Posts by Lucy Stewart
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but it turns out the conventional wisdom was wrong and fructose is not metabolised the same way as sucrose, lactose, dextrose...
And this is the awesome thing about science: it changes based on learning new things. Sometimes it takes a while. Sometimes people try to block it. But, ultimately, it changes. It is predicated upon change based upon new evidence. When have you ever seen any type of alternate medicine changed because something was shown to be wrong or not work? Ever?
Think about it.
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(which is after all older than modern western medicine)
I just really fail to grasp why this is supposed to make it any more useful. Or accurate. Or...anything, except old.
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Tell it to an engineer. Good sanitation and water supply have saved more lives than doctors ever have.
Oh, like the doctors who established the germ theory of disease and the water-borne nature of many epidemic diseases? Those doctors? The engineers didn't just wake up one morning and decide to sanitise drinking water on a whim.
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Sure, there's a danger, but I feel a lot safer about that than I do about my medically prescribed cyclosporin, which contains the risk of cancer (albeit in small numbers).
Which possibly has more to do with general human inability to accurately calculate risk/reward ratios than anything else.
There is more than one way of understanding the world and what makes humans tick, and evidence is not a synonym for science.
Evidence is not a synonym for science, but science is the only strictly evidence-based "way of understanding the world". It's also the only one based on quantifiable, replicable results. Now, not everyone who does science (or claims to, a whole 'nother kettle of fish) will get it 100% right 100% of the time. But it's the best thing we've got.
(As for other ways of understanding the world - no, not really. Understanding what makes humans tick, yes, because it's still too complex for us to have worked out all the kinks yet. Understanding the rest of the world? No.)
It's the insistent defense of science and clinical medicine as the only right way that seems religious in character
I don't know if there's a skeptic's bingo card, but if there were? This would be on it.
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Whether it is 'scientific' or not is beside the point, from a patient's point of view. I'm sure there's an enormous number of cranks and quacks, but even a stopped analog watch is right twice a day.
The viewpoint it *does* matter from, though, is this: scientifically-tested and proven treatments are ones that work for most people most of the time, better than a placebo. You can get anecdata all you like, but if these treatments can't be shown to work better than placebo for a randomly-selected group, then it's no better than chance. Twice a day isn't good enough, especially not for a government-funded health system.
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Are you guys telling me that there is a Game show on TV with sex scenes?
As far as I can tell....no?
(Although: rule 34. Does that work for TV?)
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It's coming soon to TV3, Danielle. PASS
And can I just reccommend that everyone watches it, because it is AWESOME. (And, for some weird reason, doing double-duty as a rest home for secondary characters from Heroes.)
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There's a sex scene (of all things) American Pie that I thought was quite realistic. It was the couple's first time and they awkward and not quite sure what to do and then it was over quickly.
Glee, of all things, has also had a couple of quasi-sex scenes of this character. Given the show's demographic, I doubt we'll ever see more than quasi-, but still.
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It's a sentiment bound to annoy a hell of a lot of people, but when you think about it, you have the options of following your doctor's advice, or reading up on the internet and do something different. The latter feels like making a choice, whereas the former feels like just going with the flow. The latter is harder, therefore feels like better in the implicit economy we assign to things.
On the other hand: it is possible to be well-informed, and we're basically sitting around being self-congratulatory on how we're smart enough to know the doctor is right. You do need to encourage people to question, or how are they going to know who is a quack?
Of course, we have experts for a reason. Everyone can't know everything. But they can learn how to get know which sources are reliable - and how to know which experts are, in fact, expert. Just saying that everyone who believes in 'alternate' medicine is a blithering idiot is not going to do one thing to make them better-informed. God knows derision is tempting, but it's not an answer.
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Oh for sure. But this guy's treating autism and stroke with it.
What Russell said.
Also, if it works, brilliant. I just object to having "news" basically consisting of "this company would like you to use their medical treatment, because they say it's awesome". I'd object if it had been for paracetamol, and I *know* that there's excellent science backing that up.