A cautionary tale WRT pursuit of non-... - Advanced Prostate...
A cautionary tale WRT pursuit of non-conventional medicine.
People (usually upper class and intelligent) still go for voodoo medicine and quack diets. People are weird. Mind you, I believed in Santa Claus as a kid, some people then move on to their religion of choice. It’s like A Few Good Men... “You can’t handle the truth”.
This study is cherry picking at its worst. The authors had an agenda and kept running queries against the database until they got the answer they wanted.
The definition of "complimentary medicine" was tortured into meaninglessness to get this predetermined result. They wrote
"Patients were defined as undergoing CM if they received “Other-Unproven: Cancer treatments administered by nonmedical personnel” " AND the patients had to have undergone at least one conventional cancer treatment, defined as those who received chemotherapy, radiotherapy, surgery, and/or hormone therapy.
That's why they had only 258 patients out of more than 1.9 million patients in the database. When study after study shows that the majority of cancer patients add competitive medical treatments to their treatments, that tiny number should set off loud alarms. They should have found at least 100,000 and probably 500,000 or more patients had they used a realistic definition of CM. But that wouldn't have given them the result they had determined in advance.
That tortured search criteria excludes me, on two counts:
1) All of my competitive medical treatments are administered by MDs. Most have board certifications in two specialties.
2) I didn't undergo the conventional treatments.
Here I am, 11 years later. They had to exclude me and millions of people like me because it would have ruined the pack of lies they wanted so desperately to tell.
Medicine is a business. No profit, no medicine. But conventional medicine, particularly in the US, is also a monopoly. Monopolies hate competition. The competition that gives us cheap airline prices, good food year round, better computers every day, that doesn't work in medicine. So they have to resort to base lies like this hit piece when faced with competition.
Two questions:
1) What is your definition of a "competitive medical treatment"?
2) ALL medicine (conventional, complementary, quackery) is a business, is it not?
Very happy that you're doing so well! But don't criticize small sampling methodology and then use yourself as evidence of anything.
I use myself only because it increases the absurdly small sample size of the "study" significantly - illustrating the weakness of the results.
What conventional medicine calls "alternative" medical treatments are really competitive treatments. Monopolies hate competition.
All medicine is a business, a form of professional service. Only conventional medicine enjoys monopoly privileges and monopoly pricing. That's why in other professional firms that aren't a monopoly you have reception areas, while in conventional medicine you have waiting rooms.
I'm still confused about your treatment history, since you haven't had "conventional" treatments but your "competitive" treatments are administered by MD's. Would love more info.
My reading of the study is that the higher death rate among those using complementary medicine (CM) was entirely due to patients refusing conventional cancer therapy (CCT). All of the patients had used at least one CCT treatment. If they hadn't done so they were excluded from the study. However the number of patients refusing additional CCT was claimed to be higher for those who had CM offered by a non-medical practitioner than for those who didn't.
I can't dispute FCoffey's view that there was cherry picking going on, but I can't confirm it either. It looks like the authors made some efforts to avoid that problem, but I am not competent to say whether those efforts were sufficient.
The results actually showed less difference between the two groups than I expected, but it was still significant.
Finally, I have to say that TNCanuck's point that: "ALL medicine (conventional, complementary, quackery) is a business, is it not?" is well taken. It seems to me that the prime techniques of people selling "alternative" medicine are first, to try to convince people that the doctors, hospitals and drug companies are trying to keep them sick in order to sell more medicine, and second, to convince them that their therapies are safer because they don't use "cut, burn and poison" techniques. Not all alternative practitioners do that, but a huge number do and I think they are guilty of both killing people (by negligence) for money, and scaring them with false statements for money. Compare the actions of the doctors at any of the research hospitals with the likes of "Doctor" Mercola or Ty Bollinger and the amazing assortment of quacks he endorses. Think too about the fact that many of the conventional medical doctors are on salaries - which is generally not true of the CM people. They make their money for each book or bottle of pills they sell.
Alan
My take was pretty much the same as yours, Alan.
Great point about many docs being salaried. That's the standard at teaching hospitals, and I like the fact that they have no monetary incentives and aren't constantly pressured to see more and more patients. I haven't seen a doctor in "private" practice since leaving the doctor who failed to refer me to a urologist when my PSA was > 4.0 and rising for three consecutive years. He was too busy running patients through like cattle (another profit motive) to notice the lab flags.
"ALL medicine (conventional, complementary, quackery) is a business, is it not?"
You know that sounds like another rational in the news recently. "All politicians are liars, therefore I choose to believe Mr. Trump's lies over the fake news lies"
My husband is in care with conventional, integrative, and holistic doctors. If it were not for the all of the supplements, and the avoidance of some drugs, and recommendation to start with the ketogenic diet (for cancer) I’m not sure where he would be with the all of the possible side effects from the drugs.
His integrative oncologist (M.D.) is a wealth of information and our favorite doc on his team. Sadly, she moved elsewhere and we are not able to consult with her anymore.
The Lupron/Zytiga (he uses supplements in place of the prednisone and it is working beautifully for his liver) has been a factor in newly diagnosed cardiac issues. He now is a high risk for a cardiac event or stroke.
The cancer is dormant, PSA 0.117, no metabolic syndrome, testosterone is at 20, but now he now has severe arterial plaque, cardiomyopathy, Left Ventrical output is at 50%...all this within starting Lupron/Zytiga 6 months ago.
People need to make an income, whether they fall in conventional or alternative. We know there is much greed in the medical industry.
I think the ideal healthcare would include all of these modalities that help a patient in quality, and hopefully quantity of life.
The conventional has been a huge disappointment for us. We would love for the STAMPEDE protocol to have worked for us, but it hasn’t. More issues have now been served up on our plate.
We have no option but to look at supportive alternative therapies if conventional has failed us in such a way.
Much discernment is needed in whatever therapy one chooses, conventional or alternative.
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