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Tuesday, June 28. 2016

The Alternative Medicine Racket

How the Feds Fund Quacks



Posted by Dr. Joy Bliss in Medical, Psychology, and Dr. Bliss at 13:39 | Comments (25) | Trackbacks (0)

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Reminds me of Steve Jobs who had one of the few curable instances of pancreatic cancer, but ended up dead due to his trust in alternative medicines.

A great mind gone too soon. These hucksters should be ashamed.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/apple/8841347/Steve-Jobs-regretted-trying-to-beat-cancer-with-alternative-medicine-for-so-long.html
#1 MissT on 2016-06-28 14:09 (Reply)
Ahhh. . .the wonderful wisdom of the women of power in Seattle. You know -- where Steve went. Anyhow, here is there most favoritist of all alternative medicine shyster schools

http://www.bastyrcenter.org/?&gclid=CMOiob3iy80CFQ-oaQodHfgIlQ
#2 faculty wife on 2016-06-28 18:29 (Reply)
Just looking at their home page makes me shake my head and wonder how many people they killed with their quackery.
#2.1 dcjuggler on 2016-06-28 18:36 (Reply)
It's your life. If you want to smoke -- smoke. If you want to eat or drink in excess then do so. It's your life.

Now some here like exercising. Well, it's their life. Others believe that you have a given number of heartbeats and if you exercise you use them up faster than if you take life easy. It's your life. You make the decision.

If you want to use alternative medicine then do so. If you don't want to use that approach, then don't.

But don't be a nanny telling and mandating that everyone do what you want to do.
#3 Dave on 2016-06-28 20:49 (Reply)
Well said, Dave! Problem is the supposed medical "authorities" have a death grip on what is or is not quackery. The patient's wishes be damned. This attitude springs from the same practitioners who, by their own admission, kill 250,000 patients a year due to their own ineptness. "He's not a real doctor, he only has a PhD."
#3.1 Sven Svenson on 2016-06-29 10:07 (Reply)
Quackwatch is a good site for keeping track of alternative practices that don't work. It isn't kept up as well as it used to be, but the info is still good.
#4 Assistant Village Idiot (Link) on 2016-06-29 09:13 (Reply)
There are two different areas of quackery:

One is the everyday quackery where there is a magic food or recently discovered berry that will prevent everything from cancer to diabetes to hemorrhoids, just send in $19.95 plus shipping for the miracle cure. Harmless perhaps but clearly fraud. It should be stopped until the hucksters can prove their magic cures are effective.

Then there is the fake treatments for people with serious diseases. Understandable that if you have cancer or any serious disease and your doctor seems unable to cure it that you would grasp at straws to save yourself. This is really shameful and criminal and it does sometimes prevent people from seeking actual medical care. I would be happy to see these quacks and their supporters do serious jail time.
#5 GoneWithTheWind on 2016-06-29 10:53 (Reply)
I would be happy to see these quacks and their supporters do serious jail time.

Oooh, quacks. Jail time. Musn't go around hollering pomegranates! in a crowded chemo death ward, right?

The upshot being we need an official Ministry of Truth. An Arbiter of Thought, complete with institutions of due penalties and remediated offenses.

I mean, listen to yourself; it's obviously what you expect everybody else to do. I'd be happy to see you do serious introspection time, Gone Windy, but what are the odds of that?
#5.1 Ten on 2016-06-29 11:43 (Reply)
"Musn't go around hollering pomegranates! in a crowded chemo death ward"

Indeed! Pomegranates, really? So prove it! That's all that is required to sell/prescribe medicine; prove it!

Re: Chemo, for many, sadly, chemo doesn't work. It either doesn't extend life and/or doesn't improve the quality of life. For some, chemo works. A lot depends on what cancer you have and a little depends on how early the cancer is discovered. Often chemo is chosen simply because there is no other option even though the doctor knows it probably won't work. But, can you prove to me that pomegranates work in any cases???

There IS a established case law regarding the making of false claims. There are laws against practicing medicine without a license. Where the quacks operate is in the grey area between the 1st amendment and actually practicing medicine. They operate in this grey area by design not by accident. They do this because the know they are quacks, duh! If they could prove that pomegranates or newly discovered berries from the Amazon jungle really worked they would do so eagerly and make millions. They cannot so they operate in the dark and poorly regulated area of the quacks and supplement sellers.
#6 GoneWithTheWind on 2016-06-29 12:58 (Reply)
That's all cute, Gone Windy, but contains no pertinence to your dumb conflation of undefined alternate treatments with blanket fraud, then with actually being an alternate treatment, and finally again with fraud. Naturally, you prefer to bloviate rather than capitulate when confronted about same.

As I alluded, I guess with reasoning like that we'll need official ministers like yourself to prescribe "serious jail time" for these various phantoms of your mind while proscribing anybody from identifying them as such. Neat little racket you've got there.

Nobody's promoting this asinine magic food bullshit you're spouting - including the rhetorical free-speech pomegranate, Einstein - or this mysterious chasm between free speech and wanton foolery and fraud that Fraudsters occupy so as to circularly earn the moniker so maybe also drop the strawmanning, assuming you ever do introspect. Or speak reliably instead of extensively.

And yeah, chemo, the bulwark of your Proper Acceptable Medicine, should be a clue, one you blew right past having given it too the wide, vague berth of Windy Reasoning.

You just like to hear yourself talk. Whether it makes sense is secondary and if you'll ever back up the particulars isn't even tertiary. Apparently words don't have meaning.
#6.1 Ten on 2016-06-29 13:17 (Reply)
Do you have some example of alternative medicine that is provably effective against any serious disease? Something you want to showcase as proof that alternative medicine is the equal or perhaps even better than science based medicine? Or do you have some evidence that there is some kind of conspiracy in science based medicine to promote a ineffective treatment (such as chemo which you seem to disagree with). Prove your case!
#6.1.1 GoneWithTheWind on 2016-06-29 15:04 (Reply)
I already proved half a dozen times that you're as immune to fact that disagrees with your internal narrative as you are capable of revision. They seem to go together.

Now if you'll permit, I think I'll go beseech the Village Idiot lest he cast me off and trundle anew upon my brow. For I have offended the person of his person, the greatest of ills and the height of naderhoodnessdom.

And I encourage you to go and trundle likewise for this we are veritably and soundly advised is right and true. Read not thou the unclean uncleanness of my uncleanity until I shall renew again the factual and proper. For the betterment of mankind.
#6.1.1.1 Ten on 2016-06-29 16:14 (Reply)
It's your body. It's your life. If someone decides to take alternative routes, regardless as to how silly it may seem to you, it is their life. Let them make the choice they want to make.

If you remember, there have been repeated attempts to make vitamin and herbal companies submit to FDA regulation. That is draconian and only benefits governmental agencies and drug manufacturers. If you don't want to use vitamins or herbs or Love Potion Number 9, don't.

Don't be a nanny and force everyone to follow HMO guidelines or AMA guidelines with their life.
#6.1.1.2 Dave on 2016-06-29 23:09 (Reply)
Lest we forget, there is no "cure" for cancer. Only five-year survival rates.
#6.1.1.2.1 Sven Svenson on 2016-06-30 09:52 (Reply)
" If someone decides to take alternative routes, regardless as to how silly it may seem to you, it is their life. Let them make the choice they want to make."

Couldn't agree more!!! However that isn't the issue. The issue is are the quacks lying AND breaking the law. Shouldn't the hypothetical "someone" at least have the benefit of the truth? I would think if you are willing to support their right to alternatives that at the very least it not be a scam and that the truth is available for all to see and make an informed choice. If Pomegranates or Vitamin C will cure or help in anyway I am eager to now this. If it doesn't help in anyway and the quacks are merely taking our money for fake cures while dissuading us from seeking real or possible cures I am eager to knwo that as well. Aren't you?
#6.1.1.2.2 GoneWithTheWind on 2016-07-01 14:29 (Reply)
If Pomegranates or Vitamin C will cure or help in anyway I am eager to now this. If it doesn't help in anyway and the quacks are merely taking our money for fake cures while dissuading us from seeking real or possible cures I am eager to knwo that as well. Aren't you?

BULLSHIT.
#6.1.1.2.2.1 Ten on 2016-07-02 10:19 (Reply)
At last we agree on something. The claims of magic foods and supplements are Bull Shit!
#6.1.1.2.2.1.1 GoneWithTheWind on 2016-07-02 10:29 (Reply)
We agree you're lying?
#6.1.1.2.2.1.1.1 Ten on 2016-07-02 12:35 (Reply)
I never lie. I am occasionally factually wrong, sometimes mistaken, I have even been lost a time or two but I don't lie.
#6.1.1.2.2.1.1.1.1 GoneWithTheWind on 2016-07-02 16:10 (Reply)
That's not true either. As I've said to you specifically many times, I had given you dozens and dozens of cites to or from scientific findings that record that diet and nutrition are major factors in disease. I have, in fact, noted frequently that you refuse to take in any of them. This is not a vague assertion or a diversionary claim. It is a matter of the record here in this place.

How can this be, we ask ourselves. Obviously, this is because you prefer your narrative, one that consumes large chunks of this unfortunate blog property, typically expressed in meandering blocks of prose wherein you lay out the very nature of reality for one and all. In health matters it's the rote sermon on genetics, one you then cite as its own proof.

You commonly conflate your opinion with proof, kinda like how Baraq can't commit a wrongdoing because he's president. To you - having also fancifully claimed earnest, wide-eyed lifelong interest in science, or as I like to trademark popularized scientism from people like you, Science! - there's no difference between your opinion and reality. How could there be when it's you? QED.

We have more than established this pattern. We've established that this pattern cannot and shall not be remediated. We've established that this pattern shall not be reviewed for when you yourself stand in for science there's no reason to. And now we've established that you're either ignorant of all this or that, probably, you'll just lie about it.

It has to be one or the other. There is no other alternative.
#6.1.1.2.2.1.1.1.1.1 Ten on 2016-07-02 16:27 (Reply)
Not true. You have cited quacks who believe in magic foods and supplements.

Diet and diseases? Some diseases require and/or are mitigated by a specific diet. Many quacks and pundits have conflated this to mean if we all ate those specific diets we would not catch those diseases. Poppycock.

You write a tome do tell me how hard you tried in the past to enlighten me and others but not even a sentence to support your claim. That's all I asked for!!
"Do you have some example of alternative medicine that is provably effective against any serious disease?"
Simple as that. You could have responded with your favorite magic food/supplement and made your case but you didn't/couldn't. Instead you write long posts to whine about how no one gets it but you.
#6.1.1.2.2.1.1.1.1.1.1 GoneWithTheWind on 2016-07-03 10:27 (Reply)
I've cited scientific studies, jack wagon.

I think we both know what you aim to do, which means I'm out.
#6.1.1.2.2.1.1.1.1.1.1.1 Ten on 2016-07-03 11:46 (Reply)
After reading your tone and insult, which make up the bulk of the comments rather than actual content that could be discussed, I have decided there is no point in reading any further comments by you on this site. I encourage others to do the same. This commenter has earned it.

When I was last at Hyde Corner, several speakers were freely speaking to no one.
#6.1.2 Assistant Village Idiot (Link) on 2016-06-29 15:29 (Reply)
What kind of quack would recommend a course of treatment knowing that it probably won't work?
#6.2 Sven Svenson on 2016-06-30 09:59 (Reply)
Science, law, and politics do not mix well. See History.
#7 Bird Dog on 2016-06-29 13:30 (Reply)

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