Re: The sky is falling

Yes - my daughter is a survivor of a childhood cancer that 20 years ago most certainly would have ended her life. I am very thankful to modern medicine for that. Your problem is you see it as a one or the other. They both have their place.

You're expecting me to disagree? You're making some huge incorrect assumptions about me.

That's where you're wrong (the second sentence, not the first). But you know what - that just means that you don't have to use it, and I have the choice to use it. We each will get the results of our choice. Sound fair?

Thank you for pointing out a major flaw of socialized medicine. You make decisions for me because you are paying for them. When I get to choose, I pay and, good or bad, I get the results. Please don't eliminate my freedom of choice by forcing me to use the system that you choose for me and tax me to do it. You would say that I would always have the choice in either system if I want to pay. The flaw in that is that (1) You're still forcing me to pay for a system that I don't necessarily believe in by forced participation, and (2) Many of the plans I hear about will make it criminal not to participate, or as Hillary has said, your wages will be garnisheed for your premiums. Also, is it not true that people are not allowed to pay extra for extra services if they so desire in Canada? By definition, socialized medicine eliminates choice. Socialism is never happy until everyone is equally miserable.

But your own medical system told me I'd be in a wheelchair starting about 15 or 20 years ago, and yet I'm not.

BTW - congratulations on a successful diversion. It worked.

Bill Putney (To reply by e-mail, replace the last letter of the alphabet in my address with the letter 'x')

Yet you effectively implied that one un-scientific place agreeing with the scientific ones negated what the scientific ones were saying.

Ahh - but they ae going even further and saying that the solar activity is the ovewhelming main driver, and that the stuff the GW crowd is claiming is noise level. I would even suggest the measurement methods used by the GW crowd don't have the "gage R&R" (read a rigorous definition of that to understand what that is) that is required to draw

*any* conclusions. Just the example of the NASA data being erroneous because of one temp. sensor getting thrown off by the moving of a couple of a.c. units shows that. Nevermind the intentional falsification of data on things like that Cascade Mountain snow pack, and then removing the guy who blew the whistle on that from his position as Associate Climatologist for the state of Washington when he did what a true scientist should have done.

OK - so you agree that if a number of people participating in the circle jerk known as the IPCC Report are using chiropractic (or herbs, or whatever), then the report should be declared invalid. After all, anyone who uses those things could not possibly understand anything about science. If you're honest and consistent, you'll say 'yes'. But you'll weasel word your way around it.

Bill Putney (To reply by e-mail, replace the last letter of the alphabet in my address with the letter 'x')

Nice comeback. Why don't you show that anything I said is incorrect?

The evidence is there that conventional medicine saves lives. Why don't you show us the evidence for alternative medicine?

Jeff

Who said they did?

Neither herbs nor chiropractic help much, except the wallets of the people selling the herbs or the chiropractor.

Jeff

That's the whole problem, Jeff. You make that statement out of ignorance. Yet people who know no better would take the option away from me. I prefer freedom of choice.

Bill Putney (To reply by e-mail, replace the last letter of the alphabet in my address with the letter 'x')

You're incorrect. There is no evidence that herbs do much to help people. And for chiropractic, only back pain is helped.

If I am incorrect, provide your evidence.

You still have the freedom of choosing useless therapies. You just have to pay for them out of your own pocket, instead of everyone else's.

Jeff

Some are in my family, but they're all MDs, and they learned outmoded Eastern medicine only to placate ignorant patients so they could get them to accept treatment with real medicine.

Other practices will not be proved effective because they don't do rational research and have made almost no advances at all in thousands of years, unlike what real medicine has accomplished in just the past few centuries.

They're junk, and sometimes lungs collapse because of acupuncture.

Traditional doctors have long practiced holistic medicine, and that is why the receive 12-16 years of training. It would be possible to teach a person to treat only a very few conditions in much less time, even some major surgery (in as little as 2 months), but those people would be lost if they practiced alone and encountered patients who deviated even slightest from norms.

It's one thing to be open-minded; it's another to have a big hole in your head.

Chiropractic places great emphasis on proper spinal alignment to prevent nerve pressure on the spinal cord, but the spinal cord isn't highly sensitive to misalignment, unlike an acoustical musical instrument or microwave device, where even slight deviations in size or shape can noticeably affect operation.

Nope - because I can't. I can't prove that the sun will come up today - I've never seen the math that proves that it will. But yet I plan on getting up and going to work. How arrogant to say that it doesn't work because I can't prove it. I take it you don't believe in God either, and I am unscientific because I do.

I explained that in a recent post. Once they invoke socialized medicine, it is a crime to pay your own way and bypass the government system that is set up. You're pretending not to have known that.

Bill Putney (To reply by e-mail, replace the last letter of the alphabet in my address with the letter 'x')

You're kidding, right?

Bill Putney (To reply by e-mail, replace the last letter of the alphabet in my address with the letter 'x')

You won't admit that traditional medicine kills people? You haven't heard of the recalls on ones that have been made available to the public becuase people died from taking them? You didn't read about the NIH study that was recently stopped because over 200 of the people in the study died? I don't think that's a reason to condemn all of traditional medicine, but there is a double standard in this regard when it comes to denigrating alternative medicine.

Some guy turns blue because he made his own colloidal silver and took it every day for over 12 years, and Dr. Dean Adelle says "See - that's why I say to stay away from this type of stuff." It *is* a very dishonest double standard.

Bill Putney (To reply by e-mail, replace the last letter of the alphabet in my address with the letter 'x')

Of course not. Show me one field of alternative medicine where most of the practitioners received at least half as much formal training as MDs and DOs do.

Traditional medicine kills at least 100,000 people a year in the US alone, mostly through infection.

I have.

No, but I have heard of other studies that were halted because of deaths.

Traditional medicine does a great deal of harm but a greater deal of good. Alternative medicine, at best, doesn't do any good.

With what was Dr. Adell making his comparison? There can't be a double standard without at least 2 different things. BTW colloidal silver was part of conventional medicine before the discovery of modern antibiotics but is now considered obsolete and recommended only by a few practitioners of alternative medicine.

OK - so you're intent on proving you're an idiot. Bye.

Bill Putney (To reply by e-mail, replace the last letter of the alphabet in my address with the letter 'x')

And how many does non-traditional bullshit "medicine" allow to die that could have been saved by real medicine?

Aww Steve - I though you were my budd! :)

Seriously - You do have to be careful with alternative medicine and link up with good people who know what they're doing and know the good sources for the product. YES - ABSOLUTELY - there is a bunch of crap out there. But if you get the right stuff and the right information, you don't end up with a lot of damage that "real" medicine is famous for (like liver damage). I have gotten some amazing results that the naysayers would never be convinced of, and not placebo effect which is always the first thing they throw at you. BTW - I removed the Toyota ng from this - they're nothing but a political blog.

Bill Putney (To reply by e-mail, replace the last letter of the alphabet in my address with the letter 'x')

I am, but I don't respect "alternative medicine" much at all. FWIW, I don't really put mainstream Chiropractors in that category, because they stick to treating muscular and skeletal disorders, and they can do it without damage. There still are a few old-school quack Chiropractors that claim they can cure anything from migraines to cancer, and have wound up paralyzing their patients doing "adjustments" on already-fractured vertebrae, but they're very much in the minority. The "bullshit medicine" I refer to is nonsense like aromatherapy, acupuncture, aromatherapy, 'traditional Chinese medicine,' and other foolery like that.

I pretty much agree- with the caveat that I would NEVER apply alternative medicine IN PLACE of real research-based medicine. As an adjunct or an attempt when a real diagnosis has been made and no treatment is available, maybe, but not as a total replacement.

Everyone has to take some responsibility for their own health. Liver damage is an interesting issue to bring up, because for years we've been told to take Tylenol instead of aspirin because all the advertising says "its safer." Well, its not "safer." It has almost no medicinal interactions, which means that its statistically safer to administer in a hospital where patients may be on a potpurri of other medicines. BUT- if you take as little as something like 10% above the recommended dose of Extra Strength Tylenol, for 3-5 days, you may wind up dead of liver failure. NSAIDs, like aspirin and ibuprofen, have more interactions and can lead to digestive tract bleeding over the long haul, but even a pretty substantial overdose won't do you in. None of this is in any way hidden from anyone- any doctor will tell you this. Anyone dumb enough to poison their liver with Tylenol just believed advertising and didn't do any checking (like reading the label!) before putting something in their body.