Re: Chinese med education
Quote:
Originally posted by Pilgrim
Chinese medicine is fantastic medicine, with lots of advantages over allopathic medicine. The Wall Street Journal had a large article discussing the fact that herbal decoctions have had the best success treating and in prevention of SARS.
Since you obviously never read the article, I'll save everyone else the trouble of searching for it and post a link to the copyright violation:
http://groups.google.com/groups?q=Wa...4ax.com&rnum=1
The article was a nicety, but its content barely supports its own headline much less your assertion "herbal decoctions have had the best success treating and in prevention [sic] of SARS."
Work or Doesn't Work?!?!?!!?
I didn't waste my time reading all the post, just kinda skimmed through, but I noticed a buzz word which always seems to come up when referring to alternative medicine and that is 'placebo'. I have asked this question before somewhere on this forum before with no response from anyone.
If the placebo affect is to be the reason that alternative medicine works, then why do so many people still get sick when they get a flu shot, why do so many people still die when they are being treated for cancer by Western medicine? What happened to the placebo affect when treated by Western medicine? I would think if the placebo affect is so strong it would happen in both instances. I think this term is thrown around way to often to describe something others don't understand. Just my .02 cents.
;)
Re: Work or Doesn't Work?!?!?!!?
Quote:
Originally posted by azwingchun
If the placebo affect is to be the reason that alternative medicine works, then why do so many people still get sick when they get a flu shot, why do so many people still die when they are being treated for cancer by Western medicine? What happened to the placebo affect when treated by Western medicine? I would think if the placebo affect is so strong it would happen in both instances.
In the past, you've probably never received a response because the question is answerable.
In some sort of order:
1) why do some people get sick after they've gotten a flu shot?
Well, I suppose what you really meant to ask is: why do some people get the flu following a flu shot?
Most probable answer: a vaccine is formulated for common variations of the virus causing the flu (is this regional?). If you're exposed to another mutation of the virus, it offers little or no protection. Likewise, I'd expect people with compromised immune systems may still get the flu even with a shot. However, they often don't get as sick as they would otherwise and recover more quickly.
I don't have access to medline, but I suspect if you asked FC some detailed questions he'd post some excerpts from immunology research for you.
2) why do people still die when being treated for cancer with Western medicine?
Ummm, because cancer treatment isn't a 100% thing. Disingenuous question since any oncologist will explain survival rates in probabilistic terms. Thus, some cancers have poor long-term survival rates (it's my understanding stomach cancer's in this category) while others have much better long-term survival rates.
3) What happens to the placebo effect when treated with western medicine?
Ummm, it's still there and research on efficacy must control for its effect. This is why the methodology of research is so important and best practice is a double-blind studies that attempt to remove the patient and caregiver's biases from the "efficacy equation."
NOTE: I concede double-blind studies might not be appropriate in all areas. However, there are other methodologies that help account for the placebo effect as well.