“In the Asian world, traditional Systems of Medicine focus on "holistic" treatment”
[rant on]
I believe the term you’re looking for here is “fabulist bullshit”.
“the general public often calls Western Medicine, "Allopathy with side-effects"”
Aaaand… No, it doesn’t. SCAM calls it that. Which is ironic, as “Allopathy” is a term coined by Hahnemann to mean “Everything BUT Homeopathy”, and that was in a day when “Western Medicine” was itself rank quackery still laboring under Galen’s “Four Humors” nonsense. Thus Chiropracty, Reiki, TCM, Acupuncture, etc are all “Allopathy” too.
Conversely, what you so casually misnomer “Western Medicine” (the term itself is borderline racist) is just “Medicine That Works†”.
(†“Within Limits”, as any sci fule kno.)
I mean, the only really significant difference between Traditional Chinese Medicine’s explanation of disease and Galen’s is that TCM believes in five humors while Galenites believed in only four. [Insert Emo Philips/Picard joke here.]
Otherwise “Chinese/Eastern Medicine” is the same mix of ungrounded herbalism and bloodletting that stalled out western healthcare for 2000 years. Until the Arab/Persian world, during its all-to-brief scientific golden age, came up with the brilliant idea that one should actually test one’s beliefs to find out if they’re bullshit or not… a process that Renaissance Europe finally distilled into modern scientific method 500 years later and determining Galen was full of it shortly after that.
..
Of course, getting the actual institutions to change took a lot longer; it wasn’t until Pasteur gave us a working model of disease that Galen’s bollocks and its attendant “worse than doing nothing at all” so-called treatments were finally buried down a very deep hole.
Germ Theory gave us sanitation, vaccination, and surgical hygene. Untested herbalism was usurped by pharmacognosy, modern chemistry, and reliable mass manufacturing. And so on.
Alas, China was been quite so lucky. Thanks to Mao and his vast “barefoot doctor” scam (which got around the problem of not having enough real doctors or money to provide everyone else with medicine that worked), TCM/Acupuncture is still around, not least as the CPC is now selling it for export as much as for use at home.
Incidentally, Mao himself (like most wealthier Chinese nowadays) had no truck with that homegrown crap and happily availed himself of your “Western Medicine”, thankyouverymuch. (You might want to take note of that.)
Incidentally #2, just as TCM was, and is, badly-tested herbalism marketing often poor-quality and fraudulent product, pre-Mao acupuncture was really just Galenic-style bloodletting sticking bloody great bamboo trocars into people. Worse, it had almost (rightly) died out until Mao reinvented it its modern form using fine steel needles, bad sterile practice, and total Qi bollox. “Distracting the patient while nature all does the work” as Voltaire used to say.
Incidentally #3—and considering that western researchers invested decades in figuring out how to reliably blind acupuncture studies before finally producing results showing it no better than placebo—every acupuncture study out of China is still positively glowing. Someone recently posted a FP link regarding China’s massive ongoing medical research crisis; I’m sure you can dig it up if you want.
..
TL;DR: You can take your “holistic treatment” and “traditional Systems of Medicine” and stick ’em where the pathologist’s light does shine, because that is where they all belong.
[rant off]
--
Real medicine does in fact study and treat the whole person. Unfortunately, it’s also a victim of its own and industrial nations’ success. General practices and hospitals are slammed with demand, increasingly with inevitable diseases of very old age (since so few of us die young now) and diseases of sedentary urban lifestyles.
And while doctors can tell us to eat less and exercise more till they’re blue in the face, they can’t make any of us do it; so it’s not surprising things like statins get widely (over?) prescribed as a workaround for our fat lazy butts.
I’ve no doubt too modern medicine desperately wishes more public would understand that all Medicines (that is, pharmacologically-active compounds) have multiple Effects; and that the only meaningful distinction is between Effects that are advantageous in treating a patient for a particular condition and Effects that are disadvantageous in that same patient. We commonly call the latter “side-effects” [not counting intolerance and allergies], but that’s misleading.
For instance, aspirin (descended from willow bark) is commonly used both as an NSAID and as an anticoagulant; thus what is a “side-effect” in pain patients is the therapy in those with blood disorders. (And vice-versa. And, of course, aspirin’s other common effect of giving you stomach ulcers isn’t a benefit in anyone. Although if you think aspirin is bad, just try original willow bark instead.)
Thus, we should not be surprised that modern pharmaceuticals have multiple effects across a wide range of biochemical and physiological systems; if anything, it’s a minor miracle they don’t have way more unwanted effects. Alas, familiarty does breed laxness, if not contempt, even in scientific and medical professionals; so it can never be re-stated enough that education, awareness, and due dilligence are essential to keeping that system operating as well as it can.
Think of it like this: Medicine [which works] is just a rolling bug-patching process of the most heinously complicated, tightly-coupled, under-documented Big Ball Of Mud known to man, and proceed accordingly. And that even that thing we call “self” is just a synthesized fiction, the product of countless biochemical and electrical interactions constantly occurring in just one[-ish] of numerous intricately interconnected organs, which together make up “Us”.
--
Dear Dog, I really need a drink now. Never been so glad I that crashed out of premed and landed up in software dev instead. :)
WTH ? That is a nice rant but one with some validity :-)
First see my other responses in this thread so i don't have to repeat myself.
>Real medicine does in fact study and treat the whole person.
In Theory; Current practice has all but forgotten this. That is why many Physicians themselves are looking at Yoga, Meditation, TCM, Ayurveda etc. to supplement their treatment.
>Medicine [which works] is just a rolling bug-patching process of the most heinously complicated, tightly-coupled, under-documented Big Ball Of Mud known to man
Somewhat True but there are also multiple models/architectures within it all of which gives us a framework to hang everything else off of i.e. there is a method within the madness.
The point is not to throw away centuries of empirical evidence on what has worked regardless of theoretical models used to explain them. Two different examples, a) The importance of quieting/calming the mind using Meditation independent of any religious connotations. b) The importance attached to Turmeric which has been validated today by identification of the Curcumin active ingredient.
“In Theory; Current practice has all but forgotten this. That is why many Physicians themselves are looking at Yoga, Meditation, TCM, Ayurveda etc. to supplement their treatment.”
Eh, no. If many Physicians are looking at TCM, Ayurveda, etc†, it’s because there’s piles of Money and Ego in it. Shock: some <koff> physicians really do miss the Good Old Days of “Doctor-as-God” Paternalistic Medicine, and are only too delighted to bring it all back for their neurotic wealthy patients who miss it too.
“The point is not to throw away centuries of empirical evidence on what has worked regardless of theoretical models used to explain them.’
Centuries of “empirical evidence”?
Get. Tae. Fuck. And take your Appeals to Antiquity and Special Pleading bollocks, and stick them up your ass with all the other balls that Gwyneth Paltrow and Alex Jones and the CPC are flogging this week too.
†I exclude Yoga and Meditation here because (ignoring any woo-woo gateway bullshit) those are essentially Exercise and Relaxation, which along with Diet are standard mainstream medical advice. Only real difference being that Medicine says “Eat right and exercise, or you will Dieeeee!‡”, whereas AltMed says “Eat right and exercise and stick our super-magical expensive coffee up your ass, and you will have an orgasm in your pants!”
‡Okay, it doesn’t really say “Die”, but that’s what neurotic high-maintenance muppets hear anyway; which is what makes them such suckers for the AltMed con. And I really wouldn’t care about that because that’s their funeral, except that they make others dead too.
Are you just an ass or are you just trying to get a rise out of people? It is hard to have a conversation when your tone is combative rather than rational.
You are trying to employ the "Gish Gallop" and throw all sorts of irrelevant noise to muddy the waters. What do Gwyneth Paltrow, Alex Jones etc. have to do with Medicine?. If you think physicians are looking at Ayurveda/TCM/Yoga etc. only for the money/ego/fad then you really don't know what you are talking about. Don't waste my time with nonsense.
You are also cherry-picking articles with sensational headlines eg. your last link about usage of Turmeric is an article which is very clearly sheer stupidity and nothing to do with the medicine itself.
Read the book "Herbal Medicine: Biomolecular and Clinical Aspects" for scientific research on a variety of traditional herbs. Centuries of "Empirical Data" is what is being put to test to identify efficacy. This is the proper scientific method and not the offhand dismissal that you seem to embrace.
You are also very wrong about "Yoga and Meditation" being merely "Exercise and Relaxation". Read the following;
* A Physiological Handbook for Teachers of Yogasana
Mate I agree with you but people on HN don't appreciate this sort of way of speaking. Just tone it down a bit. You're making a lot of really good points and it'd be a massive pity to see you banned for making them in a way that is so antagonistic.
[rant on]
I believe the term you’re looking for here is “fabulist bullshit”.
“the general public often calls Western Medicine, "Allopathy with side-effects"”
Aaaand… No, it doesn’t. SCAM calls it that. Which is ironic, as “Allopathy” is a term coined by Hahnemann to mean “Everything BUT Homeopathy”, and that was in a day when “Western Medicine” was itself rank quackery still laboring under Galen’s “Four Humors” nonsense. Thus Chiropracty, Reiki, TCM, Acupuncture, etc are all “Allopathy” too.
Conversely, what you so casually misnomer “Western Medicine” (the term itself is borderline racist) is just “Medicine That Works†”.
(†“Within Limits”, as any sci fule kno.)
I mean, the only really significant difference between Traditional Chinese Medicine’s explanation of disease and Galen’s is that TCM believes in five humors while Galenites believed in only four. [Insert Emo Philips/Picard joke here.]
Otherwise “Chinese/Eastern Medicine” is the same mix of ungrounded herbalism and bloodletting that stalled out western healthcare for 2000 years. Until the Arab/Persian world, during its all-to-brief scientific golden age, came up with the brilliant idea that one should actually test one’s beliefs to find out if they’re bullshit or not… a process that Renaissance Europe finally distilled into modern scientific method 500 years later and determining Galen was full of it shortly after that.
..
Of course, getting the actual institutions to change took a lot longer; it wasn’t until Pasteur gave us a working model of disease that Galen’s bollocks and its attendant “worse than doing nothing at all” so-called treatments were finally buried down a very deep hole.
Germ Theory gave us sanitation, vaccination, and surgical hygene. Untested herbalism was usurped by pharmacognosy, modern chemistry, and reliable mass manufacturing. And so on.
Alas, China was been quite so lucky. Thanks to Mao and his vast “barefoot doctor” scam (which got around the problem of not having enough real doctors or money to provide everyone else with medicine that worked), TCM/Acupuncture is still around, not least as the CPC is now selling it for export as much as for use at home.
Incidentally, Mao himself (like most wealthier Chinese nowadays) had no truck with that homegrown crap and happily availed himself of your “Western Medicine”, thankyouverymuch. (You might want to take note of that.)
Incidentally #2, just as TCM was, and is, badly-tested herbalism marketing often poor-quality and fraudulent product, pre-Mao acupuncture was really just Galenic-style bloodletting sticking bloody great bamboo trocars into people. Worse, it had almost (rightly) died out until Mao reinvented it its modern form using fine steel needles, bad sterile practice, and total Qi bollox. “Distracting the patient while nature all does the work” as Voltaire used to say.
Incidentally #3—and considering that western researchers invested decades in figuring out how to reliably blind acupuncture studies before finally producing results showing it no better than placebo—every acupuncture study out of China is still positively glowing. Someone recently posted a FP link regarding China’s massive ongoing medical research crisis; I’m sure you can dig it up if you want.
..
TL;DR: You can take your “holistic treatment” and “traditional Systems of Medicine” and stick ’em where the pathologist’s light does shine, because that is where they all belong.
[rant off]
--
Real medicine does in fact study and treat the whole person. Unfortunately, it’s also a victim of its own and industrial nations’ success. General practices and hospitals are slammed with demand, increasingly with inevitable diseases of very old age (since so few of us die young now) and diseases of sedentary urban lifestyles.
And while doctors can tell us to eat less and exercise more till they’re blue in the face, they can’t make any of us do it; so it’s not surprising things like statins get widely (over?) prescribed as a workaround for our fat lazy butts.
I’ve no doubt too modern medicine desperately wishes more public would understand that all Medicines (that is, pharmacologically-active compounds) have multiple Effects; and that the only meaningful distinction is between Effects that are advantageous in treating a patient for a particular condition and Effects that are disadvantageous in that same patient. We commonly call the latter “side-effects” [not counting intolerance and allergies], but that’s misleading.
For instance, aspirin (descended from willow bark) is commonly used both as an NSAID and as an anticoagulant; thus what is a “side-effect” in pain patients is the therapy in those with blood disorders. (And vice-versa. And, of course, aspirin’s other common effect of giving you stomach ulcers isn’t a benefit in anyone. Although if you think aspirin is bad, just try original willow bark instead.)
Thus, we should not be surprised that modern pharmaceuticals have multiple effects across a wide range of biochemical and physiological systems; if anything, it’s a minor miracle they don’t have way more unwanted effects. Alas, familiarty does breed laxness, if not contempt, even in scientific and medical professionals; so it can never be re-stated enough that education, awareness, and due dilligence are essential to keeping that system operating as well as it can.
Think of it like this: Medicine [which works] is just a rolling bug-patching process of the most heinously complicated, tightly-coupled, under-documented Big Ball Of Mud known to man, and proceed accordingly. And that even that thing we call “self” is just a synthesized fiction, the product of countless biochemical and electrical interactions constantly occurring in just one[-ish] of numerous intricately interconnected organs, which together make up “Us”.
--
Dear Dog, I really need a drink now. Never been so glad I that crashed out of premed and landed up in software dev instead. :)