Health Freedom: Freedom for Quacks from pesky government interference.

If you believe in homeopathy, shouldn't you actually take LESS of the homeopathic remedy for it to be most effective? Remember, a core belief of homeopaths is that the more diluted it is - the less of the active substance you're taking in - the more effective it becomes. The logical conclusion would then be that if you don't take any of it, it's even more effective. ;)

That's a good one, I've got to use that on the true believers.
 
But, I know what works for me.

That's exactly your problem. You only think it's works, but you really don't know. In fact with homeopathy, it is certain that it won't work.

You cannot use the placebo as a crutch. The purpose of medicine is to have efficacy BEYOND the placebo effect and to prove it.

That's why double blind studies are mandatory in medicine. It's absolutely crucial that you understand that.

Try it with your family members next time you have a cold. Make sure it's a double blind.
 
That's exactly your problem. You only think it's works, but you really don't know. In fact with homeopathy, it is certain that it won't work.

You cannot use the placebo as a crutch. The purpose of medicine is to have efficacy BEYOND the placebo effect and to prove it.

That's why double blind studies are mandatory in medicine. It's absolutely crucial that you understand that.

Try it with your family members next time you have a cold. Make sure it's a double blind.

No one is trying to say that chemistry isn't taking place when you take OTC medications. What they are saying is that it is better for your body to have your body repair itself or for it to balance itself with its own mechanisms than to use foreign substances that always cause an imbalance in the system.
 
"The Truth About Alternative Medicine" - TAM 2012
If you want to skip to the specific topic of Health Freedom, zip to 29:30


Enjoy!


I was at TAM the last two years. Enjoyed it immensely, even though this year didn't have as many big names. I was in a workshop with Dr. Novella, Rachael Dunlop, David Gorski, and Harriet Hall that I really wish I could find the video to. Novella actually gave a good presentation in detail about the different types of studies that are conducted and published, and how media and other groups will latch on to them for the sensationalism or to push some new miracle drug. In reality, many of these are inconclusive, or very preliminary studies that haven't been peer-reviewed and have flaws in them. And I think it was Harriet Hall that gave a walk-through of researching some random new miracle drug that was being pushed on homeopathy sites and claimed it had studies backing it up (in reality, it had one inconclusive study published in an obscure "health" magazine that only existed for 2 years and conveniently shared it's initials with a larger more reliable medical publication).
 
I was at TAM the last two years.

I've been at 3-4 TAM's and hundreds of skeptic lectures over the years.

As you can imagine, I am absolutely blown away at the incredulity I find in this forum. Imagine what it's like to venture in an alt med forum.

You'd think that because libertarians have woken up once (from government tyranny), that they would use the same critical thinking skills and see that Big Placebo is a scam.
 
No one is trying to say that chemistry isn't taking place when you take OTC medications. What they are saying is that it is better for your body to have your body repair itself or for it to balance itself with its own mechanisms than to use foreign substances that always cause an imbalance in the system.

What you're basically saying is: Whatever ailment you get, your body will take care of it. That true in many cases, but when it's not, it's usually fatal.

That's why the Quacks are dangerous.
 
That's exactly your problem. You only think it's works, but you really don't know. In fact with homeopathy, it is certain that it won't work.

You cannot use the placebo as a crutch. The purpose of medicine is to have efficacy BEYOND the placebo effect and to prove it.

That's why double blind studies are mandatory in medicine. It's absolutely crucial that you understand that.

Try it with your family members next time you have a cold. Make sure it's a double blind.


Nearly all drug trials scientifically invalid due to influence of the mind; Big Pharma science dissolves into wishful thinking


by Mike Adams

A new study in Science Translational Medicine has cast doubt over the scientific validity of nearly all randomized, double-blind placebo controlled studies involving pharmaceuticals used on human beings. It turns out that many pharmaceuticals only work because people expect them to, not because they have any "real" chemical effect on the body. As you'll see here, when test subjects were told that they were not receiving painkiller medications -- even though they were -- the medication proved to be completely worthless.

This particular experiment involved applying heat to the legs of test subjects in order to cause pain, then adding a painkiller medication to an IV drip while assessing the subjects' pain levels. When the painkiller drug was present, the test subjects were told about it, and just as expected their pain scores significantly dropped. But when test subjects were told the pain medication had been stopped, their pain levels returned back to the original, non-medicated levels even though the pain medication was secretly still being dripped into their IVs.

The mind of the patient, in other words, is what actually determines the "effectiveness" of the pain drug, not the chemical effect of the drug itself.

Talking to the BBC, Professor Irene Tracey from Oxford University said, "It's phenomenal, it's really cool. It's one of the best analgesics we have and the brain's influence can either vastly increase its effect, or completely remove it." (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-12480310).

As pointed out by George Lewith, a professor of health research at the University of Southampton, these findings call into question the scientific validity of many randomized clinical trials. He said, "It completely blows cold randomized clinical trials, which don't take into account expectation."

Many pharmaceuticals only work if you believe they do
What the research really means, you see, is that the mind is the main determiner of the effectiveness of many drugs, not the so-called chemical profile of the drugs themselves. This has been proven out again and again with not just painkiller drugs, but also with antidepressant drugs which have consistently failed to out-perform placebo. (http://www.naturalnews.com/022723.html)

But it all brings up a question: If many pharmaceuticals only work because the mind makes them real, then why do some drugs appear to out-perform placebo in clinical trials?

The answer to that will probably surprise you: It's because when people are in randomized, placebo-controlled studies, they're usually hoping to get the real drugs, not the placebo. And how do they determine whether they're getting the "real" drugs? By the presence of negative side effects! As those side effects begin to appear -- constipation, sexual disorders, nausea, headaches, etc -- then those participants convince themselves that they received the "real" drugs! And from that point, their mind makes it real! So the blood pressure actually then starts to go down, or their cholesterol numbers drop, and so on.

The patients make real whatever expectation they were given when they were recruited for the drug trial in the first place. Even the act of recruiting people for drug trials sets an expectation in their minds. Patients, after all, are recruited for a "cancer drug trial" or a "blood pressure drug trial" or some other trial in which the expected outcome is made evident during the recruitment phase.

This is all really important to understand so I'm going to break it down step by step:

Why pharmaceutical "positive" effects are actually generated by the minds of the clinical trial participants:

Step 1: Clinical trial participants are recruited through a trial that is advertised as testing a drug for a particular outcome such as lowering blood pressure, halting cancer, normalizing blood sugar, etc. This sets the expectation of the drug effects in the minds of the patients even before the trial begins.

Step 2: When the trial begins, the clinical trial participants are told that half will be given the "real" drug, and the other half will be given a placebo, but it's a blind study, so no one knows whether they're receiving the drug or the placebo.

Step 3: Study participants begin to take the pills, but they don't know whether they're getting drugs or placebo.

Step 4: Those participants who are receiving the real drugs begin to show toxic side effects (because most pharmaceuticals are toxic to the body). This excites them because they conclude that they are on the "real" drugs!

Step 5: Those participants who conclude they are on the "real" drugs then, through the power of their minds, cause their bodies to make real the physiological effects that were imprinted in their minds in step one! Whatever drug expectation was explained to them before the trial, in other words, is suddenly made real by the patient's mind.

Step 6: Meanwhile, those patients receiving the placebo pills and having no side effects convince themselves that they aren't receiving the "real" drugs and therefore they should experience no positive physiological effects. So their mind makes that real, too, and they get no benefit from the whole experience.

Step 7: After the end of the clinical trial, the researchers compare the results of the placebo group against the results of the drug group, and guess what? The drug looks like it performed better! But was the drug the actual cause of that? Not at all: It was the expectations of the study subjects that made the effects real. The drugs, in other words, only look good as a result of wishful thinking.

As you can see here, this calls into question the scientific validity of every randomized, double-blind placebo-controlled drug study that has ever been conducted. The critical scientific failure they all share, you see, is that as part of the clinical trial, the researchers set the expectations of the drug's results in the minds of the patients. It is those minds that then made the effects real, not necessarily the drugs.

This leads to the fascinating conclusion that in today's medical system, many drugs may only work when patients expect them to because it is the patient's mind creating the physiological effects, not the drug itself.

So how do you get around this and design a truly scientific trial that eliminates the effect of the mind?

How to design a truly scientific clinical trial using drugs
The answer to that is simpler than you think: In humans, you must eliminate the trial subjects from learning of any expectation of the drug's effects. In other words, you can't sign patients up for a "blood pressure drug trial" because right there you've set the expectation that the drug will lower blood pressure.

You essentially have to sign people up for a trial of a "mystery drug" with no expectation of any effects whatsoever. That way, the mind of the study participants is no longer a variable in the outcome of the drug trial. From there, all the various physiological effects of the patients must be tracked. With the patients' minds now out of the picture, you can get an honest assessment of the genuine chemical action of the drug itself.

Why most clinical trials are scientifically invalid
It is fascinating, of course, that virtually no clinical trials are ever conducted in this way. Today's drug trials are almost universally described to patients along with the expectations of the outcome. This has been done for decades under the false belief that the mind somehow played no role whatsoever in the physiology of the body. Conventional medical researchers and scientists incorrectly believed that chemistry alone would dictate the outcome of the trial. The mind had nothing to do with it, they claimed.

They were wrong. The mind has everything to do with it. In fact, the mind can make a placebo "real" and render a drug useless. The mind has near total control over the outcome of the trial. Because this has almost never been taken into account, all those clinical trials that ignored the influence variable of intention are, technically speaking, scientifically invalid. There's no way to know whether the outcome of the trial was due to the drug or the mind.

And that makes the mind a variable in the scientific question of what is at work in a clinical trial. When the mind is at work, you cannot scientifically claim the achieved results were simply due to the drug itself. Unless, of course, you disavow the influence of the mind. And that is precisely the mistake that has been made since the dawn of modern medical science.

The pharmaceutical industry's "science" falls apart in the presence of the mind
Once you understand the power of the mind to either create real physiological effects in the body or nullify the chemicals being administered to the body, you immediately grasp the stunning conclusion: Big Pharma's "science" is not scientific!

Virtually all the results from the tens of thousands of clinical trials that have been conducted over the last several decades must now be called into question. In which trials did patients produce their own positive results simply through the power of their minds after believing that negative side effects meant they were taking the "real" drugs?

It is not a question to be taken lightly. This question, in fact, will demolish modern pharmaceutical "science" once it is fully understood. The pharmaceutical industry, you see, needs the power of the mind to make its drugs appear to work! Without the "wishful thinking" factor engaged, it is altogether likely that most pharmaceuticals simply don't work at all.

The truth is that virtually all the effects of the most commonly prescribed pharmaceuticals -- diabetes drugs, blood pressure drugs, painkillers, statin drugs and so on -- can be achieved without using any drugs whatsoever. The only cause required to produce the positive effects is the expectation of positive results in the minds of the patients.

There are certainly exceptions to this, of course. Anesthesia drugs do not appear to require the active mental participation of patients in order to function as expected. Likewise, there are certainly nutrients such as vitamin D that function in a certain way in the human body regardless of whether a person "believes" in vitamin D.

The real question, you see, is what happens at the intersection of molecular biology and the expectation of the mind? Modern medical science has near-zero knowledge on that subject because it has denied the existence of the mind. Most so-called "skeptics," for example, do not believe there is such a thing as the mind. Humans are merely biological robots, they say, and brains are mere molecular machines that carry out deterministic actions based purely on the laws of chemistry and physics. The mind, they insist, does not exist.

No wonder their clinical trials fail to take the mind into account. And that is why their clinical trials are now revealed as medical self delusion. They thought their drugs were working, but it turns out it was the patients' minds that delivered the results.

The great censorship of the power of the mind
But don't expect the conventional medical industry to acknowledge any of this. In order to continue its charade of "scientifically validated pharmaceuticals," the industry must desperately seek to pretend that the mind has nothing whatsoever to do with clinical trials.

That is why the pharmaceutical industry is trying to deny the existence of the mind. It's why medical journals are reluctant to publish studies that invoke the power of the mind, and it's why medical schools refuse to teach medical students about mind-body medicine.

The placebo effect -- perhaps the single most powerful tool for healing -- is utterly discarded as worthless by the entire medical profession!

The mind is so powerful that it can render drugs obsolete. When doctors truly understand and are able to harness the power of the mind, they won't need routine pharmaceuticals. They will only need to empower patients with the factually correct belief that they have the power to heal within them, and chemical drugs have only been symbolic metaphorical chemicals that allowed the mind to believe healing was taking place.

This is a cultural issue, of course. The culture of our modern world is one of reductionism. Western science refutes the power of the mind and denies individuals the power to heal. Healing must come from external intervention, we are taught: through chemicals, radiation or surgery.

In a parallel world, with the exact same biology, consciousness and environment, another race of human-like creatures might have chosen a different path -- the path of patient empowerment where doctors are mere guides who teach patients how to heal themselves. Healing is a personal art, done from the inside out, not through dangerous chemical interventions. All that is necessary for this parallel world to become a reality is a shift in the beliefs of the people. When society accepts as real the power of the mind, it suddenly becomes believable to the weak-minded masses who always look to figures of authority to tell them what's real.

But the deeper truth of the matter is that what's real is what you make real. Your mind, all by itself, can alter your physiology, neutralize toxic drugs, halt pain and probably even achieve other seemingly miraculous feats such as re-growing lost limbs. What's necessary to get there isn't technology but rather belief in the ability of the mind to shape the outcome of the body.

It is especially fascinating that this is no longer merely new age talk: It is the scientifically validated conclusion of rigorous studies involving patient expectations. Now, the interaction of the body and the mind IS the new science!
 
I've been at 3-4 TAM's and hundreds of skeptic lectures over the years.

As you can imagine, I am absolutely blown away at the incredulity I find in this forum. Imagine what it's like to venture in an alt med forum.

You'd think that because libertarians have woken up once (from government tyranny), that they would use the same critical thinking skills and see that Big Placebo is a scam.

Well said. Faith tends to inject a certain level of cognitive dissonance in any group though - political, religious, or other.
 
What you're basically saying is: Whatever ailment you get, your body will take care of it. That true in many cases, but when it's not, it's usually fatal.

That's why the Quacks are dangerous.

That is not at all what I said they are saying that it is better for your body to have your body repair itself or for it to balance itself with its own mechanisms than to use foreign substances that always cause an imbalance in the system.

Big Pharma is not concerned with helping your body heal itself. That does not benefit them. That is not profitable for them. Since they are corporations, they are obligated to provide maximum profits for their shareholders. Making people healthy is not profitable, so Big Pharma legally can not be pursuing that goal.
 
That is not at all what I said they are saying that it is better for your body to have your body repair itself or for it to balance itself with its own mechanisms than to use foreign substances that always cause an imbalance in the system.

Big Pharma is not concerned with helping your body heal itself. That does not benefit them. That is not profitable for them. Since they are corporations, they are obligated to provide maximum profits for their shareholders. Making people healthy is not profitable, so Big Pharma legally can not be pursuing that goal.
Why can't making people healthy be profitable?

Well, it is.
 
Why can't making people healthy be profitable?

Well, it is.

Making people healthy isn't the goal of Western Medicine, you can tell this by asking a doctor what is needed to stay healthy and they tell you, "good nutrition and regular exercise" but when you go to the doctor to seek help with a medical problem they prescribe a drug that will cause other problems for you instead of saying, "you can't catch your breath because you are 200 lbs over weight, you sit in front of the TV 7 hours a day and the only food you eat is cheetos and gas station burritos. You need to get off of your ass and get some exercise, eat some fruits and vegetables, and stay away from the TV." What you do get from a Doctor is, "I'm diagnosing you with asthma and I'm prescribing you an albuterol inhaler."

Profits pretty much require returning customers when your operating costs are so high and there is so much competition with relation to the demand.
 
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Making people healthy isn't the goal of Western Medicine, you can tell this by asking a doctor what is needed to stay healthy and they tell you, "good nutrition and regular exercise" but when you go to the doctor to seek help with a medical problem they prescribe a drug that will cause other problems for you instead of saying, "you can't catch your breath because you are 200 lbs over weight, you sit in front of the TV 7 hours a day and the only food you eat is cheetos and gas station burritos. You need to get off of your ass and get some exercise, eat some fruits and vegetables, and stay away from the TV." What you do get from a Doctor is, "I'm diagnosing you with asthma and I'm prescribing you an albuterol inhaler."

LOL, yeah, treating the symptoms rather than the real problem.
 
I'll just leave this here.


Yeah leave it at that. Big Pharma has been caught red-handed in fraud many times.

Celebrex Fraud Docs Reveal Deception at Pfizer

In Documents on Pain Drug, Signs of Doubt and Deception


Merck to Pay $950 Million Over Vioxx


Merck Vaccine Fraud Story Buried by Media


How Bogus Scientific Studies Are Created
http://www.cancertutor.com/Other/BogusScience.html

As mentioned in my "Introduction to Alternative Cancer Treatments" article, over a period of 42 years, the tobacco industry spent over $220 million funding over 1,500 scientific studies, yet not a single one of these studies could find a relationship between tobacco and lung cancer, heart disease, etc. As I mentioned in that article, a group of high school students with a phone book could prove a relationship between tobacco and lung cancer. My point to mentioning this fact was that scientists are more than willing to accept money to do bogus scientific studies.

In fact you can almost always predict what conclusions a "scientific" study will come to by knowing just one key fact: "who funded the study." The person who funded the study will always get the conclusion they want. People who loosely call themselves "scientists" will always make sure of that.

The pharmaceutical industry, with their total control over the National Institutes of Health (NIH), National Cancer Institute (NCI), Food and Drug Administration (FDA), etc. have also funded many, many millions of dollars of bogus scientific studies. In fact, their budget is in the billions of dollars every year!! Couple this with their control of the media and you have the situation we are in today.

It is the Prime Directive of medical research to do two things:
First, make it appear there is "scientific evidence" for orthodox cancer treatments, orthodox heart disease prevention treatments, etc., and
Second, make it appear there is "no scientific evidence" for alternative cancer treatments, alternative heart disease prevention treatments, and so on.

But how can a scientist not find value in a nutrient that treats cancer or heart disease when the truth of the matter is that this substance does have value? That is what this web page is about.

This web page will summarize a number of different tactics and tricks that scientists can use to insure that their masters who fund their studies get exactly what they want.

Tactics, Tricks and Fraud in Scientific Studies

Using Synthetic Versions of a Nutrient In the Study

In many studies of nutrients, especially vitamins, synthetic versions of the nutrient were used in the study. Synthetic versions of a vitamin do not have nearly the effect on a disease as a quality-processed natural version of the same nutrient. For example:

"A new landmark study suggests that pregnant women should ask their physicians for a prenatal supplement that contains natural vitamin E for optimal health insurance. According to this new research, the human placenta can deliver natural vitamin E to the fetus in much greater concentration (3.5 to one) than the synthetic supplement.

Natural and synthetic vitamin E are not the same. Previous research has shown natural vitamin E is better retained and more biologically active than synthetic. To identify the kind of vitamin E in a supplement, it is necessary to read the ingredients listed on the label. Natural vitamin E begins with "d," as in "d-alpha-tocopherol." The synthetic version begins with "dl.""
http://www.pslgroup.com/dg/63882.htm

The Dosage is Too Low

When the news media blasts to the world that a particular vitamin or other nutrient "does not work" at preventing or treating a disease, they may mention the dosage of the product used by the orthodox scientist, but they won't mention the real world dosage used by alternative medicine practitioners. Frequently, the orthodox "study" only used a small fraction of the dosage generally used by alternative medicine.

Isolating a Natural Substance That Works in Synergy With Other Nutrients

Scientists like to study one nutrient at a time, ignoring that in raw, whole foods, this nutrient may be the best nutrient in isolation, but in fact this nutrient only works in combination with several other key nutrients in the raw, whole food. For example, orthodox scientists may study Vitamin A, by itself, instead of the effect of fresh, properly prepared carrot juice. By isolating one substance, they can then generalize that they have proven that the entire natural food has no effect on prevention or treatment.

Isolating and Studying the Wrong Nutrient

There are many thousands of phytonutrients in plants. No one has a clue how many of them there are. Most of them have not been identified or isolated. Few of them have ever been tested for treating cancer. With glyconutrients, the situation may even be worse. Glyconutrients may some day be found to be more effective at curing cancer than phytonutrients.

When massive evidence suggests that carrot juice is one of the best treatments for cancer, scientists quickly try to guess what it is about carrots that kills cancer cells so well.

It might be beta carotene, it might be alpha carotene. No one knows for sure. It might be a combination of 20 different things, only 4 of which have been isolated and identified as of this date.

Nevertheless, such a possibility will not stop scientists from trying to prove that carrots cannot cure cancer. They will select one or two nutrients in carrots, claim that they know that these nutrients are the only cancer-fighting nutrients in the carrots, and then use every trick and tactic they can come up with to "prove" that carrot juice cannot cure cancer.

No one knows the truth about why it works, but many people do know that carrot juice is a major part of many alternative cancer treatments. That is a fact. So is Essiac Tea, but know one knows for sure why. Doctors have known for over a hundred years that the herb Sheep Sorrel kills cancer cells, but no one can truthfully say they know what it is about Sheep Sorrel that kills cancer cells.

But scientists don't want you to know how complex the synergy is between multiple nutrients. They want you to think that they know what the nutrients are that work, and that they have proven that since these nutrients cannot, in isolation, cure cancer, that carrot juice (or whatever) cannot cure cancer.

Contaminating the Substance Being Tested

In one case, at least, the NIH contaminated an already bogus pill being used in a study. Natural laetrile cannot and has never given a patient the symptoms of cyanide poisoning. It simply is impossible. The NIH refused to allow an alternative laetrile vendor to supply natural laetrile for the study - so they could create a custom pill for the study.

In creating their custom bogus laetrile pill, it was not enough for them to not have any natural laetrile in the pill. A worthless pill would not have given any patient the symptoms of cyanide poisoning. They also had to lace the pill with inorganic cyanide so that the patients would have the symptoms of cyanide poisoning.

In other words, since they could not make a natural laetrile pill big enough to induce the symptoms of cyanide poisoning, they provided a pill with no natural cyanide, but laced it with inorganic cyanide to induce the symptom.

Modify the Complete Treatment Plan

Generally, when the federal government wants to make sure a study it funds will kill all of the patients, in order to make some natural substance look ineffective, they will use multiple techniques. For example, when doing a study of laetrile they created a totally bogus "laetrile pill" and laced it with inorganic cyanide, as just mentioned. But that was not enough. They also did not give the patients the standard cancer diet used by alternative practitioners in a complete laetrile treatment. This was easy to see because this cancer diet, by itself, even without laetrile, would have produced a survival rate significantly higher than orthodox medicine.

Tricky Statistics

Particularly with regards to "survival time," scientists frequently use worthless statistical techniques to come to the conclusions their funding sponsors want them to come to. For example, rather then measure the total survival times of two groups, they may measure the percentage of people who are still alive after a short length of time. My "Introduction" article goes into this trick in more detail.

Choosing the Confidence Interval

A "confidence interval" is a number used in statistics which provides the level of confidence that the results of the study are valid. In trying to find "evidence" that an orthodox treatment works, another statistical trick is to use a low confidence interval combined with a large number of studies. In other words, if you use a low confidence interval and fund a lot of studies, eventually one of the studies will give you a "statistically valid" study. But it is not because the product works, it is because of the nature of statistics and probability.

On the other hand, when looking at alternative studies, there is no confidence interval high enough that will convince the FDA to approve an alternative treatment. As I show in my eBook, applying statistics to the results of one alternative doctor yielded a confidence interval equivalent to more than a thousand standard deviations (three standard deviations yields a commonly accepted confidence interval in science, using more than three standard deviations is too high for most studies). But more than one thousand standard deviations is not enough evidence for orthodox medicine.

Not Looking For the Right Thing

This was the tactic used over and over again in tobacco studies, and it is a trick used over and over again in the pharmaceutical industry. For example, in order to get funding from the tobacco industry, you could not directly look for a relationship between tobacco and lung cancer. You had to look for some irrelevant, but seeming relevant, issue that "skirts" or avoids the real issue.

As an example from the pharmaceutical industry, the FDA only accepts studies that compare an "old" toxic sludge to a "new" toxic sludge. They will not legally allow or accept a legitimate study comparing an alternative treatment to an orthodox treatment.

Preaching the Importance of "Double Blind" Studies

Scientists love to preach the importance of "double blind" studies because in that way they can compare their "old" toxic sludge to their "new" toxic sludge in the same study. But in many cases, a double blind study makes no sense in the world. For example, how could you do a double blind study comparing a person who refuses all orthodox cancer treatments with someone who goes through chemotherapy? It is a stupid concept, because after one day a person would know which group they were in.

Likewise, how can you compare chemotherapy to Vitamin C in a double blind study? The chemotherapy group would have intense pain, sickness, their hair will fall out, and so on. The Vitamin C group would have no added pain, no sickness (except perhaps diarrhea), and their hair will not fall out, etc. A double blind study in this case is nonsense. What are you going to do, secretly put Drano (a toxic sludge used in plumbing to clean drain pipes) and ipecac (which makes people vomit) in with the Vitamin C so the Vitamin C group will experience intense pain and sickness and not know which blind group they are in?

There is nothing more stupid in the world of science that requiring a double blind study in cases where it makes no sense.

But it gets worse. The whole point of a "double blind" study is to remove any possible "psychological" effect in the study. In other words, since the patients don't know which group they are in, there is no "psychological" benefit or detriment to the treatment caused by their beliefs.

So what is the ultimate situation where there cannot possibly be any "psychological" effect? Using medical records, especially of people that are already DEAD! When a person doesn't know that their treatment is going to be used in a study long after they are dead, there certainly is no "psychological" effect that influences their outcome.

As a further point in this regard, the patients who are dead, and now only exist in medical records, could not possibly have known about treatments that didn't even exist when they were being treated. So how could there be a psychological effect?


Patient Selection (i.e. Selection Protocol)

When scientists want to make sure they do not accidentally duplicate the successful treatment of alternative medicine, they may use a clever way of selectively picking participants for the study. For example, when Pauling and Cameron selected patients for their study comparing Vitamin C therapy to chemotherapy, they selected patients who had a wide variety of cancers. When the Mayo Clinic wanted to make sure they did not come to the same conclusions as Pauling and Cameron they did not use a wide variety of cancer types, they used a small number of different types of cancers. By carefully choosing the patients in a study you can largely control the outcome of the study.

Another trick they can use with patient selection is designed to make alternative medicine look bad. But they usually don't use statistics to do this, but rather they will use one patient at a time to make alterantive medicine look bad.

For example, they can find a patient who was send home to die, after being mutilated, poisoned and burned so bad that there is no way this patient can survive. They then tell the story of an alternative cancer patient who died, failing to mention that he was essentially dead before he started taking the treatments.

Or they can find someone who didn't pick the right treatment for their situation and died because of that. Because they suppress the truth about alternative medicine, it is easy to find these people. These people probably died due to the lack of truth available to them, rather than the ineffectiveness of alternative medicine.

In essense, they can find a lot of people who took alternative treatments who died. By not telling the whole story (whatever that story was), they can make it look like alternative medicine is useless.

Give Drugs Known to Interact With the Treatment

When the NIH wanted to "prove" that Hydrazine Sulphate did not treat cachexia, they had a problem - there were already many scientific studies that proved it did work. So what they did was give 94% of the patients in the study a prescription drug that was known to neutralize the effect of Hydrazine Sulphate. The patients died of course, and the NIH got the data they wanted.

Hiding Who is Funding the Study

Many scientific studies are done by Big Pharma. Since these studies are too overtly biased to be taken seriously, Big Pharma will frequently seek out a big name scientist to attach his or her name to the study, as if they had actually done the study. There are in fact many different ways to hide who really does a study and many medical journals couldn't care less anyway.

In addition to this, many medical journals ignore who funds a study done by non-Big Pharma scientists. As was mentioned in my "Introduction" article, with aspartame studies there was a clear correlation between what the studies found and who funded the studies.


Bribing the Peer-Review Group

As mentioned in my "Introduction" article:

"In June [2002], the New England Journal of Medicine, one of the most respected medical journals, made a startling announcement. The editors declared that they were dropping their policy stipulating that authors of review articles of medical studies could not have financial ties to drug companies whose medicines were being analyzed.

The reason? The journal could no longer find enough independent experts. Drug company gifts and "consulting fees" are so pervasive that in any given field, you cannot find an expert who has not been paid off in some way by the industry. So the journal settled for a new standard: Their reviewers can have received no more than $10,000 [per year] from companies whose work they judge. Isn't that comforting?

This announcement by the New England Journal of Medicine is just the tip of the iceberg of a scientific establishment that has been pervasively corrupted by conflicts of interest and bias, throwing doubt on almost all scientific claims made in the biomedical field.

The standard announced in June was only for the reviewers. The actual authors of scientific studies in medical journals are often bought and paid for by private drug companies with a stake in the scientific results. While the NEJM and some other journals disclose these conflicts, others do not. Unknown to many readers is the fact that the data being discussed was often collected and analyzed by the maker of the drug involved in the test."
http://www.healtoronto.com/big_pharm.html

Contracts With Scientists

Virtually all contracts between a scientist and a pharmaceutical company will include a stipulation that if the pharmaceutical company does not like the results of the study, they have the legal right to suppress the results of the study, and the scientist is forbidden from publicizing the results of the study and is forbidden from submitting the study to a journal.

Very, very few colleges have the integrity to sign a contract that does not have this contract clause.

What this means is that when a study finds a dangerous side-effect of a prescription drug, or if it is found that the drug is worthless, the information is legally suppressed.

Control By Funding

The fastest and quickest way to get on the "black list" of pharmaceutical companies is to come to a conclusion they don't like. Perhaps you have found out that one of their drugs kills more people than they admit. Perhaps you have found a higher incidence of new cancers in patients who took a particular type of chemotherapy drug. Perhaps you have found that a natural treatment for cancer is superior to all chemotherapy drugs. You can forget ever being funded again.

In short, if you don't give Big Pharma the conclusions they want, you won't get funded again. Ever. Everybody knows that. It is the basic "rule of the game."

Flooding Scientific Journals With Bogus Studies

To put all of these items in perspective, it was the ultimate goal of the tobacco industry to flood the scientific journal market with bogus scientific studies in order to dilute the valid scientific studies that they were not able to control (i.e. fund).

The pharmaceutical industry has set even higher goals: use the corruption of science and government to flood the scientific journal market with bogus scientific studies, PLUS make sure the peer-review people are also in their hip pocket, PLUS make sure that no studies making alternative treatments look good can be published. They have done well.
 
That's why the Quacks are dangerous.
Concerned about dangerous medicine, RR? Then please answer both of these questions:

1. How many people die per year as a result of alternative medicine?
2. How many people die per year as a result of science-based medicine?

If you avoid answering question #2, we'll know who the real fraud is.
 
You seriously make no distinction at all between completely arbitrary belief (for instance, an unshakable belief in invisible flying pink unicorns) and using logic, reason, and the scientific method to evaluate empirical evidence and account for cognitive biases?

Yes, I do have faith in logic, reason, and properly conducted experimentation (the scientific method), because the importance and usefulness of these tools should be self-evident to anyone wanting to go through life without killing themselves over bizarre beliefs (like, "I can fly, so let's jump off a skyscraper!" or "Gasoline smells good, so let's drink it!"). If my faith were misplaced, we wouldn't be sitting here in artificially lit rooms typing on computer keyboards in the first place. In fact, if logic in particular were unreliable, we wouldn't be able to learn anything meaningful about the world at all, because nothing would make sense...including any attempt at debate. The things I have faith in are indispensible intellectual tools that are so fundamental to our existence and experience of consensus reality that anyone arguing against them is typically engaging in performative contradiction.

You think pretty highly of scientific methods and empirical evidence and seem to be trying to make me sound like I believe in unicorns. A doctor and scientist created homeopathic medicine he spent a lot of time researching and writing papers on his findings.

Something I will tell you about homeopathic and why it works. It works on the cellular level. Thru dilution and shaking the healing substance or the "like" is is broken down to be smaller than the cell and the cell can absorb it. Modern science could probably learn a lot about the way they use giant molecules to bump up against the cells and damage them rather than be absorbed and used by the cell to create immunity with homeopathic dosages. If vaccine were made in homeopathic dosages they would be much more effective and safer to store, distribute and administer with none of the dangerous side effects. There are homeopathic vaccines. I know the FDA does not approve it but for me I do not care if the FDA approves it. I want to use it for my self and I don't think the government ought to be able to decide what I put into my body.
 
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Nearly all drug trials scientifically invalid due to influence of the mind; Big Pharma science dissolves into wishful thinking


by Mike Adams

A new study in Science Translational Medicine has cast doubt over the scientific validity of nearly all randomized, double-blind placebo controlled studies involving pharmaceuticals used on human beings. It turns out that many pharmaceuticals only work because people expect them to, not because they have any "real" chemical effect on the body. As you'll see here, when test subjects were told that they were not receiving painkiller medications -- even though they were -- the medication proved to be completely worthless.
<snip>

This is a fascinating study, but take caution not to take the wrong conclusion from it: It does NOT mean, "Double-blind tests are insufficient to demonstrate a positive result for efficacy, so let's just fall back on making wild assertions about homeopathy or anything else working without proof." Double-blind tests are still necessary, but what this study demonstrates is that they are not always sufficient, because truly double-blind tests are difficult to conduct, and "information leaking" from side effects means that some tests were never truly double-blind at all.

As long as you understand the difference between necessary and sufficient, we're on the same page: Odds are, a number of positive results for pharmaceutical medicines likely are false positives due to side effects leaking information about who is in the control group and who is not. That said, this is not an especially startling revelation for anyone familiar with double-blind testing, and there is a way to control for this: For instance, a more cautious (more true) double-blind test would replace the placebo with another baseline medication, like the current leading treatment. This is not just a hypothetical suggestion for fixing the process in the future, either: Researchers DO already use this technique to account for side effects leaking information about who is in the experimental group vs. the control group (and to be more responsible than totally denying real treatment to people with serious illnesses), so it's not like they're all a bunch of noobs. Ultimately, the article author exaggerates with his narrative that we have to throw all of our positive results out the window.

Other than that, the study demonstrates something else we would be wise to note, as the author indicates: Not only is the mind powerful enough to cause healing (sometimes to a great degree, sometimes not), but it's also powerful enough that negative thinking will override even treatments which are otherwise more effective than placebos (or other baseline treatments). It would be unwise to underestimate how much negative thinking hurts...but it would also be unwise to overestimate how much positive thinking alone will help: It can help and it does help, and I even read of a guy a few years back who literally cured himself of HIV with it (he's no longer HIV positive whatsoever), but it's not something you can rely on 100% either. Homeopathic practices and the placebo effect were around long before penicillin, but wishful thinking doesn't kill deadly bacterial infections nearly as effectively as penicillin can. ;)
 
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Listening to James Randi on anything is about the same as listening to the RNC, lots of blather and hyperbole and blanket demonization.

Ad hominem circumstantial - Ad hominem circumstantial involves pointing out that someone is in circumstances such that he is disposed to take a particular position. Essentially, ad hominem circumstantial constitutes an attack on the bias of a person. The reason that this is fallacious is that it simply does not make one's opponent's arguments, from a logical point of view, any less credible to point out that one's opponent is disposed to argue that way.

http://encycl.opentopia.com/term/Ad_hominem#Ad_hominem_circumstantial
 
Concerned about dangerous medicine, RR? Then please answer both of these questions:

1. How many people die per year as a result of alternative medicine?
2. How many people die per year as a result of science-based medicine?

If you avoid answering question #2, we'll know who the real fraud is.

If you think that's how math works, we'll know something very personal about you.
 
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