82 thoughts on “Everything You Need to Know About Complementary and Alternative Medicine (Part 2)”

1. “I am however at his mercy unless I want to study car repair or haul the thing to more than one mechanic.”

   Here you are still making one mistake. Even people educated in the field at issue can be fooled by appearances. The lure of the simplicity of unacknowledged magical claims and the illusion of efficacy by “clinical experience” (personal anecdote) can be a strong one even for some MDs. Two of the biggest woo-woo medicine promoters out there are full blown MDs: Chopra and Weil.

   We are all subject to the illusions of judgement and perception, even in fields we are educated in.

2. Alright Panda, we get it! Does this subject truly deserve a month? I think, by now, you’ve ousted the demons. I love your blog, but let’s move on to something else already…

3. I completely agree with you in terms of what we (who have not spent years studying medicine) can know. But simple explanations, do not have to be bad explanations. I’ve had a reasonable amount of experience with doctors, surgeons et. al, and while most are fairly rigorous when it comes to applying their knowledge, them using the bare minimum of their communication skills to make their patients comfortable is far from being a guarantee.

   While I’m not a sucker for CAM (and have a trusty surgeon pal who takes the time to answer all the questions which remain after medical appointments without assuming I’m a moron) perhaps this is one area in which CAM seems a little more enticing.

   I know that point has been made before, and it certainly does not excuse those who leave their critical thinking at the door or the vultures that feed off their gullibility, but I just wonder if it is also worth considering what pressures there are coming from the evidence-based side of the fence which move people away from it. Doing so, of course, would move you into the realms of very soft science, but hey, when you make statements like “it’s just human nature” you’re not being strictly scientific, are you? 🙂 The converse – that it is human nature to not want simple answers – could just as easily be argued as one of the reasons people choose CAM. The more convoluted the explanation, the more unintelligible the practitioners are, the more people may be inclined to believe them. It makes it appear as though it is privileged knowledge, like real medicine and auto tech. The bombardment of mashed-up scientific mumbo-jumbo in CAM’s sales pitch seems perfectly designed to baffle those who know enough about science to respect it, but not enough to recognise it when they see it.

4. Don’t move on to something else already…

5. As much as this topic has been beaten to death here and elsewhere, I really love point seven. I hang around with a lot of anthropologists; all of them are very smart people, and all of them are able to distinguish between what’s “historically interesting” and “medically worthwhile.” But their training in cultural relativism, even if they don’t apply it to their own lives in terms of health care choices, makes me wonder sometimes. The idea that we should give merit to unscientific practices in the name of “cultural tolerance” makes me queasy.

   ~N.B.

6. YOUR WHOLE BLOG IS WHY PEOPLE HAVE COME TO DISTRUST DOCTORS. We hate your elitest attitudes and your God complexes. You’re just jealous of people who have been “healed” by other means. Suck it.

    

   (Well, uh, maybe so…but that doesn’t mean I’m wrong either.  I can be a complete ass and still be right, a concept that never occurs to most people. -PB)

7. Elitist attitude as defined by Jenny:

   Doctors study medicine for years to become somewhat knowledgeable in the field. Patients come to doctors for answers and are upset by said doctors explanations and unwillingness to support “treatment” which have not been proven scientifically. Doctor is flabbergasted why you bothered to go to the doctor in the first place if you already thought you could find “healing” using Google and tea.

   God complex = Doc thinks: “I have studied the body and its innerworkings extensively and am therefore convinced that most things labeled CAM are IMPOSSIBLE AND INEFFECTIVE based on the molecular basis of the body.”

   However, Jenny, I commend you on your appropriate use of quotation marks around the word “healing.” I personally always use air quotes when speaking of CAM.

8. I’m inclined to agree with cerebralmum, because it fits the cult/occult paradigm:

   “The more convoluted the explanation, the more unintelligible the practitioners are, the more people may be inclined to believe them. It makes it appear as though it is privileged knowledge, like real medicine and auto tech.”

   That’s exactly how the “you’re special” message is being inserted in the loony’s heads.

9. I really like this blog and the conservative take on medicine but Jenny has a point. One thing people want from their medical system is to feel cared for and made to feel like a human being. CAM may be ineffective, unscientific, and so forth but why is there a market for it? The whole idea of homeopathy is alien and ridiculous, but enough about me. What is this stuff providing that allopathic medicine does not? People are obviously willing to vote with their wallets (a meaningful thing in our medical system)… IMO a little introspection into patients’ needs wouldn’t do docs any harm.

    

   (Many patients want too much sugar for their dime and when they don’t get it feel like they are not being treated well.  Because there is a shortage of doctors (so I am told), a decrease in reimbursment (generally), and a huge increase in the volume of increasingly sick patients (which is only going to get worse), your doctor cannot spend an hour with you every time you come in for a minor complaint.  Sometimes a cold is just a cold and you have to deal with it.  The medical profession performs a function that is objectively necessary and often involves telling people what they don’t want to hear.  CAM is entertainment and is set up to cater to, not treat, patients. 

   Other than that I have an excellent bedside manner (as I have been told), there is not too much more I can do to make my patients feel like a human being.  Not feeling like a human being is a personal problem which we are not able to treat if it means giving our patients as much time as they would like with us.

   I guarantee that on that sad day when CAM become legitimate (for insurance and political purposes) and your acupuncturist or homeopath has to see charity patients and barely reimbursed medicaid patients, they will have to move the same volume of patients that we have to and their vaunted bedside manner will crumble in the face of acutally having to do some work.

   I think a lot of the readers of this blog who are not yet in the medical field do not comprehend the huge volume of patients that they will be expected to see every day in almost every medical specialty, nor do they comprehend the paperwork and compliance burden (secondary to the legal profession and government regulation) imposed on every doctor.   -PB)

10. CAM will be fully reimbursed by medicare to relieve the physician shortage. You doctors claim to be overworked well i will solve that. My plan will alleviate the current healthcare crisis! Vote for me and get Bill back into the whitehouse.

11. Could you write a blog on doctor shortage and patient volume then?

    After CAM month, which I for one am terribly enjoying.

12. (Well, uh, maybe so…but that doesn’t mean I’m wrong either. I can be a complete ass and still be right, a concept that never occurs to most people. -PB)

    Indeed. I’ve heard the same sorts of complaints leveled not just at doctors but at scientists. My usual reply is, “Yes, scientists can be jerks, but that doesn’t invalidate science.”

    The same is true of doctors and medicine.

13. I think when the field of healthcare regains it’s mission of healing the sick, we’ll all be better off. For now, the insurance industry rules the roost, and the medical profession profits from sickness. Therefore, it hurts the bottom line if we become a well nation, rather than a sick one. And, considering I found this blog through a pharm forum, let’s not even get started talking about that industry-calling all the shots!

    Last I checked, medicaid payscale was absurd, and medicare not far behind it. Private insurance is even making deals that private pay can’t compete with.

14. We hate your elitest attitudes and your God complexes.

    Yes, studying for years is elitist.

    Pulling something out of your arse, pronouncing it to be 24-karat gold and demanding to be taken seriously (and paid for with serious money) is, of course, saint-like humility.

15. Excerpted and posted elsewhere with credit/link back to here; fantastically entertaining as usual.

    And I’m obviously not alone in thinking that “Jenny” is missing the point at best or completely naive at worst.

16. Hippiemama this is contradictory: “I think when the field of healthcare regains it’s mission of healing the sick, we’ll all be better off… and the medical profession profits from sickness. Therefore, it hurts the bottom line if we become a well nation, rather than a sick one.”

    Yes, doctors make a living off of healing sick people. Even if we outlawed fastfood and all bad behavior ala the movie “Demolition Man,” doctors will still never make a living by treating well patients. This does not make them greedy or bad. I’m tired of the inference that because health professional make money doing their jobs, they are somehow underhanded and greedy.

    Moreover, the idea that doctors intentionally keep their patients ill is preposterous and significantly insulting. Making money and improving the lives of our patients as we are able are NOT mutually exclusive. The idea that we are a community of professionals who set out to deliberately subvert an oath to “first do no harm” by depriving our patients of wellness seems pervasive in many CAM circles and also in the general public.

    Actually, CAM has more to gain by keeping their patients ill than any trained physician. Whereas a healthy person might see their primary care physician a couple times a year for maybe a physical and the occasional sick visit, many CAM practitioners will insist on regular, short-interval “maintenance” treatments. CAM says “if you don’t continue to use CAM when you are well, you will get sick again.” Physicians are pretty up front that if you are not ill and do not need a checkup, you’re free to go on with your life and keep your money until you ACTUALLY get sick.

17. Before saying anything else, this is an incomplete rant…if I have left out details its because I needed to stay on track.

    Saying that the medical profession profits from sickness is akin to saying that the devil keeps churches in business…its such nonsense that pointing out the obvious fallacy in the argument made by these sycophantic demagogues only gives them a false sense of validity.

    Sickness existed before medicine, continued to exist in spite of folk medicine, and yet continues to thrive in the face of biochemically/physiologically based medicine. The only thing that has changed is the potential outcome for given illnesses…and sadly enough there are still many things out there that, as Chris Rock would say, “you just got this shit.” For every problem that we eliminate we manage to create others revealing more about the hydra-like nature of biologic dysfunction than before.

    I pay my plumber $65/hour. I would never look at him and say that he profits from my clogged pipes. He profits from my inability to correct a situation without his help. It’s his chosen career and he deserves to be recognized for the service he provides as a professional in his field. In a similar manner doctors provide a service that can’t be accomplished (read: CANNOT!) by those without a particular understanding of the body and its potential defects. The financial difference in the value between a doctor’s and a plumber’s services is that the doctor has a much, much smaller acceptable margin of error, making his/her services more valuable. This causes a societal impulse towards encouraging the best and brightest, who find themselves inclined, to be doctors.

    It is also worth noting that medicine as it is practiced today has so many fallacies because it is still truly in its infancy…we invent new techniques/drugs/interventions every day. CAM on the other hand relies strictly on techniques or variations thereof based on the same invalidated hocus-pocus that was being pushed before the advent of the scientific method by those in the know.

    All this being said I see a chiropractor on a semi-regular basis. However, as a DC, he does not think that he is aligning my “energy centers.” Rather, he bases his diagnoses on objective information such as x-rays and offers suggestions as to how to relieve neuro/osteo/muscular issues in compliment with my allopathic physician’s interventions. Most of his interactions in my life has been on helping me find exercises and stretches to prevent repeated injury. His eventual goal is to help me change my lifestyle sufficiently that he won’t need to see me anymore, except perhaps at the bar.

    The lesson is that all things have value, even if it is only as a shining example of what not to do and that not all things that look the same are.

18. What??? You mean Captain Planet is a fake?

    I am crushed.

19. Panda Bear, I got a big chuckle reading this from Part 2 above: “Not even a clue except for some superficial things and the usual lies and half-truths they have found on the internet.”

    I suppose you know that describes this blog of yours? hehehehe

     

    (I don’t dispense medical advice, I am not in control of your brain, and I am not asking you to join a cult or accept anything I say just because I said it.  I’m not yer’ friggin’ mother.  Do whatever you want to do. -PB)

20. “His eventual goal is to help me change my lifestyle sufficiently that he won’t need to see me anymore, except perhaps at the bar.”

    Personally, I think the drink has medicinal properties, but I find it amusing how contradictory this statement is for you.

21. Does anyone else understand how disaffected’s statement is contradictory? I can’t see it.

22. MSII: No, it’s not contradictory at all, and I can’t imagine why anyone who thinks “the drink has medicinal properties” would believe it is.

    I just found this blog myself, and my first post detailing my own experience with acupuncture is attached to Complementary and Alternative Medicine Month Continues. Suffice it to say that CAM practitioners’ vaunted bedside manner, at least sometimes isn’t. The complex — but still comprehensible — gobbledegook must be at least part of the attraction.

    PB made a few misstatements about quantum mechanics himself. Which is OK. His patients don’t see him for a physics lecture.

    In QM, properties like momentum and velocity do exist, and in fact are critically important “observables”. It’s called “quantum” (Latin: “how much?”) because of its non-intuitive result that energy does not occur in a continuum, but that only certain discrete energetic states (of, say, an electron) can possibly occur. CAM is equally likely to speak of “quantum theory”, which has more general applicability. It’s under QT that we’ve come closest to a “theory of everything”; a single theory that accounts for all four fundamental interactions. (We’ve only unified electromagnetism, the weak interaction, which binds quarks, and the strong force, which accounts for why atomic nuclei don’t fly apart. Gravity remains intractable, and superstring theory — another CAM favorite — is barely science at all.)

23. See PandaBear, I told you drumming saved lives:

    “As the cyclone neared landfall, volunteers were banging drums to warn people in low-lying coastal areas in Bangladesh to evacuate, a spokeswoman for the Bangladesh Red Crescent Society said.”

24. Thanks for the post, Panda! I think i might print it out and carry it around with me, so I can just hand it over and save my breath the next time I get into an argument with a CAM proponent.

    Just discovered your blog, and I’m loving it.

25. Panda Bear,

    This is incomprehensible isn’t it?

    Not only what this and other M.D.’s are doing daily in their practices but that the State health officials charged with protecting citizens take 34 months to get around to telling the exposed patients that their M.D. infected them.

    You don’t believe the Health Dept. was waiting for the patients to die first do you?

    Amazing that these things go on in our ‘health care’ system isn’t it.

    Patients Were Not Told of Misuse of SyringesBy PAUL VITELLO and SARAH KERSHAW
    Published: November 16, 2007

    State health officials notified 628 patients this week that they should be tested for hepatitis and H.I.V. infection because they were treated years ago by an anesthesiologist in Nassau County who used improper procedures for preventing the spread of blood-borne diseases.

    …At least one and possibly more doctors in the state, including a New York City anesthesiologist, have been reported to state health officials in the last several years for reusing syringes. State officials said they would cite those reports in their meetings with C.D.C. officials.

    link: http://tinyurl.com/2vtlt9

     

    (And your point? -PB)

26. Panda Bear,

    Will you kindly explain this article to me and how its results make medicine ‘scientifically superior’ to other health care providers?

    I’m especially interested in your take on gap between results and conclusions”, “a disconnect between the data that underlie the results and the interpretation” and “spin” mentioned in the article.Oh, and then explain this: “…meta-analyses with financial ties to nonprofit groups had excellent agreement between results and conclusions”.

    It does seems obvious that medicine has serious ‘science’ issues of its own.

    Can you think of a metaphor that applies?

    I can: ‘People that live in glass houses should not throw stones’.

    Drug Company Funding Found to Bias Study Conclusions, Not Results

    STANFORD, Calif. — Hypertension drug studies with financial ties to a single drug company were not more likely to present favorable results, but they were significantly more likely to have favorable conclusions, researchers here said.

    link: http://tinyurl.com/3a3eqy

    (And your point, or more precisely, how does deceit in the real medical world prove CAM modalities?  In other words, are you saying, “See, chiropracty is bogus, just like real medicine?”  It would seem that you want it both ways, on one hand discrediting research but on the other seeking to use it to validate your ridiculouos treatment modality.-PB)

27. Panda Bear, just as all we find that every doc is not the best, not caring, but most of them are there to help us poor patients be healthier, we can find a lot of CAM healers to be people who are out to just make money and fools of gullible people, there are as many, who are very genuine people – certainly not saints – these people really do help to heal. No I didn’t put the heal in quotes, please notice.

    I am tired of docs who know very little about CAM, writing columns and columns like this. It’s just nonsense. First read about it with open minds, then think about what you’ve read. The reason I’m on CAM is because of all the side effects of “regular” meds. And as one of the posters have written “regular” docs like Chopra, Weil, Whitaker have switched to CAM and their CAM is not hokus pocus but ideas like switching to nutritious food, instead of living on fast foods, like a lot of America does. What is so hokus pocus about that? Isn’t that what finally main stream medicine is finally coming to understand?

    I, myself, am on both allopathic as well as CAM meds and feel they complement each other. Am feeling great, infact, have not felt better in my life. THAT is the proof of the pudding!!

    So PB, why not really study something about CAM, instead of wasting time writing about something you obviously know nothing about. So sorry!! You’ll come to understand why thousands of people are switching to CAM, and it’s certainly NOT because of the bedside manners of the CAM docs!!

    (I want you to explain to me, for example, in clear terms, how homeopathy works.  The fact that thousands of people are turning to CAM does not validate it as an actual therapy that really works.  Thousands of people believe all kinds of things, many of them mutally exclusive.  Your appeal to the mob is almost as ridiculous as an appeal to authority.-PB)

    It’s time mainstream docs like you understood that we’d have fewer sicker people, if the two medicines could work in harmony. If Ayurvedic meds were hokus pocus, there wouldn’t be so many studies being done on them by reputable scientists. Once can read about these studies all over the net. Some, have proved to be as good as allopathic drugs, if not better.

    (This is an emotional response to a question that should be entirely rational.  There are no reputable studies, that is, with good design and of sufficient power to validate Ayurvedism.  Sorry.  I don’t think you know what a reputable study is and your knowledge of research and statistics is as shoddy as your knowledge of medicine.  This is a peculiar trait of many readers of my blog.  To first confess that they know nothing about a subject (either actually or by their writing) and then insist on being taken seriously as an expert.  If you don’t know what makes a study valid, just say so and I’m sure one of my readers will be happy to enlighten you.  Remember, just doing a study does not prove the hypothesis.  Many end up either disproving or at least not validating the intitial hypothesis.  The cool thing about CAM is how every single study conducted by, say, chiropractors validates chiropracty.   Mirabile Dictu!  Real medicine doesn’t have nearly that great of a track record.  A lot of things we would like to prove don’t pan out and are abandoned.

    Here’s a twist on your comment: Are you willing to admit that some studies have been done that show CAM modalities to be totally worthless?  If so, why, and why are these studies less valid than the ones that show the opposite.  If you can’t answer that question you have no business invoking the “research card.”-PB)

28. Damn it, PB, as a doctor, you’re supposed to hold her hand when you say stuff like that.

    Jesus.

29. My experience with you leads me to post this report I saw this morning on MSNBC’s website:

    Do-gooders can become the worst cheats
    Study: Sense of moral superiority might lead to rationalizing bad behavior

    By Jeanna Bryner

    updated 3:07 p.m. ET, Thurs., Nov. 15, 2007

    “Morally upstanding people are the do-gooders of society, right? Actually, a new study finds that a sense of moral superiority can lead to unethical acts, such as cheating. In fact, some of the best do-gooders can become the worst cheats.

    “Stop us if this sounds familiar.

    skipping

    “In the new study, detailed in the November issue of the Journal of Applied Psychology, researchers find that when this line between right and wrong is ambiguous among people who think of themselves as having high moral standards, the do-gooders can become the worst of cheaters.

    skipping

    “The principle we uncovered is that when faced with a moral decision, those with a strong moral identity choose their fate (for good or for bad) and then the moral identity drives them to pursue that fate to the extreme,” said researcher Scott Reynolds of the University of Washington Business School in Seattle. “So it makes sense that this principle would help explain what makes the greatest of saints and the foulest of hypocrites.”

    link: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21820808/

    Nothing new but still insightful and helpful to recall when dealing with individuals that stray outside their boundaries.

30. Since when are “ideas like switching to nutritious food, instead of living on fast food” a CAM modality? Panda obviously isn’t ranting against somebody who recommends eating healthy- in fact, that’s been a critical part of preventative medicine for a long time.

    By CAM “treatments” we are talking about things like homeopathy, ayurveda, chiropractics for cancer… things with absolutely no place in evidence-based medicine (obviously because there is no evidence). Eating healthy IS evidence-based, and is a pretty important part of current medical practice.

    Finally, the post right above mine is an absolute gem of an exercise in irony. What is it called when one person subjectively declares that somebody else has a moral superiority complex. Is that irony squared? Is it a second-layer permutation of irony? Irony’s half-retarded, inbred cousin?

31. Panda, I couldnt find your email, so I will post this here despite it not being related really. Feel free to not approve this post. I just found these comments amazing, espically coming from a french politican. I wish our own politicans would talk like this:

    SARKOZY (via translator): To the millions of men and women who came from every country in the world and who, with their own hands, their intelligence, and their hearts, built the greatest nation in the world, America did not say, “Come, and everything will be given to you.” Rather, she said, “Come, and the only limits to what you will be able to achieve will be those of your own courage, your boldness, and your talent.”

    QUOTE
    SARKOZY (via translator): The America that we love throughout the world embodies this extraordinary ability to grant each and every person a second chance, another chance — because, in America, failure is never the last word. There is always another chance. Here, in your country, on this soil, both the humblest and the most illustrious citizens alike know that nothing is owed to them and that everything has to be earned. That is what constitutes the moral value of America.

32. Panda Bear, your disingenuousness and use of the logical fallacy misdirection is obvious to all.

    You: “And your point, or more precisely, how does deceit in the real medical world prove CAM modalities?”

    It doesn’t and I didn’t say it did.

    The point was and is that medical practitioners aren’t on any higher ethical, moral or ‘professional standards’ ground than CAM practitioners.

    Flaws abound in each.

    Because medical science has made great strides the past 100 years you seem to think that automatically means that the other professions have not made any progress of their own and thus can be legitimately excluded as invalid.

    I’m here to tell you such a conclusion is bogus.

    Please recall the aphorism “Those that live in glass houses should not throw stones”?

    Once again for the record, my posts were not to prove Homeopathy or ‘water memory.’

    They were to show that there is new scientific evidence indicting the existence of “molecule memory” and “molecular memory”.

    I don’t preclude what the research scientists may find going forward as you emphatically do.

    My posts were my way of telling you and your readers that minds should remain open to new ideas and not preclude them based on old ideas.Nothing more than that.

    You: “In other words, are you saying, “See, chiropracty is bogus, just like real medicine?”

    “Chiropracty”? Never heard of it.

    Chiropractic, however stands on its own history and research as does allopathy.

    The healing disciplines are the traditional: Allopathy, Chiropractic, Homeopathy, Osteopathy and Acupuncture.

    They are separate and distinct. Each has played a legitimate role in healing in the past and continues to do so.

    Only Allopathy’s proponents like you claim theirs to be the ‘be all end all’ of health care to the absolute exclusion of the others.

    To me those that make that argument are ordinary monopolists and common rent seekers.

    (That means you are more interested in power over others and money than in patient welfare.)

    Don’t bother denying it since you wrote as much on November 1st in “Kicking Off Complementary and Alternative Medicine Month”: “…one of the biggest problems with Complementary and Alternative Medicine, not that it is mostly ridiculous (which it is), takes money from the gullible including those who really can’t afford it (which it does), or even that it sometimes delays the effective treatment of health problems (which I see regularly), but that it has the potential at a time when we should be looking for ways to economize on medical care to suck up even more public money with nothing to show in return except the enrichment of a pack of charlatans.”

    Here the assumption you made and thus the logical fallacy inherent in your post is that the patients seen by CAM providers are there b/c they haven’t been to medical doctors, haven’t given medical treatment a sufficient try and or don’t understand their condition cannot be helped and they will just have to learn to live with it.

    That’s simply not true or accurate.

    Most have tried medical doctors and the medical treatments have failed them for one reason or another.

    I can inform you from experience that does not mean the patient automatically trusts (are gullible in your words) CAM.

    While that doesn’t invalidate medicine neither does it invalidate CAM as you assume in your November 1st blog.

    Each must prove its worth to the patient by its results.

    IMO, patient’s are better off when M.D.’s are part of their care along with CAM providers. I play my role you play yours. (I don’t tell patients not to get vaccinations, etc. and don’t know any D.C.’s that do, not that they don’t exist)

    You: “It would seem that you want it both ways, on one hand discrediting research but on the other seeking to use it to validate your ridiculouos {sic} treatment modality.-PB)

    Now that is low down disingenuousness and common misdirection.

    It is you that has discredited research, not me.

    To review the record, the substantive post on “molecular memory” and the substantive post on “molecule memory” from ScienceDaily.com in Part 1 of your “Alternative Month” were reproduced on this blog as well as linked so you and your fans could follow up on the juried scientific research, IOW, don’t take my word for anything, see for yourself.

    What have you brought to the debate?

    (Well, technically I don’t have to bring anything to the debate because, and I blush to say it, this is my house. -PB)

    Nothing but dogma, fear mongering and hate.

    I do not disparage your profession but you insist on disparaging mine and me personally.

    That’s lame argumentum.

    The repeated use of the fallacies ad hominem and Strawman Red Herring tells a distinct tale of the strength, or more accurately the total lack of strength, of your evidence and thus the quality of your position and argument.

33. im1dc has posted all sorts of ridiculous drivel here this month, and it never seems to bother him when specific examples of his are definitively refuted.

    “Because medical science has made great strides the past 100 years you seem to think that automatically means that the other professions have not made any progress of their own and thus can be legitimately excluded as invalid.”

    It doesn’t automatically mean that by any means, but it just so happens that many/most modalities of CAM have NOT made progress of their own, so they are still out plowing the back 40.

34. hippiemama posted this link earlier, but I’d just like to point it out again – http://thinktwice.com/ – was absolutely depressing. I can’t believe how ignorant people are, and how easily they are swayed by simple coincidences and instantly equating them with complete causality.

35. Panda,

    You’ll be surprised to know the military is actually leading the charge for acupuncture. Most of the work is being done at Walter Reed and bases across the country. Auricular acupuncture and batallion acupuncture is well studied.

    http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3912/is_200610/ai_n17194855

    Most are anesthesia, er and pm&r docs. 350 scientific articles in the literature have come out since 1997 supporting or disproving the efficacy of acupuncture for various studies. They’ve been done – you just have to dig a little bit through the literature to find them.

    For a good overview of proposed mechanisms, I would recommend reading “Acupuncture Energetics” by Helms or attending the Stanford/UCLA accredited HMI course for physicians, which has 10,000 graduates over the last 20 years who are all MDs or DOs. Or take the Harvard CME course, which is reputable “despite” being co-taught by an L.Ac.

    You can spin this whatever way you want, but these can at least give you a better vantage point from which to base your claims.

36. So I’ve been reading this blog and lurking for a few months, and have really enjoyed it. Now I’m still working on a BS in Biology, and will admit I don’t have any medical knowledge besides CPR, first aid and athletic trainer aide knowledge. On the other hand, some of the claims made by CAM practicioners/proponents really make me never ever want to trust any part of myself to them.

    So as a reader of PB’s, I’ll take up im1dc’s challenge to follow up the juried research of the sciencedaily.com article. Well, first of all, it’s a review other primary research. And really, to say that receptors might be affected after the release of a ligand isn’t something very earth-shattering. Worth considering – yes? Shaking my faith in modern science and therefore allopathic medicine, making me want to have my back rearranged instead of medicine for an illness – not particularly.

    Kinda sounds like really super complex receptors act like a memory-foam pillow, and take a little while to bounce back from having something latch onto them. To say that “molecular memory” of a receptor indicates any sort of validity in homeopathy because it uses the words “molecule” and “memory” is like saying I’m going to get a new car because an article on the Yahoo! front page says, “How to finance your new car”. im1dc, if you have an amazing explanation of how 2 hydrogen atoms and 1 oxygen atom can undergo some sort of bending to remember the shape of a molecule of some compound waaaaaaaaaaaaaaay larger than itself, I’ll listen, but I reserve the right to laugh at any cockamanie ideas.

    And im1dc, you said that
    “Each must prove its worth to the patient by its results.”
    Well, let’s see some peer-reviewed evidence not sponsored/associated with/serving the interests of some chiropractic institution since you pointed out to us that getting your funding from a source with an interest in your research might change your conclusions (not even results, for a critical reader to look at themselves).

    Another question for im1dc and those with similar viewpoints. If the “traditional” healing disciplines are “Allopathy, Chiropractic, Homeopathy, Osteopathy and Acupuncture,” then what do think of all the other CAM forms, they lesser since they’re not “traditional”. If Allopathy doesn’t get to decide what’s “traditional” and what’s not, then why do you?
    And as a society we had the Enlightenment, and decided that observable, reproducible, measurable results would be considered, an allopathy fulfilled that criteria, so it doesn’t seem too unreasonable to go with allopathy and tell the other disciplines “too bad, so sad, you lost” until proven otherwise?

    Panda, if I’m rambling on too long, or should get my own blog, feel free to delete or tell me so. But I do love your blog.

37. Pepito, that is a very poor study that you linked. Patients and practitioners were not blinded on whether they received treatment or not. What was the point then? Here is a study showing a reduction in the number of days of migraine headaches with acupuncture treatment. The only problem is that they added a third leg with “sham acupuncture” that showed the same result compared to no treatment.

    http://jama.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/abstract/293/17/2118

38. The point was and is that medical practitioners aren’t on any higher ethical, moral or ‘professional standards’ ground than CAM practitioners.
    Flaws abound in each.

    Oh dear, you are confused. May I use a basketball analogy? Western medicine may be Michael Jordan and the Bulls missing a few shots but, after thousands of years of practice, CAM is still those white guys who played the Harlem Globetrotters. Seen side-by-side, not only shouldn’t they play on the same court, but there’s no reason for the HG’s foils to exist. Running around with that damn bucket of confetti.

    There are no “new ideas” there. Homeopathy, alone, is 200 years old and, evidently, based on wrong conclusions. Accupunture is centuries old and people can’t tell the difference between it and “fake” accupunture, so it’s based on a wrong premise, and so on. Old, discarded, ideas is more like it.

    Ethics? Here, you’re surely dreaming. Homeopaths have a plank in their code of ethics that forbids them from criticizing each others work. (“I do not disparage your profession but you insist on disparaging mine and me personally.”) Doctor/patient sexual boundary issues are as rampant as the outright killing of patients. Nevada’s medical board (“one of the five worst in the country”) is made up entirely of “doctors”, now practicing the traditional disciplines, who have all been sued for malpractice in other states.

    Here’s a link: http://faculty.uml.edu/sgallagher/NIRB.htm

    As far as the patients/boosters go, the subject of “cultism” rarely comes into the discussion. (I give PB big ups for his willingness to broach the subject.) How so many credulous/gullible people openly ignore facts, reason, and the concern of others – just as all cultists do – to follow their (not just wrong-headed but insane) beliefs is a topic that’s long overdo for study.

    By their actions, we know these cultists/believers “are ordinary monopolists and common rent seekers” who, in their power-mad rush to hurt science and medicine, are behaving as faith-based parasites, slowly attempting to kill their more successful host for their own gain.

    “Dogma, fear mongering and hate”? CAM can’t exist without them. The dogma is faith-based. The fear is of facts. And the hatred is for anyone that knows those facts. “Keep an open mind”? No thanks:

    You open yours first.

39. Nice, Panda.

    But wouldn’t you agree it’s difficult to understand quantum mechanics when you’re looking through the lens of general relativity?

40. In particular it addresses the relationship between the orbital shells of electrons and photons.

    Photons have orbitals? I must have missed something during my year of P-chem.

    (Don’t be an ass.  I mean between valence shell electrons and photons.  And this is not my doctoral dissertation, I am not a physicist, and you may imply commas wherever you want.

    Seriously. -PB)

41. Panda Bear blogs: (Well, technically I don’t have to bring anything to the debate because, and I blush to say it, this is my house. -PB)

    Lovely.

    Your admission that you can’t back up your rant with fact severely injures your credibility and the faith of the those here that have slavishly followed your unscientific diatribe against CAM.

    That’s a good thing.

    You should be ashamed of yourself for speaking out so stridently on topics that you know little about and are not educated in.

    Here’s a suggest: Go to the experts and invite them to discuss the issues you have raised opposing the various CAM’s that you devalue.

    That way your readers will get an accurate picture of the faults of CAM.

    In my experience, no profession in health care is squeaky clean and wholly scientific so it would be interesting to see what critics of Medicine would bring to your blog.

    I bet that discussion alone would take more than a month!

     

    (Easy there, Cochise.  I mean to say that as this is my blog, more a labor of love than a commercial enterprise although you will notice that I now have my first real sponsor (Epocrates), there is no requirement that I footnote and prepare a bibliography of things I know.  In other words, this is not a public service.  Now, I have proposed to you that chiropracty, homeopathy, Reiki, and a myriad other CAM modalities are ridiculous both from a scientific and common sense point of view.  You propose otherwise.  All right then.  If you think subluxation repair can cure cancer or that spiritual fire can shoot from yer’ appendages to cure other diseases, start talkin’ and tell us all how it works.  The podium is yours.  Wow us with your scientific knowledge.  Thrill us with your description of the physiology behind Reiki.  Captivate us with your extensive knowledge of cell biology and how it applies to homeopathy.

    Ready…set…go! -PB)

42. And I don’t rant. I comment on the conventional wisdom and some of my readers use this as an excuse to rant.

43. SomeDumbCollegeKid and The Crack Emcee

    You two are out in far left field.

    I suggest that you learn to read thoroughly and with comprehension. Take notes.

    Let me boil this discussion down for you two and the others that think they know what is happening but don’t.

    Panda Bear calls all CAM practitioners, in essence, shamans.

    Additionally, he claims that only allopath’s can provide scientific care to patients that truly benefits patients.

    Its no accident he’s an allopath.

    It is absurd claim on its face not to mention there is no evidence to support the assertion and much evidence to refute it.

    If you don’t know why that is so, then you should not be posting here.

    His rant is politicoeconomic, i.e., Panda Bear being in the dominant profession wishes to keep all the patients and the dollars that go with them for allopaths.

    Its that simple.

    They claim they are protecting patients based on science.

    But that is the charge not the fact. They don’t care about patient protection only patient money and not being sued.

    Medical practitioners are as greedy as they are egotistical.

    If they actually cared about patient protection they would stop condemning CAM and prove that CAM providers are hazardous.

    They haven’t, can’t and won’t. They need the bogeyman to scare you.

    Most striking they can’t provide any proof that much of what medicine does is based on science.

    That’s right, medical care is not scientific, it is a jumble of myth, experience and poorly designed experiment that doesn’t meet the twin tests of reliability or validity.

    If you two are virgins consider yourself deflowered of the notion that M.D.’s know precisely what they are doing medically and scientifically, b/c they don’t.

    Medicine is an art.

    What they do today is a medical fad and will change in years to come — during your lifetime several times.

    Panda Bear is a monopolist and rent seeker pure and simple.

    Look up the terms from Economics if you don’t understand them.

    Competition is good in health care in the same way it is good in other aspects of the economy.

    In the USA we spend 16% of GDP on health care yet rank near the bottom of our peer countries in providing health care to our citizens on almost every measure (except one) yet we outspend every country per capita by at least 60%.

    Try to explain that while remaining calm.

    Don’t buy into the myth being sold by Panda Bear, that they only need more money to do a better job.

    That’s just Madison Ave spin used to keep you from learning how the USA’s medical-surgical-pharmaceutical industrial complex has overcharged Americans while providing below World standard care to ALL CLASSES of patients (rich to poor, insured to uninsured, big city to country living).

    (Look up the statistics from the World Health ORG. and UN reports on health care yourself)

     

    (You got beaten up a lot as a kid, didn’t you?-PB)

44. pandabearmd says:”…start talkin’ and tell us all how it works. The podium is yours. Wow us with your scientific knowledge. Thrill us with your description of the physiology behind Reiki. Captivate us with your extensive knowledge of cell biology and how it applies to homeopathy. Ready…set…go! -PB)”

    I don’t believe in Reiki or homeopathy, I am not educated or trained in them, nor do I understand their theory, if any.

    Chiropractic and Acupuncture can be interesting but I’m not going to waste any time explaining their theory and practice here. (I couldn’t for acupuncture in any event)

    Check them out Online and search at NIH, etc.

    Of meddling interest on acupuncture to me is that one of your posters mentioned the study funded by NIH that found that acupuncture and sham acupuncture both helped headaches.

    Worthless research that.

    What is compelling is that surgery is performed daily under acupuncture anesthesia. And I seem to recall that is how acupuncture become known to Americans after a reporter had his appendix removed on one of President Nixon’s visits to China using only acupuncture for anesthesia. He wrote about it upon his return to the USA.

    Real world experience trumps trumped poorly designed placebo psuedo experiments every time, imo.

    However, after your admission and assertion that this is your house and you don’t have to and won’t provide any proof of your assertions disparaging all CAM professions I think it is best that I leave you to do whatever it is you do here.

    There is nothing more to be said to you b/c you are not listening with an open inquiring mind.

    FYI In the future think of electrons as moving clouds and subatomic particles as chaotic clouds, not orbits, to get a mental picture of what is thought to be happening at the atomic and subatomic levels.

45. im1dc: You can think of electrons either way. Both ways are equally inaccurate. Electrons are subatomic particles, so you’re wrong to distinguish them, and to think of a neutron as a “cloud” is at least moderately bizarre. Neither can be properly understood without the underlying mathematics, which I assure you is beyond you.

    It’s beyond me too, and mostly was even when I was studying this 25 years ago. I was able to satisfactorily derive the simplest case, the hydrogen atom. This is also the only case for which we can obtain a closed-form solution. After that it gets very complicated. I know just enough to know how much I don’t know.

46. “If they actually cared about patient protection they would stop condemning CAM and prove that CAM providers are hazardous.”

    I gave you a link to a whole slew of CAM providers, in Nevada, that have been acting in an underhanded manner – with some that have killed people – but you ignored that in your response. There’s a story being followed, right now, about a homeopath who killed his own daughter.

    Must I go on?

47. im1dc, did you just say that case reports are more powerful than double-blind placebo controlled studies? What? Take a statistics course, because your understanding of the subject seems to be very limited (see I can do that, too, Mr. “Look up the terms from Economics if you don’t understand them.”).

    In James Reston’s own words:
    “In brief summary, the facts are that with the assistance of 11 of the leading medial specialists in Peking, who were asked by Premier Chou En-lai to cooperate on the case, Prof. Wu Wei-jan of the Anti-Imperialist Hospital’s surgical staff removed my appendix on July 17 after a normal injection of Xylocain and Bensocain, which anesthetized the middle of my body.”

    This doesn’t jive with, “And I seem to recall that is how acupuncture become known to Americans after a reporter had his appendix removed on one of President Nixon’s visits to China using only acupuncture for anesthesia.” Your recollection was mistaken. But then again, just about everything you say is wrong or misleading.

    The true rent seekers are the homeopaths, naturopaths, and chiros. Hippocrit (ad hominem FTW).

48. Also in James Reston’s own words (just finishing your article Jake):

    “However, I was in considerable discomfort if not pain during the second night after the operation, and Li Chang-yuan, doctor of acupuncture at the hospital, with my approval, inserted three long thin needles into the outer part of my right elbow and below my knees and manipulated them in order to stimulate the intestine and relieve the pressure and distension of the stomach.

    That sent ripples of pain racing through my limbs and, at least, had the effect of diverting my attention from the distress in my stomach. Meanwhile, Doctor Li lit two pieces of an herb called ai, which looked like the burning stumps of a broken cheap cigar, and held them close to my abdomen while occasionally twirling the needles into action.

    All this took about 20 minutes, during which I remember thinking that it was a rather complicated way to get rid of gas in the stomach, but there was noticeable relaxation of the pressure and distension within an hour and no recurrence of the problem thereafter.”

49. Consistently, I’ve noticed that when people are challenged “give us good evidence that CAM works” their answer is “conventional medicine is a fraud!”

    Logic, it doesn’t work that way. If I ask you to prove that your name is Fred, then why are you spending all your time shouting that your name is not Roger? I don’t care that it’s not Roger; you claimed that your name is Fred, let’s see some evidence *for* that, and not against something else, please.

    Also, the assertion that anecdote and case study trumps blinded studies indicates a deep, deep ignorance of how to get reliable evidence anyway. Seriously, you need to be able to separate real effect from placebo effect and confirmation bias, if you think there is a real effect there; why do you have such a problem with that?

50. Pepito: First, the claim was that only acupuncture was used for anesthetic. That claim is false, and you haven’t proved otherwise.

    Second, I find that 20 minutes is plenty of time for gas pain to go away without anyone jabbing needles into major nerves or fumigation.

51. Panda Bear asks: (You got beaten up a lot as a kid, didn’t you?-PB)

    No.

    Why did you toss out such an irrelevant comment as that?

    Do you think that is what you and your bloggers are doing to me in this debate on what science has shown and not shown?

    Do you have a need to feel like a bully? Does that make you feel like a winner? Righteous?

    So you disrespect me and my profession. Big deal.

    My goal was not to support Homeopathy or “water memnory” but to show that you were either silly, stupid or arrogant to have done so.

    I succeeded.

    And I’m not done with you b/c I have more for you today, this time on the underpinnings of scientific theory.

     

    (I tremble in fear. -PB)

52. Jake asks im1dc, did you just say that case reports are more powerful than double-blind placebo controlled studies? What?

    No, I did not.

    Please stop using the Strawman Fallacy and stick to what I posted and don’t supply your own facts or interpretation.

    I don’t know where you got that notion from since you don’t identify where you believe I posted it.

    However, on this particular point, I don’t believe ‘Double blind placebo controlled studies” are the ‘be all end all’ of medical science on human subjects.

    There are too many variables to control that cannot be controlled. I am correct in this criticism as seen by the degrees of freedom used in human studies of all types being humongous in comparison to physics, chemistry or geology.

    There is hard science and there is human or social science. Medicine is mainly a human not hard science.

    Since that observation/criticism applies to my profession as well as Panda Bears and perhaps yours you should realize I am not picking on him, you or medicine by making that observation.

    It is just the way it is.

    FYI, I have taken Statistics at Under, Grad and Post Grad levels but I am not an expert. Need to know is more like it.

    The Economics comment was inserted to direct readers of this blog to Economics to look up the definition of “rent seeker”. I thought I was being helpful.

    Why are you guys so touchy? I’ve knocked better people than you off pedestals. Learn to accept it. Its your fate.

    Regarding Reston’s appendectomy I did not misremember and your selective use of the quote was misleading.

    As Pepito pointed out Reston did receive Acupuncture and as you yourself point out, there was a reporter, Reston, who had his appendix removed and received traditional Chinese Medicine and lived to write about it which had the effect of introducing Acupuncture to America for the first time.

    About your tirade “The true rent seekers are the homeopaths, naturopaths, and chiros. Hippocrit (ad hominem FTW).”

    FYI: You saying it doesn’t make it true.

    Let’s deal with the facts shall we and not your spleen.

    Where’s your proof bud?

53. This is for you Panda Bear:

    Taking Science on Faith

    By PAUL DAVIES
    Op-Ed Contributor
    New York Times

    Published: November 24, 2007

    link: http://tinyurl.com/yslyhy

    Who is Paul Davies? Check Wikipedia.

54. The Crack Emcee posts:

    “I gave you a link to a whole slew of CAM providers, in Nevada, that have been acting in an underhanded manner – with some that have killed people – but you ignored that in your response. There’s a story being followed, right now, about a homeopath who killed his own daughter.

    Must I go on? ”

    That is truly tragic but how is that any different from M.D’s doing the same?

    Surely you don’t need me to post individual stories of such tragic occurrences do you?

    You should logon to Nevada’s Medical Board and look up Board actions against M.D.’s, they should be public record.

55. So, im1dc, if science is just faith-based, why are you trying so hard to blind us with science? Just say, “My belief in chiropracty and homeopathy is my religion about which all appeals to reason are meaningless.”

56. pandabearmd on November 25, 2007 6:23 pm

    “So, im1dc, if science is just faith-based, why are you trying so hard to blind us with science? Just say, “My belief in chiropracty and homeopathy is my religion about which all appeals to reason are meaningless.”

    Sorry if I gave you that impression Panda Bear.

    Here’s the impression I want to give:

    Dr. Drug Rep

    By DANIEL CARLAT
    Published: November 25, 2007

    link: http://tinyurl.com/32l8hz

    You should be examining your beliefs more closely.

57. im1dc: On “Taking Science on Faith” — did you even read that article? It’s like you read the title and last sentence, but failed to notice the middle makes the exact opposite point you seem to want it to. It’s about removing the last remnants of non-rationalism from science and placing the assumption that physical laws are immutable on a firm scientific basis. It presents this goal as something achievable, and something physicists are paying more attention to. You can remove all faith from science. It can be totally rational. As it is, it’s already a good deal more rational than the next best thing.

    As Davies reminds us, we have good reason to persist in this assumption anyway: he overstates the case when he calls it “faith”. You can’t prove a physics assumption by induction, but induction tells us that the speed of light not going to abruptly change tomorrow to 100 kph, but remain at about what it’s been ever since we became able to measure it. The assumption is eminently falsifiable, but it has never been falsified. Everything we’ve seen tends to reinforce it.

    Nor will CAM abruptly start working tomorrow, and nor will its assumptions — which have been falsified — suddenly become valid.

    It always amuses me when people sit in front of a computer, of all things, and then complain how science is somehow faulty. Computers don’t work unless science does.

58. Luna_the_cat posts “Consistently, I’ve noticed that when people are challenged “give us good evidence that CAM works” their answer is “conventional medicine is a fraud!”…Logic, it doesn’t work that way.”>/i>Quite right.

    Now try to pay attention Moon Kat, the challenger in this insistence on this blog is Panda Bear.

    Panda Bear challenges CAM in Part 1 and Part 2 and it is his burden to provide the evidence that he is correct.

    His argument takes the form ‘The moon is not made of rock it is made of green cheese’.

    All I asked for is valid and reliable evidence independent of his opinion (and yours).

    Show me yours boys, I showed you mine. (2 articles that showed clearly that “molecule memory” and “molecular memory” are valid and reliable concepts seriously under study by researchers)

    I did not purport to prove Homeopathy or “water memory” only that one should not absolutely disregard them.

    Luna, if you had bothered to read the thread and truly comprehended it you would have noted your objection is precisely the form of argument I raised, but in reverse order, to Panda Bear.

    PB attacked all Complimentary Alternative Medicine, i.e., CAM.

    He attacked it without any supporting evidence.

    Plenty of myth and belief, but no substantiated verifiable fact.

    When challenged by me he attacked the messenger as did others on this blog using both ad hominem attacks and Strawmen Red Herring Fallacies.

    Very tiresome that.

    And its tiresome correcting your oversights too.

    Luna also says “Also, the assertion that anecdote and case study trumps blinded studies indicates a deep, deep ignorance of how to get reliable evidence anyway. Seriously, you need to be able to separate real effect from placebo effect and confirmation bias, if you think there is a real effect there; why do you have such a problem with that?”

    Show me where I attacked Double Blinded science.

    I haven’t, but that doesn’t mean I accept poor methodology such as the acupuncture study or if I accept the experimental results that I therefore must accept the explanation.

    I put medical/human studies science in proper perspective in prior posts today but I have not attacked the double blind methodology since it is the best we currently have.

    That being the best of human science does not make it good science such as that of the hard sciences such as physics, chemistry or geology as attested by the degrees of freedom.

    Here is food for thought for you and Panda Bear. Both Acupuncture and Chiropractic have been used on animals with good results. Should you ignore anecdotal evidence such as that b/c you can’t explain it? But more importantly even if you do ignore the evidence why should others?

59. im1dc: “…only acupuncture…”
    Reston: “…Xylocain and Bensocain…”

    How is that for selective quoting?

60. im1dc: “I did not purport to prove Homeopathy or ‘water memory’ only that one should not absolutely disregard them.”

    But you failed. It’s this that you don’t seem capable of understanding. That some effect of an interaction on a complex molecule such as a protein might persist for a time is an unsurprising result. In the particular class of experiment under discussion the opposite was assumed, probably for lack of clear indication that it could not be and it simplified matters if they did, but this assumption was shown to be an incorrect. It has ZERO, ZILCH, NOTHING to do with “water memory”. AT ALL. It’s not even remotely related. Do try to get that through your skull.

    What was poor methodology about the “acupuncture study” — by which I assume you mean the ones showing that sham acupuncture is no less effective than the real thing? It’s not possible to make a “good” study of acupuncture, because it’s impossible to double-blind. An acupuncture-like procedure that should be that discipline’s equivalent to a placebo is the next-best thing. What would you suggest by way of improvement?

    That you challenge PB on anecdotal evidence simply demonstrates you don’t understand scientific evidence. “Evidence” is not the plural of “anecdote”. All anecdotes might do is suggest a possible course of investigation. Once an investigation in the form of well-designed experiments has been done, the evidence it garners trumps any anecdote you might care to present.

    The lack of such evidence for CAM when well-designed experiments are devised for it is exactly the issue that causes the rational-minded to reject it. You have the issue exactly backward. CAM advocates make certain claims. It’s up to them to prove them. Thus far they have spectacularly failed to do so to the standards required for evidence-based medicine. Until such evidence can be found, claims of efficacy for CAM will remain unconvincing.

61. Panda Bear, et. al..

    I happened upon this on Brad DeLong’s blog today.

    Clear visualization of the cellular wall with its orientation.

    WOW! These animations are fabulous.

    Incredible detail and depth. Quite advanced.

    PB, pay attention to “aqueous pore”.

    Enjoy!

    Inner Life of a Cell: Leukocyte

    link: http://tinyurl.com/37nndx

    I must say this and the other videos are superior learning tools.

62. I tried posting here yesterday and was blocked. What’s up with that? Can’t take the crticism?

     

    (You were not blocked.  All comments are moderated by me because I get about 500 spam comments a day and some slip through my automatic spam detector.  I have a real job and I can’t always check to see who is in the moderation que.  I can take criticism but you are not so much criticising me as you are highlighting oyur own ignorance. -PB)

63. Jake,

    Excellent selective quotations.

    Your complaint however is irrelevant.

    I suspect you are not a medical doctor.

    Reston received Acupuncture as anesthesia according to the Chinese doctor who performed the operation and the Chinese hospital where it took place.

    Why would you take Reston’s, the patient, account as objectively valid in this instance? Remember Reston as the patient was very ill and in lots of pain when he was laying on an operating table with his ABD opened up.

    His account is generally correct but not precisely correct.

    The local anesthetics you named would not have been sufficient to cause anesthesia for the appendectomy. Good for drilling on teeth or putting in sutures but not for major ADB surgery.

    Don’t take my word for it ask around.

     

    (Whoa.  I have done major laceration repairs on legs and arms including undermining, debriding, and extensive irrigation with “field blocks” using lidocaine or Marcaine.  Major operations (C-Sections for example) are routinely done using nothing but epidural anesthesia and sedatives.  Now, typically, for major abdominal procedures patients are intubated for airway protection, put under general anesthesia, and even paralyzed with neuromuscular blockers to “relax” the muscles in the surgical field but this is not necessary and there was a time when this was not done. I imagine that even in the 1970s the Chinese were using 1950s style anesthesia so it is not at all inconceivable that this was their standard of care which, while out-of-date and somewhat “retro,” still provided servicable anesthesia. -PB)

64. Is the flu worse than this?

    FDA panel to review Tamiflu’s effect on brain

    link: http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2007-11-25-tamiflu-brain_N.htm

65. Panda Bear,

    Re: “Whoa” comment.

    I don’t know what to make of your comment. Are you asserting that Reston only had local injections of anesthetic or are you asserting he received a nerve block, spinal or what?

    I am operating from memory only but I am reasonably certain that the Chinese credited Acupuncture for Reston’s appendectomy anesthesia when their accounts were made available.

    That doesn’t mean he did not receive local anesthetic as well as pointed out by Jake to me above.

    I don’t buy the notion that Reston’s appendectomy was performed under Lidocaine only. I imagine if I researched it Reston also credits Chinese acupuncture. We know he credits acupuncture for pain relief.

    BTW, can you explain how would he have known what was going on in surgery during his appendectomy?

    Since that time there have been infrequent accounts published in the USA about acupuncture being used as anesthesia on patients undergoing various surgeries up to and including Brain Surgery.

    (There is no way, no way, that any IRB would sanction any study that provided conventional anesthesia to one set of surgical patients and acupuncture to another.  Can you imagine any patient agreeing to be placed into the acupuncture arm of the study?

    “Mr. Smith, we’re going to be digging in your abdomen to remove your colon but rather than knocking you out we’re going to have Wu Phat stick these rinky-dink needles into you to see they control the pain as we eviscerate you.”

    Not and never going to happen.  The best that can be tested is the use of acupuncture as an adjunct in which case the only claim that can be made is, “Gee, we used a little less halothane than we usually do.” -PB)

    One account about a young women was published not too many years ago, sometime this Century.

    We don’t hear much about it here, but that shouldn’t take away from what it is being used.

     

    (Are you insane?  You said that the anesthesia agents mentioned in the article could not possibly be used for an abdominal procedure and I pointed out how you were wrong.  Whether Mr. Reston had acupuncture or not is irrelevant because he also had Western anesthesia which was more than capable of numbing him up sufficiently without knocking him out. I recall the story myself and the additional commentary that acupuncture was never used alone for surgery because it didn’t work and could not possibly provide analgesia, sedation, of amnesia for the patient.  It was used for Mr. Reston as part of a Dog and Pony Show to impress the barbarian visitors.  Why don’t you research it and get back to us…but only if you promise to read more than the title of the article. -PB)

66. “Accordingly, at a little after 8:30 in the evening they rolled me through the dim, hot corridors to an air-conditioned operating theater and Dr. Wu Wei-jan, a remarkably bright and lively man with a quick intelligence and a compelling smile, took over. He bound me tightly but comfortably on the operating table, put a small iron stand with a towel over my head so that I could look backward to the interpreter but not forward, and then pumped the area anesthetic by needle into my back.”

     

    This is from Mr. Reston’s account of his appendectomy.  Apparently they used epidural anesthesia.  Big whoop.  We use it all the time here on our planet.

    http://www.nda.ox.ac.uk/wfsa/html/u13/u1311_01.htm

67. PB, says: “You said that the anesthesia agents mentioned in the article could not possibly be used for an abdominal procedure and I pointed out how you were wrong.”

    Please do show the world where I said “…could not possibly be used for an abdomial procedure”.

    I’ll wait.

    I’ll have to since I never said it.

    PB asks “Are you insane?”

    If you consider yourself sane then I want to be considered insane.

    And to put to rest the remainder of your unreasonable post here is what I posted EXACTLY:

    “I am operating from memory only but I am reasonably certain that the Chinese credited Acupuncture for Reston’s appendectomy anesthesia when their accounts were made available.”

    “That doesn’t mean he did not receive local anesthetic as well as pointed out by Jake to me above.”

    “I don’t buy the notion that Reston’s appendectomy was performed under Lidocaine only. I imagine if I researched it Reston also credits Chinese acupuncture. We know he credits acupuncture for pain relief.”

    The Reston quote you provided at 5 p.m. does not mean what you think it means.

    Let me enlighten you, this “…and then pumped the area anesthetic by needle into my back” means that he received acupuncture anesthesia.

    If he’d gotten spinal anesthesia he would have told of being curled into a fetal position to receive the injection.

    (Good Lord.  I have been in many C-sections where the patient received epidural anesthesia (including my wife’s) and except to place the epidural catheter, the patient could lay on her back or in any position at all while getting anesthetic.  In other words, for epidural anesthesia, a small catheter is placed and the anesthetic is administered as needed.  “Pumped” clearly implies the flow of some fluid, in this case most likely an epidural or spinal anesthetic.  Are you for real? Is this an example of the stellar medical training provided by chiropracty schools? You do know that in the medical world, “needles” are hollow implements designed to draw or inject fluids, right?-PB)

    Talk about a junior league mistake, phew!

    I must be insane to expect you to read and comprehend what you read.

68. im1dc sez: “PB, pay attention to ‘aqueous pore'”

    im1dc: Define “aqueous pore”. Do you have the faintest idea what it means, or what makes it aqueous? Do you know what “aqueous” means in chemistry in general? (This is Chem 101, not grad-level stuff.) Do you understand at all how little any of this has to do with water memory?

69. The superiority of medicine?

    Third wrong-sided brain surgery at R.I. hospital

    Patient OK in 2 of the incidents; institution fined $50,000 after latest error

    link: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21981965/wid/11915773?GT1=10613

70. PB says: “(Good Lord. I have been in many C-sections where the patient received epidural anesthesia (including my wife’s) and except to place the epidural catheter…”

    Yea, exactly “except to place” precisely my point, didn’t happen with Reston.

    Why do you continue to dissemble?

     

    (If you read the article, Mr. Reston without a doubt states (by decribing his position and the screen used so he couldn’t see the surgical field) that he was laying on his back when the Chineses anesthesiologist started pumping the anesthetic.  Are you saying that the acupuncturist was crouching under the table shoving needles into his back?  Through the operating table?  I understand that you have never been within a quarter of a mile of a really sick patient but on our planet, the anesthesiologist places the epidural catheter (a thin conduit) in the epidural space before the procedure.  This is usually attached to a mechanical pump so the flow rate can be adjusted but the patient does, indeed, lay on their back.  The fact that you are argunig about this reminds me of Hippiemamma saying that vaccines couldn’t possibly work because her antibodies don’t transfer to her children.  It indicates an extreme, and I mean extreme, ignorance about medicine. -PB)

71. Chris C. asks “Do you understand at all how little any of this has to do with water memory?”

    Do please explain.

    What I understand Chris C. is that I was and remain correct in regard to cellular molecular memory, molecular memory and the human hydrophilic cellular functions.

    Aqueous refers to H20, that as you probably don’t know is the Water molecule. Its made of 2 Hydrogens and one Oxygen atom. You do remember Hydrogen don’t you, from the second article I posted showing that Hydrogen molecules, at least in its gaseous state, have been shown to have “molecule memory”.

    When will you see the light?

    (You cannot possibly be for real.  I suspect you are a troll sent to delight and amaze us with your goofy ignorance, an ignorance that doesn’t even know its own ignorance. -PB)

72. Panda Bear,

    I have been upset with myself for posting that article on the neurosurgical errors and taking a cheap swipe at medicine.

    As if that represented modern medicine.

    It doesn’t. I know better.

    I sincerely apologize.

73. @im1dc:

    You said — “Of meddling [sic] interest on acupuncture to me is that one of your posters mentioned the study funded by NIH that found that acupuncture and sham acupuncture both helped headaches.

    Worthless research that.

    What is compelling is that surgery is performed daily under acupuncture anesthesia. And I seem to recall that is how acupuncture become known to Americans after a reporter had his appendix removed on one of President Nixon’s visits to China using only acupuncture for anesthesia. He wrote about it upon his return to the USA.

    Real world experience trumps trumped poorly designed placebo psuedo experiments every time, imo.”

    WHY was the research you didn’t like worthless? You don’t like it, therefore you discard it? Give a reason why you think it was poorly designed, why don’t you?

    The problem is, you seem to discard ALL the research with conclusions you don’t like as being somehow flawed, and I haven’t seen you demonstrate why, methodologically, this is the case. Add that to the “real world experience” statement above and your track record here, and you can understand, perhaps, why everyone else here thinks that you value anecdote over research.

    The fact is, no well-designed double-blinded trial has EVER demonstrated an effect for CAM beyond that of placebo. On the other hand, we *can* see effects for other treatments. That’s the whole “evidence based” part of “evidence based medicine”, you know. Is the system perfect? No, and no-one here is claiming that it is. However, we can still see things work. In CAM, not so much; there has never been a trial which separated it from placebo or from confirmation bias, I say again.

    And the vast, vast majority of stories and references that you have posted here have been ones detailing how evidence-based medicine has f***ed up in individual cases. You aren’t providing evidence, you are just rubbishing the “opposition”. Don’t try to claim that you aren’t concentrating on that, please. It’s bleedin’ obvious.

    If you have actual evidence for your claims, present it; otherwise, get used to people dismissing them.

74. Aqueous pore. Wow. They cover that in pre-nursing A&P that you have to pass just to be admitted into the program, you know. Congrats im1dc, you’ve just shown you have less medical knowledge than a pre-nursing student. Keep it up, maybe you’ll end up showing you weren’t paying attention in 8th grade biology, too.

    Are you sure that profound silence you heard after the folks much better than us that you supposedly put in their place wasn’t just profound pity?

75. Wow.

    I suspected im1dc didn’t know enough to know what he didn’t know, but…

    Wow.

76. Panda Bear says: “(You cannot possibly be for real. I suspect you are a troll sent to delight and amaze us with your goofy ignorance, an ignorance that doesn’t even know its own ignorance. -PB)”

    You are consistent to the end, using myths, bluster, ad hominem and testosterone fueled BS as your means of debate instead of sound reason based on reliable, valid and citatable fact.

    Luna_the_cat asks “WHY was the research you didn’t like worthless?”

    Sham acupuncture on human subjects is impossible.

    (No, it’s not.  All you have to do is locate the real acupuncture point and insert the needle slightly to the left or right of it.  The patient won’t know the difference.   The spot can be marked by an acupuncturist and the patients can be randomized into two groups, one where the needles are placed by technicians into the correct spot and one where the technician randomly inserts the needle anywhere outside of a circle, say of 2 cm diameter, whose center is the real point.  Seems simple enough but it will never be done because the acupuncture industry has no financial interest in disproving their key treatment modality. -PB)

    The placebo effect not only affects CAM trials but all MEDICAL trials as well, double blind or not.

    (Idiot. That’s why well-designed studies are randomized, double-blinded and “placebo controlled,” in other word, neither the subject or the researcher knows who’s getting the test therapy or the placebo. -PB)

    And, as posted earlier the degrees of freedom used in human experiments, especially medical experiments, is so high that they are at best borderline quasi-science if not outright shams in comparison to the hard sciences.

    (I don’t think you understand the concept of “degrees of freedom.”  All well designed studies seek to control for random variables whose effects can be detected by statistical analysis. -PB)

    IOW, interpret them skeptically, for your own good.

    Shining Hector says “Aqueous pore. Wow. They cover that in pre-nursing A&P that you have to pass just to be admitted into the program…”

    But what does that have to do with the leukocyte video?

    See: “XVIVO collaborated with Dr. Robert Lue Ph.D., Director of Life Sciences Education at Harvard and a faculty member in the Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology, and Dr. Viel to create an educational piece that is scientifically accurate as well as visually engaging for students. “We have received a tremendously enthusiastic response from students, both in freshman biology and sophomore cell biology courses,” says Dr. Lue…”

    That video and the others represent a major advancement in visual learning of cellular biology for university students of biology.

    The reference to aqueous pore was to reinforce the hydrophilic nature of our cellular biology. A simple and straightforward reference to the possibility of water based pores both inside the cell (as depicted) and potentially in the cell wall as well.

    You missed the point. No surprise.

    Chris C. posts: “I suspected im1dc didn’t know enough to know what he didn’t know, but…

    I suspect you intended that as a profound put down but reading it it comes across confused and convoluted that reflects upon you as a buffoon.

    It reminded me of the old saw “Be careful when you point at someone b/c there are 3 fingers pointing back at you”.

    (But look, im1dc, you obviously don’t know much about science.  And I mean obviously.  You can fool your customers because they probably know less than you but most of my readers are either physicans, medical students, or other people who know a little bit more than the man-on-the-street.  What plays on your chiropracty discussion forums won’t pass muster here.-PB)

    Panda Bear has declared victory and Complementary Month closed.

    He’s offered nothing substantive.

    Nothing at all.

    Closing this down is the only way he can get out of the mess he created b/c he lacks even minimal factual information and citations to back up his assertions and accusations.

    (Dude, this is not a CAM website.  It is about residency, medical school, and general medical issues and now that I have advertiser(s), I have to keep my readership interested.  It’s not that I won’t get a lot of readers if I spend every day beating up on acupuncture and chiropracty, it’s just that these are not the kind of readers who are interested in buying Epocrates or any of the other medical products I hope to advertise.  Besides, if you read my ten rules of CAM, that’s all you really have to know. -PB)

    In the non virtual world that is called hot air, BS and bluster.

    In the world of Logical Fallacy it is called…no, look it up for yourselves if you want to know. It’s not my job to educate you.

    The logical hurdle Panda Bear and the other medics here did not recognize and can never overcome is that medicine relies as much on faith (placebo effect) as CAM practitioners.

    All practitioners of healing rely on it, some more than others.

    (I am not a “healer.”  I reject that word completely.  I am a physician who treats medical problems, some more successfully than others and mostly by management rather than effecting an outright cure.  You are not a healer either, nor are you a physician.  CAM is part of the entertainment industry. -PB)

    Therefore, the very criticisms he’s hurled at CAM he’s hurled at his profession.

    Sweet!

    Here’s a link to the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine: http://nccam.nih.gov/

77. Panda Bear says: (I am not a “healer.” I reject that word completely. I am a physician who treats medical problems, some more successfully than others and mostly by management rather than effecting an outright cure. You are not a healer either, nor are you a physician. CAM is part of the entertainment industry. -PB)

    “…rather than effecting an outright cure.”

    Now we are getting somewhere.

    I totally agree that you generally don’t cure patients. There are obvious exceptions.

    CAM providers do cure patients for the conditions legitimately treated.

    That keeps patients out of medical offices which is why CAM is pervasive, generally accepted and respected by people who experience it.

    Since you admit to your limitation above I’ll admit to you that CAM providers should not treat patients that are broken, damaged (mentally or physically) or seriously ill. Those patients properly belong to medical providers and that is where medicine out shines all over healing professions.

    Each profession has a place in the health care scheme regardless of your declamation against all other forms of healing.

     

    (CAM is entertainment, not medicine, and has no place in medical care. -PB)

78. Here’s another of today’s medical dogma’s that bites the dust:

    Late Shift Work Is Linked to Cancer

    Nov 29 12:15 PM US/Eastern
    By MARIA CHENG
    AP Medical Writer

    “LONDON (AP) – It was once scientific heresy to suggest that smoking contributed to lung cancer. Now, another idea initially dismissed as nutty is gaining acceptance: the graveyard shift might increase your cancer risk.

    Next month, the International Agency for Research on Cancer, the cancer arm of the World Health Organization, will classify shift work as a “probable” carcinogen.

    That will put shift work in the same category as cancer-causing agents like anabolic steroids, ultraviolet radiation, and diesel engine exhaust…”

    Link: http://tinyurl.com/322gwe

    Is it just me or do others see that the more we learn about the body the less doctors like you seem to have known, despite your absolute certainty that you know-it-all today?

    Enjoy the article.

    I visualize you standing at the center of an ever shrinking island of dogmatic denial as the tide rises around you on all sides.

    Hope you can swim.

79. Panda Bear says (CAM is entertainment, not medicine, and has no place in medical care. -PB)

    Who claimed CAM had a place in medical care?

    CAM is not medicine, it is its own discipline.

80. “Is it just me or do others see that the more we learn about the body the less doctors like you seem to have known, despite your absolute certainty that you know-it-all today?”

    We don’t know it all, you’ve just demonstrated with every post we’re pretty sure we know more than you.

    “I visualize you standing at the center of an ever shrinking island of dogmatic denial as the tide rises around you on all sides.”

    As has been the recurring theme this whole month, there isn’t anything in medicine that’s not subject to review with new evidence. If your article is some lame attempt to try and convict us as dogmatic, it fails utterly. We’re really quite sure we don’t know everything, and it comes up every day. As your article shows, when doctors are faced with new evidence, the discipline is healthy enough to re-evaluate former positions in the face of new evidence. Was acupuncture or homeopathy re-evalutated and reworked in the face of the germ theory of disease, though? Were we so stiff and dogmatic in the face of scientific evidence, we’d still be bleeding the bad humours.

    A discipline that actively seeks new evidence and constantly changes its underlying beliefs and treatments is the exact opposite of dogmatic. “Be careful when you point at someone b/c there are 3 fingers pointing back at you” was quite apropos on your part, shame you missed the irony. Unless you really are deliberately trying to make CAM look ridiculous, in which case mission accomplished.

81. im1dc: My last remark wasn’t really intended for you, but I’ll explain it since your reaction indicates you missed the point.

    You don’t even seem to know there’s something you need to look up here. On the other hand, I did, because I hadn’t heard the term “aqueous pore” before and wanted to find out if what you were saying made any sense. As I suspected, it didn’t. But along the way I learned a bit of cell biology I hadn’t known about before.

    An aqueous pore isn’t “water based” in the sense you appear to intend. You are confusing the thing itself with the nature of the process it mediates, passive diffusion of small water-soluble molecules through the membrane. (PB will have a much better handle on this than I do. I have only the basics of biochemistry, and have no doubt stated matters imprecisely or incorrectly.)

    “Hydrophilic” is not a magic word that makes all things it touches “water based”. That you as a CAM practitioner rely on magic in one form or another doesn’t affect how the word is used in chemistry.

    Many different biochemical structures are hydrophilic, at least in part. Others are hydrophobic, at least in part. Many are both, in different parts. Our cell biology as a whole is not particularly hydrophilic. If it were, then our cells would themselves be water-soluble, and that would be bad. The hydrophobic/philic nature of any one part of our cell biology depends on the need dictated by that part’s function.

    On another subject, it’s nice to see you admit that CAM cannot do anything for people with actual problems: “broken, damaged (mentally or physically) or seriously ill.” Since those who are ill, but not seriously, get better all on their own, what exactly do you claim CAM does? You certainly don’t appear to be saying it’s anything worth bothering about if there are better things to spend money on. Such as, for example, portraits of Elvis on black velvet. Or lottery tickets. Or souvenir spoons.

    I’m not certain what your point is when you present articles on recent developments in evidence-based medicine. A cancer link seemed implausible when first proposed, but unlike the situation with CAM it proved otherwise when investigated. I don’t recall anyone ever saying either that graveyard shift is good for you, that MDs know everything, or that — unlike CAM — evidence-based medicine relies on any dogmata. (The only related thing I know of that goes by that name, the “central dogma of molecular biology” is not in fact a dogma. If evidence develops that it’s wrong, it will be corrected or discarded.) But CAM retains its beliefs regardless of the evidence, and that is dogmatic. So you seem to be spitting into the wind here.

    The only other thing I want to point out is that when you say “CAM is not medicine, it is its own discipline,” you are actually not disagreeing with PB when he says it’s entertainment. You may wish to dispute him on other grounds.

82. im1dc:

    So I went to the local elementary school and learned to read more good.

    I’m well aware that the medical industry/community/conspiracy/whatever you want to call it is not perfect. Yes, I can understand the concept that it wants to make money, and that bad men control it. The system is pretty messed up, wastes a ton of money, and makes a lot of people rich on other’s misfortune. I cried a little when I finally came to that realization after reading your post, but I think I’ll live. I appreciate you clearing that up for me.

    I get it that science and medicine aren’t perfect, that some research out there sucks, and many techniques/treatments used in medicine have problems. But I really fail to see how any CAM modalities are superior to the attempts of medicine using the scientific method to improve itself. How does medicine’s problems and failings help the case of CAM in any sense? Why would someone like yourself not fall prey to the same attitude of “not caring about patient protection, only patient money and not being sued” Oh, wait, you don’t have to worry about malpractice. That’s actually a pretty good deal for you. But seriously, if you and the good dr panda are part of the traditional healing disciplines (like you asserted earlier), why aren’t you affected by the same issues? Maybe because you’re not in the “dominant profession” and are still trying to knock off the king of the mountain? (oh shoot, more playground analogies, maybe I still do need to learn to read!)

    If I wanted to make tons of money, I don’t think I’d start a medical career. L Ron Hubbard said something along the lines of “The best way to make money is to start a religion.” Considering the fact that Americans will believe almost anything that makes them feel better about themselves, and that Americans spend 16% of our GDP on healthcare (according to you, I’ll admit I didn’t look it up), I’d probably start some spiritually-related vaguely wellness/health related schtick. Got any ideas?

    I guess Panda Bear was right to say that Panda Bear says “that CAM is entertainment”

    And seriously, water memory from sciencedaily.com? Isn’t sciencedaily.com part of what The Man is selling?

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