Sequel Thread To Holistic Doctors, and medicine

The same is true of alternative medicine, but there are a couple of differences. The drugs promoted by alternative medicine are:

1. Often grown rather than manufactured, which isn't a problem.
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2. Not approved by the FDA and so have not gone through a rigorous period of testing and clinical trials, which is very expensive and can take as long as 10 years.

The example of St. John's wort for depression is illustrative. It has been the subject of clinical trials, it's efficacy has been demonstrated, but it hasn't been subjected to FDA testing that would also identify potential side effects and harmful effects, recommended dosages, and so forth. This kind of information has instead been developed anecdotally if at all, and the sources of the product are highly variable.One of PurpleDawn's concerns about mainstream drugs was that we often don't know the exact mechanisms by which they work, but this is just as true of alternative drugs, it is certainly the case with St. John's wort, and it is also true of aspirin. We can discuss this again, but the answer will be the same. Human foibles cannot be avoided, and last time I checked, it isn't just big pharma that is run by humans. If there are flaws in the way big pharma approaches the drug development and approval process, a process largely defined by the FDA, then the solution is to develop remedies for these flaws, not to abandon scientific methodologies in favor of anecdotal approaches. It would be just as wrongheaded to advocate a return to horse-and-buggies because of automobile fatalities. These issues are equally valid for alternative medicine, only the answers are nowhere near as satisfactory. If you can't trust FDA sanctioned scientific studies, then you certainly can't trust anecdotal reports. Especially by self-selected groups who gather at Internet sites. As I said the last time you cited this book, when you find a book titled The Truth about the Scientific Method: How Scientists Deceive Us and What To Do About It, then you let us know. If the drug companies are truly lying, then the solution is to address that problem, not abandon scientific methods. You're using your acceptance of the demonization of big pharma to justify a return to methods from the stone age of science.You see, the issue isn't how bad big pharma is. In any given year news about the misbehavior of large companies across all industries hits the air waves many times. When big pharma does something wrong I would share your concern. But just as you don't go calling for abandonment of automobiles when General Motors has a recall, you don't abandon mainstream medicine just because of some misbehavior by big pharma.Whether or not big pharma is the evil entity you seem to think, and I doubt they are worse than any other big industry, and they're certainly highly regulated in comparison to most industries, you are clearly wrong to advocate abandoning modern clinical methods in favor of anecdote.--PercyEdited by Percy, : Grammar.

Good question!Your post very effectively makes the point I was trying to make to Molbiogirl. Most people are surprised to find out just how messy a business science really is, and you can find papers out there that span a wide variety of conclusions on the same topic. But as to the quality of those papers? Well, judging quality takes familiarity with both the subject area and with the proper protocols for conducting double-blind placebo-based trials.Molbiogirl mentioned some factors that a low-quality study might not take into account, such as withdrawals. A withdrawal is a form of self-selection, something one can't have in a truly valid study, but there are statistical approaches to adjusting for withdrawals. A study that doesn't mention withdrawals might be considered suspect.So, incredible as it might seem, yes, someone can publish a low quality paper in a medical journal. It doesn't take a whole lot of effort to just record information about patients' course of treatment who agree to be part of the protocol and write it up. Won't get you published in the New England Journal of Medicine (very prestigious, very particular, very demanding), but it might well get you published. And you can shop your paper around to a series of journals of descending quality until someone bites. Not everyone in medicine is the equivalent of an Einstein. As in all other fields, the vast majority are somewhere in the vicinity of average.--Percy

This reads like a rebuttal of someone who argued that St. John's wort doesn't work, which is weird given that I said, "Its efficacy has been demonstrated."My criticism concerned not its efficacy but its safety, since it is not FDA approved, and so issues of safety, long-term effects, drug interaction, dosage, and so on, have not been established to anywhere near the degree of drugs that *are* FDA approved, plus sources of St. John's wort are highly variable since there are no standards that must be followed. When you take the pill of a drug with FDA approval that says it contains 10 mg of diltiazem, then you can be very confident it contains 10 mg of diltiazem. The same is not true of many of the drugs of alternative medicine.What I was trying to explain is that both alternative and traditional medicine prescribes drugs, but the drugs of alternative medicine tend to derive from plants and animals rather than from chemical processes. But a drug is still a drug, it's a chemical or cocktail of chemicals that have some effect on the body, and the drugs of alternative medicine sorely lack the quality and safety of drugs with FDA approval.So I wasn't singling St. John's wort out for criticism. St. John's wort was just my example, and I chose it because I thought it was the best case alternative medicine can offer, since it actually works. But even this best example of alternative medicine has all the weaknesses and dangers I noted above. And people get in cars and trust that the airbags won't explode and take off their heads (still a risk for babies and small children, by the way). And people take the drugs of alternative medicine and trust that naturopaths know what they're talking about, but this is a misplaced trust. Fortunately naturopaths are mostly prescribing drugs whose effect cannot be differentiated from placebo, so the dangers are small, but as has often been pointed out in this thread, to the degree that alternative medicine delays effective medical care it can be very dangerous. You mean people who feel the same way you do? By doing what? I believe that what really happened was that you took an FDA approved drug that had been through clinical trials over a number of years and that included on the information sheet a long list of possible side-effects. It was not a poison. Your opinion of FDA approved drugs has a strong emotional component, as indicated by the fact that you don't consider St. John's wort a poison though you didn't tolerate it very well, either. Why do you keep citing self-diagnosed, self-selected people as evidence? Do you remember Dow Corning and silicon breast implants? Thousands of women claimed that these implants increased the risk of autoimmune diseases. Many of the women had horrific stories. The case went to trial before all the medical evidence was in, and Dow Corning was found culpable and assessed damages that forced it into bankruptcy. Many women felt the dangers justified having a second medical procedure to remove their implants.It took a long while for conclusive evidence from further studies to come in, but by that time Dow Corning was history and many women had already had their implants removed. The studies indicated that there was no relationship between silicon breast implants and autoimmune and other diseases. Silicon breast implants are now being used again, and indeed never stopped being used throughout the rest of the world.This is the danger of anecdotal evidence that we've been trying to explain to you. You don't have an identified medical danger. What you have is what you get when people start sharing anecdotal stories: nothing, at least from any scientific perspective that might tell us anything reliable about the real world. I think that working with a trained licensed medical professional is the best way to approach medical issues. I think that listening to those outside the scientific consensus is more risky than listening to those within that consensus, since the consensus view must be the one that is most compelling scientifically since it was able to convince the most scientists. I think that anecdotal evidence is an extremely poor way to develop the answer to any question about anything. Beyond that this is a false charge and the fallacy of overgeneralization, you've convinced yourself that naturopaths know more about the root causes of illness than mainstream medicine. These root causes you believe in are just a mumbo-jumbo of words about things like natural approaches and toxins and at the fringe even nut-case claims about vital forces, none of which have an ounce of scientific support.--PercyEdited by Percy, : Grammar.

Homeopathy believes that substances diluted to the point that there is literally nothing left but water can have a positive therapeutic effect upon the body. A common homeopathic preparation approach is to do a 10:1 dilution 30 times. That means that if the concentration of the original substance was 1 (in other words, it was 100% pure substance), then after 30 10:1 dilutions there is .000000000000000000000000000001 left. If exponential notation is familiar to you, that's 10^-30.You can create your own homeopathic remedies if you're so inclined. If there's a headache medication that works reliably for you (and I do mean reliably - Tylenol doesn't work for me, but aspirin cures my headaches every single time), then the next time you get a headache, take the medication and grind it up into a powder and mix it with 10 ml of pure water. That's the 1st dilution. Now take 1 ml of that mixture, add 10 ml of pure water to it, then mix it thoroughly. Repeat this process 28 more times. Now drink the mixture. Did your headache go away?Even more important, does it make sense to you that such a dilute mixture of headache medication could have any effect whatsoever on you? That's a rhetorical question, hopefully it seems as ridiculous to you as it does to everyone else.As to mechanism, the claim of homeopathy is that the water "remembers" the substance it was mixed with, even though the mixture is so dilute that none of the original substance is left. There is no evidence of this, and the claim originates with the originator of homeopathy, who since he died in 1843 could not possibly have had any way to know such a thing even if it were true. The layperson cannot do this. You'll often see it said here that a scientist operating outside his field is just another layperson, and so what scientists do, and what everyone else should also do, is rely upon the scientific consensus. For issues on the cutting edge of science where there is not yet a strong consensus, then "Not yet known" is a good conclusion. And of course, in science nothing is ever known for certain. *You* can't. Rely upon the consensus. That doesn't guarantee you won't go wrong, but it provides the least chance of going wrong. Right. Precisely. We agree about this. Still, many people enjoy learning, and this conundrum should not be construed as an argument that it is pointless to learn. Increasing one's understanding can be very rewarding, but one should keep in mind that understanding a little bit about a subject does not qualify you to draw independent conclusions outside the consensus. Yep! Now if we could only figure out what that other approach is...--Percy

Believing that Prozac is more likely to cause harm than SJW might be a valid first guess, but the way you determine the actual potential for harm is through double-blind placebo-based studies. Until you have the same data for SJW that you do for Prozac then you really can't know. The criticism isn't that you're wrong, it's that your opinion is not based on good data and is therefore unlikely to be correct. To the extent that they accept anecdotal over scientific evidence and incorporate it into their care, you should not trust them, and for the same reasons you've been provided over and over and over again. The answer isn't going to change, LindaLou. There is nowhere in this universe where anecdotal approaches to evidence gathering trump scientific approaches. Someone who accepts such approaches as superior to scientific approaches really shouldn't be trusted. Your assumption that a traditional MD is always going to prescribe a drug is a gross overgeneralization. I'm sure that whether such a thing is true varies widely by physician. Probably the distribution from overprescribing to underprescribing physicians fits under a bell shaped curve.Maybe you should introduce me to the traditional MDs of your experience, because the one's of my experience are harder to pry prescriptions out of than barnacles off a boat. If I had my way I'd have prescriptions for diet pills, alertness and sleep, but I don't because my mean MD says I don't need them, just good nutrition and exercise. Sheesh! Uh, okay, they're calling for reform, perfectly believable, but not the same kind of reform that you want (i.e., they're not pushing alternative medicine), and not for the reasons you're providing except when expressed at the most general level (i.e., most people would agree we rely too much on prescription medicine, but definitely would not agree with you that prescription medicine represents a health threat). The editors of prestigious medical journals definitely do not agree with most of what you've been saying here. LindaLou, when are you going to recognize that your personal experience self-analyzed is not a clinical study? How do you know SJW didn't cause your problems? How do you know it was the prescription medication? How do you know it wasn't something else? How do you know it wouldn't have happened to you anyway?The answer is that you don't know, you don't even have enough data to suspect, and that's why I mentioned the example of the silicon breast implant fiasco, which is what you address next: As I said, the studies have already been done. Unfortunately they were completed too late to save Dow Corning from bankruptcy or to save women from unnecessary medical procedures, and these are the kinds of negative outcomes that result when anecdotal evidence is used.That's why I mentioned the silicon breast implant fiasco in the first place, because it is your own situation writ large and famous, surprising you haven't heard of it. Using anecdotal information women were able to convince a court that they had been harmed by the implants. Certainly the women believed this themselves, but later medical studies discovered that the implants were not to blame.You're doing the same thing as these women, reaching conclusions based upon anecdotal information, except that for you the correct information is already available, you've just consciously decided to let anecdote trump scientific evidence. Anecdote again, and a truly weird conclusion. Congratulations to the ND for being the one who figured it out, but what in the world about this story is leading you to conclude that traditional medicine wouldn't consider the possibility of workplace pollution? Depression is one of the known symptoms of carbon monoxide poisoning. I presume that inquiring about possible environmental causes of depression is taught in medical school. Except there's no one here saying "it's drugs or nothing" except you. You're creating a monster within your own mind and then trying to convince everyone else that it's real.What I've been saying, and you've seen this so many times by now that you must already know what's coming, is that anecdotal approaches to gathering and interpreting evidence are far inferior to scientific approaches, especially double-blind placebo-based studies.--Percy

Studies far superior to your anecdotal approach already exist. What you actually mean is that you'll ignore the studies until some are performed that tell you what you've already made up your mind is true. A true scientist follows the best evidence wherever it leads - he doesn't start ignoring the evidence when it takes him in directions he doesn't like. This is just another way of saying what you already said - you're going to ignore the best evidence until it tells you what you want to hear. If you had a bad experience and have now chanced across approaches that work for you then I think that's great, but the corollary is not that modern medicine is wrongheaded when it comes to prescription drugs.You shouldn't be demonizing modern medicine on the basis of anecdotal evidence, or anything else, for that matter. There is not "a lot of suffering" out there at the hands of modern medicine. One of the reasons for the world population problem is modern medicine. When modern medicine is brought into a 3rd world region, populations skyrocket. This is not a claim that modern medicine is perfect, but it sure beats the hell out of anecdote. The next time you're in a primitive region of Africa where people are suffering from West Nile Virus or malaria, why don't you get everyone together and share stories so you can develop effective treatments?To a great extent what you're doing is just taking advantage of the luxury and safety of living in the western world. In a region as healthy as ours, medical advances can provide only marginal benefit because all the big benefits occurred years ago with advances like smallpox and polio vaccines. The complaints of the healthy and wealthy often tend to run toward the "difficult to detect" end of the spectrum, like depression or diastolic dysfunction, and it is easily possible that for some individuals the risks of drugs for these conditions might outrun the benefits they provide.For every anecdotal story with a bad outcome there's an anecdotal story with a good outcome. Concerning depression, my wife's experience cancels out your experience. We could gather stories and stories and put them in lists of good and bad outcomes and count them up and try to weigh them, but it would all be meaningless because you don't learn anything much about the real world with anecdotal stories. And you certainly can't use them to conclude that big pharma is evil and mainstream doctors are prescription-crazy. Oh, good grief. I've lived long enough to have had plenty of doctors, the current one is typical. I've never run into a prescription-crazy doctor in my life. I'm sorry, LindaLou, you're a sample size of 1, plus it's anecdotal, and because it's also personal it's highly subjective. Your story is meaningless by itself, and it stays meaningless no matter how many other anecdotal stories you combine it with from your website. The plural of anecdote is anecdotes, not scientific evidence. This is just a relatively recent event in American history, not as big as Watergate, of course, but maybe as big as Exxon Valdez or the Texaco/Pennzoil trial. I imagine that if you typed "silicon breast implants" and "dow corning" (including the quotes to make them phrases instead of individual words) to Google that you'd find a lot of stuff on the web. It wasn't that long ago, maybe a decade or so.But the story is very instructive, because it is an illustration in real life of what we're telling you here, that the actual nature of the real world isn't derived from anecdote, but from scientific investigation.--Percy

And so your sample size is...one? Doesn't sound like a very good doctor, but I have the same question. So your sample size is...one?Even if two or three or four or five, I would ask the same question: And so your sample size is...six?Tiny sample size, subjective assessment, plus this is still anecdotal. I truly don't understand why you keep citing anecdotal evidence. How many times do we have to tell you how worthless it is? Like PurpleDawn said about MBG, at some point you have to figure out that you need a different approach. My doctors tend to spend a lot of time with me. It would be a rare appointment where I spent only 5 minutes with the doctor. If I were to guess at an average I would say it is 15 or 20 minutes.LindaLou, the problem with your conclusions is that they're anecdotal. They can be contradicted with other anecdotes, such as the ones I offered about myself, but this will never lead to any reliable conclusions. For that you need to apply the scientific method. Did you mention this just for purposes of comparison? Or are you now challenging the safety and efficacy of blood pressure medications? And what criteria should we apply in determining whether this is good or bad news? If in the real world 10% of women suffer from depression, then helping them is good news, not bad. Also bear in mind that if 15 million women are taking antidepressants, then if the dangers were truly as common and severe as you've been attempting to portray then it would have become bloody obvious long ago. Your own statistics reveal the impossibility of your claims.--Percy

Half my time seems to be spent correcting your mischaracterizations of this discussion, so allow me to correct you yet again. You are not being accused of having extreme views, though they are extreme, but of reaching those views based upon poor evidence, a type of evidence known to invariably produce flawed conclusions.And we're not saying you're wrong because "medicine and drugs are actually very safe and effective." We're saying you're wrong because you cannot support your position with valid evidence, and the quality evidence that does exist in the form of FDA approved studies contradicts you.You're also wrong because you're already on record as saying you won't accept scientific studies until they confirm what you already know to be true, meaning that you'll ignore evidence that isn't consistent with what you already believe. This, too, is untrue. We're not placing our trust in the system, but in the vast superiority of the scientific method at ferreting out what's really going on in the real world. The "system", as you call it, that exists today takes advantage of the scientific method, and the flaws and biases and cheating and finagling that may go on are simply part and parcel of all human activity, including alternative medicine - in fact, especially including alternative medicine. You've affiliated yourself with a system that prefers anecdotal evidence, that rejects scientific evidence, and that includes a seriously significant component of flim-flam. Wheatgrass juice, anyone? Cures all that ails ya! But you'll be concerned for the same poor reasons. Once again I have to correct you. The criticism is not that you're analyzing your own symptoms in order to decide a course of action. I don't know how many times I've said now that I think it's great that you've chanced across a diet regimen that works for you. The criticism is that you're generalizing from your own experience to conclude that what is true for you is true for everyone, and that quite obviously and self evidently is not the case. What is clear is that you're so emotionally tied up in what the "system" did to you that you can't think straight, can't even consider the arguments that are put to you. You've offered nothing but anecdotal arguments, it's been pointed out how poor these are and that there are counter anecdotal arguments and I've even given you a few, yet you just ignore these points and continue criticizing with subjective evidence a "system" that uses validated scientific practices that have produced a remarkable record of medical progress.The bottom line is that scientific methods are the best way to figure out what's really going on, and it is still apparent that you don't understand this as you continue making anecdotal arguments, and now even making critical characterizations and false accusations such as that we're making the discussion tiresome or that we're not looking at things critically.Here's some advice: instead of seeking only the easy evidence that comes to your website and that agrees with you, seek the best scientific evidence available and follow it where it leads. Wherever you end up you'll be immune to criticism that you were unscientific, which would be a good thing.--Percy

Hi LindaLou,I'm responding to both Message 181 and Message 182 in this single message. I think you're forgetting that I've only been making one point, that scientific methodologies are far superior to anecdote for figuring things out. I hope that's not an an "idea" you think is wrong. I'm not trying to change your "ideas" but rather your habit of basing your opinions on anecdote.Oftentimes when you attempt to echo back what people are telling you it is inaccurate, sometimes hightly inaccurate. One reason it appears to you that you and I are going round and round and getting nowhere is that I often have to repeat what I just said, because it's apparent you thought I was saying something else. The repetitiousness of this is obvious to everyone, but I don't see that I have any choice but to reexplain when you once again fail to comprehend what I just said. We don't need to be told once again that you believe big phara is evil and mainstream doctors are prescription crazy. We already know what you believe. And we don't need to be told once again that you're not going to be persuaded away from your current regimen, because no one's trying to do that, either. I'm not asking for agreement, just comprehension.What I'd like to see is something like, "What I understand you to be saying is..." followed by a summary of what I actually said. Too many times you just misinterpret someone's response to you so as to justify repeating the same anecdotally based positions, and you do this over and over again. Though we don't agree with your positions, that's not what's at issue here. What's at issue is the quality of the evidence you used to reach these positions.So once again, I'm not saying you're wrong, though of course I think you are. And since you replied like this in your next message to something very similar that I said: I feel I have to point out that this is not a joke. I'm being honest with you about what I believe. I'm not denying that I think you have extreme views. I'm not denying that I think you're wrong. That's just being honest. But those aren't the points I'm making.The point I'm making, and that you seem to keep missing, is that your conclusions are supported by the worst kind of data available. I'm trying to explain to you that you've adopted an incredibly poor method for reliably figuring things out.So please stop saying things like, "You're not going to convince me to stop taking my herbs because I wouldn't be able to function," because no one here is trying to tell you to stop doing what seems to be working for you. And stop saying things like this: Because unless you can support it with reliable evidence, it shouldn't be said. The evidence we have tells us that us that as a nation (and I assume the same is true for Europe) we are healthier than ever before. Mortality rates across a host of diseases and conditions continue to drop. Life spans continue to lengthen. So unless you can find reliable evidence that modern medicine is worsening rather than improving health, you haven't got a leg to stand on. You're not only not reading my posts very carefully, you're not reading you're own, either? This is from your Message 167: As I said when I first quoted this, you're very clearly saying that you've decided to ignore the best evidence until it tells you what you want to hear. Once again I point you to the fact that the plural of anecdote is anecdotes, not reliable evidence. Collecting many subjective experiences is not the way to compensate for one subjective experience. Only objective data gathering can effectively lead to reliable conclusions.This is why I pointed you to the silicon breast implant case. Here, let me Google it for you...This link provides an objective chronology of events showing how people using the same kind of data that you do, anecdotal, were able to use the court system to force Dow Corning into bankruptcy and force payments to women for damages that silicon breast implants never caused. While current evidence supports the safety of silicon breast implants, there are groups that have geared up to fight their reintroduction, but again based upon anecdotal data.There's another example of the same thing that is now happening in the United States and Europe. Some parents are refusing to have their children inoculated against the standard diseases because of the potential danger of harmful reactions to the vaccines. This behavior has caused several unnecessary outbreaks, something that had been unheard of in the western world for a few decades. See Events following reductions in vaccination at Wikipedia for a few details.The anti-vaccination crowd is using the same kind of data and analysis you are: anecdotal.--Percy

Hi LindaLou,I think it is possible that you still don't understand the point other people are trying to make to you. I also think you need to slow down and take your time. You keep complaining how much time and energy this is taking, how draining it is, so slow down. This isn't a race. Nobody cares if you don't reply until sometime next week, or even next month for that matter. Go at what seems like a reasonable pace for you, otherwise you'll flame out. No one is disputing this. You're presenting a position in the form of rebuttal as if it were something that wasn't accepted. I think you need to take more care to figure out what the other person is actually saying, then rebut that. Now you've hit upon what I'm actually questioning. You are using your own personal experience and anecdotal stories from others to indict an entire profession. You have presented no reliable evidence. What you should do is seek out valid evidence supporting your position that doctors are diagnose-and-prescribe machines. Your personal experience says yes, mine says no, both are anecdotal, so now what? The answer is actual scientific studies, LindaLou. Since the evidence isn't there, it is already very clear why people choose naturopathy. It's the same reason they choose to believe in ESP, alien abductions and Bigfoot. Most people do not understand the difficulties inherent in making sound determinations of what's really going on amidst the raft of complicated and often conflicting data from a very complicated real world, especially when it concerns medical issues. No one here is trying to talk you out of a diet regimen that is working for you. True, you're exposing yourself to unknown risks, probably more long term than short term, but you're the boss of you and so that is your right.Where you go wrong is in generalizing from personal experience and anecdote, then giving that generalization greater weight than conclusions derived from scientifically gathered evidence. Have you considered the possibility that they really can be dangerous, but there haven't been enough studies done yet?Food, vitamins, herbs, drugs, they all have an effect on the body. They're all just chemicals that react with the chemicals in our body and cause certain effects. That's true of food, that's true of vitamins, that's true of herbs, that's true of drugs. There is nothing special about the chemicals in vitamins and herbs that makes them inherently safe. Herbs are natural, sure, but a harmful chemical is still a harmful chemical no matter what its source. Alternative medicine pushes this agenda that natural is better, but I'd bet they'd find few takers of a challenge to walk into the woods and eat the first mushroom or fern you find, both very natural. The impression of comfort and safety that people have about vitamins and herbs derives from long experience with many of them, not from science, but when you put "natural" in terms of unknown mushrooms and ferns most people recognize the difference with regard to safety.For example, most people don't regard ginseng as safe because they're aware of scientific studies or because it has FDA approval (which it doesn't, since it doesn't need it), but because they're aware it's been used by people for centuries, and they figure that if it were harmful we'd have figured that out by now. In other words, ginseng is accepted as safe not because it's natural, but because of the long record of human experience with it. Natural is definitely not a guarantee of safety. There are scads of natural poisons. Hemlock is a famous one. Well, you've said this yet again, so I guess I have to rebut this yet again.You are once again mischaracterizing the position of the other side. We're not saying there are no problems with big pharma or modern medicine. Like any human endeavor, they aren't perfect. They are, however, and unlike alternative medicine, highly regulated and embrace scientific methods. Any flaw in our system of mainstream modern medicine stems from the participation of people, a quality shared in spades by alternative medicine which is much less tightly driven by the requirements of scientific inquiry.What we're supporting is the scientific method, as opposed to personal anecdote, as a means of reliably gaining knowledge. Nowhere in this discussion have you been able to muster a successful argument for the value of anecdotal evidence. You've even said many times how much you would prefer evidence from clinical studies, so we know you do understand that scientific evidence trumps anecdotal evidence.So what exactly do you mean by "pretty good evidence"? On a scale of 1 to 10 where 1 is no evidence or useless evidence and 10 is a double-blind placebo-based study of a very large group with careful controls that has been successfully replicated several times, where would you place your "pretty good evidence"?The proper value for anecdotal evidence is 0, worse than no evidence, because while having no evidential value is possible, it can also actually be misleading, counterinformative, the opposite of valid information. Actually, given what you've provided, this is anecdote. You can transform it from anecdote into fact simply by providing documentation.But for the sake of discussion let's accept it as fact. Since there is no scientific documentation for the kind of withdrawal symptoms you've been describing, that means these two people did the same thing the silicon breast implant people did, convince a jury using anecdotal evidence. Juries do not decide what is science and what isn't, indeed aren't even qualified to make that judgement, and juries are often sympathetic to parties claiming injury at the hands of big business. This is again a mischaracterization. There is a world of difference between anecdotal evidence and scientific evidence, a difference that has been objectively established and is the reason scientific evidence carries infinitely more weight than anecdotal. This isn't a case of different strokes for different folks, but of you drawing insupportable conclusions on the basis of unreliable evidence that is subjective and personal and self-assessed.There's nothing special or unusual about EvC Forum regarding evidence. The only reason the discussion has taken the turn it has is that you believe if you collect enough anecdotes that it trumps scientific evidence. This can never be the case. You don't seem to understand that anecdote is almost like negative evidence because it is so likely to be misleading and lead to false conclusions.If I could add just one more thing in the nature of insurance to prevent going around the same mulberry bush one more time, please remember I'm not trying to talk you out of your current diet regimen, and I'm not claiming that big pharma and modern medicine is without problems. In the nature of full disclosure I admit that I believe your conclusions about these things are wrong, but those are not the points I'm making.For me this discussion is all about the dangers of valuing anecdotal information over scientific evidence, and also about the dangers of drawing conclusions when anecdotal information is all we have. The information you have available to you so far is sufficient to raise concerns and act as the spur to scientific investigations to get to the bottom of things, but it is wholly insufficient for reaching conclusions.--Percy

You know, LindaLou, it's getting to the point where one has to wonder if misrepresentations like this are purposeful. In discussion one should place what others say in a light as favorable to one's own position as possible, but not mischaracterize their position in the process. It can take a considerable period in some discussions for a point to get across, but we're past 500 messages on this topic, so I suspect you really do understand what we're saying. Just as people are responding to what you say, you should respond to what they say instead of just repeating your unsupported opinions.No one here is callous about people's lives. The very opposite is true. What you're really doing is labeling as callous those who disagree with you. I think it would be better if you just kept your focus on the topic and not on those you're debating with.The point being made is that all you have so far is anecdotal data that at best indicates that further study is necessary, and at worst should be ignored. A balanced characterization of the situation would state that antidepressants have many potential side-effects, and that one should only take them in consultation with a doctor. As you are likely aware since you've been through the process yourself, there is no way to tell how well or how poorly any particular individual will respond to any particular antidepressant, and so the process is a partnership between doctor and patient to identify the best medication (or possibly medications) and dosage level.The danger you mention regarding neuroleptics (antipsychotics) and tardive dyskinesia is well known, and it is the doctor and patient's responsibility working together to balance the risk of side effects (of which tardive dyskinesia is only one) with the possible benefits, and to monitor for side-effects during treatment. Family members of those suffering from sufficiently severe psychoses often live in fear of harm both to themselves and to their loved ones. Neuroleptics hold the potential for allowing a family to return to some semblance of normalcy. The risks of side-effects like tardive dyskinesia have to be balanced against the risk of the patient trying to put his head through a wall or pushing his little sister down the stairs, and there's also the immeasurable stress and strain of trying to live with someone who's almost literally living in a different world. Well, yes, and that's what you've been doing, repeating your position rather than addressing what people actually say, with a healthy side of arguing that anecdotal arguments should be valued. This explains a lot. Do you not understand the risks you're exposing not only your children to, but also because of a growing number of people who feel the same way, to society in general? If attitudes like yours become too prevalent then we shall see the return of polio and rubella epidemics.You might want to rethink who your charges of callousness best apply to.--Percy

I can't really answer your question. All prescription drugs in the US are FDA approved, but I don't know about OTC drugs. I know the FTC (Federal Trade Commission) is responsible for insuring that advertising claims (including those on the package) are accurate, so maybe the FTC is involved with OTC drugs, I don't know, but I do know they're way overloaded and have to pick their battles carefully.That's not a very good answer, maybe someone else knows more.--Percy

I'm beginning to wonder if you believe anything that is actually supported by valid evidence.Viruses are fought off by the bodies natural defense system through the development of antibodies. When the body is exposed to a new virus there is no protection against it. It doesn't matter how healthy a person is, they're defenseless against a virus to which they've never before been exposed, because they have no antibodies to fight off that virus.A healthy person is better able to withstand a virus's initial onslaught and develop an immune response that develops antibodies to fight off the virus, and then it just becomes a race between the development of antibodies and the virus's ability to make copies of itself. A healthy person can survive an illness longer, giving his immune system a longer opportunity to fight off the virus. That is the extent of the contribution of health to fighting off a virus. Good health makes it more likely the body will successfully fight off the virus, but it definitely does nothing to prevent viral infection.The principle of vaccination is that exposure to an inactivated form of the virus will provoke an immune response so that the body builds up antibodies against that particular virus. After vaccination, whenever the body is exposed to that virus, the antibodies already present prevent the virus from gaining a foothold, thereby preventing illness. Yes, of course. The most successful approach was quarantine of contagious people, which became increasingly successful because as its effectiveness was observed, departments of health were given increasing powers to effect quarantines.I can only wonder what led you to cite declining incidence rates prior to the introduction of vaccines as evidence that they're unnecessary. Whatever you were thinking, progress was made by using methods that prevent exposure, not that prevent infection. First, about some common diseases for which children are usually inoculated:Measles is not usually dangerous, but it is so highly contagious that in an unvaccinated society it would sweep through in epidemics, disabling the economy and seriously compromising public safety.Rubella is very dangerous to the fetus of pregnant women.Chicken pox is also very dangerous to the fetus of pregnant women, and it is extremely dangerous to people with compromised immune systems, such as might result from HIV.Mumps in children is usually mild. Mumps in adults can be very dangerous.Diphtheria has a serious mortality rate, as high as 20% for the very young.Whooping cough "is one of the leading causes of vaccine-preventable deaths world-wide," according to Wikipedia.Polio can cause paralysis.Second, these diseases are opportunistic, taking advantage of people in a weakened state. Everybody isn't healthy all the time, and we certainly don't want to see people who are already sick to also come down with measles or rubella or mumps or chicken pox or diphtheria or whooping cough or polio, any of which could be very dangerous, even fatal, simply because they were never vaccinated. So now your daughter is immune to chicken pox, but let's imagine she never had the disease and it's 20 years later and she comes down with chicken pox while early in a pregnancy. The dangers to the fetus include "skin scarring, malformed limbs, an abnormally small head, vision or hearing problems, and motor or mental developmental disabilities." (from Chicken pox during pregnancy). Sure, I guess, if you're lucky enough to catch them while healthy. But it's even healthier to develop immunity through exposure to the deactivated virus than to the real thing.It also makes no sense to believe it's better to develop immunity through exposure to the live virus (as well as suffering through the subsequent illness) than to the deactivated virus (which usually causes no illness at all). Oh, I see, you just want to present your ideas but not have them rebutted. How wonderfully fair-minded of you! But that's okay, I don't mind rebutting your misconceived ideas. What you're doing is horrific. I watched only the first eight minutes. They presented graphs showing the dramatic declining death rates for whooping cough and diphtheria in the US prior to the introduction of vaccines. This is due not only to aforementioned actions of public health departments, but also the increasing quality and availability of medical care. Reducing the incidence rates of these diseases to near zero required vaccines.--Percy

Posted at my work location: If people want to suggest questions, I'll ask one if there's a question/answer session.--Percy

Would it really be very useful to know these things, since she isn't someone from your neck of the woods and so isn't a practitioner that you'd ever consider seeing, even if her methods were exactly what you're seeking?Anyway, she'll probably give a pretty good idea of her methods during her presentation. I'll pass the information on. Not sure I understand this one. Shouldn't the "cancer protocol" for any family physician be referral to a specialist? Or did you mean something else?I guess I was thinking more along the lines of questions about alternative medicine rather than about the person giving the presentation.--Percy