Freedomain Radio

http://www.lef.org/magazine/mag2004/mar2004_awsi_death_01.htm

I believe it.  My dad almost died a few years ago because he was misdiagnosed with some condition or other and medicated for it, when he actually had Parkinsons.  About a month ago I was put on prednisone for a back injury in order to keep muscle spasms in check and a few days after the prescription ran out (being unwilling to seek a refill due to the long-term side effects) the spasms returned for a couple days.  Turns out, from some research my brother and I have done over the last couple days, that all I needed was the roots of a licorice plant and the side-effects of that are very mild.

Hrm, skeptical Nate is skeptical.

http://www.quackwatch.com/04ConsumerEducation/null.html

I'll agree the state is responsible for the horrific state of healthcare, but I'm no fan of quack "alternative" medicine.

Carolyn Dean touts magnesium as some kind of panacea. Sounds just like my quack of a father.

Nathan:

Hrm, skeptical Nate is skeptical.

http://www.quackwatch.com/04ConsumerEducation/null.html

Isn't the internet fun...:-)

http://quackpotwatch.org/quackpots/quackpots/barrett.htm

Yeah it is a shame to see the conflation of medical establishment with government intervention.  Medical doctors are no less and no more corrupt than everyone else who works in a state licensed profession.  The criticisms presented there do not stick to the cause of corruption being the institution of state regulation but it goes onto question established medical practice which of course is as hindered as any other field is by the presence of government but to "follow the money" in a way that implies cospiracy rather than mere presence of incentives when approaching established and empirical medical practices is like calling what we currently have a free market. Exactly like that.

David L:

Nathan:

Hrm, skeptical Nate is skeptical.

http://www.quackwatch.com/04ConsumerEducation/null.html

Isn't the internet fun...:-)

http://quackpotwatch.org/quackpots/quackpots/barrett.htm

Pfft, medical advancement? Seriously? I'm sure you can find similar pages dedicated to Penn Jillett, James Randi and other skeptics that like to call people out on their bullshit.  Stef has one or two pages like that out there as well. Stef quit his job as a software CTO to work full time on debunking bullshit. Does that mean he "failed in the software industry"?

Pseudoscience sells. Being the son of a total quack who fed me all kinds of pills and "cure alls" growing up, it's been my mission in life to set things straight. A lot of good it has done, it's like putting out wildfire.

Here's a better source, with some pretty solid counter arguments: http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/index.php/death-by-medicine/

Nathan:

Here's a better source, with some pretty solid counter arguments: http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/index.php/death-by-medicine/#more-136

Nathan:

Here's a better source, with some pretty solid counter arguments: http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/index.php/death-by-medicine/

That article is a lot of unsupported assertions written by appologists. In no way is it of comparable quality to Death by Medicine.

Just as the state and its ever expanding regulations and activities move us further away from the protection and quality of life it is suppoosed to protect, so as more and more is spent on drugs and medical technology, populations continue to experience terrible ill health. (There have been some noteable advancements.)

In both cases this is because the undelying approach is wrong.

Freedom is the effect of no government, health is the effect of healthful living. Complex attempts to circumvent these simple truths are futile.

As I said on Noras thread (http://board.freedomainradio.com/forums/t/32414.aspx), primitive peoples enjoy levels of health unheard of in modern populations and this is simply because humans are not adapted to modern conditions. Organisms are adapted to the environment that their ancestors inhabited.

The most effective means of having good health are to reverse many of the changes we have made in how we live, eg: eat a simple low fat diet based on unrefined/uncooked fruits and veggies, avoid medicines, chemicals and pollutants (unless there really is a necessity), and stay away from dense populations.

Critical thinking about medical science is still somewhat lacking amongst institutional academics (who would fund it?), but "evolutionary medicine" is a start. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolutionary_medicine

Outside the world of corrupt academia, renegade doctors created a school of thought called "Natural Hygiene". While I find their theories pretty cranky, the basic principles are sound.

One of the more dangerous misconceptions is that symptoms are the disease and need to be cured. This is known as the "Clinician's Illusion" (see below). Many symptoms are in fact the body having a means to correct the disease, and by preventing these mechanisms wellness isn't restored, and often worse conditions follow.

"...Finally, there are defenses. Cough, fever, pain, nausea, vomiting, pain, anxiety, and fatigue are not abnormalities, even if they do motivate people to seek medical help. They are aversive, almost certainly for good reason, but they are not themselves problems, they are solutions (Nesse and Williams 1994). The tendency to misinterpret them as problems is so pervasive it has been called "The Clinician’s Illusion." http://www-personal.umich.edu/~nesse/Articles/Nesse-MaladaptNatSel-QRB-2005.pdf

Given that many medicines are deadly petrochemical derivatives, it is no surprise there are so many injuries and fatalities.

SimonF:

That article is a lot of unsupported assertions written by appologists.

Isn't that an unsupported assertion?

I think the freedom movement could do with more rational skepticism and rigor.  If all people ever see is creationists, climate change denial, conspiracy theorists and an affinity for CAM, then I can't blame people for throwing us out with the tea partiers.  It's realy frustrating and discouraging to see all that.

Nathan:

SimonF:

That article is a lot of unsupported assertions written by appologists.

Isn't that an unsupported assertion?

I'd call that an observation about the evidence provided. Harriet Hall (the author) is really clueless. She uses her complete ignorance in food and nutrition in an attempt to discredit her complete ignorance about the risks of medical intervention. There's no academic authority in the topic, no peer review, no citations, and no numbers at all. It's largely a word salad and an illogical diatribe. We should challenge what we hear, but not with that kind of garbage.

She claims that eating food harms people, then says we have to have food, and then tries to suggest that this means we should accept medicine. She then accepts that she is being ridiculous - that's her best claim.

There are no other species that get obese, heart disease and diabetes eating their biological diet is there? When creatures are kept in captivity, great efforts are made to feed them the foods natural to them so they stay healthy. And when the right foods and other environmental conditions are provided most animals are healthy until they get old. Only humans eating their local cultural diet get rampant degenerative diseases. As I pointed out in Noras thread, even primitive peoples with no medical science easily out health the average American, and evolutionary theory explains why that is.

Hall also claims that the casualty figures may be overestimates, yet the original article makes the perfectly logical claim that we can't really know the full negative impact medication has. It simply isn't well enough studied, and doctors don't really go looking for problems and are sometimes unfamilar with adverse reactions. Sometimes it takes a generation to discover exactly how a drug is toxic.

Nathan:

I think the freedom movement could do with more rational skepticism and rigor.

I think the above observation applies to you Nathan, and you're projecting.

I've had times where I get paranoid that I am not skeptical enough Nathan, it gets me feeling very uneasy, because my thoughts are that most people I talk to are attached to nonsense and I waste my time.

Having been mentored with Charles Tarts transpersonal psychology, particulary the ideas from his "Waking Up" book, I moved to the state of mind where I regard everything cultural as wrong by default, until proven otherwise. This certainly includes "medical science" and it's irrational claims to make people better by giving them toxins. I do have a little room for play around my doubts (some medicine does work), but as I studied more it just became pretty clear it's a bad idea from the start. People who know how to be healthy have no need to look for medicines on the whole, with the exception of dealing with injury.

Nathan:

then I can't blame people for throwing us out with the tea partiers.  It's realy frustrating and discouraging to see all that.

When people are truly unpopular it's either because they are idiots or sages.

Whatever side of the quackery / authorized medicine debate you're on, you should watch the whole hour and a half of the following. It's from the aptly-named "Red Pill TV" site.

http://codehazard.com/media/Cancer%20The%20Forbidden%20Cures

I'd prefer to make a distinction between the methodology of medicine and statism which are different things.  Much like one doesn't say "death by ethics" when pointing to Stalin.