theusedversion
Member
Ah man, I had no idea that acupuncture is bogus. I've always wanted to try it out. I guess I will skip it now. That sucks.
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Should acupuncturists, homeopaths or faith healers be imprisoned?
- Thread starter Opiate
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Vulcano's assistant
Banned
Even if you believe they have broken the law, prosecuting would be a legal shitstorm. Some people would be caught in the middle of it because they don't know better. Make some laws, make the alternative medicine community aware of the precedent, and then regulate them.
As others have mentioned, it can be relaxing, but so can massage or just sitting there and meditating or whatever happens to relax you.
If you were hoping it would cure some specific, objective disease or syndrome, no luck on that front.
Another lazy reply? I provided studies that gave some evidence, you didn't. Anything you can give to reject the two studies that I provided? Because you're the one arguing from the position of ignorance here.
I'm looking at the study now, my reply was only referring to the bolded part of your post, which is a formal logical fallacy. Saying "we don't know everything" doesn't automatically lend credence to whatever you're arguing in favor of.
I agree, and this is part of the reason why I included the caveat in the OP that we're talking about people who charge money, anticipating exactly this line of discussion. I'm quite sure we'd no longer have sympathy for the guy telling his friend in the middle of the war that he's going to be okay if he charged his dying friend for the kind words.
ClassyPenguin
Banned
http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2012/05/21/papuncture-on-the-rebranding/
That is the blog of Dr David Gorski, surgical oncologist with a response to that study.
Devolution
Member
It doesn't but neither does acting like we've hit the pinnacle of discovery about how our bodies work.
theusedversion
Member
Yeah, I never really wanted to try it for any specific reason. Its just something that I have always wanted to try and was curious about. I like to try new things.
I haven't read through the whole thread yet or any of the articles posted but doing a super quick google search brings up what seems like a lot of articles about Adenosine in relation to Acupuncture and how it may be the factor that causes people to receive relief. Has that been proven to not be the case?
ClassyPenguin
Banned
Which is a strawman, and is a logical fallacy. It's a total misinterpretation of my statement.
I'm not even in favor of acupuncture for fucks sake. I am saying to keep an open mind on researches that does show some evidence. Look at the post I responded to and the article it linked. It didn't address anything I said.
It's good that you finally decide to stop being lazy and spent that 30 seconds on Google to actually address my post.
From your own link:
Which is my contention, that there might actually be benefits resulted from this research, hence my quotes around "acupuncture".
Byakuya769
Member
Fraud needs scienter, most of these people don't have the intent to defraud. They believe in their work. Stupid issue, the type that makes the politically left embarrassed.
theusedversion
Member
Thanks. Will read now.
In the past I might have agreed with you, but my Mom has been going to an accupuncturist (different ones because she has moved) for Lyme Disease and swears by it. She tried Western medicine for a about two years and only ever got painkillers that would help her, but also cause her not to be able to go to work when a friend told her to try it.
The acupuncture seems to work if she catches an outbreak before it really starts. Somehow it has helped to keep the inflammation down as well as the pain, so she continues to go. If it is just placebo, whatever, but if you asked her 10 years ago about acupuncture she would have laughed and called you crazy and has been going a few times a year for 5-6 years now.
Now, as for the rest, I guess if we also put all fortune tellers and such behind bars, go ahead. Personally, I feel that they are just as good as entertainment. As long as they don't get covered by my medical insurance and don't hurt anyone.
The acupuncture seems to work if she catches an outbreak before it really starts. Somehow it has helped to keep the inflammation down as well as the pain, so she continues to go. If it is just placebo, whatever, but if you asked her 10 years ago about acupuncture she would have laughed and called you crazy and has been going a few times a year for 5-6 years now.
Now, as for the rest, I guess if we also put all fortune tellers and such behind bars, go ahead. Personally, I feel that they are just as good as entertainment. As long as they don't get covered by my medical insurance and don't hurt anyone.
Can we agree that there is a difference between alternative medicine for pain relief and alternative medicine for curing disease?
That is to say, I think a claims of fraud against someone who sells a cancer curing elixir that does nothing to cure cancer are a lot stronger than claims against someone who uses a procedure that is scientifically proven not to be any more effective than placebo, but still results in pain relief for the patient.
In one of those, the person is getting what they paid for, assuming it was marketed to them correctly.
That is to say, I think a claims of fraud against someone who sells a cancer curing elixir that does nothing to cure cancer are a lot stronger than claims against someone who uses a procedure that is scientifically proven not to be any more effective than placebo, but still results in pain relief for the patient.
In one of those, the person is getting what they paid for, assuming it was marketed to them correctly.
PezDispenser
Banned
As long as the suckers they prey on are fully consenting in a sound state of mind, leave em be. There are much bigger assholes out there.
Liamario
Banned
I don't think they should be shut down- but I do think the regulations under which they operate should be more stringent.
Apparently in the UK, if you were to take one to court for fraud, the burden of proof is on those who claim fraud to disprove the claim. Which is logically flawed.
Of course the justice system applies to rule of innocent till proven guilty- which works in favour of fraudsters in this case.
Apparently in the UK, if you were to take one to court for fraud, the burden of proof is on those who claim fraud to disprove the claim. Which is logically flawed.
Of course the justice system applies to rule of innocent till proven guilty- which works in favour of fraudsters in this case.
ClassyPenguin
Banned
They are one and the same, really. Medicine that works is medicine, there is no alternative, or the alternative is not treating the illness.
For instance, St. John's Wort has properties of anti-depressants because ], I am using layman's terms, the same chemicals as some anti-depressants of the SSRI category. It is still alternative medicine and still ineffective because of the lack of manufacturing consistency and purity, the lack of dosing schedules, efficacy, and can lead to Seratonin Syndrome (and other drug interactions, just because it's natural doesn't mean it can fuck you up). With normal anti-depressants, the risks are known and measured. There are tables and schedules for that treatment and for going off that treatment, everything is controlled and measured. You don't get that with alternative medicine and alternative medicine leads to self-diagnosis and self-medication.
Obviously herbal medicine has a bit of truth in it since most medicines come from a natural product. It's just been refined to contain the active molecules. Pharmacology evolved as this.
ClassyPenguin
Banned
Here is a great talk by doctors Steven Novella, Harriet Hall, David Gorski, and Rachel Dunlop on alternative medicine.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z-AUHCf7eHQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z-AUHCf7eHQ
This. I don't know why you'd even put acupuncture in the same category as faith healers - as Ghaleon said, there's plenty of research that proves an effect in migraine matters, hayfever, etc. They can prove the effect, but not why it works.
Chinese medicine is 3000 - 4000 years old - they're stuff has been mostly found out with trial and error, I'd assume, but that doesn't change the fact it actually works.
My personal anecdote: When I was 12, I developed such a strong hayfever that I couldn't stand outside longer than 10mins without an inhalator, otherwise I could've passed out due to a lack of oxygen. My parents dragged me to 10+ specialists (living in Europe so booya healthcare), nothing worked. Then my mother had heard that a colleague of hers had gotten rid of her hayfever with acupuncture. Here's the deal though: I didn't want to do it, because I hate needles. And for everyone screaming placebo, even when I was 12, I thought this was a huge pile of mumbo jumbo.
Well, after 5 sessions, I didn't need the inhalator anymore. My therapist (american, btw) has a diploma in western medicine from Boston as well as one in chinese medicine from... Some place in China. I find it hard to believe a doctor would just start an education path to become a doctor of chinese medicine after already becoming a doctor in western medicine if it all was just a huge pile of bullshit.
ClassyPenguin
Banned
Except there hasn't been concrete proof that it works any more than placebo. When drugs are tested by the FDA (Phase trials), they have to prove efficacy greater than placebo.
http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/tag/acupuncture/
http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/acupuncture-doesnt-work/
http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/tag/acupuncture/
Moff
Member
No, I know enough cases where people could be helped after normal doctors didnt know anythiny anymore to try.
My stance on alternate medicine is that you should go to a real doctor first, but if he cant help you and you continue to suffer you should explore all the available options, as dumb as they may seem.
My stance on alternate medicine is that you should go to a real doctor first, but if he cant help you and you continue to suffer you should explore all the available options, as dumb as they may seem.
SolidusDave
Member
I'm interested in this, how was this compared to placebo? (like, for one group they did not actually puncture the skin?)
I read a study that showed that acupuncture can work, just that the whole chart of energy points in the body is complete bullshit. As in, it didn't matter where they placed the needles.
Obviously agreeing on the other two.
My (old) uncle told us recently a story how he suddenly could not move his neck anymore and it was painful. He went to some doctors who couldn't help, but one gave him a tip to go to a physiotherapist. The guy then only massaged his foot and after several weeks the issue was gone.
I'm not attacking physiotherapy, but that story didn't make sense to me at all. After several weeks you would think whatever nerve/muscle issue has resolved itself anyway, hell I could heal broken bones in that time.
Since I haven't actually responded to the original question yet:
I think homeopathy ought to be banned and that it would be pretty straightforward to do this. I think that in the US the FDA's authority should be a bit broader and that it should crack down on obvious attempts to mislead people about health. I'd take this pretty far; I don't think you should be able to advertise naturally gluten-free products as gluten-free if you clearly intend to create the impression that your competitors' essentially similar products are not gluten-free. Probably wishy-washy statements like "X may reduce bad cholesterol in your blood" should be out too. If we really want this sort of thing, we should poll a bunch of scientists working in the field to determine a set of allowable claims that can be made about particular products or ingredients.
I'd be happy to ban invasive forms of acupuncture absent compelling reason to think it does anything non-invasive forms can't do. Following the false advertising line of thinking above, I'm a little inclined to crack down on implications that extensive training in acupuncture is likely to make practitioners significantly better at achieving whatever benefits the procedure produces.
If faith healing can be distinguished from simply praying for someone's health, then I'd ban it. But it's very important that we not ban praying for someone's health (and people give money to churches, so the taking money distinction isn't going to help as much here), so probably faith healers get more leeway than others. I would want to see a pretty clear implication that prayer is an adequate substitute for real treatment before taking action against someone.
Edit: I don't need to see police coming for them in the night, but it should not be profitable to do these things.
I think homeopathy ought to be banned and that it would be pretty straightforward to do this. I think that in the US the FDA's authority should be a bit broader and that it should crack down on obvious attempts to mislead people about health. I'd take this pretty far; I don't think you should be able to advertise naturally gluten-free products as gluten-free if you clearly intend to create the impression that your competitors' essentially similar products are not gluten-free. Probably wishy-washy statements like "X may reduce bad cholesterol in your blood" should be out too. If we really want this sort of thing, we should poll a bunch of scientists working in the field to determine a set of allowable claims that can be made about particular products or ingredients.
I'd be happy to ban invasive forms of acupuncture absent compelling reason to think it does anything non-invasive forms can't do. Following the false advertising line of thinking above, I'm a little inclined to crack down on implications that extensive training in acupuncture is likely to make practitioners significantly better at achieving whatever benefits the procedure produces.
If faith healing can be distinguished from simply praying for someone's health, then I'd ban it. But it's very important that we not ban praying for someone's health (and people give money to churches, so the taking money distinction isn't going to help as much here), so probably faith healers get more leeway than others. I would want to see a pretty clear implication that prayer is an adequate substitute for real treatment before taking action against someone.
Edit: I don't need to see police coming for them in the night, but it should not be profitable to do these things.
I've posted a lot about this already in the thread, but I'll give a comprehensive explanation of my understanding of the situation.
First, what you are describing is placebo for acupuncture; they insert the needles in random places (but tell people it's "real" acupuncture) and find that it produces the same effect in both cases. Another example posted earlier: they have tried it by simply poking people with toothpicks, but adapting the toothpicks so that it felt like it was a needle and act like it was actually being inserted in to the skin, even though all it did was press on them. Again, both the toothpicks and needles were equivalently useful.
In other words: it doesn't matter if you use needles or something else, it doesn't matter whether you actually insert the needle or not, and it doesn't matter whether you poke them on random places in their body or on the supposedly "correct" meridian lines. All of these run directly contrary to acupuncture methodology.
Still, at least some studies show that acupuncture is better than nothing at all (i.e. not even placebo). The reasonable conclusion, based on my reading and others, is this: there seems to be consistent positive effects caused by people simply paying attention to you and trying to help you for an hour (which is the average acupuncture treatment time). Especially if they touch you and show they care for you and try to relax you.
That does seem to be clinically useful. But if that's what is going on, then we don't actually need the stuff which makes acupuncture acupuncture. It isn't the specific qualities of acupuncture which are helping -- it isn't the needles, it isn't the puncturing of the skin, it isn't the Qi energy lines being unstuck or the meridians or anything like that -- and something like massage could accomplish the same effect without all the fluff.
I hope that makes sense. Medical research is certainly a noisy thing.
Messofanego
Banned
But then how will be laugh at the suckers and assert our superiority?
Although it should be law to give a disclaimer that it's all unproven but that placebo effect can be a wonderful thing if you just open your pores.
Although it should be law to give a disclaimer that it's all unproven but that placebo effect can be a wonderful thing if you just open your pores.
ClassyPenguin
Banned
And that non-invasive "acupuncture" can be win the form of relaxation and other forms of psychological therapy, which is a lot better in terms of efficacy and patient care (better licensing and certification and professionalism).
SolidusDave
Member
Thanks for the summery! Now that you mentioned it, I remember the part about the toothpicks as well. If it were at least necessary that you had to puncture the skin, one could argue there is some effect due to immune response etc. (leading to different blood flow and so on), but with that evidence it's really more about the relaxing/caring part. Like, including a one hour massages in therapies.
Problem is that the placebo effect can sometimes do stuff that's hard to explain, like the mentioned hay fever cases. I don't even know how you can simply convince your immune system to just not react anymore to a molecule but oh well (maybe they dipped the needles in pollen so it's actually a immune desensitization
).So would you still need to tell patients that e.g. the massage is supposed to increase their healing chances?
Buddha Beam
Banned
There have been no shortage of cases over the years where science can't tell us why something works, yet we know it does. Aspirin probably being the most famous example of this. We had no idea how it worked or why it relieved people's pains for decades. It wasn't until the 1970's that we finally learned why, although we have been taking the stuff since the 1850's or so.
Just because science can't yet tell you what it does is not reason to proclaim it as bunk. Acupuncture seems to fall into the category of 'we know it works, we just don't know why'.
Nah man it'll clear your chi right up
I don't think it is. "keeping an open mind" and saying that something is true because it has not been proven false are two completely different things that seem to get mixed up constantly.
ClassyPenguin
Banned
A placebo is not a cure, or proof that it works. Those studies have proved that acupuncture does not have greater efficacy than placebo, for a drug or treatment to pass phase trials an efficacy greater than placebo has to be proven. A science standard of care is how it is known in the medical profession.
Thanks for the summery! Now that you mentioned it, I remember the part about the toothpicks as well. If it were at least necessary that you had to puncture the skin, one could argue there is some effect due to immune response etc. (leading to different blood flow and so on), but with that evidence it's really more about the relaxing/caring part. Like, including a one hour massages in therapies.
Problem is that the placebo effect can sometimes do stuff that's hard to explain, like the mentioned hay fever cases. I don't even know how you can simply convince your immune system to just not react anymore to a molecule but oh well (maybe they dipped the needles in pollen so it's actually a immune desensitization
So would you still need to tell patients that e.g. the massage is supposed to increase their healing chances?
Yes, placebo works considerably better when the person actually thinks whatever you are doing will really heal them.
And that leads to a very complicated discussion: is it okay to blatantly lie to people because it might reduce their subjective perceptions of pain? Particularly when you are charging them money for those blatant lies? I don't feel there's a simple, straightforward answer to those questions. It's especially complicated in serious situations: for example, if someone goes to a homeopath for placebo relief from a serious disease, that may give them false hope and make them cheerier. However, what do we do when they learn they're not going to be healed of their serious disease after all, and the false hope crashes in to despair or humiliation from being duped? It really is quite complicated.
Devolution
Member
Trent Strong
Banned
Should doctors who prescribe SSRIs be imprisoned, since those are just placebos?
ClassyPenguin
Banned
They are not placebos because in order to get FDA approval, they need to show efficacy greater than placebos. And don't use that bullshit Scientific American article that was written by a journalist and not a medical professional.
There is more evidence that shows efficacy than not.
Trent Strong
Banned
So drug companies conduct a bunch of studies on something like Prozac, and most of them show no effect, so they just publish the few that do show a small effect. There's a name for this practice, I forget what it's called.
ClassyPenguin
Banned
That's not how FDA phase trials work. They take years and even decades for approval. They are very strict.
Trying to equate psychopharmacology to fraud is disgraceful.
ComputerMKII
Banned
Define 'fraud'.
A lot of my girlfriends relatives are into Homeopathic/Naturopathic stuff. It's hard for me sometimes - because by now they know me well enough to know how my mind works with that sort of stuff. I'm completely polite, but they still know even if I never say anything about it.
The hardest part about it for me is seeing how much money they spend. Some of them spend hundreds a month on what essentially is water or oily water. For a person to say "eat less gluten, and eat more vegetables" to them. For all sorts of... hokum. But these are good people, who are earnest and excited and want to believe in all these alternative medicines. I don't think any of them are religious, but that isn't really that much of a factor apparently.
In my head I imagine that at least one of these Naturopaths or Homeopaths know that they are basically conning nice people, using health as an emotional hook.
And don't even get me started on how this propoganda that comes out of these and related fields, about how western medicine is what really makes you sick, natural is the only way etc etc. The only time I have ever raised my voice in opposition of these treatments with these people is when one of them got sick, REALLY sick, and needed to go see a specialist - she was considering dropping her appointment with the gastroenterologist and just going to see her naturopath instead. I at least got everyone to agree with me that, at the very least, see both.
The hardest part about it for me is seeing how much money they spend. Some of them spend hundreds a month on what essentially is water or oily water. For a person to say "eat less gluten, and eat more vegetables" to them. For all sorts of... hokum. But these are good people, who are earnest and excited and want to believe in all these alternative medicines. I don't think any of them are religious, but that isn't really that much of a factor apparently.
In my head I imagine that at least one of these Naturopaths or Homeopaths know that they are basically conning nice people, using health as an emotional hook.
And don't even get me started on how this propoganda that comes out of these and related fields, about how western medicine is what really makes you sick, natural is the only way etc etc. The only time I have ever raised my voice in opposition of these treatments with these people is when one of them got sick, REALLY sick, and needed to go see a specialist - she was considering dropping her appointment with the gastroenterologist and just going to see her naturopath instead. I at least got everyone to agree with me that, at the very least, see both.
The funny thing about placebos is that they work. Only reason they work is because patients believe the placebos work. How do you convict 'criminals' who sell a product that works for regular consumers?
Regulation can only determine that such and such disease isn't cured by said remedy. Kind of like those 99.9% germ kill rate bleach adverts which actually kill all known germs, no?
Regulation can only determine that such and such disease isn't cured by said remedy. Kind of like those 99.9% germ kill rate bleach adverts which actually kill all known germs, no?
Trent Strong
Banned
There are a million articles I could post besides that Scientific American one. The debate about the efficacy of antidepressants has been going on for decades.
http://www.minnpost.com/second-opin...pressants-report-may-be-explosive-its-not-new
Publication bias is real and the file drawer effect is real.
I love how you're all ignoring everyone with first hand experience so you can blather on about placebos. I worked in hospitals and clinics for 20 years. Western medicine is great for many things but you're crazy if you think that's the only way to deal with our health. I mean, we're talking about an institution that only recently began to acknowledge that marijuana can be used medicinally and works better than the expensive pills they like to prescribe. And truly, for most things I'd much prefer a magic pill that cures whatever ails me, but those don't often exist, or if they do there's potential side effects that aren't pleasant.
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