Posts by Lucy Stewart
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But then again, a birth which works well is still a very natural experience, and in the most part not too different from how it was done hundreds of years ago. Informed by some Western medical science, but still often using traditional techniques.
Where there's complications of course, it rapidly changes.
The over-medicalisation of birth is huge issue, especially in the US - I mean, home birth, even *with* a doctor or midwife, is illegal in a lot of states. I find that hard to believe. So you get concepts like"freebirthing", i.e, giving birth without any medical aid whatsoever. There has to be some sort of middle ground.
Now my children barely get through the door of all the GPs we've been to see in New Zealand (that is to say, quite a few) and it's amoxycillin a go-go.
Placebo use of antibiotics - for viral infections - is almost certainly more damaging to the general public's health than the entirety of adverse effects from alternative medicine (aside from anti-science type campaigns.) It makes me despair for humanity a little.
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Why is this unreasonable?
Because back in the day people had no way of sensing electricity - short of static friction/lightning - and no understanding of how it worked. It doesn't seem unreasonable to me to assume that the energy flows bit is, basically, guessing. Voltage potentials along neurons were somewhat difficult to observe before the twentieth century.
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Lucy, it's not unreasonable to say that scientific understanding of electricity in human bodies is highly incomplete. You don't need to invoke woo ("vitalism" here) to agree with that point.
It is somewhat unreasonable, however, to link however many thousand year old "maps" of "energy flows" in the body to the electromagnetic fields produced by the biomechanical and chemical interactions of the human body. Saying we don't understand it fully is *not* the same as saying alternative medicine understands it any better.
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When western medicine includes a proper energy model of the body rather than trying to explain everything in biomechanical and chemical terms, it will be entitled to take cracks at acupuncture.
Ah, vitalism. I actually have no words.
(Okay, two. What energy?)
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That be the thread whose name we dare not speak, for fear that we shall awaken A Great Evil which will destroy us all......
TTWMNBN?
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Well, I interpret it as fucking gross. That 'psychic' person is exploiting that poor family for her own benefit, and the relevant TVNZ employees are either stupid or assholes. Or both.
There have been cases where psychics have described where the missing child's body is hidden, only for the kid to turn up alive. And vice versa. It's the last thing mentally stressed people need.
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That's the tragic thing; those medical practitioners that refuse to admit the fallibility of their practice, and overstate benefits and understate side-effects are often the ones that drive people into the arms of those whose treatments have failed to deliver in even more consistent ways.
I wonder how much of the uptake of alternative medicine is also because modern medicine can do so much that when it fails to deliver the expected miracles people turn to those who are willing to promise miracles. Knowing that so much is possible, it must seem hideously unfair when it's not possible for you - and so tempting to believe that it is, really, you just haven't been given all the options.
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As I have said before, if what is being offered is a placebo (and the evidence says Osteo is), then the risk/benefit equation is very different since benefit is in essence 0 then any risk gets magnified even if it is rare.
The benefit isn't 0. The point about the placebo effect is that it is *better than* doing nothing. There is some benefit. The question is whether most forms of alternative medicine function *better than* placebos. They don't, mostly, but that doesn't mean they can't perform a useful function, especially for quality of life issues. Depends on the level of risk, but as richard says, if that particular placebo has proven effective for your personal problem, then why not use it?
We just need to avoid pretending that it's because of qi energy or some magic other form of knowledge or whatever, because that leaves the door open to the idea that scientific medicine can be replaced with alternative medicine. And that's when you get people refusing to have their kid with cancer go through chemotherapy.
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Look at something like manuka honey and its antiseptic properties - where did that idea come from? Now been proven through randomised control trials. A remedy from one tradition tested and becomes part of another.
Manuka honey? The antiseptic properties of honey have been known for a very, very long time. The mechanism is equally well-known. It's not hugely surprising someone spotted a more effective variety.
Thing is, though: lots of proven remedies have come from traditional medicine (aspirin!). That's great, and there are whole branches of modern medicine devoted to testing out traditional remedies, as there should be. Nothing should be dismissed totally out of hand.
But there are also whole swathes of traditional medicine that have not been proven to be effective (e.g. acupuncture.) You can't say on one hand that the bits that pass randomised tests are good, and then that the bits that haven't are equally as good. They're not, or the effect (and mechanism) would have shown up by now. How long do we have to keep trying?
I say again: Chinese traditional medicine does not get a pass for being old. Bits of it do work. Bits are mystical bollocks. E.g.: acupuncture has been shown to be slightly more effective than a placebo. But so is the placebo acupuncture - sticking needles in the "wrong" places. The point is that someone's sticking needles into you, not that they're in some vital energy points. We aren't required to pay lip service to the mystical bollocks because some bits are useful.
And that's the thing: alternative medicine always reaches for some very special circumstance in which it has been shown to be very slightly effective. That isn't improvement. Or progress.
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Lucy - New Zealand Chinese herbalists no longer use remedies from endangered species. Now they use equivalents from plant or synthetic origins. That's a change.
Forgive me for being a little sceptical that this is a change based on best practice rather than the illegality of killing endangered creatures.
Just like all health practitioners, the best ones are those prepared to critically and constantly review their practice.
But it's not a part of the idea of alternative medicine. You yourself were saying upthread that Chinese traditional medicine must have something because it had been around for a while. That kind of epitomises the ideas at play here.