huge for me to stop going to all restaurants.

We do know that essential hypertension (hypertension that's not caused by some other disease) is caused by a high sodium to potassium ratio. There are many papers on this.

Uh. Yeah. That's what the drugs are helping treat. But why they developed it is unknown. Regardless of sodium intake, eating habits, culture--people all around the world develop it all the time. There is no KNOWN cause. That's a mechanism of the disease itself. I don't see what you're trying to dispute here. I never said we didn't know how the disease works--we do. We know how to treat it too, and are working for better treatments. But that doesn't mean we know the true source. We don't.

This was a three year study. They surveyed several thousand people and then divided them into the supplement group and the non-supplement group. After three years, they found that those people taking vitamins C & E had 70% less Alzheimers.

Thousands of people, and only three years? How does that account for alzheimers manifesting later in life? How does it account for the fact that NONE of these guys HAD alzheimers to begin with? It's a quack study, dude. I'm sorry, but it is. Not all studies are born equal. This lacks the longitudinal depth, and basic criteria to qualify as anything useful ever. "Oh, take Vitamin C and you won't get Alzheimers! Don't worry about the fact that many of these people don't have Alzheimer's in their family history, or that taking vitamins tends to promote people into better health as well! Forget all that stuff! In three years if you don't get alzheimers, you Wont!" .. It's entirely misleading.

This is about making a scientific informed assumption. It seems kind of hand-wavey but this kind of thing is done all the time. The concept of making informed assumptions is alien to a lot of people, and some people outright hate it (I get a lot of organic chemistry students that struggle with this), and refuse to do it. Unsurprisingly, these individuals very often struggle as scientists. It works though, and it's been proven to work. Science would not work if it were not for this.

It's no different from how organic food people discovered organic foods were helping them. They made an educated guess, based on experience and similar already founded principles, and discovered it did work in one way or another for whatever problem they had. It stands to reason that, "If the pores are clogged it does nasty things for the body." There isn't a need to pull a ton of scientific pore studies out of old dusty books to know that you don't want clogged pores. Similarly, if you have a foundation in chemistry and medicine activation sites, you can guess how things will work.

There's a lot of medicines that "work" that we don't even know the reasons why still. We developed them, and use them, without even knowing how. It's been the stuff of science since the beginning. Guess, test, results, and eventually theorize and turn it into a principle.

Dose is everything in toxicology. What is the evidence that the quantity (however little it may be) of ethylmercury used in vaccines before 2001 is safe?

All the 1980-2000 babies that are perfectly fine functioning adults right now that didn't die of horrid diseases, end up with life-long suppressed immune systems from damaging illnesses, or get stuck in a wheelchair their whole lives from polio.

Shouldn't they be done on mercury compounds since it's a known neurotoxin? Is that not common sense?

If it's a known neurotoxin, why are we going to test it on people? .. It's been tested on lab rats enough already. That's like saying, "If electricity can burn people, shouldn't we see how much people can be burned by it?" .. No. We shouldn't. Jeezus, you're just trying to make mad scientists now.

How can evidence appear when people don't want to find out? It's all a moot point today because mercury is no longer used in most vaccines thanks to concerned citizens like Jenny McCarthy.

It's not thanks to Jenny McCarthy. It's because scientists are always looking for better medicines anyways. As discoveries are made and technology advances, so too do medicines. Yes, the consumer has a dictation in all of this.. Absolutely not to be discredited. No sense in making a vaccine people won't use. But a large reason mercury is no longer used is because of technological advancements and discoveries. People can complain all day about mercury--if there's nothing to replace it, what can they do? Bitch and take it, or bitch and not take it. That's it.

I don't get caught up in "magic" very much at all; however, I've met doctors who were poorly informed and gave me medications that were at very least contraindicated for the symptoms present. This is the problem with medicine, in my experience. While there's a plethora of peer-reviewed journals that are available to even the novice researcher armed with google scholar, some doctors seem to coast through by the grace of their title. This is where it becomes an issue, and it probably is the reason for mistrust. Many serious medication-induced symptoms or disorders can arise in this way.

I find that hard to believe. We live in an age of technology where all kinds of information is out our fingertips. We don't have to spend $1000 for a lengthy, boring textbook. We have the cliffnotes of like everything ever. People need to be more proactive about their health--trusting anyone without rapport established first isn't really the way to go about things.

We ended up going to three doctors because my mother's disease was so rare that they didn't know what she had--but they all thought it looked like something else. I'm not going to deny there are quack doctors (that's a whole other discussion, and I agree it's a problem.. but Not nearly to the extent people think it is) out there, but if you're willing to listen to anyone at their word before even taking a glance at what you have, or establishing a trust relationship with a doctor before divulging your symptoms and signs, then I don't know what to say. You're throwing your trust out there to the wind just because they say they have a PhD. That's not really the right answer--and not fair to the doctors.

As such, I go with what what works but what is also the most well-researched. These are often more natural products because whatever properties they elicit have been documented for sometimes centuries. Weeding out what truly works and what truly is harmful is a great feat that a lot of times cannot be done without testing it on the general population. And incidentally, the causaility vs. correlation fallacy is also the reason why the harm of these products goes unnoticed. It may be casually brushed off as being more likely caused by something else.

The same could be spun around onto natural products as well. You can tell me all day long that hypertension can be treated with x chinese herbal supplement, but people all over the world are using modern hypertension treatments anyways. There's a known correlation with people obsessed with natural cures and products, and a conscientiousness of health and body care in general. It's easy for healthy people to say their cancers were cured with diet--but tell that to a cancer patient, and you'll get frowny-faces and gtfos. It's easy for people to say "organic foods help you with disorders" if you can afford it. But these supplements, usually made from things easy to grow and cheap to harvest, are marketed far beyond the cost of production, and sometimes filled with fillers. There's a whole bad-side debate to herbal supplements and remedies.

Sometimes the best option is the cheapest and most readily available one--and while sometimes that's all natural cures (Every doctor ever will tell you to wait out a cold vs using anti-virals right away, physical therapy is still like the number 1 recommendation for chronic pain, and many doctors still tell you to use good ole' hydrogen peroxide for a sore throat vs medicine) it doesn't mean natural cures are always feasible.

Whatever works for you and your health, is fine, though.. really.. I tend to use natural remedies for many things, simply because it's cheap and/or free.

Actutane, for example, was out for years, and females had a high birth defect rate for newborns in the 85-95 period. They did however also have greatly improved acne and younger looking skin--a fact that would later send many even "naturalist" to select topical retinoids. Many were also probably on other pre-natals. So it was not clear that it was the accutane, until about 15 years later. Now women cannot get pregnant if they take it.

There is a phenomenon out there about pressuring pharm labs to pump out things faster than they'd like. Funding is a huge issue with this--and on both sides. There are usually pretenses like "These are experimental drugs that haven't been tested, but have shown x..".. and people usually agree to it.. and then later on cry that they used drugs that weren't properly tested. :shrug: It's the way the game goes. You live and learn.

While I definitely agree that we should heed to science, I don't think doctors always stay abreast. And many it is these doctors who do "studies," sometimes solely for the grant money. I had a course in grad school in which we read journals; our professor would give us extra credit if we identified the logical flaw, and there were a good deal in some of them. Although this is in computer science, I'd imagine it to be the same or worse in a field where absolutes such as "Does work" and "Does not work," as there's far more ambituity.

It's a never ending struggle and battle. I mean, if you told a shaman to stay abreast with the latest findings, he'd say "Why? What I've been doing has been established for generations, why do I NEED this now?" You say you trust naturalists because they've been well documented for hundreds of years... Why would they ever need to learn or identify new things if what they're doing works in their lifetime? Going to school for 12 years as a doctor now-a-days.. what you started school with will be obsolete when you end it. There has to be some sort of system set up to establish increments because it's impossible for humans in general to keep up with the times lately. It just is.

I usually invite people who distrust doctors and their methods to go to medical school and change the industry. Most people don't feel that strongly about it.. and that's fine. But it's a long, hard walk in those shoes.. and there's very, very little consideration given to them and their miles in the process. It's a lot of thankless work.
 

Stephano

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Some also claim praying helps. There are enough studies to disprove that but no believer really cares. People believe what they want to believe.
 

Elocute

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Testing babies with mercury until they're toxic is probably as unethical as you can get. However.. I'd say that the fact that most babies are doing okay in a world that got vaccines before they were even improved upon highly is evidence enough that babies are going to be okay with a minute amount of literally anything. I've had literally every vaccine that was available to me at my age, and some most people my age do not get anymore. Like.. Me and every other military person out there. There are some vaccines administered at the beginning of life because of how prevalent and persistent diseases are--and the guarantee-y-ness that babies will die from them--that seemed to (and accurately did) outweigh the potential for things like mercury toxicity. Babies are growing up fine and healthy all the time.. and they mostly all get vaccines. So I don't know where your grounds are for wanting studies in areas that aren't only not feasible, but would really waste research money. That'd be like me asking you to study how many pages are in a typical notebook--no one is affected school wise by having to buy more notebooks, it doesn't seem to be a factor in education, so why would you study it with precious research money when it doesn't even make sense to go around counting pages? But by all means, go ahead and try to get funding for testing how toxic you can make babies with mercury. I'm sure that won't get people all pissed off.



It's because she throws out, willy-nilly and knowing her celebrity status lends her an audience, an entire classification of drugs. She doesn't want a 'safer product'. She wants attention and something to complain about in her perfect little world to keep herself viable. If she said "Oh, the RUBELLA vaccine causes toxicity in children, I see all these studies that say so." I could MAYBE see her point. But vaccines are vast, with many different ones all containing different ingredients.. and they're ALL bad. It's like saying all carbs are bad just because you don't like processed food. She isn't even focused on her demands--she just hates for the sake of hating. And that's why it's infuriating. Because she lacks any scientific foundations, and her convictions are static even when presented new evidence that contradicts the studies she relied on. She wants studies when they agree with her--and ignores studies that don't, even when they far outweigh the studies she likes. She's not actually aiming for a quality product. She's aiming for attention and blind hatred. Because, like everyone else in the world, admitting you're wrong is hard.. and wanting validation for the way you personally feel about things is more tempting than any evidence.

She's allowed to hate all vaccines for ANY delusions or perceptions that she has. No one's telling her otherwise. But its the stuff she does around that, the fact she tries to pretend its scientific and educated and not personal emotions that puts it all out of whack and angers people.



Exactly. But there is little evidence to support it. Just like someone came out and said "Oh, Carbs are bad for you I think! look!" And it turned out processed foods were what was bad for us.. and carbs are easily converted into processed foods in the shape of breads, cookies, etc. It was a big huge hoopla over NOTHING--carbs were not the criminal. You're literally saying, "I'm avoiding ALL aluminum until I have proof it doesn't cause alzheimers." Fat in food CAN make you fat, but that doesn't mean avoiding all of it entirely it is the most rational thing to do. In the spectrum of things, aluminum hasn't shown near as much dangers as other chemicals -- like all the chemicals that come out of vehicles and cars and that go into them for example -- and yet it's getting uneven focus. The amount of aluminum in vaccines is considerably less than you'd ever need to cause any disease though--up to and including alzheimers even if there were a causation.

I don't avoid all restaurants if I get sick at one. I might avoid that restaurant. It would have to take something insanely huge for me to stop going to all restaurants.



Uh. Yeah. That's what the drugs are helping treat. But why they developed it is unknown. Regardless of sodium intake, eating habits, culture--people all around the world develop it all the time. There is no KNOWN cause. That's a mechanism of the disease itself. I don't see what you're trying to dispute here. I never said we didn't know how the disease works--we do. We know how to treat it too, and are working for better treatments. But that doesn't mean we know the true source. We don't.



Thousands of people, and only three years? How does that account for alzheimers manifesting later in life? How does it account for the fact that NONE of these guys HAD alzheimers to begin with? It's a quack study, dude. I'm sorry, but it is. Not all studies are born equal. This lacks the longitudinal depth, and basic criteria to qualify as anything useful ever. "Oh, take Vitamin C and you won't get Alzheimers! Don't worry about the fact that many of these people don't have Alzheimer's in their family history, or that taking vitamins tends to promote people into better health as well! Forget all that stuff! In three years if you don't get alzheimers, you Wont!" .. It's entirely misleading.



It's no different from how organic food people discovered organic foods were helping them. They made an educated guess, based on experience and similar already founded principles, and discovered it did work in one way or another for whatever problem they had. It stands to reason that, "If the pores are clogged it does nasty things for the body." There isn't a need to pull a ton of scientific pore studies out of old dusty books to know that you don't want clogged pores. Similarly, if you have a foundation in chemistry and medicine activation sites, you can guess how things will work.

There's a lot of medicines that "work" that we don't even know the reasons why still. We developed them, and use them, without even knowing how. It's been the stuff of science since the beginning. Guess, test, results, and eventually theorize and turn it into a principle.



All the 1980-2000 babies that are perfectly fine functioning adults right now that didn't die of horrid diseases, end up with life-long suppressed immune systems from damaging illnesses, or get stuck in a wheelchair their whole lives from polio.



If it's a known neurotoxin, why are we going to test it on people? .. It's been tested on lab rats enough already. That's like saying, "If electricity can burn people, shouldn't we see how much people can be burned by it?" .. No. We shouldn't. Jeezus, you're just trying to make mad scientists now.



It's not thanks to Jenny McCarthy. It's because scientists are always looking for better medicines anyways. As discoveries are made and technology advances, so too do medicines. Yes, the consumer has a dictation in all of this.. Absolutely not to be discredited. No sense in making a vaccine people won't use. But a large reason mercury is no longer used is because of technological advancements and discoveries. People can complain all day about mercury--if there's nothing to replace it, what can they do? Bitch and take it, or bitch and not take it. That's it.



I find that hard to believe. We live in an age of technology where all kinds of information is out our fingertips. We don't have to spend $1000 for a lengthy, boring textbook. We have the cliffnotes of like everything ever. People need to be more proactive about their health--trusting anyone without rapport established first isn't really the way to go about things.

We ended up going to three doctors because my mother's disease was so rare that they didn't know what she had--but they all thought it looked like something else. I'm not going to deny there are quack doctors (that's a whole other discussion, and I agree it's a problem.. but Not nearly to the extent people think it is) out there, but if you're willing to listen to anyone at their word before even taking a glance at what you have, or establishing a trust relationship with a doctor before divulging your symptoms and signs, then I don't know what to say. You're throwing your trust out there to the wind just because they say they have a PhD. That's not really the right answer--and not fair to the doctors.



The same could be spun around onto natural products as well. You can tell me all day long that hypertension can be treated with x chinese herbal supplement, but people all over the world are using modern hypertension treatments anyways. There's a known correlation with people obsessed with natural cures and products, and a conscientiousness of health and body care in general. It's easy for healthy people to say their cancers were cured with diet--but tell that to a cancer patient, and you'll get frowny-faces and gtfos. It's easy for people to say "organic foods help you with disorders" if you can afford it. But these supplements, usually made from things easy to grow and cheap to harvest, are marketed far beyond the cost of production, and sometimes filled with fillers. There's a whole bad-side debate to herbal supplements and remedies.

Sometimes the best option is the cheapest and most readily available one--and while sometimes that's all natural cures (Every doctor ever will tell you to wait out a cold vs using anti-virals right away, physical therapy is still like the number 1 recommendation for chronic pain, and many doctors still tell you to use good ole' hydrogen peroxide for a sore throat vs medicine) it doesn't mean natural cures are always feasible.

Whatever works for you and your health, is fine, though.. really.. I tend to use natural remedies for many things, simply because it's cheap and/or free.



There is a phenomenon out there about pressuring pharm labs to pump out things faster than they'd like. Funding is a huge issue with this--and on both sides. There are usually pretenses like "These are experimental drugs that haven't been tested, but have shown x..".. and people usually agree to it.. and then later on cry that they used drugs that weren't properly tested. :shrug: It's the way the game goes. You live and learn.



It's a never ending struggle and battle. I mean, if you told a shaman to stay abreast with the latest findings, he'd say "Why? What I've been doing has been established for generations, why do I NEED this now?" You say you trust naturalists because they've been well documented for hundreds of years... Why would they ever need to learn or identify new things if what they're doing works in their lifetime? Going to school for 12 years as a doctor now-a-days.. what you started school with will be obsolete when you end it. There has to be some sort of system set up to establish increments because it's impossible for humans in general to keep up with the times lately. It just is.

I usually invite people who distrust doctors and their methods to go to medical school and change the industry. Most people don't feel that strongly about it.. and that's fine. But it's a long, hard walk in those shoes.. and there's very, very little consideration given to them and their miles in the process. It's a lot of thankless work.


I find that hard to believe. We live in an age of technology where all kinds of information is out our fingertips. We don't have to spend $1000 for a lengthy, boring textbook. We have the cliffnotes of like everything ever. People need to be more proactive about their health--trusting anyone without rapport established first isn't really the way to go about things.
In fairness, I was talking mainly about psychiatry. This area, as far as I know (I am not in the medical field), is far more ambiguous and labile due to not understanding the underpinnings of brain chemistry yet.

I had quite a good rapport with the doctor, which is what made me stay. He and his office officials were also courteous, but I didn't heed people saying it was a "pill factory," including other psychiatrists.

As I replied in my post of yours you left (again thank you), I should have been researching this far more than I did. I eventually downloaded a pharmacology book and read more currrent articles.

When I brought a few in to discuss what they said, I was basically told to shut up as I do not have any medical experience. I later went to a hospital with a more open-minded doctor and got medication that really helps me.

I have heard of other stories from MDs, especially dermatologists and psychiatrists. I'd imagine this happens less in less ambiguated fields of internal medicine because things tend to be more delinable.


The same could be spun around onto natural products as well. You can tell me all day long that hypertension can be treated with x chinese herbal supplement, but people all over the world are using modern hypertension treatments anyways. There's a known correlation with people obsessed with natural cures and products, and a conscientiousness of health and body care in general. It's easy for healthy people to say their cancers were cured with diet--but tell that to a cancer patient, and you'll get frowny-faces and gtfos. It's easy for people to say "organic foods help you with disorders" if you can afford it. But these supplements, usually made from things easy to grow and cheap to harvest, are marketed far beyond the cost of production, and sometimes filled with fillers. There's a whole bad-side debate to herbal supplements and remedies.

I'm sorry if I did not make this clearer: I tend to go with products that are more well-researched. As organic chemistry was largely an 1800s/1900s phenomenon, a lot of chemicals and their interactions are not fully known to us. So I said the products TEND to be more natural, as a consequence of being more researched. If they are not natural but well-documented, I will opt for them over herbs with dubious effects. Lithium is the most perscribed for my disorder, and it has documentation from the Roman Empire era, where those with "hysteria" were noted to be better after bathing in lithium springs (so even its cutaneous activity is somewhat established).

I'm on medication that is not naturally occuring, but it is well-documented, and I have a pretty good sense of what to expect. I also used facial products with parabens, mostly because I don't see why they are so maligned, given their concentration in most products vs. the toxicity level. Then there's a low level of cutaneous diffusion etc.

I'm the last person to recommend some "herb" without research. In my family, I'm normally asked questions about products (I have a chemistry degree; it helps a bit, but some of the compounds really can't be analyzed trivially by looking at structure or by a novice). For example, I loathe "natural" weight loss products, yet many ignore the caffiene being the first on the list of ingredients, which just speeds up their metabolism slightly but also causes agitation and sleep issues in high doses.

It's a never ending struggle and battle. I mean, if you told a shaman to stay abreast with the latest findings, he'd say "Why? What I've been doing has been established for generations, why do I NEED this now?" You say you trust naturalists because they've been well documented for hundreds of years... Why would they ever need to learn or identify new things if what they're doing works in their lifetime? Going to school for 12 years as a doctor now-a-days.. what you started school with will be obsolete when you end it. There has to be some sort of system set up to establish increments because it's impossible for humans in general to keep up with the times lately. It just is.

Ok. Again, I don't seek natural over chemical for any reason other than perhaps it is more well-documented. If having a choice betwen 5-isobutyl-2-methoxy-scary-sounding-to-most-people and some herb that a random person believes will work, I'm going with the IUPAC one.

Shamnism isn't really based on science in the strict sense that medicine is. Medicine, nowadays, starts normally with biochemists. And in biochemistry, everything must be rigorous or close to it.

Doctors, unlike Shaman, can make about a quarter million dollars in a good number of fields. I certainly expect them to keep abreast of latest literature, especially since it's free for most of them. Search engines make this easy. If I have a patient suffering from X, X likely has a few instant results in fractions of a second.

In my example, again, I had some parkinonism for a good week, and the psychiatrist stated it was not medical--but rather, it was all in my head. I asked a highly-rated doctor about the issue , and he said it was possibly the combination, It was; neuroleptics today have far more serotonergic effects, and being on a cocombinant dose of a serotonergic drug (SSRIs) could confer a problem in a cross-mechanistic fashion, as apparently the dopamine and serotonin pathways, thought previously to be distinct, are interwoven. Once the dose of the SSRI was lowered by a factor of 3, the stuttering dissapeared.

Yes, I expect doctors making more than enough money to keep abreast of important info like this. With the Shaman, there's an element of quackery inherent within the practice as it's far from standardized.

I usually invite people who distrust doctors and their methods to go to medical school and change the industry. Most people don't feel that strongly about it.. and that's fine. But it's a long, hard walk in those shoes.. and there's very, very little consideration given to them and their miles in the process. It's a lot of thankless work.


In all honesty, I think the chemists are more "thankless." Doctors make about 2-3 times what an average biochemist would make, although they are the people who synthesize the molecules. No one ever really mentions them, not even doctors. If they make a mistake and produce the wrong enantiomer of ibuprofen, people die. How often have you heard of people like Linus Pauling?

I have had a biochemist explain pathways to me better than any doctor, and he made about $70, 000/ year, about 200k less than my psychiatrist who thought something was "all in my head." They also have about a 10 year reduction of life expentancy, likely because, even with all of the protective gear, exposure to byproducts and intiial ingredients does some damage, although I don't know if the answer has been definitive.

And doctors aren't always open to hearing patients speak of this. I told one that the drug he was about to give me had a near identical michales-menton kinetics as the previous one that caused stuttering. I tried it anyway. Same. Same stuttering. Still all in my head. And how dare I discuss chemistry with them?! was the basic response, even though I had the journal articles on my laptop ready to go.

As with the diva crowned for her voice, many people become complacent. Unfortunately, medicine is always changing. If they have no intentions of noticing these changes, they should opt for another profesion.

Computer scientists, who also make frations of what doctors do, have to always be on their toes because a new class or framework may appear. And if you don't take the chance to learn it to some degree, it's easy to become obsolete, as we saw with the .com boom in the early 2000s.

I don't see a reason to note hold Dr.s to this standard when change occurs in many other lower-paying fields, with the need to know to be functional.
 

Elocute

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Testing babies with mercury until they're toxic is probably as unethical as you can get. However.. I'd say that the fact that most babies are doing okay in a world that got vaccines before they were even improved upon highly is evidence enough that babies are going to be okay with a minute amount of literally anything. I've had literally every vaccine that was available to me at my age, and some most people my age do not get anymore. Like.. Me and every other military person out there. There are some vaccines administered at the beginning of life because of how prevalent and persistent diseases are--and the guarantee-y-ness that babies will die from them--that seemed to (and accurately did) outweigh the potential for things like mercury toxicity. Babies are growing up fine and healthy all the time.. and they mostly all get vaccines. So I don't know where your grounds are for wanting studies in areas that aren't only not feasible, but would really waste research money. That'd be like me asking you to study how many pages are in a typical notebook--no one is affected school wise by having to buy more notebooks, it doesn't seem to be a factor in education, so why would you study it with precious research money when it doesn't even make sense to go around counting pages? But by all means, go ahead and try to get funding for testing how toxic you can make babies with mercury. I'm sure that won't get people all pissed off.



It's because she throws out, willy-nilly and knowing her celebrity status lends her an audience, an entire classification of drugs. She doesn't want a 'safer product'. She wants attention and something to complain about in her perfect little world to keep herself viable. If she said "Oh, the RUBELLA vaccine causes toxicity in children, I see all these studies that say so." I could MAYBE see her point. But vaccines are vast, with many different ones all containing different ingredients.. and they're ALL bad. It's like saying all carbs are bad just because you don't like processed food. She isn't even focused on her demands--she just hates for the sake of hating. And that's why it's infuriating. Because she lacks any scientific foundations, and her convictions are static even when presented new evidence that contradicts the studies she relied on. She wants studies when they agree with her--and ignores studies that don't, even when they far outweigh the studies she likes. She's not actually aiming for a quality product. She's aiming for attention and blind hatred. Because, like everyone else in the world, admitting you're wrong is hard.. and wanting validation for the way you personally feel about things is more tempting than any evidence.

She's allowed to hate all vaccines for ANY delusions or perceptions that she has. No one's telling her otherwise. But its the stuff she does around that, the fact she tries to pretend its scientific and educated and not personal emotions that puts it all out of whack and angers people.



Exactly. But there is little evidence to support it. Just like someone came out and said "Oh, Carbs are bad for you I think! look!" And it turned out processed foods were what was bad for us.. and carbs are easily converted into processed foods in the shape of breads, cookies, etc. It was a big huge hoopla over NOTHING--carbs were not the criminal. You're literally saying, "I'm avoiding ALL aluminum until I have proof it doesn't cause alzheimers." Fat in food CAN make you fat, but that doesn't mean avoiding all of it entirely it is the most rational thing to do. In the spectrum of things, aluminum hasn't shown near as much dangers as other chemicals -- like all the chemicals that come out of vehicles and cars and that go into them for example -- and yet it's getting uneven focus. The amount of aluminum in vaccines is considerably less than you'd ever need to cause any disease though--up to and including alzheimers even if there were a causation.

I don't avoid all restaurants if I get sick at one. I might avoid that restaurant. It would have to take something insanely huge for me to stop going to all restaurants.



Uh. Yeah. That's what the drugs are helping treat. But why they developed it is unknown. Regardless of sodium intake, eating habits, culture--people all around the world develop it all the time. There is no KNOWN cause. That's a mechanism of the disease itself. I don't see what you're trying to dispute here. I never said we didn't know how the disease works--we do. We know how to treat it too, and are working for better treatments. But that doesn't mean we know the true source. We don't.



Thousands of people, and only three years? How does that account for alzheimers manifesting later in life? How does it account for the fact that NONE of these guys HAD alzheimers to begin with? It's a quack study, dude. I'm sorry, but it is. Not all studies are born equal. This lacks the longitudinal depth, and basic criteria to qualify as anything useful ever. "Oh, take Vitamin C and you won't get Alzheimers! Don't worry about the fact that many of these people don't have Alzheimer's in their family history, or that taking vitamins tends to promote people into better health as well! Forget all that stuff! In three years if you don't get alzheimers, you Wont!" .. It's entirely misleading.



It's no different from how organic food people discovered organic foods were helping them. They made an educated guess, based on experience and similar already founded principles, and discovered it did work in one way or another for whatever problem they had. It stands to reason that, "If the pores are clogged it does nasty things for the body." There isn't a need to pull a ton of scientific pore studies out of old dusty books to know that you don't want clogged pores. Similarly, if you have a foundation in chemistry and medicine activation sites, you can guess how things will work.

There's a lot of medicines that "work" that we don't even know the reasons why still. We developed them, and use them, without even knowing how. It's been the stuff of science since the beginning. Guess, test, results, and eventually theorize and turn it into a principle.



All the 1980-2000 babies that are perfectly fine functioning adults right now that didn't die of horrid diseases, end up with life-long suppressed immune systems from damaging illnesses, or get stuck in a wheelchair their whole lives from polio.



If it's a known neurotoxin, why are we going to test it on people? .. It's been tested on lab rats enough already. That's like saying, "If electricity can burn people, shouldn't we see how much people can be burned by it?" .. No. We shouldn't. Jeezus, you're just trying to make mad scientists now.



It's not thanks to Jenny McCarthy. It's because scientists are always looking for better medicines anyways. As discoveries are made and technology advances, so too do medicines. Yes, the consumer has a dictation in all of this.. Absolutely not to be discredited. No sense in making a vaccine people won't use. But a large reason mercury is no longer used is because of technological advancements and discoveries. People can complain all day about mercury--if there's nothing to replace it, what can they do? Bitch and take it, or bitch and not take it. That's it.



I find that hard to believe. We live in an age of technology where all kinds of information is out our fingertips. We don't have to spend $1000 for a lengthy, boring textbook. We have the cliffnotes of like everything ever. People need to be more proactive about their health--trusting anyone without rapport established first isn't really the way to go about things.

We ended up going to three doctors because my mother's disease was so rare that they didn't know what she had--but they all thought it looked like something else. I'm not going to deny there are quack doctors (that's a whole other discussion, and I agree it's a problem.. but Not nearly to the extent people think it is) out there, but if you're willing to listen to anyone at their word before even taking a glance at what you have, or establishing a trust relationship with a doctor before divulging your symptoms and signs, then I don't know what to say. You're throwing your trust out there to the wind just because they say they have a PhD. That's not really the right answer--and not fair to the doctors.



The same could be spun around onto natural products as well. You can tell me all day long that hypertension can be treated with x chinese herbal supplement, but people all over the world are using modern hypertension treatments anyways. There's a known correlation with people obsessed with natural cures and products, and a conscientiousness of health and body care in general. It's easy for healthy people to say their cancers were cured with diet--but tell that to a cancer patient, and you'll get frowny-faces and gtfos. It's easy for people to say "organic foods help you with disorders" if you can afford it. But these supplements, usually made from things easy to grow and cheap to harvest, are marketed far beyond the cost of production, and sometimes filled with fillers. There's a whole bad-side debate to herbal supplements and remedies.

Sometimes the best option is the cheapest and most readily available one--and while sometimes that's all natural cures (Every doctor ever will tell you to wait out a cold vs using anti-virals right away, physical therapy is still like the number 1 recommendation for chronic pain, and many doctors still tell you to use good ole' hydrogen peroxide for a sore throat vs medicine) it doesn't mean natural cures are always feasible.

Whatever works for you and your health, is fine, though.. really.. I tend to use natural remedies for many things, simply because it's cheap and/or free.



There is a phenomenon out there about pressuring pharm labs to pump out things faster than they'd like. Funding is a huge issue with this--and on both sides. There are usually pretenses like "These are experimental drugs that haven't been tested, but have shown x..".. and people usually agree to it.. and then later on cry that they used drugs that weren't properly tested. :shrug: It's the way the game goes. You live and learn.



It's a never ending struggle and battle. I mean, if you told a shaman to stay abreast with the latest findings, he'd say "Why? What I've been doing has been established for generations, why do I NEED this now?" You say you trust naturalists because they've been well documented for hundreds of years... Why would they ever need to learn or identify new things if what they're doing works in their lifetime? Going to school for 12 years as a doctor now-a-days.. what you started school with will be obsolete when you end it. There has to be some sort of system set up to establish increments because it's impossible for humans in general to keep up with the times lately. It just is.

I usually invite people who distrust doctors and their methods to go to medical school and change the industry. Most people don't feel that strongly about it.. and that's fine. But it's a long, hard walk in those shoes.. and there's very, very little consideration given to them and their miles in the process. It's a lot of thankless work.


I find that hard to believe. We live in an age of technology where all kinds of information is out our fingertips. We don't have to spend $1000 for a lengthy, boring textbook. We have the cliffnotes of like everything ever. People need to be more proactive about their health--trusting anyone without rapport established first isn't really the way to go about things.
In fairness, I was talking mainly about psychiatry. This area, as far as I know (I am not in the medical field), is far more ambiguous and labile due to not understanding the underpinnings of brain chemistry yet.

I had quite a good rapport with the doctor, which is what made me stay. He and his office officials were also courteous, but I didn't heed people saying it was a "pill factory," including other psychiatrists.

As I replied in my post of yours you left (again thank you), I should have been researching this far more than I did. I eventually downloaded a pharmacology book and read more currrent articles.

When I brought a few in to discuss what they said, I was basically told to shut up as I do not have any medical experience. I later went to a hospital with a more open-minded doctor and got medication that really helps me.

I have heard of other stories from MDs, especially dermatologists and psychiatrists. I'd imagine this happens less in less ambiguated fields of internal medicine because things tend to be more delinable.


The same could be spun around onto natural products as well. You can tell me all day long that hypertension can be treated with x chinese herbal supplement, but people all over the world are using modern hypertension treatments anyways. There's a known correlation with people obsessed with natural cures and products, and a conscientiousness of health and body care in general. It's easy for healthy people to say their cancers were cured with diet--but tell that to a cancer patient, and you'll get frowny-faces and gtfos. It's easy for people to say "organic foods help you with disorders" if you can afford it. But these supplements, usually made from things easy to grow and cheap to harvest, are marketed far beyond the cost of production, and sometimes filled with fillers. There's a whole bad-side debate to herbal supplements and remedies.

I'm sorry if I did not make this clearer: I tend to go with products that are more well-researched. As organic chemistry was largely an 1800s/1900s phenomenon, a lot of chemicals and their interactions are not fully known to us. So I said the products TEND to be more natural, as a consequence of being more researched. If they are not natural but well-documented, I will opt for them over herbs with dubious effects. Lithium is the most perscribed for my disorder, and it has documentation from the Roman Empire era, where those with "hysteria" were noted to be better after bathing in lithium springs (so even its cutaneous activity is somewhat established).

I'm on medication that is not naturally occuring, but it is well-documented, and I have a pretty good sense of what to expect. I also used facial products with parabens, mostly because I don't see why they are so maligned, given their concentration in most products vs. the toxicity level. Then there's a low level of cutaneous diffusion etc.

I'm the last person to recommend some "herb" without research. In my family, I'm normally asked questions about products (I have a chemistry degree; it helps a bit, but some of the compounds really can't be analyzed trivially by looking at structure or by a novice). For example, I loathe "natural" weight loss products, yet many ignore the caffiene being the first on the list of ingredients, which just speeds up their metabolism slightly but also causes agitation and sleep issues in high doses.

It's a never ending struggle and battle. I mean, if you told a shaman to stay abreast with the latest findings, he'd say "Why? What I've been doing has been established for generations, why do I NEED this now?" You say you trust naturalists because they've been well documented for hundreds of years... Why would they ever need to learn or identify new things if what they're doing works in their lifetime? Going to school for 12 years as a doctor now-a-days.. what you started school with will be obsolete when you end it. There has to be some sort of system set up to establish increments because it's impossible for humans in general to keep up with the times lately. It just is.

Ok. Again, I don't seek natural over chemical for any reason other than perhaps it is more well-documented. If having a choice betwen 5-isobutyl-2-methoxy-scary-sounding-to-most-people and some herb that a random person believes will work, I'm going with the IUPAC one.

Shamnism isn't really based on science in the strict sense that medicine is. Medicine, nowadays, starts normally with biochemists. And in biochemistry, everything must be rigorous or close to it.

Doctors, unlike Shaman, can make about a quarter million dollars in a good number of fields. I certainly expect them to keep abreast of latest literature, especially since it's free for most of them. Search engines make this easy. If I have a patient suffering from X, X likely has a few instant results in fractions of a second.

In my example, again, I had some parkinonism for a good week, and the psychiatrist stated it was not medical--but rather, it was all in my head. I asked a highly-rated doctor about the issue , and he said it was possibly the combination, It was; neuroleptics today have far more serotonergic effects, and being on a cocombinant dose of a serotonergic drug (SSRIs) could confer a problem in a cross-mechanistic fashion, as apparently the dopamine and serotonin pathways, thought previously to be distinct, are interwoven. Once the dose of the SSRI was lowered by a factor of 3, the stuttering dissapeared.

Yes, I expect doctors making more than enough money to keep abreast of important info like this. With the Shaman, there's an element of quackery inherent within the practice as it's far from standardized.

I usually invite people who distrust doctors and their methods to go to medical school and change the industry. Most people don't feel that strongly about it.. and that's fine. But it's a long, hard walk in those shoes.. and there's very, very little consideration given to them and their miles in the process. It's a lot of thankless work.


In all honesty, I think the chemists are more "thankless." Doctors make about 2-3 times what an average biochemist would make, although they are the people who synthesize the molecules. No one ever really mentions them, not even doctors. If they make a mistake and produce the wrong enantiomer of ibuprofen, people die. How often have you heard of people like Linus Pauling?

I have had a biochemist explain pathways to me better than any doctor, and he made about $70, 000/ year, about 200k less than my psychiatrist who thought something was "all in my head." They also have about a 10 year reduction of life expentancy, likely because, even with all of the protective gear, exposure to byproducts and intiial ingredients does some damage, although I don't know if the answer has been definitive.

And doctors aren't always open to hearing patients speak of this. I told one that the drug he was about to give me had near identical michales-menton kinetics as the previous one that caused stuttering. I tried it anyway. Same. Same stuttering. Still all in my head. And how dare I discuss chemistry with them?! was the basic response, even though I had the journal articles on my laptop ready to go.

As with the diva crowned for her voice, many people become complacent. Unfortunately, medicine is always changing. If they have no intentions of noticing these changes, they should opt for another profesion.

Computer scientists, who also make fractions of what doctors do, have to always be on their toes because a new class or framework may appear. And if you don't take the chance to learn it to some degree, it's easy to become obsolete, as we saw with the .com boom in the early 2000s.

I don't see a reason to note hold Dr.s to this standard when change occurs in many other lower-paying fields, with the need to know to be functional.
 
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