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Faith  Suspended Member (Idle past 1771 days) Posts: 35298 From: Nevada, USA Joined: |
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Author | Topic: "Natural" (plant-based) Health Solutions | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
jar Member (Idle past 166 days) Posts: 34140 From: Texas!! Joined: |
Recent news found all over the internet and even in TV news stories is that drinking four cups of coffee a day reduces the chance of death.
I don't think so! The problem, at least in the US, is that most of the people writing and reporting the news are simply too ignorant to recognize really stupid assertions like "drinking four cups of coffee a day reduces the chance of death." They just don't get it.
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PaulK Member Posts: 18064 Joined: Member Rating: 5.0
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No, the odds are not "pretty enormous that they are right". Indeed, on a sensible evaluation the odds are that they are wrong. You can't conclude a link just based on one or even two cases. Some people with cancer do better than others - sometimes a lot better. People who drank lots of carrot juice and did well will report it. Those that died will not. Without actual numbers - or other relevant evidence - we can't tell that there is anything more than (unintentional, but pretty much inevitable) selective reporting
quote: You don't HAVE a direct cause and effect, you have a weak correlation, with a built-in bias to the reporting, which may be the whole of the story.
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Granny Magda Member (Idle past 365 days) Posts: 2462 From: UK Joined: |
They can't "know" the juice cured the cancer, but the situation is such that the odds are enormous that they are right. No they're not! They are absolutely not and we already know this from some of the numbers that have come up in conversation. Say we accept Wark's "60% for all cancers" number. That still means that 40% of those who refuse chemo will survive! For some cancers, the odds are way,way higher. Cancer Research UK puts testicular cancer survival at 98% (for everyone that is). That a lot of people survive cancer is not in the least bit surprising. That many do so without chemo is still unsurprising. It is in fact exactly what we ought to expect to see. These anecdotes are particularly useless when you don't include details. What type of cancer did they have? At what stage was it diagnosed? How old as the patient? Did they have confounding pre-existing conditions? And so on. For all we know the patients who so impressed you with their survival might have had a chance in the high nineties even without intervention. You're not even clear on whether or not the "carrot juice" patients were on chemo or not. You have no basis upon which to be talking about the "odds", as you have no hard data with which to calculate those odds. It's meaningless. Mutate and Survive Edited by Granny Magda, : No reason given.
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Granny Magda Member (Idle past 365 days) Posts: 2462 From: UK Joined:
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It seems logical that Chris Wark perhaps just doesn't give enough credit to the surgery he had when his cancer was first diagnosed, Yeah, it does. I find this baffling. He keeps saying things like "Surgery didn't cure my cancer". Well how does he know? Because it looks an awful lot like surgery did cure his cancer. Worse, Wark not only downplays the role of lifesaving surgery, he actively spreads scare stories about surgery, promoting the moronic "surgery spreads cancer" meme on his website.
The point is that if he was cured after the surgery there would have been no need to compute the odds of his living for only five years. Wha? Huh? But... That's all kinds of wrong. At the point when Wark finished his surgery they didn't know whether he was cured or not. They couldn't look into the future and tell him whether his cancer would reoccur. They are doctors, not wizards. This is why doctors cite odds of survival, based upon the performance of previous patients. No-one is saying that Wark should be happy about his odds. Of course he shouldn't be goddamn happy. He should rage against the dying of the light and all that. But Wark's happiness or otherwise doesn't mean shit to his cancer, which will either spread or not spread, die or not die, quite regardless of how happy Wark is about any of it. I have said it before and I will say it again; I wish that we could cure cancer with carrot juice. That would be great. No-one wants cancer. No-one thinks that it's a good thing that cancer is so hard to treat. It's just that some of us take exception to the baseless and false claims made for alt-med cancer treatments. If alt-med quacks could do what they claim they can, that would be wonderful. But they can't. I'm not happy about it, but that's just the way it is. Mutate and Survive.
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Pressie Member (Idle past 302 days) Posts: 2103 From: Pretoria, SA Joined: |
Sorry Magda, it wasn't meant for you.
This post was meant for Faith. Edited by Pressie, : No reason given.
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Pressie Member (Idle past 302 days) Posts: 2103 From: Pretoria, SA Joined: |
Yes and that's what pissing me off about people like you.
My father had a heart-bypass ten years ago. Ten years later his body is too weak to survive another operation like that. The specialist told my father that he does urgently need another bypass; but his body is too weak to survive it. He's on borrowed time. We've had at least another extra ten years of having my wonderful father with us. Due to modern medicine. Your posts piss me off.
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NoNukes Inactive Member |
We've had at least another extra ten years of having my wonderful father with us. Due to modern medicine. Your posts piss me off. She doesn't know any better. You cannot let what she says affect your day. My mom survived more than 35 years after breast cancer surgery and chemo. Nothing will replace those years for me and my family. Nothing Faith says will take a second of that away. Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also in prison. Thoreau: Civil Disobedience (1846) I was thinking as long as I have my hands up they’re not going to shoot me. This is what I’m thinking they’re not going to shoot me. Wow, was I wrong. -- Charles Kinsey I never considered a difference of opinion in politics, in religion, in philosophy, as cause for withdrawing from a friend. Thomas Jefferson Worrying about the "browning of America" is not racism. -- Faith I hate you all, you hate me -- Faith
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Faith ![]() Suspended Member (Idle past 1771 days) Posts: 35298 From: Nevada, USA Joined: |
I've said nothing about "modern medicine" in general, only chemotherapy, and I'm aware that that works too in some cases. In fact I said I wasn't objecting to surgery for cancer either. Get mad about something I've actually said for a change. My brother had a quadruple bypass ten years ago and it saved his life so I'm certainly all in favor of bypass surgery, and for that matter most of modern medicine.
Glad you've had your father for as long as you have. However, let me risk getting you even madder by suggesting that maybe you could improve your father's strength with a nutritional upgrade in his diet. Green smoothies, protein drinks? My brother and his wife are doing those for general health. Edited by Faith, : No reason given. Edited by Faith, : No reason given. Edited by Faith, : No reason given. Edited by Faith, : No reason given. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.
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Faith ![]() Suspended Member (Idle past 1771 days) Posts: 35298 From: Nevada, USA Joined: |
60% five year survival rate means 40% could survive without chemo? What? Anything lower than 60% to me means those people wouldn't even survive the five years.
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.
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Faith ![]() Suspended Member (Idle past 1771 days) Posts: 35298 From: Nevada, USA Joined: |
I figured Li would be accepted, as he should be. He's in a position to do the research a recently diagnosed cancer patient isn't, who has the choice of going with the available treatments or considering other options based mostly on personal intuition, with a few guides you either trust or you don't.
As Wark said toward the end of that interview in Message 1, two paths are open to the cancer patient at that point, one well-lighted and well-traveled, the standard treatments, and the other a thick jungle you have to hack your way through, the alternative treatments. There's nothing certain about the jungle route, you are on your own without much of a compass, trusting in whoever and whatever persuades you. Wark didn't consider a 60% chance of living five years a strong enough case against trying something that might give him a longer life. That ought to be his choice, don't you think? And I still think that the fact that he's lived fourteen years when five was the best they could offer him, really is evidence that he went the right direction.
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PaulK Member Posts: 18064 Joined: Member Rating: 5.0 |
It's worth pointing out that a 60% five year survival rate means a 60% chance of living AT LEAST five years.
Wark chose to take a gamble - to take a bigger risk of dying in five years in the hope of finding a better treatment. It's not an obviously sensible choice. And, while he has survived, we don't have much reason to think his choice of treatment had anything to do with that. And if he really is advising people to avoid surgery - then his advice will probably kill people. That's really not something I find praiseworthy and it reflects very badly on his judgement.
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Faith ![]() Suspended Member (Idle past 1771 days) Posts: 35298 From: Nevada, USA Joined: |
At least five years, but obviously the flat five years given means that's the best they can offer, and anyone who does live longer is beating the statistic and has to be very rare.
I don't defend rejecting surgery, as I've said. And I also am not relyinjg only on Wark's experience, but consider that Kordich's and that of the local man I've mentioned strengthen his case. The objections to this strike me as quixotic. Y'know, all this moral highgrounding here could be turned against you, since the record of survival on conventional treatment is clearly a lot shorter than the alternative treatments in the cases I've given. I've given five who died on conventional treatment within a few short years, and three who lived decades longer on alternative treatment and you are all acting as if that is big nothing. And that makes YOU the ones enticing people to inferior chances for longer life and health. Edited by Faith, : No reason given. Edited by Faith, : No reason given. Edited by Faith, : No reason given. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.
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PaulK Member Posts: 18064 Joined: Member Rating: 5.0 |
quote: Utterly wrong. It's just a standard statistic. If 60% last 5 years, many of those will last longer.
Statistics on the outlook for a certain type and stage of cancer are often given as 5-year survival rates, but many people live longer — often much longer — than 5 years. The 5-year survival rate is the percentage of people who live at least 5 years after being diagnosed with cancer.
American Cancer Society According to Cancer Research UK the 10 year survival rate for bowel cancer is not much lower than the 5 year rate
Bowel cancer survival falls only slightly beyond five years after diagnosis, which means most patients can be considered cured after five years.
quote: It isn't much. The numbers are way too low to make a good test, even if the data were unbiased - and it very likely is. If you want to claim the moral high ground you need to give up your obsession with winning the argument and rationally consider the evidence.
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NoNukes Inactive Member |
out of this...
Edited by NoNukes, : Pointless... Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also in prison. Thoreau: Civil Disobedience (1846) I was thinking as long as I have my hands up they’re not going to shoot me. This is what I’m thinking they’re not going to shoot me. Wow, was I wrong. -- Charles Kinsey I never considered a difference of opinion in politics, in religion, in philosophy, as cause for withdrawing from a friend. Thomas Jefferson Worrying about the "browning of America" is not racism. -- Faith I hate you all, you hate me -- Faith
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Granny Magda Member (Idle past 365 days) Posts: 2462 From: UK Joined:
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I don't really have time for a fuller reply tonight, but I just want to say a couple of things.
At least five years, but obviously the flat five years given means that's the best they can offer, and anyone who does live longer is beating the statistic and has to be very rare. No, that's wrong. PaulK has it right. The "over five years" phrase describes the chance of living at least five years. They also use 1 year and 10 year measurements. They do this because of the difficulty in pronouncing a person "cancer-free". There's no way to be sure whether any given intervention worked or not, whether the cancer will recur or not, so they describe outcomes in twrms of how many patients with similar symptoms will still be alive over one, five or ten years. It's a statistical thing, not a prognosis of five years to live. Also, just to be clear, when someone like Wark gets a statistic like this, it's not uniquely tailored to him. They're not saying "You, Chris Wark and no-one else, have a specifically 60% of living another five years.". What they are saying is more like "A patient of your age and gender, presenting with your symptoms has approximately X% chance of surviving another five years under a given course of treatment.". They base these numbers on previous outcomes.
I've given five who died on conventional treatment within a few short years, and three who lived decades longer on alternative treatment and you are all acting as if that is big nothing. It is a big nothing. less than nothing. Sorry, I know that's not what you want to hear, but it's the case. There were 281 patients in the sample group for the study I cited in Message 6. They form a robustly analysed data-set, where like is carefully compared to like. You have 8 cases, the details of all of which you are extremely sketchy on. We don't even know what cancers these people had. There's no reason to favour your minuscule collection of detail-free anecdotes over a large and well-analysed data-set. Well, no reason other than that it's not telling you what you want to hear. Mutate and Survive
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