Death by woo

[WhollyHeretic]

I was reading through a thread tonight and there were several people advocating avoiding surgery or chemo for cancer. People peddling fake cold cures is bad enough but people will die if they listen to these morons. There is talk of treatment with ozone and hydrogen peroxide :wtf: These people are so sure of this crap (that I'm sure they "learned" of somewhere online) that they are willing to peddle it online and endanger peoples lives.

[Warpy]

1. I read one somewhere else, the maple syrup and baking soda cure

The poor thing said the sugar carried the baking soda into the cancer cell and the baking soda made it pop.

I had to tell the poor dear that all that combination would get her is obesity and burping, that stomach acid would turn the baking soda into salt and carbon dioxide and leave her with nothing but a gut full of air, salt and sugar, none of which would be particularly healthful.

The information was not well received.

[TZ]

2. Yeah I saw that

Because of course no one I'm the history of the world has ever survived chemo apparantly :eyes:

[uppityperson]

3. Maybe they work for mortuaries?

[Heddi]

4. I sent an alert to the mod that it should be locked

on the basis that anyone who has any kind of mass or tumour (esp in the colon or bowel, which have very high mortality rates) and follows this BULLSHIT will *DIE* and that it was irresponsible post that could lead to the death of someone who follows it.

Then I put that this could be considered giving medical advice, only that there was nothing medical about that bullshit post.

And, miracously it still stands.

I wonder what the liability for DU would be if someone *DID* follow that horse-shit malarky bullshit snake oil and actually, you know, DIED because of it?

what a bunch of horse-shit.

Alert the FUCK out of that post. It has no basis WHATSOEVER in medical fact and it has NO FUCKING PLACE on a website, esp. one so full of gullable fools who will do anything if it means poo-poo'ing BIG PHARMA fuck.

[WhollyHeretic]

9. I alerted but the post is still there

[WhollyHeretic]

11. The whole subthread ha been deleted now

[Heddi]

12. Thank the gods

shit like that....oh that pisses me off. utterly utterly irresponsible posting. Shame on that poster and the others who were all like "Yeah, man, chemo SUCKS...." as if dying from untreated colon or rectal cancer is any better? Most people I hear prefer when the cancer metastasizes to the bone, where the pain is uncontrollable, even on a morphine or fentanyl drip, with continuous doses of high powered narcotics (generally more than one at a time) that would kill a fucking elephant that doesn't even put a DENT in the pain.

Or how about when you get mets to the brain...that's great. Excruciating headaches AND loss of all brain function, right in front of your family's eyes.

Me personally, I prefer full system mets, where it gets in your bones AND brain AND lymph nodes AND thyroid AND stomach AND lung...that's the best. Nothing better than seeing your family member weigh 70 pounds, unable to eat or shit or drink or piss on their own, can't talk, can't breathe, can't think, writing and screaming in pain 24 hours a day...Gosh...nothing like untreated cancer! Why more people don't choose to go this excruciatingly painful way, I'll never know :eyes:

[TZ]

15. One of my coworkers(another lab tech here) husband is a chemo is a scam woo..

and his father has BONE cancer. He's been "treating" him with silver iodide and such. But they've actually sneaked him off to chemo when the pain just got too bad...Its a sad day when that occurs.

[bluedawg12]

19. Untreated breast cancer is pretty horrifying too.

I met a really nice lady recently who had breast Ca and opted against mastectomy and chemo and went to Mexico for alternative care. She said she felt better, was going to beat this whole thing and was now relying on prayer. Oh she was a little tired, had some back pain and wondered why she was shorter.

Her MRI showed multi-level metastatic disease through out the spine and both of her iliac bones were loaded with mets. She blamed it all on an accident she had.

It was tragic, she was a single mom and a really sweet woman. I can only wish her well.

But dispensing sh8t advice like H202 for tumors, which I’ve poured in a tumor biopsy site to clear the wound of debris before shipping to NIH does nada. Don’t people ever think that this has all been tried before, in the last 100 years at least?

[Djinn]

5. what I love is the assumption

that if you prefer evidence based medicine you must be blind to the problems of "Big Pharma". As I've mentioned, I once (long ago) worked in PR (and eventually took a huge pay cut to do a job I not only love but lets me sleep a lot easier)

The way to alleviate a lot of the problems is tight ass regulation, proper oversight and NOT having a polity that is so beholden to corporate cash.

While I'd be the last to say that Australia/UK has none of the issues faced by the US citizenry in relation to dodgy chem-co's it's NOTHING like what you all face because your politicians are so thoroughly bought and sold.

When "alt-med" gets even further entrenched in the mainstream medical field then ALL the problems you have with pharma's will be REPLICATED by numpties peddling "natural" quackery that can ALSO kill you because they'll face the SAME lax standards.

If people have a huge problem with "Big Pharma" they should look at your political system and try to fix that not to the friggin stars/herb garden/witchdoctor for a cancer cure.

As a fervent opponent of many corporate practices I can still tell the difference between evidence based medicine and PROVEN efficacy and bad (or entirely invented fantasy) science and I couldn't even pass Year 9 Biology

[moggie]

6. To summarise

The problem with Big Pharma is that it's big, not that it's pharma.

With Big Yak it's the other way around, but I don't think that can be fixed.

[Djinn]

20. not quite

The size is pretty irrelevant, it's your system of governance that has essentially provided you with a President and Congress who are ALL corporate whores.

Corporations will always look for the cheapest way to make a profit - it's their raison detre, your politicians should have a raison detre that extends beyond helping them do just that.

[TZ]

7. disclaimer: I work for a large biotech...

However in this country the alt med industry is a BILLION dollar industry. AND it practically has no oversight by the FDA..I hate to hear the woos scream everytime the FDA DOES try to regulate it that its FASCISM and they want to take away our vitamins and herbs. Uh no, stupids, they want to make sure that it does what the sellers claim it does AND that its not contaminated with stuff like melamine! I am so fucking tired of those who think there is no regulation in the Pharma industry (wrong I can heartily assure you) but that there SHOULD BE NONE in the altie med industry. Believe me, the altie med groups get away with far more shit everyday in this country than Big Pharma does.

[Deep13]

8. patent medicine

Before modern pharmacuticals, Americans relied on patent medicine with names like Dr. Johnson's Liver Pills and Nerve Tonic. Scientific analysis showed essentially none of these treatments worked and many were harmful. This kind of shit is a rejection of modernity and an effort to return to folk medicine.

[WhollyHeretic]

10. My favorite reason in that line of thinking is "But it has been used for thousands of years"

Um...how many people lived past 25 2000 years ago

[Deep13]

18. That's a shameful admission by our species.

It never occured to anyone to see if any of that stuff actually worked.

[lizerdbits]

13. Things were so much better back then!

When the average life expectancy was, um, decades less than now and child mortality rates were much higher due to infectious disease! Or something.

[uppityperson]

16. But people were Happy and In Touch with Nature and all that

Connected. Something we Miss in these Modern Times. Being taken by the condition of loneliness, people become members of the Wanna-be Tribe to be Connected with The Whole.

I can't figure out how to do trademark logo thing, so am sticking with capitalizing the Important Terms.

[Djinn]

22. on the infant mortality thing

Australia's hippies are all abuzz right now because soon midwives who attend home births will have to have professional indemnity insurance and so far no insurer is willing to do it for a fee that'd be even remotely affordable.

For some reason my friends seem to think (despite my total lack of maternal feeling/interest in babies & fondness for proper medical care) this is a cause I'll jump on, when I politely refuse their invitations to various protests/petitions etc I get a barrage of shite about how people have been giving birth at home/squatting in fields for centuries and that it shouldn't be viewed as a medical issue.

I have to explain that the REASON insurers wont take their cash (as they're usually wont to do) is because the risks inherent in home births would bankrupt them, and that had my mother decided on a home birth we'd both be dead.

They never seem to remember to corollary to "people have been giving birth outside of hospitals for centuries" which is the patently obvious (you'd think) "yes and they regularly DIED doing it".

There's a panic-y cry that women will go "underground" and have illegal home births - FINE, you want to take the risk for you and your child, you do it - just don't use MY tax money to look after your kid for 75 years if he/she ends up with severe disabilities. Much the same as if you want to perform a "natural" appendectomy at home and it all goes tits up.

[semillama]

14. Weird - Orac just had a blog post on this same subject

http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2009/03/does_alternative_medicine_use_result_in.php

Specifically about breast cancer, but it all applies.

[beam me up scottie]

17. This is why we harsh their buzz all the time.

Not because we give a shit what idiotic homeopathic pill or fairy dust is on sale this week, but because magical thinking kills people.

[Name removed]

21. Deleted sub-thread

Sub-thread removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.