Shame on Orrin Hatch - The Patron Saint of Quack Medicine

[wuapinmon]

Contrast the vitamin industry with this http://voices.washingtonpost.com/che...mouthwash.html



I'm not really sure how you were supposed to administer it, but I have some ideas.

[USUC]

Contrast the vitamin industry with this http://voices.washingtonpost.com/che...mouthwash.html



I'm not really sure how you were supposed to administer it, but I have some ideas.

[Donuthole]

I'm not really sure how you were supposed to administer it, but I have some ideas.

You gargle it. Move it around to get even exposure using your lips, cheeks, and periodic bursts of air pressure.

[wuapinmon]

You gargle it. Move it around to get even exposure using your lips, cheeks, and periodic bursts of air pressure.

I believe a YouTube video of that might get you kicked out of BYU-I.

[ERCougar]

I ranted on facebook a few weeks ago about this, urging people to memorize the phrase "double blinded randomized placebo controlled trial" to use whenever the next MLM ward member approaches them. Because really--they have no answer and that's the quickest way to deal with them.
The girl who does my wife's hair keeps giving her samples of her overpriced caffeine/bicarb combination performance pill or another one that miraculously cures back pain. My wife asked her about studies and her response was "I'm not really a study person. I just know it works for me." I'll leave out the commentary on the unique susceptibility Mormons have to this kind of thinking (oh...oops!) and just point out that the reason that this quackery takes hold is that the placebo effect is real. Doctors aren't exempt from this. Anyone who's been given a Z-pack for sinusitis or bronchitis or a cold have also taken a completely useless therapy (and may have "gotten better", just like they would have with a sugar pill).
The question is, how do we take advantage of the placebo effect? I don't have a huge problem with echinacea because it's cheap and relatively harmless (if it's from a well-established--of course, the lack of oversight of these companies is another huge problem), and it can have a nice placebo effect. It's much better than the alternative--antibiotics that aren't cheap, are harmful, and increase antibiotic resistance.

[Color Me Badd Fan]

I ranted on facebook a few weeks ago about this, urging people to memorize the phrase "double blinded randomized placebo controlled trial" to use whenever the next MLM ward member approaches them. Because really--they have no answer and that's the quickest way to deal with them.
The girl who does my wife's hair keeps giving her samples of her overpriced caffeine/bicarb combination performance pill or another one that miraculously cures back pain. My wife asked her about studies and her response was "I'm not really a study person. I just know it works for me." I'll leave out the commentary on the unique susceptibility Mormons have to this kind of thinking (oh...oops!) and just point out that the reason that this quackery takes hold is that the placebo effect is real. Doctors aren't exempt from this. Anyone who's been given a Z-pack for sinusitis or bronchitis or a cold have also taken a completely useless therapy (and may have "gotten better", just like they would have with a sugar pill).
The question is, how do we take advantage of the placebo effect? I don't have a huge problem with echinacea because it's cheap and relatively harmless (if it's from a well-established--of course, the lack of oversight of these companies is another huge problem), and it can have a nice placebo effect. It's much better than the alternative--antibiotics that aren't cheap, are harmful, and increase antibiotic resistance.

How about this one : "Sis. _____'s husband had been allergic to chicken, but after he tried this treatment from Dr. ____ (a chiropractor -- it's frequently a chiropractor), he was all of a sudden able to eat chicken."

-- "Honey, that's complete and utter bullshit."

"Then how can he eat chicken now?"

-- "Because we don't know if he was allergic to chicken in the first place, it was probably psychosomatic if anything. And the placebo effect is especially powerful as it relates to psychosomatic issues."

"The medical industry and pharmaceutical industry has a ton of money and they have a vested interest in people not using these kinds of treatments. They want to keep all of that money with the doctors, hospitals and pharmaceutical companies."

-- "Pharmaceutical companies spend 100s of millions of dollars in carefully scrutinized studies and clinical trials to get a medication to market. This chiropractor decided to drop a piece of chicken into a vial and tape it to someone's skin. There's no possible trial involving this 'therapy' that could fool a ninth grader taking biology."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nambudr...ion_Techniques

[Jeff Lebowski]

"The medical industry and pharmaceutical industry has a ton of money and they have a vested interest in people not using these kinds of treatments. They want to keep all of that money with the doctors, hospitals and pharmaceutical companies."

This is one that steams me. Alternative medicine is a multi-billion dollar industry. And when I teach my kids the concept of "conflict of interest", the best example I can think of is when the person diagnosing your illness also happens to be the person selling you the cure.

People jump from the arms of Big Pharma right into the arms of Big Placebo.

[Color Me Badd Fan]

This is one that steams me. Alternative medicine is a multi-billion dollar industry. And when I teach my kids the concept of "conflict of interest", the best example I can think of is when the person diagnosing your illness also happens to be the person selling you the cure.

People jump from the arms of Big Pharma right into the arms of Big Placebo.

What's amazing to me is anyone that learned anything from high school biology and chemistry should know this stuff is complete nonsense. Notice how the quackier theories get into notions of "electromagnetic [insert a nebulous noun" and "energy pathways" and how you can get a phD in Biology, Chemistry, and various engineering fields (e.g. biochemical engineering) and never hear the terms these chiropractors throw out there. There's a total and complete lack of science behind it.

But intelligent people fall for this crap. Steve Jobs and Dave Rose got the same form of cancer. Jobs, who's regarded as being extremely brilliant, fell for some of this nonsense and is dead. Dave Rose trusted the people who are supposed to know about these things and he's still alive. Jobs was oblivious to the limitations of his own range of knowledge.

[Jeff Lebowski]

What's amazing to me is anyone that learned anything from high school biology and chemistry should know this stuff is complete nonsense. Notice how the quackier theories get into notions of "electromagnetic [insert a nebulous noun" and "energy pathways" and how you can get a phD in Biology, Chemistry, and various engineering fields (e.g. biochemical engineering) and never hear the terms these chiropractors throw out there. There's a total and complete lack of science behind it.

But intelligent people fall for this crap. Steve Jobs and Dave Rose got the same form of cancer. Jobs, who's regarded as being extremely brilliant, fell for some of this nonsense and is dead. Dave Rose trusted the people who are supposed to know about these things and he's still alive. Jobs was oblivious to the limitations of his own range of knowledge.

What kills you is to read the stories of people with small children who are diagnosed in the early stages of perfectly treatable cancer and then they refuse standard treatment for a regimen of coffee enemas, magnets, etc. and the kid winds up dead. And the parents often wind up bankrupt.

[wuapinmon]

If Big Placebo is your line, that's pretty damned clever.

[old_gregg]

the best response to the anti-vaccination dummies:

or, alternatively.

[Jeff Lebowski]

If Big Placebo is your line, that's pretty damned clever.

Nope. I read that line somewhere.

[snowcat]

My son recommended this book to me recently:

Do You Believe in Magic?: The Sense and Nonsense of Alternative Medicine

http://www.amazon.com/Do-You-Believe...0578761&sr=1-1

I am about halfway through and it is a really good book. A page-turner. At the same time, I get pretty upset reading it. At the beginning of the book, it charts the history of medicine and shows how horrible things were just a century ago with a vast industry of snake oil salesman preying on the general public. It shows how we gradually started moving to evidenced-based medicine and started using double-blind clinical trials to sift the legit cures from the fraudulent cures. We made steady progress with the development of the FDA and a series of laws and regulations to protect the public from medicinal scams.

In the early '90's some major legislation was proposed that would have put the final dagger in quack medicine, making it illegal to make fraudulent claims about the healing powers of any kind of health product. Sadly for all of us, it backfired and the quack industry put the dagger in the FDA. As the legislation was making steam, the tycoons of the quack industry gathered at a large estate in California and planned what to do in order to protect their multi-billion dollar business. They decided to fund a massive campaign to stop the legislation and a core part of the strategy was to buy off a number of senators to lead the fight in Washington. The main target was our very own Orrin Hatch, who was already a fan alternative medicine and was already bought off by the supplement industry in Utah (many of which are also pyramid schemes). In a classic case of cronyism, they donated massive amounts to his campaign and he led an effort that not only killed the bill, but he wrote and successfully passed a bill that carved out a special exception for certain types of quack medicine. If your drug can be classified as a vitamin, herb (plant-based), etc (a few other criteria - can't remember the full list) then you can make ANY claim you want without any consequences whatsoever. Cures cancer? Sure, whatever. If your claim gets debunked by clinical trials, no problem. Just keep on committing fraud and lining your pockets with the money from desperate sick people and Orrin Hatch has your back. I wonder how many people have died because they wasted their money on fraudulent cures when they could have been using something that actually works. It is disgusting.

This is absolutely not true.

[Jeff Lebowski]

This is absolutely not true.

Care to elaborate?

[snowcat]

Care to elaborate?

It is not legal for a supplement company to claim a product treats, prevents or cures and disease or it is immediately classified as an unapproved drug by the FDA.