On Aug 8, 2006, at 1:06 PM, joanna wrote:
>> Why? The real comparison should be to the efficacy of "mainstream"
>> medicine (henceforth referred to as professional-racket-medicine),
>> especially as a ratio of public and individual dollars spent.
>> Setting aside the silly anecdotes (man I would love to take the
>> guy who introduced this style of writing -- Jane Ficklebottom of
>> Wasatch knows the other side. Her family of five, including
>> newborn Jason, have led the archetypal exurban life for four
>> years.... yadda, yadda.... -- to a parking lot), there is (in the
>> above article) a bit of attention (in the manner of Fox News "Fair
>> and Balanced") to the excesses and accuracy of professional-racket-
>> medicine medicine. Nor is the promiscuous nature of professional-
>> racket-medicine made obvious, as remedies stolen from
>> "alternative" medicine are quickly incorporated into professional-
>> racket medicine, and even claimed as one of its successes.
> Right on ravi!
Except that what Ravi writes isn't true.
These are quotes from the article that started this - by a prof at the Harvard Medical School - it doesn't get more establishment than that:
> But it is not a matter of geography or culture. Until the 19th
> century, Western practitioners were badly wrong, attributing
> diseases to an imbalance in humors, bleeding patients and
> prescribing poultices and purgatives. Modern Western medicine has
> also embraced therapies that were later disproven. In the 1960s,
> surgeons tied off an artery under the breastbone in patients with
> angina, believing this increased circulation to the diseased heart.
> Many patients swore by the surgery, but when the procedure was
> subjected to a clinical trial, it turned out that the sham
> operation was equally beneficial.
> On the other hand, one of the most important new therapies for
> leukemia is an arsenic derivative identified in western China as
> part of traditional practice that resulted in well-documented
> remissions; its effects on key molecules in the malignant cells
> have been elegantly mapped by scientists. And qualified researchers
> are testing components of tumeric and other spices than can inhibit
> melanoma and breast cancer cell growth. Science is enthusiastic
> when it meets reality.
>