Case (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
case) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
fandomsecrets2010-09-19 05:01 pm
case) wrote in fandomsecrets2010-09-19 05:01 pm
[ SECRET POST #1355 ]
⌈ Secret Post #1355 ⌋
Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.
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Notes:
Secrets Left to Post: 12 pages, 295 secrets from Secret Submission Post #194.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 1 2 3 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 1 - too big ], [ 1 2 - repeat ], [ 1 - take it to comments ], [ 1 - personal attack ], [ 1 - unreadable ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.
no subject
Not remotely true. My contraceptive insert works; the demeanour of the doctor who put it in almost five years ago is completely irrelevant. Antibacterial cures for peptic ulcers work, no matter who gives them to you. Placebo effects are known to be boosted by good, diligent care but the whole point is that placebo is 'as effective as the practitioner' and real medicine is better than the practitioner.
Not all alternative medicine is 'fake' (homeopathy is fake, herbal remedies are unregulated and have the potential for both great good and great harm, acupuncture is statistically indistinguishable from a placebo). But with very few exceptions, alternative medicine is not subject to double-blind randomised trials before it can be legally marketed as medicinal. We often don't know whether they're fake or not. With scientific medicine it is possible for fail and fraud to slip through the net but there is, at least, always a paper trail for us to follow.
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(Anonymous) 2010-09-19 10:51 pm (UTC)(link)no subject
(Anonymous) 2010-09-19 11:03 pm (UTC)(link)no subject
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(Anonymous) 2010-09-19 11:23 pm (UTC)(link)You appear to believe that if someone believes that acupuncture works, they also must not believe that Western medicine works, and can't possibly be using both at the same time. I don't understand why you think this.
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Why are acupuncturists so insistent that everyone believe that their placebo treatment is more than that? Because there's money in it, I guess? It's not like I have the power to stop anyone from believing anything, but there's no harm in passing around the results of clinical trials on the subject. It's kinda interesting imo.
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Funny thing is, I don't think we've got any acupuncturists posting in these threads.
If I may give it a shot though, I think people are insisting that Acupuncture as more than placebo is because it's pretty insulting to lump a 3000 year old practice in with sugar pills just because Western Science hasn't figured it out yet. Acupuncture (among other practices) has been part of a lot of Asia's medical history for a very long time--there are schools dedicated to teaching this skill.
There is a multitude of things that Science does not know about the Human body. Acupuncture has survived for millenia, despite periodic persecution--you would think it'd take something stronger than a placebo effect to manage that.
Just my .02 on that though--if a real Acupuncturist would like to step in, plz do.
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YMMV.
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With that said, if real medicine always works, why are there usually such dreadful side effects? In the past 5, almost 6 years, I've had a number of clients who come to me with a plethora of what's considered 'real' medicine that does absolutely nothing for their problems--now I'm not saying that what I do cures the ailment, but I have been told unanimously that my part of their health care (massage therapy) has been crucial to their pain relief, and I can actually see and feel the results myself. That is something they could not get with years of specialists and doctors in some cases, and that is why I find it faulty to assume that they will always be more effective.
In addition to that, I will agree that a lot of the alternative medicine practices in the Western hemisphere have made my slam my head into my desk with rage. The Western version of Reiki, for example, is pretty much a sham because it resembles nothing like what it actually is supposed to be--they've inflated the shit out of it with 'spiritually healing' labels and other romanticized tripe. A lot of the Eastern, traditional practices have been lost in translation, and then people ran with these incomplete versions and fill in the gaps with whatever they think will sell.
I will never, ever say that all doctors are ineffective. There are good doctors and bad doctors out there, just as there are good and bad acupuncturists, etc. There are quacks in every field. That's why I think it's wrong to generalize on any of it--there are too many factors, and too many unknowns that make it impossible to make an effective overall ruling.
As for this paper trail you're speaking of, in some cases, that's true. But you're also working off the assumption that the Medical community isn't corrupted in some way. In America, at least, I can tell you this is not true by any stretch of the word. There is a whole other level of politics that doctors have to try and work around, and in the end, everyone loses.
...I do apologize, I believe I may have wanked here unintentionally. It's just hard to remove all personal intrigue aside when it feels like there are people out there who believe I practice fraudulence when I know otherwise.
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Weird thing is, I've previously only seen that one put the other way around; if [insert alternative treatment here] works, why are there no side effects? (The most recent time I saw this it was coming from a sceptic who, in order to demonstrate that they were fake, 'overdosed' on homeopathic sleeping pills and filmed himself not passing out.) There's the base assumption made that nothing can have an effect that's focused wholly on the positive.
As for this paper trail you're speaking of, in some cases, that's true. But you're also working off the assumption that the Medical community isn't corrupted in some way.
I guess you missed the first half of the sentence you were replying to there: With scientific medicine it is possible for fail and fraud to slip through the net but there is, at least, always a paper trail for us to follow. There have been many verifiable cases of medical fraud, and there have been legal cases (such as the Vioxx trial) that have handed out compensation in the billions. Where are the equivalent responses to fraudulent alternative medicine? It's not like the alternative medical community isn't equally corrupted, hello Matthias Rath. But there's no class-action lawsuits, no across-the-board withdrawals of 'treatments' found to be useless or dangerous. That's the danger of that lack of a paper trail.
no subject
I think I understand a little better about where you're coming from with the lack of paper trail for Alt. Medicine. Problem is that a lot of Alt. Med. is not researched thoroughly or effectively for a multitude of reasons.
Believe me, I know full well that there are a bunch of quacks out there pretending to be messiahs of alternative medicine. That is not all of us, I promise. But it is going to take some time before effective regulations are set up to weed out the money grubbers from the specialists that are actually trying and are capable of helping.
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Kinda like how you'd adjust doses of a certain medicine for different people with different conditions-- trying to apply western medicine to acupuncture doesn't work. They're different. You might not think it works, but people have been using it for millenia and the fact that it's managed to stick around so long means that it's worked for a whole chunk of people. I can speak from personal experience about a lot of things I've seen acupuncture do, but I doubt it'll make a difference to you.
If the doctor put your contraceptive in wrong, newsflash! It wouldn't work. Or it'd be massively uncomfortable, at the very least.
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Yes, it's called the placebo effect, and it works pretty damn well. There's no evidence that acupuncture is significantly better than a placebo but that doesn't mean it 'doesn't work', only that it doesn't work well enough to be legally licensed as medicine.
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I don't speak for everyone, but I have personally seen Acupuncture serve more than a placebo effect, and that's good enough for me.
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How can you see something serve more than a placebo effect? Honest question - I don't understand how that's possible unless you're conducting your own randomised medical trials at home. If something works, it works, and unless you're involved in medical testing surely there's no way to know whether it works due to a placebo effect or due to a real intrinsic effect?
no subject
I'm a massage therapist. I get a lot of clients that combine my line of work with their doctors and/or their acupuncturists. It's part of my job to detect muscular changes if I've been seeing clients long enough, so I guess I am involved somewhat.
If you want a specific case though, I'll give the one that swayed me. I've a client that's been quadriplegic for the last 18 years. His normal routine involved a plethora of medication with varied results--overall though, he suffered pretty badly.
Long story short, he tried acupuncture and felt much more relief than he'd felt in a long while. The reason he figured it wasn't a placebo effect is because something weird happened--as he continued with the acupuncture, he noticed that he could start feeling muted sensation in his extremities when he couldn't feel anything before. Certainly not enough to move the limbs on his own, but odd in that he went from feeling nothing to being able to sense pressure and temperature to some degree--and the only thing that changed in his normal pattern was the acupuncture.
He's continued to improve since then, thankfully, and has incorporated other alternative therapies into his lifestyle (like my own, for example). I was curious when he told me about this as well, because I'm pretty skeptical myself, but he proved to me that he wasn't faking the ability to feel in his legs. He can tell exactly what part of the leg I am touching without being able to see where I am, and I don't mean general description either. He can tell which toe, which tendon, etc.
I understand that everyone else can look at this as hearsay, but I see this guy every week. I can't do that, not when I can see and feel the results myself. His physical condition in addition to that of the rest of my clients is enough proof for me to see that acupuncture, when performed by someone who knows what they're doing, can be a very effective form of pain relief.
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Page 7 has a pretty nice MRI scan of real acupuncture and sham acupuncture effects on the brain, too. 99% of acupuncture points come within .5mm of major nerve endings, and sticking a needle into any random place won't produce the same effects. Just sayin'.
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acupuncture isn't JUST sticking a needle into a point and then hoping it works. if you're gonna cling to a website called badscience after i linked a harvard med school study, i dunno what your definition of science is.
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You are using one study to decree that all acupuncture is used for is a placebo effect, which is flawed reasoning. I don't think anyone ever stated that for some people, it wasn't a placebo effect. However, that is not the case for everyone. Pyrat just gave you a study that showed acupuncture yielding actual, measurable benefits.
So this basically suggests that Acupuncture is like most medicine (Eastern and Western), results may vary from person to person, lol. Acupuncture can benefit both the believer and the skeptic, depending on the acupuncturist's level of skill as well as the source of the pain.