Hard News: An unexpectedly long post about supplements and stuff
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I think I put a little more stock in the New England Journal of Medicine than you, Eleanor.
why? because they have got a nice fancy name and web site?
the summary you linked to is exactly as Eleanor said: three boys have been observed. this is not a sample size capable of generating any kind of probability confidence, it's a glorified anecdote.
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I mentioned the possible gynecomastic effects of lavender/tea tree oil as part of a wider discussion, not in the context of the bill per se.
There's another study as well, by the NIEHS. I agree it's a small number of affected boys, and more research is needed.
Still, there does seem to be a link... feel free to point me to studies that show lavender/tea tree oil do not mimic oestrogen and suppress androgens.
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O did I mention who was funding the "scientists"? Dig a bit deeper and you will find out!
The work was funded by the US government. The lead author works for the US government. One of the four authors gets money from a pile of pharmaceutical companies. He is not the lead author, or the corresponding author.
the so-called scientists behind the gynomastica / lavender link used a sample of three boys who came to their attention through various other studies.
They did some cell culture studies as well. Does that not count either? They say "Our in vitro studies confirm that lavender oil and tea tree oil possess weak estrogenic and antiandrogenic activities that may contribute to an imbalance in estrogen and androgen pathway signaling."
I expect there was a lot of unhappiness when meat hygiene regulations came into place requiring inspection of facilities and a shirt-load of paperwork. Small abattoir owners probably went out of business, and meat prices probably went up. Anyone want to return to the days before meat inspectors checked your steak for tapeworm?
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No, Stephen. That's not the reason.
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Yes, Anne, Bloch was an author who put his name to this as a "credible" scientist, and was funded grants from a serious cluster of pharmaceutical companies.
Of course this would not be too galling, really, if only the "study" hadn't claimed that “No other potential conflict of interest relevant to this article was reported”.
Juha did the medics of New England point out that one of the boys had a twin using the same products who wasn't affected in the slightest? Or that further analysis found actually very little evidence of the presence of tea tree oil in the cosmetics? Or that some of the products used were actually soaps and shampoos - which wash off?
O well... as my little sister (a doctor) always says, "everyone makes mistakes"
And as the hardy manfolk of Provence, the French lavender-growing district who on the whole had lower mortality levels during plagues than those in other regions and countries, said afterwards: "Ah, oui survived! Merci for the mammaries..."
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I recall reading somewhere that the majority of medicines in the modern pharmacopeia - i.e., all therapeutic medicines and drugs, both copyrighted and generic - are, rather than being synthesised, still largely derived from naturally-occuring sources. While the definitions I've used are a little sloppy, can anyone clarify this?
Apart from simple curiosity, I'm wondering how this affects the motivations of pharmaceutical companies in, say, the lavender/tea tree oils example.
Do they have a vested interest in discrediting the products, and if so, why? -
This reminds me of a very good US documentary, called 'The Alternative Fix', part of the Frontline series that covers the way in which the US Federal Guidelines for Alternative medicines were loosened and the politicians involved. Also, it covered a touring party of Maori healers performing something described as 'deep massage therapy'....looked painful!
It can be watched online (legitimately) at...
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/altmed/ -
can you please provide the quotes where I said anything of the sort? I would politely ask that you stop making stuff up, thanks.
And it seems I can now make the same request of you.
I made no claims about your views. I was just attempting to find what your views actually were. That's why I asked.
this looks like a tautology to me: if something works, then it must be science.
It's not a tautology. It's a straight definition.
If it can reliably be shown to work, it's science.If data or methodology is disputed then the criticism should be based in science. The same deal applies. to criticize methodology you have to provide sound argument as to why the methodology would not work reliably.
Scientific consensus is different from science. The Scientific consensus may be flat wrong on any number of counts, but as soon as it can be reliably shown that it is wrong the consensus shifts.
IMHO, there are countless things that work, which have never been accepted by Western scientifically based medicine.
You could mean one of two things by 'never been accepted', Either that it has been rejected or simply unaccepted.
To reject a treatment scientifically it would have to be reliably shown that the treatment offered no benefit.
For something to be unaccepted it simply means it hasn't been shown to work.There may be treatments that people believe work that do indeed work, but you need to distinguish those from the treatments that people believe work that don't work. Any mechanism that you use to reliably distinguish one from the other can be called science.
The entire notion of "western scientifically based medicine" is a bit absurd. The west doesn't own science. Science isn't 'beakers and Bunsen burners but not herbs and oils'
I should add that scientists may reject theories out of hand. This isn't strictly scientific but is usually done on a balance of probabilities. A person may come up with a design for an experiment that would produce one result if the universe is made up of electrons protons neutrons etc. and a totally different result if the universe is made out of toothpicks. It would be unlikely that any scientist would build the experiment. It isn't strictly scientific to dismiss the notion of a toothpick universe but scientists must make pragmatic decisions to make good use of their time while adhering as closely to the principles of science as possible.
Some treatments may be rejected because of attached baggage. For instance If I told you that taking an asprin would fix you headache because the toothpicks in your head will chase the asprin down to your stomach. You may reject it out of hand because the toothpick universe is absurd. That's unscientific without proving the nonexistance of the toothpick universe but you take your chances with probability It doesn't mean asprin doesn't work, but you have to have a better reason than that to consider taking it.
Science is simply the best possible way to know things.
The best possible way to know things is science.
not a tautology, defined equivalence. -
So will Placebos need to be tested as well?
In his book “Time for a Change”, Richard Bandler describes how he and a graduate student had planned to market placebo pills to the general public. They made plans to publish a leaflet with an index. A person would look up “Headaches” for example and read,
“When tested against other drugs, placebos work five out of six times – and no side effects.”
Then it would say
”Take seven when you have a headache.”Unfortunately, the FDA complained that the effects would wear off and that the placebo would lose its efficacy. Bandler says that he knew that this could happen because some people would not have strong enough beliefs first time around. So they revealed their back-up plan.
“New! Placebo Plus! Twice the inert ingredients! Twice as powerful as before.”
Nevertheless, the FDA wouldn’t let them offer their capsules and told them it would be illegal and couldn’t work. Bandler’s view was “We had proved it would work. After all, we had decades of FDA experimental results directly from them.”
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<blockquote>IMHO, there are countless things that work, which have never been accepted by Western scientifically based medicine.</blockquote>
That acronym at the beginning is really the key to your mistake. When you're talking about healthcare, and science in general it isn't enough to be able to say 'in my opinion shining a pink light on you will cure you of cancer'. You have to be able to provide proof to back up your opinion.
How would you go about obtaining such proof? Well . . . you could give cancer to a bunch of rats, shine the pink light on half of them and do nothing with the others . . . hey presto! You're doing science!
I'd be interested to hear what these 'countless things' are, since treatments like chiropractice and acupuncture are now widely practised methods within the western medical tradition - even though the theory behind their efficiency is deeply disputed.
To go back to homeopathy, I'd suggest that it's not accepted within western medicine not because the foundational theories (water has memory, serial dilutions, 'vital forces') are gibberish, but because it always fails clinical trials.
To my western educated mind acupuncture also sounds like nonsense - it treats 'patterns of disharmony' - but it damn well works, which is why it's now such an accepted part of mainstream medicine.
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The study suggests that once the products containing the oil were not used, the moobies subsided because... the oils were found to act like oestrogen.
Maybe the naturo/homeo/something-path community could offer up its children for a long-term trial to test whether or not the above is correct, and if so, to determine what the safe levels are? That would be commitment par excellence.
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Eleanor, I was using "medic" as shorthand for "professional health practitioner" as you told us you were in your first post.
I see where you're coming from with your definition of "antibiotic" but it doesn't really match with the conventional usage, which covers agents which are effective against bacterial infections *within the body*, like penicillin or doxycycline.
As this article points out, lots of things (including soap and water) are effective against bacteria on the skin surface, but they're not antibiotics in the usual sense of the word.
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Joe, yes teatree oil (and others) are a pesky thorn in the side for pharmaceutical companies, who cannot monopolise profits from natural products, nor chemically break them down - they are really too complex. It's easy to figure out what, say, 90% of the chemical composition is, but there are too many variations and miniscule amounts of things in the other few percent to crack the code. It makes testing and trialing very difficult too. While Juha has pointed out some appalling science partly subsidised by the industry, exploring efforts by pharmaceutical companies to discredit natural products is something I spend little time looking into. I prefer focusing on the positive results of my work.
Juha, most aromatherapists I know have children who were brought up around essential oils, and they were used on them for various ailments; this includes many little boys for whom long-term exposure to volatile extracts of lavender has resulted in zero breast-tissue growth. Luckily my husband has a hardcore of common sense that prevails in these matters and when we have children, in circumstances that demand it we'll both be happy to use manuka oil instead of / as well as, say, dettol.
Rich, of course, soap & water, great! ;o) I can prescribe a gargle containg essential oil of thymus vulgaris for strep throat, and it's really effective. In France doctors can take swabs of throat infections and match them to the most effective essential oils, then prescribe these to treat infections. What a great mechanism.
Of course thyme, which makes SUCH a great essential oil, grows abundantly in Central Otago; ANZTPA will provide a disincentive for NZers to explore and innovate with yet another wonderful NZ-grown cash crop.
We should be encouraged to innovate and create using renewable natural resources, shouldn't we?
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Can you cite a scientific study that shows thyme extract is effective in treating strep throat, Eleanor?
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John, with all due respect, a simple google search of "thyme" and "strep throat" will do that for you. It's really easy. Here's one.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2005/12/051216184545.htm\
Now I'm going to work, but I'm glad John learned something today.
Have a good one all!
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I looked hard for information in that news story, Eleanor, to find support for use of thyme extract to treat strep throat. It doesn't seem to be there.
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I recall reading somewhere that the majority of medicines in the modern pharmacopeia - i.e., all therapeutic medicines and drugs, both copyrighted and generic - are, rather than being synthesised, still largely derived from naturally-occuring sources. While the definitions I've used are a little sloppy, can anyone clarify this?
. . . I would be very surprised if that were the case.
Nominally, novel therapeutic candidates are primarily identified through screening of a known potential source, for example deer velvet -- traditional Chinese medicine notes that this stuff is a panacea for almost everything, so it's a good starting point. So we get some sample, grind it up, made a DNA library out of it, randomly screen that library for activity through a number of known models, identify hits and search for those against known databases for novelty. If you find something, you file for a patent, then you have a year to prove function.
So in this sense, the initial identification is through 'natural' sources.
Beyond that that, economy reigns supreme. If it's something that needs to be mass produced for human consumption, then there are huge volumes of law dictated how unfeasibly anal you have to be about it, i.e. no batch to batch variation in activity. The best way to achieve this strictness is through a standardised model of synthesis.
As such, I'd be surprised if anything more than a few percent of total products available are actually derived from natural sources. If nothing else, these compounds usually exist at extremely low concentrations in vivo -- given their regulatory nature -- so the extraction process is gonna take a lot of 'material' to give a small amount of 'product'.
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Hansel
"Seeing as how you confess to having little knowledge of the subject a simple statement that frauds and quacks do exist in the field of natural health would be fine. If you are impressed by Diplomas then you can look for those from recognised schools of naturopathy. People like Natural Ange (who I grew up listening to on bFM) are members of industry bodies."
Hansel, I don't have to have detailed knowledge to notice the sheer number of people just among my acquaintances, who have attempted to give me all sort of advice about my particular problem and the alternative cures available. Most of the time I have never asked for their advice. They make the assumption that doctors don't have a damned clue about any of the stuff they are talking about, and insist they know just the herb to cure all my ills. Some of them are homeopaths, claiming to have been trained in creditable schools, others have had homeopathic treatments of their own, or other alternatives.
Not one single one of them or anybody they even knew suffered from my problem to the extent that I do, since I'm one in 150 out of eczema sufferers alone. The doctors I deal with are dermatologists and other skin professionals who have seen countless people with the same or worse problems. They have approached it completely scientifically, trying one set of controlled treatments after another, based on case notes that track into my infancy, along with providing me with excellent relief from what is a horribly frustrating condition. They have tried allergy testing, in which I had over 100 patches of various substances put on me. They've tried phototherapy. They've tried topical immunosuppressants. They've tried many kinds of steroids and moisturizers. They've tried antihistamines to suppress the itching. They've recommended many lifestyle changes. All have worked to some degree, and come with their own well known, well documented side effects.
Contrast that to the homeopath who has no detailed knowledge of eczema *whatsoever*. They couldn't classify my condition to save themselves. They couldn't explain it in any way. They certainly can't tell me the research that has gone into people with my condition and how they have responded in massive samples to their various potions. They couldn't tell me the potential side effects, both in short or long term use. Most of the time they wouldn't even be able to tell me what chemicals are in their herbs.
If they could, I'm damned sure it's because they have conventional "western" medical training as well.
I have suffered this problem for my entire life and am well acquainted with many cures both orthodox and alternative. Only the orthodox ones have ever done anything at all to help me. All of the alternatives have done nothing or made it worse. Many have burned my skin off, or made me feel sick, or break out in shocking rashes, or other allergic reactions. Hence my wariness. It's not based on a closed mind, or being "impressed by a diploma", it's based on a burned hand. Literally. A burned face, too. Days in bed. Weeks of weeping eyes and crusted broken skin.
"I'm not trying to defend a particular school of thought on this issue but I do find it dangerous how much faith people put in the medical profession. And I don't like the fact that most (but not all) Doctors will not recommend a generic (i.e herbal product) for minor conditions where they are appropriate. Usually preferring to sell you something from one of their pharmaceutical providers"
If I were simply working on faith, you might have a point.
I have only once experienced a doctor profiting in any way at all from something they prescribed me, usually the profit goes entirely to the chemist. And that doctor was only profiting because the cream she sold me was so damned expensive off the shelf that she was able to get me a massive discount if I bought it through her. But she made it extremely clear the stuff was new, that it was pretty weak, and it had some side effects. I have not continued with it, because it was too weak and expensive, and that doctor referred me for hospital treatment when she could have kept me forever as an extremely profitable patient. So I don't buy the conspiracy theory. If anything, I've found that to be way more the case from herbal healers, who insist you buy their herbs.
Across this thread, defenders of alternative treatments have insisted that the "western" "conventional" medical professionals have closed minds towards alternative treatments. That has not been my experience at all. I have many times raised the question, and their answers have been astoundingly consistent. They tell me that extensive trials have been done for tens of thousands of compounds for treating eczema, many many of which have derived from herbal healing theories, and only a few, which have all ended up in "western" "conventional" medicine (which could well have only just been invented), have been found to have success without totally uncontrolled side effects. So I will be taking alternative treatment at my own risk. And I have, and it was, and I suffered.
This is referring to external medications. When it comes to things taken internally, in particular regulating one's diet, the answer has also been consistent. Many allergy sufferers have specific compounds that activate their condition. But since food is a massive mishmash of compounds, isolating out the ones that affect you is a huge task. Some people are lucky and find that a simple major food group, such as dairy, when removed, alleviates their problem. With others it is extremely specific, down to some kinds of preservatives, or traces of certain nuts. To conduct such an experiment on oneself is the work of decades in many cases, and will have the side effects that come with screwing around with your diet a lot. There *certainly absolutely* is not one particular kind of food that causes eczema. Nor is there a herb that will cure it.
I don't have a closed mind on the issue either. I'm reporting my experience of alternative healing, which is that it's mostly ineffective or dangerous. That has been my experience across decades with a problem that afflicts me terribly. I would absolutely love it if there was a miracle cure, as so many have promised, but there isn't so far. In fact, outside of "conventional" treatments, there has been no cure whatsoever, just pain, inconvenience, and cost.
I will continue to seek whatever treatment I can, since the steroid cure is finally exhibiting the side effects I was warned of as a teenager. My skin tears easily now, on the parts which have been most extensively treated. The recently posed alternative, by a hospital specialist, is to take oral immunosuppressants. This scares me a great deal, and I really need to consider it hard. When stacked up against the risk of cancer, any alternative sounds like it's worth trying.
Hence my lamentation that so much of the natural healing world is so unregulated, so untested, and so fucken patronizing about the other medical world that has served me for decades, that I quite literally wouldn't know where to start with alternatives. I'm not about to jump into some alternative that may have an even higher risk of cancer than immunosuppressants. That would simply be stupid.
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Science can claim to have a monopoly on solutions because it is prepared to take on information from all sources. If you have a solution and you can show that it performs better than chance then it becomes part of the scientific base. You can't show something works and go 'nyah nyah and science can't have it'.
Can anyone reference any books which focus on the colonising nature of 'Science'? Neil's more recent post above struck me as being particularly of that nature - the all powerful all encompassing nature of the word science in the modern world - for something to be 'OK' it needs to be done so scientifically, and once something is OK it must therefore be scientifically so.
I'm not arguing or even particularly disagreeing, I just wonder if anyone is aware of any books which discuss the way that 'Science' is used in that manner, I'd be interested in a wee read.
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glad you pointed that "study" out, Juha.
the so-called scientists behind the gynomastica / lavender link used a sample of three boys who came to their attention through various other studies.
Yup - ONE, TWO, THREE.Perhaps it's worth pointing out that this is what is known as a case series, which is not high level evidence of an association. The next step down, to simplify things a bit, is a case report. Case reports and case series are descriptive, not analytical, in that they describe and postulate hypotheses but don't test them.
However, they are how we came to recognise AIDS as a condition - case reports, then case series being put togehter by observant doctors. Of course, not all case reports end up being the basis of something so massive, or they could propose an association that doesn't end up being there after further study.
For higher level proof one would need to put together cases and compare them to controls in a well designed study - perhaps on the basis of a case series of 3 boys someone might do that. It would be a reasonable way to examine what is probably a rare outcome and its proposed association with lavender oil as the exposure.
BTW Eleanor I have the same concerns as you regarding the need for transparency in the provenance of funding. -
Thanks Chaos Buddha.
I guess that only leaves the questions of the economics of naturally sourced vs. synthesised (and therefore patentable?), and the impact of molecular biology on effective synthesis.
Ben:so much of the natural healing world is so unregulated, so untested, and so fucken patronizing about the other medical world that has served me for decades . . .
The medical establishment can also be 'fucken patronizing' at times. There was an exchange of views in the Listener in the late 80s where a leading medical academic openly gloated over the death of a terminally ill cancer patient who'd undergone a radical and untested form of treatment overseas.
That said, there can be few things more galling for a chronic sufferer than to be told that a successful cure depends on their 'really wanting' to get well. It's essentially a shifting of responsibility to the patient, and an attitude you're unlikely to encounter from conventional practitioners.
One thing that instantly convinces me that I'm dealing with an incompetent is an unsolicited lecture about the evils of 'allopathy', and the generally corrupt state of conventional medicine. If the efficacy of their methods doesn't speak for itself, they shouldn't be practicing.
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I guess that only leaves the questions of the economics of naturally sourced vs. synthesised (and therefore patentable?), and the impact of molecular biology on effective synthesis.
Fortunately (or unfortunately, depending on your point of view), there is usually little question of economics here; if you can isolate a novel molecule, then it doesn't matter if it's naturally sourced or synthesized, you can patent it. I think the only restrictions are that it cannot 'occur naturally in state' -- i.e. you can't patent H2O, but you can patent something you've found in and isolated out of H2O -- and it can't be personal, i.e. you can't patent someone's specific cDNA. And let's not go into the molecular chemistry aspect of it all, that sect is filled with balding, bearded old men that run their HPLC's by taste, and can pretty much synthesise whateveryouwant out of whateveryouhave given enough time, and relish the challenge of having to do so with fervent glee.
Apart from that, the world is your mollusc. Meaning 'organisations' such as the US government will try and fund the mapping of the human genome, so they can claim patent rights to it . . . but also meaning organisations such as Venter's Celera Genomics were motivated to do it faster, to effectively make it open source.
Still, this is the-me-wearing-a-white-lab-coat talking (shakes fist at those hassling white lab coat wearers), not me-who-knows-a-lot-about-patent-rights.
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After my father nearly bleed to death after my mother misguidely gave him a "natural" supplement I am more in favour of a tighter regulatory framework. Unfortunately many people, like my mother, assume natural means safe, It doesn't. Warfarin in particular, which is a blood thinner, interacts with many other drugs and supplements. This is why the recently released Aneline milk carries a warning for people on blood thinners as the added vitamin K will increase its affect. Even grapefruit will interact with other medications. Unfortunately studies have shown that most people fail to tell their doctor that they are taking a natural supplements, as in my father's case. My mother gave him a concotion of garlic and herbs. He merrily got a tooth pulled not realisng the combination had stripped all the clotting factor from his blood. 14 hours and a litre of blood later the doctors will still trying to stop the bleeding.
Supplements do have their place, but be informed - go to to PUBMED, which is the scientific research paper library, and see what studies have been done on that particular supplement. St Johns Wort is a good example. Numerous studies are available that have been well run showing that it works well for mild to moderate, but not severe depression. All the studies for homeopathy show at best they have a placebo effect. -
That said, there can be few things more galling for a chronic sufferer than to be told that a successful cure depends on their 'really wanting' to get well. It's essentially a shifting of responsibility to the patient, and an attitude you're unlikely to encounter from conventional practitioners.
A good friend of mine battled off cancer in her early 20s, and she got very, very tired of well-meaning people implying it was something to do with her attitude: like she'd get better if only she thought more positively or something.
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Can anyone reference any books which focus on the colonising nature of 'Science'? Neil's more recent post above struck me as being particularly of that nature - the all powerful all encompassing nature of the word science in the modern world - for something to be 'OK' it needs to be done so scientifically, and once something is OK it must therefore be scientifically so.
There was much talk in certain academic circles for awhile about how Science was a Western construct used to disempower the colonised and that there were as many equally legitimate ways of understanding the universe as there were societies. With the corollary that the only illegitimate way of understanding the universe was of course Science since that lead to so many bad things.
This view ignored the long history of scientific thought in places like China and the Middle East. The West did pick up science and ran with it, for reasons that Jared Diamond makes clear, which gave the West a dominance for a while.
It's not really a matter of science colonising but rather of some societies re-establishing connections with a lost scientific heritage. That reconnection has been resisted by some in various indigenous movements who believe that one has to vigorously support tradition over new knowledge as a way of combating colonialism.
Up thread a bit it was suggested that my views on science were based on "faith". It's not at all - it's a matter of following logical arguments. I'm more inclined to accept that a treatment is effective if it has been put to the test of clinical trials than on the basis of anecdotal evidence.
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