The Alternative Medicine Racket: How the Feds Fund Quacks

[Axulus]

"Funding alternative medical centers." Is that like funding a hospital? What does that mean?

Do you not know what goes on at medical schools?

On what scientific grounds do any therapies and "treatments" merit having money spent on them to study their efficacy?

Gee, I don't know, maybe an educated scientific understanding of how certain compounds are likely affect and interact with different body systems, using our gained knowledge of biology, chemistry, psysiology, immuniology, pathology, etc. To determine that something is promising and merits spending millions on to study further. You know, all that sciency stuff.

What do those have to do with protecting people from false medical claims that could end up killing them?

Wat?

Where is the government misleading people about the efficacy of alternative medicines?

Did you not bother to read anything from the Expanding Medical Horizons government report I only linked to and discussed three times?

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

So what is Axulus' beef this time? That the government is spending money to find out if certain treatments work or not?

Isn't that what we're supposed to do in order to weed out the bad treatments from the good treatments?

How does funding dozens of alternative medicine centers at medical schools accomplish that?

On what scientific grounds have these therapies and "treatments" merited the spending of billions of dollars to study them, studies which have so far found zero such treatments that are safe and efficacious?

We spend Trillions on health care every year. Billions is a drop in the bucket. A very small one.

Should the governmemt spend billions to study ufos, psychic powers, esp, ghosts, dowsing rods, faith healing, astrology, oujia boards and fund dozens of centers at universities because you just never know if there is something to any of these? My sister has claimed to see a ghost, after all.

Are you comparing acupuncture with a Ouija board?

The defence of those on this board for wasting money on quackery is mind boggling.

Seriously, stop with the bloody strawman. No one is supporting the paying to support quackery. We are saying that shit isn't quackery because it is called quackery. Using the scientific method isn't a bad thing.

Is it fine to waste billions and mislead the public about the efficacy of alternative medicine and scare them about scientific medicine because its the government doing it, and the government is full of nothing but saints and angels in your mind?

What a bunch of shit. Why do you even bother having discussions if you don't actually give to understand what people are actually saying?

 

[whichphilosophy]

http://www.nhs.uk/news/2013/03March/Pages/97-percent-of-GPs-admit-prescribing-placebos.aspx


Survey finds 97% of GPs prescribe placebos






Thursday March 21 2013


Placebos include sugar pills and water injections

"Most family doctors have given a placebo to at least one of their patients," BBC News reports.

The news is based on a large survey of UK GPs. For the purpose of the study, placebos were put into one of two categories:
•pure placebos – treatments containing no active ingredients, such as sugar pills
•impure placebos – treatments that contain active ingredients but are not recommended for the condition being treated, such as antibiotics for flu

The survey found that 97% of doctors admitted to giving an impure placebo at some point during their career, while 10% had given pure placebos.

The survey found that more than 1% of GPs used pure placebos at least once a week, and more than three-quarters (77%) used impure placebos at least once a week. Most doctors said placebos were ethical in some circumstances.

Placebos are often used in the control group in trials looking at the effectiveness of treatments. It is widely recognised that they can result in an improvement in a patient’s condition – a phenomenon known as the placebo effect.

However, there is an ongoing and vigorous debate about whether using placebos in normal medical practice is ethical. END OF QUOTE

I guess if the Placebo is working then just increase the doseage.

Last time I was in hospital I was in horrendous pain. When I got discharged the doctors told me that about 1/3 of my morphine injections were actual morphine. The rest was water/placebo. In my case the placebo worked just as well as the real stuff. Annecdote

Next time ask the doctor to increase the Placebo.