Posts by BenWilson
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The viewpoint it *does* matter from, though, is this: scientifically-tested and proven treatments are ones that work for most people most of the time, better than a placebo.
The truth of that statement will be entirely dependent on what your definition of science actually is. If you see it as synonymous with "the practices of the Western medical profession" then I think it is patently false. If you think science is a process, rather than a particular group of people with particular credentials, then it's quite possible that there is an awful lot of science going on outside of what is taught in medical schools, and I would hardly disagree with you. If you confess that a great deal of science is a black art, an accumulation of training, ongoing research and a lifetime of anecdata, then I would agree with you entirely.
You can get anecdata all you like, but if these treatments can't be shown to work better than placebo for a randomly-selected group, then it's no better than chance. Twice a day isn't good enough, especially not for a government-funded health system.
To be honest, a lot of the time, I'd be happy with even a placebo effect. And twice a day may not be enough to justify government funding, but anyone who receives one of the twice daily cures is going to be mighty bitter to hear that their healer got shut down because of a lack of science. Especially if the problem was extreme, and the science hadn't helped.
If they actually harmed people, that is another matter. Then the question of to what extent the people were made aware of the risks and consented anyway comes up. I could, for instance, try some homeopathic remedies for my skin and develop a nasty rash. That would probably be OK - I would only 'spot test' it anyway, so the extent of the rash could be contained. But if some poor unfortunate is told to cover their entire body in it, and has the same reaction, then anywhere else in the world that would be a reasonable ground to sue.
As for the 'known and proven' treatments, there is only one that generally has no side effects - to moisturize. I do that, and it is not sufficient. Everything else is a balancing act of various harms that Western medicine is doing to me every single day. Steroids work but the side effects are pretty severe (and I suffer from them). Phototherapy did not work, and carried a heightened risk of skin cancer. Allergy testing was conducted and found absolutely nothing. Topical immunosuppressants worked a little bit, but nowhere near enough to justify the exorbitant cost. Oral immunosuppressants work for me, but carry quite a high risk of cancer. I've recently discovered another nasty side effect that I was not made aware of - my body has now become so finely tuned to the immunosuppressants that if I fail to take them, I suffer an almost immediate flare up. I mentioned this to my doctor(s) and they say "excellent, that shows it's working". Which is all very well for science but bloody inconvenient for me - now I don't know if I've got a monkey on my back that I will never be rid of (as well as the original condition).
Can you see the appeal of experimentation (which I will conduct in as scientific a manner as possible) in alternative treatments? Frankly, nothing seems too whack at the moment. I'm extremely cautious (to the point of inaction to this time), because flaring skin is no joke.
Whilst individual treatment of particular skin conditions by specific treatments in controlled samples gives us excellent scientific data, this is seldom a practical treatment solution for anyone with a chronic condition. Most likely they have been subjected to many different treatments, and may be on a number of different medications. It's highly possible that only a very small sample of people, period, is on exactly the same combination of treatments that I am on. To that extent all of this medical science is as much of a black art as some homeopath saying "here, try this". Except that the homeopath doesn't have access to quite such powerful drugs on prescription.
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I presumed that was the entire lesson of the show. It's not so unrealistic either - it seems to me that the men who insist on the most freedom from female influence in their thought patterns are by far the biggest slaves to women.
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Though probably better than the other way around.
Trying to think which way round is worst. Chatting about mouths with his hands on your breasts? Or chatting about hands with his mouth on your breasts.
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But at last we have some positive anecdata for physiotherapists:
Oh, I've got a ton of anecdata for physiotherapists. Unfortunately, the best one moved to a richer neighborhood, or perhaps one which had more sore backs that he hadn't already cured.
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Are there any nuanced male characters in it, for that matter?
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I tend to think that with healing of a physio nature, the individual matters at least as much as the art. Some people are clumsy no matter how well trained. Some have good training but little experience, where others have poor training but a lot of experience, and that can count for a lot. I got the impression with my failing physio that a lot of his problem was his youth, and the cocksure arrogance that often comes with it, where the chiropractor was a kindly old gentleman whose hands had learned an extremely subtle art very well. He seemed very well informed about physiotherapy and was not dismissive of it - he just didn't have a piece of paper that he could use to claim the title of physio, and he did have a piece of paper saying chiropractor.
Sometimes the good old GP does a better job than all of these manipulators and crackers. A woman I knew had a muscular pain that none of them could deal with. Her GP fixed it with a muscle relaxant injection. It's pretty hard to beat the effect of powerful drugs with any amount of healing hands or postural therapy, or freakish exercises.
Then again, I once had a locked jaw problem, and a physio managed to fix it, despite openly admitting to having no direct experience with such a problem before - she just applied light traction repeatedly. My dentist said he could have fixed the problem with a jab but frankly, I preferred the physio to having a needle stuck in my face.
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Do I have to be the only one to stand up with some anecdata for chiropractors? I had a long series of failures with a physio before going to a chiropractor and getting nearly instant relief, and lasting good advice. In his first session he didn't manipulate me at all, he recommended Voltaren, which unlocked my neck over the next hours. After that his manipulations were extremely light and sparing, no cracking at all.
Frankly, I don't really care what the credentials of the physio were. He wasn't helping, and his assumption of being a demigod of healing were offensive and flew in the face of my experience.
So I don't have much time for people who try to talk down 'alternative' healing all the time. Sometimes it works, and when you are in pain, that matters. Whether it is 'scientific' or not is beside the point, from a patient's point of view. I'm sure there's an enormous number of cranks and quacks, but even a stopped analog watch is right twice a day.
That said, 99% of the time, I go to my GP, and for my worst condition, the hospital. I'm reluctant to dick around with alternative cures for my skin, but sooner or later, I will try, having been put through every drug that Western medicine has ever invented for it, and finding the result now is that I have paper thin skin, that tears easily, and a course of drugs whose known side effect is an increased chance of cancer.
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I'm deriving a certain amount of wry amusment from your willingness to (ahem) 'let it all hang out' vis-a-vis your knowledge of porn, and the contrast with your reaction to something as anodyne as 'two-and-a-half men' (ugh! disgusting! of course I never watch that crap!)
I did it just for you, Rich. Actually I've got a slightly legitimate reason for a greater-than-can-be-usually-mentioned-in-polite-company knowledge of porn - my day-job is blocking spam, and I've had to read an awful lot of it. I've also had to experiment with visual classifiers, which does involve having a 'corpus' of data. My less legitimate reason is that I am good friends with someone who worked in the porn distribution industry.
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Certainly, but I think that's a sub-species of a guilt trip you can lay on parents, full stop.
Perhaps so, certainly post natal depression is well known even for perfectly healthy children.
Guess what -- it's OK to be so damn tired and/or anxious you want to lock yourself in the bathroom with a bottle of gin.
It's OK to want it, but it's not OK to do it. That's the bit that's hard to get used to.
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Yup, it seems a very human trait. In some pursuits it seems almost compulsory.
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