Health Freedom: Freedom for Quacks from pesky government interference.

[tttppp]

We don't know. Science based medicine is required to report adverse events including deaths but there are no such reporting requirements for alternative medicine. If they voluntarily report deaths, they lose business so they have an incentive not to report failures of treatment (even if the patients live). And we would need to break them down by deaths per patient visits- the vast majority of people use "conventional" medicine so in absolute numbers we would expect them to have more. Perhaps you can provide us with some numbers for alternative medicine deaths? And how many of those who died in either case would have died anyways (say a person is dying and the doctor- regular or alternative- tries some new risky proccedure to try to save them and the patient dies- did the treatment cause the death or fail to prevent it? If I have a major heart attack and go to the hospital and die there- did they cause my death? It will be reported as a patient death.

The most fair number would be the percentage of deaths caused by the practitioner. All practitioners have clients who die. The major difference is that western medicine causes a much higher percentage of thosee than alternative medicine. Also, many patients use western medicine and alternative medicine, so you have to account for that as well.

 

[Zippyjuan]

The most fair number would be the percentage of deaths caused by the practitioner. All practitioners have clients who die. The major difference is that western medicine causes a much higher percentage of thosee than alternative medicine. Also, many patients use western medicine and alternative medicine, so you have to account for that as well.

Can you provide us with any figures to support that claim?

 

[tttppp]

Can you provide us with any figures to support that claim?

No, I can't. All I know is from personal experience is that everything in western medicine has side effects. In Chinese traditional medicine, when done right, there are no side effects. It would be very difficult for alternative medicine to screw up badly enough to have western medicine's record.

 

[Zippyjuan]

I see. No evidence but it must be true. Thanks.

when done right, there are no side effects.

The vast majority of "modern medicine" related drug deaths come from people who abused them and did not "do them right" also.

 

[tttppp]

I see. No evidence but it must be true. Thanks.

I speak from personal experience. CTM has a very low chance of side effects if done right. Western medicine always has side effects. You don't need stats to see the difference. Either way, you have presented no stats either.

 

[Zippyjuan]

I speak from personal experience. CTM has a very low chance of side effects if done right. Western medicine always has side effects. You don't need stats to see the difference. Either way, you have presented no stats either.

I was not the one making the claim so I don't have to prove it- you do. I indicated earlier that is is impossible to prove since alternative providers are not required to report bad events like modern providers have to.

Even asprin has side effects- and it is naturally occuring. Yes, even Chinese herbs have side effects.

http://www.livestrong.com/article/154140-chinese-herbs-side-effects/

Every day Chinese herbs such as Asian ginseng, astragalus, gingko, Artemisia annua and licorice root are consumed by the general public in an attempt to treat various illnesses and to promote overall good health. Like many herb enthusiasts, you may be under the impression that taking Chinese herbs is completely safe. Unfortunately, the word "herb" often gives people a false sense of security. The reality is that although Chinese herbs come from plants, the chemicals they contain can be extremely potent. You should discuss your plans to take Chinese herbs with a doctor before getting started.

Side Effects
Some Chinese herbs can have a positive impact on your health. Nevertheless, Chinese herbs carry the same risk of side effects as do prescription medications. The exact type and severity of the side effects you experience will vary, based on the specific Chinese herb that you use. The Chinese herb ginseng is known to cause side effects such as skin rashes, breast tenderness, nervousness and high blood pressure. If you take the Chinese herb Artemisia, you may experience side effects such as abdominal pain, digestive problems, a lack of appetite and flu-like symptoms.


Complications
If you suffer from certain health problems, Chinese herbs may lead to complications with your condition. Taking ginseng can be dangerous if you have diabetes because it can potentially decrease your blood sugar levels. The Chinese herb gingko may increase your risk of bleeding. Therefore, you should not take gingko if you suffer from a bleeding disorder. Some Chinese herbs including gingko may lead to complications during surgery. These herbs can cause excessive bleeding and may interfere with the efficacy of the anesthesia. If you are pregnant, taking Chinese herbs may affect your unborn baby. Licorice root is a Chinese herb that can potentially increase your risk of preterm labor. To be safe, tell your doctor about any Chinese herbs that you take or plan to take if you are pregnant, considering surgery or have an existing health condition.

Drug Interactions
Many Chinese herbs will interact with medications such as blood thinners, blood pressure pills or aspirin. The Chinese herb astragalus has been known to interact with immune system suppressants. Since gingko can increase your risk of bleeding, the herb may cause problems if you take it alongside anticoagulant medications. Licorice root can severely decrease your body's potassium levels if you take the herb while you are on diuretics. The Chinese herb Artemisia annua can potentially increase your body's stomach acid production. Consequently, this herb often causes problems with medications such as proton pump inhibitors and antacids. Artemisia annua can also interfere with the success of anti-seizure drugs, since the herb can actually induce seizures in some individuals.



Read more: http://www.livestrong.com/article/154140-chinese-herbs-side-effects/#ixzz24y6sz1oh

Link to list of some other side effects: http://thedao.com/side_effect_of_some_herbs.htm

Since we are unable to show their harm rate, can we show their cure rate?

 

[tttppp]

I was not the one making the claim so I don't have to prove it- you do. I indicated earlier that is is impossible to prove since alternative providers are not required to report bad events like modern providers have to.

Even asprin has side effects- and it is naturally occuring. Yes, even Chinese herbs have side effects.

http://www.livestrong.com/article/154140-chinese-herbs-side-effects/


Since we are unable to show their harm rate, can we show their cure rate?

I have always stated people should not be treating themselves with herbs and should seek an expert before they take anything. The herbs they listed are fine, but the side effects are due to abuse. Ginseng can boost your energy, but it also creates a lot of heat. You are not suppose to take it unless you body is on the cool side. Ginko is one of those herbs meant to take in combination with other herbs. If you don't take it at the right time, in the right combination, it can cause problems. I took both of these herbs before I saw an expert, so I know what I am talking about. If you go to an expert there is a very low chance of side effects. Additionally, my acupuncturist advised his patients ahead of time for example, that the herbs can lower your blood pressue and to monitor your blood pressure and ask your doctor if you can lower blood pressure medication. He makes similar statements with patients who have diabetes.

As I have stated before, most acupuncturists in the US are not competent, so very few studies are going to prove acupuncture works. If you want to see proven stats, you'd need to study only the best acupuncturists.

 

[tttppp]

I was not the one making the claim so I don't have to prove it- you do. I indicated earlier that is is impossible to prove since alternative providers are not required to report bad events like modern providers have to.

Even asprin has side effects- and it is naturally occuring. Yes, even Chinese herbs have side effects.

http://www.livestrong.com/article/154140-chinese-herbs-side-effects/


Since we are unable to show their harm rate, can we show their cure rate?

I have always stated people should not be treating themselves with herbs and should seek an expert before they take anything. The herbs they listed are fine, but the side effects are due to abuse. Ginseng can boost your energy, but it also creates a lot of heat. You are not suppose to take it unless you body is on the cool side. Ginko is one of those herbs meant to take in combination with other herbs. If you don't take it at the right time, in the right combination, it can cause problems. I took both of these herbs before I saw an expert, so I know what I am talking about. If you go to an expert there is a very low chance of side effects. Additionally, my acupuncturist advised his patients ahead of time for example, that the herbs can lower your blood pressue and to monitor your blood pressure and ask your doctor if you can lower blood pressure medication. He makes similar statements with patients who have diabetes.

As I have stated before, most acupuncturists in the US are not competent, so very few studies are going to prove acupuncture works. If you want to see proven stats, you'd need to study only the best acupuncturists.

 

[Zippyjuan]

Interesting. If you only go to the best alternative medicine practicioners, the risks are low. Same could be said about conventional medical doctors (and also interesting that your accupuncturist also suggested you see a regular doctor as well).

In Chinese traditional medicine, when done right, there are no side effects.

Earlier you claimed there were no side effects (see quote above) and now there are some which your conventional doctor should monitor. Curious. Perhaps he isn't as you say "doing it right?"

What is a "cool body"? When your temperature is significantly below 98.6 degrees?

 

[tttppp]

Interesting. If you only go to the best alternative medicine practicioners, the risks are low. Same could be said about conventional medical doctors (and also interesting that your accupuncturist also suggested you see a regular doctor as well).



Earlier you claimed there were no side effects (see quote above) and now there are some which your conventional doctor should monitor. Curious. Perhaps he isn't as you say "doing it right?"

What is a "cool body"? When your temperature is significantly below 98.6 degrees?

Lowering blood pressure for a person with high blood pressure, is not a side effect. Its the whole point of them getting acupuncture in the first place. He tells people to visist their doctor because he is not the expert on medications and doesn't know whether its safe or not to just come off certain medications. He could also be held liable for damages for giving out advice on western medicine. Unfortuntely doctors don't practice the same ethics. There are many doctors who have told their patients not to take herbs from my acupuncturist, even though they know nothing about herbs.

There are always side effects with even the best doctors. Medication always has side effects. Surgery always has side effects.

 

[Working Poor]

I speak from personal experience. CTM has a very low chance of side effects if done right. Western medicine always has side effects. You don't need stats to see the difference. Either way, you have presented no stats either.

Here is somethings comparing the difference I don't know if you will call it a credible sources or not.

http://www.lasentinel.net/index.php...ventional-medicine&catid=67:health&Itemid=157

http://drugwarfacts.org/cms/?q=node/30

 

[Zippyjuan]

Neither is all bad or all good. Success and failure can be found from both methods of treatments. If we want to look at failures, consider Steve Job's death. Medical doctors were convinced they could heal him (or at least had good odds of healing him) but he was afraid of invasive treatment so he sought alternative treatment and died.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/alicegwalton/2011/10/24/steve-jobs-cancer-treatment-regrets/

According to Steve Jobs’ biographer, Walter Isaacson, the Apple mastermind eventually came to regret the decision he had made years earlier to reject potentially life-saving surgery in favor of alternative treatments like acupuncture, dietary supplements and juices. Though he ultimately embraced the surgery and sought out cutting-edge experimental methods, they were not enough to save him.

Jobs’ cancer had been discovered by chance during a CT scan in 2003 to look for kidney stones, during which doctors saw a “shadow” on his pancreas. Isaacson told CBS’ 60 Minutes last night that while the news was not good, the upside was that the form of pancreatic cancer from which Jobs suffered (a neuroendocrine islet tumor) was one of the 5% or so that are slow growing and most likely to be cured.

But Jobs refused surgery after diagnosis and for nine months after, favoring instead dietary treatments and other alternative methods. Isaacson says that when he asked Jobs why he had resisted it, Jobs said “I didn’t want my body to be opened…I didn’t want to be violated in that way.” His early resistance to surgery was apparently incomprehensible to his wife and close friends, who continually urged him to do it.

But there seemed to be more to his resistance than just fear of surgery.

“I think that he kind of felt that if you ignore something,” Isaacson told CBS, “if you don’t want something to exist, you can have magical thinking. And it had worked for him in the past.”

It worked in business, anyway – and brilliantly. Jobs’ employees had joked that surrounding him was a “reality distortion field,” which allowed him to make his own rules, and conjure up new products for which there was no precedent or apparent market. His capacity to create the reality he envisioned – and convince others of it – was a large part of his business success.

Another element of Jobs’ decision-making process was, according to Isaacson, his trust of his own instinct. Jobs had spent time studying Buddhism in India, and he felt it served him in his work. “The main thing I’ve learned is intuition, that the people in India are not just pure rational thinkers, that the great spiritual ones also have an intuition.”

But however well his intuition and “magical thinking” may have worked for him at work, Jobs’ postponement of surgery in favor of alternative means was a bizarre executive decision. “We talked about this a lot.” says the biographer. “He wanted to talk about it, how he regretted it. … I think he felt he should have been operated on sooner.”

More at link.

 

[tttppp]

Neither is all bad or all good. Success and failure can be found from both methods of treatments. If we want to look at failures, consider Steve Job's death. Medical doctors were convinced they could heal him (or at least had good odds of healing him) but he was afraid of invasive treatment so he sought alternative treatment and died.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/alicegwalton/2011/10/24/steve-jobs-cancer-treatment-regrets/


More at link.

Medical doctors have no chance of curing problems as complex as Jobs'. I don't have enough information to determine exactly where he screwed up, but I do know if he went to my acupuncturist starting in 2003 and did what he told him, Jobs would be alive and actually healthy. Its possible listening to doctors could have kept him alive a little longer, but it would not have cured him. Killing his cancer and replacing a liver would not have fixed him. He was way too screwed up for a doctor to help.

 

[Zippyjuan]

You do know enough about his condition to be positive that your acupuncturist could have cured him and that conventional medicine never could have. Curious- has your acupuncturist cured a lot of cases of pancreatic cancer?

A bit on Job's treatments (very general):

His early decision to put off surgery and rely instead on fruit juices, acupuncture, herbal remedies and other treatments — some of which he found on the Internet — infuriated and distressed his family, friends and physicians, the book says.

and later:

Friends and family, including his sister, Mona Simpson, urged Mr. Jobs to have surgery and chemotherapy, Mr. Isaacson writes. But Mr. Jobs delayed the medical treatment. His friend and mentor, Andrew Grove, the former head of Intel, who had overcome prostate cancer, told Mr. Jobs that diets and acupuncture were not a cure for his cancer. “I told him he was crazy,” he said.

Art Levinson, a member of Apple’s board and chairman of Genentech, recalled that he pleaded with Mr. Jobs and was frustrated that he could not persuade him to have surgery.

His wife, Laurene Powell, recalled those days, after the cancer diagnosis. “The big thing was that he really was not ready to open his body,” she said. “It’s hard to push someone to do that.” She did try, however, Mr. Isaacson writes. “The body exists to serve the spirit,” she argued.

When he did take the path of surgery and science, Mr. Jobs did so with passion and curiosity, sparing no expense, pushing the frontiers of new treatments. According to Mr. Isaacson, once Mr. Jobs decided on the surgery and medical science, he became an expert — studying, guiding and deciding on each treatment. Mr. Isaacson said Mr. Jobs made the final decision on each new treatment regimen.

The DNA sequencing that Mr. Jobs ultimately went through was done by a collaboration of teams at Stanford, Johns Hopkins, Harvard and the Broad Institute of MIT. The sequencing, Mr. Isaacson writes, allowed doctors to tailor drugs and target them to the defective molecular pathways.

A doctor told Mr. Jobs that the pioneering treatments of the kind he was undergoing would soon make most types of cancer a manageable chronic disease. Later, Mr. Jobs told Mr. Isaacson that he was either going to be one of the first “to outrun a cancer like this” or be among the last “to die from it.”

Actually this article has more details: http://www.thedailybeast.com/articl...odox-treatment-for-neuroendocrine-cancer.html

 

[Working Poor]

A doctor told Mr. Jobs that the pioneering treatments of the kind he was undergoing would soon make most types of cancer a manageable chronic disease.

Yea the medical industrial complex just loves manageable chronic diseases

 

[tttppp]

You do know enough about his condition to be positive that your acupuncturist could have cured him and that conventional medicine never could have. Curious- has your acupuncturist cured a lot of cases of pancreatic cancer?

A bit on Job's treatments (very general):


and later:


Actually this article has more details: http://www.thedailybeast.com/articl...odox-treatment-for-neuroendocrine-cancer.html

That's still not enough of a timeline to tell me what went wrong. When did he get alternative treatment and for how lonng? How often did he get treated? Who treated him? How did they diagnose him and what was his diagnosis? I can't explain what he did wrong until I know these things.

I find it laughable that doctors would claim they definetly would have saved him, when I have never gotten a definite answer from a doctor. They are always flat out guessing, or giving some percentage. Pancreatic cancer almost always kills patients, yet these doctors are confident they'd fix him. Jobs had severe liver problems, pancreatic cancer, kidney stones, and horrible blood flow. How many thousands of surgeries was Jobs expected to get?

By the way, when I said acupuncture can cure Jobs, I didn't mean managing his cancer the rest of his life. I meant the cancer would be gone, along with the rest of his imbalances.

 

[tttppp]

Yea the medical industrial complex just loves manageable chronic diseases

That's where they rip us off the most.

 

[tttppp]

Here is somethings comparing the difference I don't know if you will call it a credible sources or not.

http://www.lasentinel.net/index.php...ventional-medicine&catid=67:health&Itemid=157

http://drugwarfacts.org/cms/?q=node/30

That seems to have more information about western medicine than alternative medicine. However its good enough info to avoid western medicine as much as you can.

 

[farreri]

No I don't.

How are homeopathic remedies made and how are vaccines made?

We can learn a lot from nature.

RR seems to suggest nature doesn't work.

 

[farreri]

We don't know. Science based medicine is required to report adverse events including deaths

So why didn't you answer question #2?

Here it is again:

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