For DentArthurDent to read

Post Reply New Topic

Like you I use BOTH Complimentary and Conventional Western medicine. Each have their roles and as I said previously they should work together not in opposition. The snobbery of intellectuals like Orwell on one side and hippy trippy nutjobs on the other really annoys and saddens me. The result of this snobbery on both sides is the dysfunctional system we now have, the losers in all this are those who need help with their well being.

To call herbal and nutritional medicine witchcraft and quackery, is as much as an absurdity as non scientific naturopaths talking about the vital natural force held in medicinal herbs, whilst they check your iris looking for a diagnosis.

Both are wrong, it is high time research scientists and institutions put far more time, effort and capital into this paradigm as it has a lot to offer, conventional medicine is NOT the panacea many would have you believe, and this is especially so in the treatment of chronic disease states. Orwell If you want me to elaborate on that statement I suggest you do as I did spend 4 years studying the paradigm.

That there exist legitimate herbal/nutritional medicine practitioners. I asked you how a patient is supposed to properly discern between "real" naturopaths and "fake" naturopaths. Basically, I'm calling you out on a "no true Scotsman" fallacy.


So is blood-letting, astrology, palm reading, etc.


The answer is to get rid of naturopathy.


This is what most naturopaths will say when pressed on it out in the open, but their actions and the advice they give their patients speaks louder than such claims.


Naturopathy and herbal medicine. Also crap like homeopathy (little real difference).


It is not a straw man. People die of treatable conditions because they trusted some idiot herbalist.


And proof that you're full of crap. Are people who are "disillusioned with conventional [sic-real] western medicine" going to honestly try to be a complement to, rather than a replacement for, real medicine? Do you think they will hold a respectful "peer dialogue" with a physician who represents the system that the alternative medicine practitioner opposes?

You're delusional, Dent.


You oppose science. Hardly any better than the YECs. Perhaps even worse, because making incorrect claims about the age of the world doesn't lead people to make decisions that get them killed in the near term.


If you examine the data, I think you will find that even among the worst scandals of drugs with unanticipated side effects, most of them did more good than harm. The pharmaceutical industry is held to higher standards than most people realize.


I've already said those physicians should have their licenses revoked. There are problems in the status quo. Problems that desperately need fixed. I readily acknowledge that. A flaw in the current system, however, does not change the fact that your proposed alternative is BS and witchcraft.


It's a shame that humans suck at logical reasoning. The availability heuristic gets in the way, and since needless deaths from fake medicine are individual and scattered, they go unnoticed. If we had "alternative physics" that some engineers used to design jet engines, and those engines occasionally blew up and killed all the passengers aboard an airliner, such engineers would immediately be banned from the profession, and perhaps be facing jail time. Magic is no substitute for science, in any field.

Straw man. I have never claimed conventional medicine to be flawless, or a panacea. That kind of deception is left to the loony naturopaths. There is no panacea. We will probably never have a cure for every kind of cancer. We will almost certainly never have a cure for AIDS. Someday, we will fail to correctly anticipate the next big flu pandemic and probably millions of people will die. But we have no alternative to science-based medicine. It is not perfect, but it is by far the best chance we have.

I have to agree with Orwell. There is no criteria for deciding if a problem is becoming serious enough to warrant forgoing of naturopathic solutions in favor of hard science.

People become invested in things that they have spend time working at. This is both the naturopath saying 'give the cinnamon tea some more time to cure your heart disease', and the patient thinking "I'm probably already healing, I just dont feel it yet". Both are ignoring the fact that its well past time to deal rationally with the issue. Go see a doctor! Pride will keep both from deciding that they started down the wrong damn path in the first place. They are unlikely to give up their foolish folk cures when they think they are making valid headway.

I mean, you took some schooling in it. How readily will you admit that it might have been a big waste of time? Up until now you dont. You poured time and money into that. You strained to change your thinking along the lines of your teachers.

People are bad enough for completely ignoring the signs of disease in the first place. If an oncologist tells them that they have reduced their chance of cancer survival from 95% down to 15% because they spent the last year overdosing on vitamin C, they are going to shut him out. They are invested and he has no light at the end of the tunnel for them. What good would it do to listen?

What about now? Still invested strongly in being correct? I bet you are.

Furthermore, even if there were a legit naturopathy science, it simply primes people to swallow(punningly) the ridiculous quackery. It is exactly the same as how moderate religious belief paves the way for fundamentalism. You are paving the way for woo-woo witch doctorism.

Are you annoyed with me? Am I so totally wrong, deluded, under the sway of big pharma? Is there no possible way you dont know what you are talking about?

Naturopathy is a kind of old medicine revival. It's holistic, and clings on using a variety of methods, all chosen because they are unfalsifiable/unproven (link, click one! they all are ineffective or involve fraud).

Surely if one recognised the medicinal power of herbs, diet etc, one would study medicine, or biology/chemistry, and then specialise to research a particular plant or process, instead of ascribing to Vis medicatrix naturae; "nature's magic heals and that's that", and dealing herbs. In fact people have already done this, and chemicals taken from plants have aided in making all manner of medicinal drugs, because these people learned the medical/scientific discipline.

Acupuncture for example. Could be explained by placebo (which is powerful as it is), in combination with a salient nervous response to very light tissue damage (mild pinprick sensation), however it claims to be based on meridians (how many? it varies, in fact fake acupuncture has been found as effective as "real acupuncture )(link)

I have never claimed there were 'fake' Naturopaths only ones who I do not respect and are not worthy of the name, so take your Scotsman and shove it up up your ass



Pathetic fail, apart form the editing and removal of context



You are such an idiot, it worries me that you are going to be a research scientist when you are not able to allow yourself to move from a fixed belief, I have access to a large amount of reaseach on efficacy of Medicinal herbs as do you and yet you refuse to acknowledge this



So you keep saying, this may happen on occasions as it does with conventional medicine, but were is your evidence that this is a common occurance, oh of course I forgot, silly me, it happens all the time but goes unnoticed



So you dont have multimodality clinics in the US or are you going to try and claim they dont exist, and yes the philosophy is to try and complement rather than replace, if you think I am wrong, like I said come here and study it and find out the truth for yourself


Yet another f*****g lie, I dont and a great many other herbalists do not deny science, in fact we want more research.



Funny Irony that the person who not only believes in a completely hypothetical creator but worse that this creator came to earth as his own son, performed a few magic tricks, survived his own death and then teleported himself back home, would call someone who questions this legend, and reads scientific research into the field of medicine that he interested in a believer of witchcraft.

Your claim that Herbal medicine is not based on any science is a complete and utter load of BS, that you cannot see this is a flaw in your character. If you want me to produce evidence of the science involved I will but you are quite capable of getting it for yourself as Pub Med has reams of information on the efficacy and usefulness of Medicinal herbs

That link is interesting, the only modalities listed there that I studied are Botanical Medicine, Nutrition, and Iridology (which i have already dismissed as nonsense)along with advice on lifestyle. Prove your claim that Herbal meciine and Nutrition is unproven or fraudulent.

And exactly where in this thread will you find any support for Homeopathy

Nowhere, I just thought that picture (which just happened to be today's xkcd) would produce some laughs

All the naturopathic "schools" in the US teach homeopathy as part of their required course.

Herbal medicine is for the most part ineffective compared to proper medicinal treatment. Although herbal remedies such as StJohn's wort can help people, I've already mentioned that they can be studied to produce more effective drugs than the herbs on their own:

It's why we use pure aspririn today instead of instead of powdered willow bark.

Nurtrition shouldn't take a holistic approach, given that biology has already found the way that these things work in completely explanable terms, which is taught to doctors or other medical professionals, who can advise patients on diet alongside effective treatment.

Now here is a subject worthy of debate.

Your statement is essentially untrue. That some medications are more effective or safer than the natural alternative is true Laudenum Vs Ms Contin or Vicodin for example you will find no argument from me. But this is not true across the board as you are stating, also effectiveness must also take into consideration side effects and drug resistance for example

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18803230

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19593179

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19653313


Firstly why? secondly are you aware of just how little nutrition MD's actually study

1) Because then it will more properly complement medical decisions. Our medical system does need to place a greater emphasis on preventive care, and physicians need to do more to advise their patients on lifestyle issues.
2) Yeah, physicians should have more training on those issues, and less on organic chemistry.

I note with interest Orwell that you have not comented on the PubMed articles. Considering your position regarding the complete lack of science re-Herbal Medicine I would have expected you to try and refute these studies

Would you like some more PubMed articles? I can furnish this thread with hundreds that support the efficacy of Medicinal Herbs

Neither did you respond to the studies I posted. We can keep spamming each other with articles if you like.


Well, the entire premedical curriculum is utterly irrelevant to a physician's day-to-day tasks, meaning their undergraduate education is basically a waste. Replace the study of organic chemistry, calculus, physics, and genetics with more instruction on nutrition and whatever else.


I think we disagree with how much would be left after you get rid of the fruitloops. I doubt there would be much of a paradigm left.


Well, if you are not actually a supporter of naturopathy then I'm not sure where exactly our disagreement lies. That many plant compounds are medicinally useful is uncontroversial. There are research projects that involve just going out into wilderness areas and examining everything that is found to see if something is pharmacologically active. We need more of that type of thing.