Still anti-medicine?
There are some people that comment that modern medicine is bad. Certainly it isn’t perfect; nothing is. To say that it is all bad is silly, in my opinion. For the anti-vaxxers, there’s a whole list of diseases that we’ve eradicated due to vaccinations. The NPR piece linked helps drive home the point.
A change came when, in 1995, the first triple-drug combinations became available, Lennox says. He saw an amazing transformation take place, where people who were on their deathbed were discharged within a month.
“It was the most amazing thing and it still is,” he says. “We still get people who come in at the end stages of AIDS and if we catch them in time, many of them are restored to normal health.” [Dr. Jeffrey Lennox]
#ScienceEveryday when it isn’t #ScienceSunday
#Anti_anti_intellectualism
http://www.npr.org/2012/07/22/157199216/testing-treatment-key-weapons-in-aids-fight
July 24, 2012
How do you know Chad Haney that Rajini Rao and I were talking about just that!!
July 24, 2012
I saw her link to HIV at the NIH on the hijacked thread. You weren’t talking about NPR I’m guessing.
July 24, 2012
Deeksha Tare don’t you think it’s a powerful statement, that people were on their deathbed and the triple-drug cocktail was able to make them well enough to go home?
July 24, 2012
Ya, not about NPR…
And these drugs are not meant for final stage patients…
ART is started asap after the detection of HIV/AIDS in a patient. Otherwise it won’t be that effective.
July 24, 2012
the magic was by hitting 3 different aspects of the HIV virus. When you hit just one, drug resistance develops fairly rapidly. Two was better, but the nature of the 3 didn’t allow for any replication of the virus (no replication means no evolution, and no evolution means no drug resistance).
I think the anti medicine is a backlash to the “take a pill for this” mentality that is so prevalent in medicine today. In many cases, a few lifestyle changes produce better results than any modern or traditional medicine (with fewer unintended side effects).
And to come full circle, I remember reading about thalidomide being useful in treating some of the ailments of aids patients….
July 24, 2012
I think the anti medicine is a backlash to the “take a pill for this” mentality that is so prevalent in medicine today. In many cases, a few lifestyle changes produce better results than any modern or traditional medicine (with fewer unintended side effects).
The problem is, at least what I’ve seen on G+, is that people who agree with this, tend to throw out the baby with the bath water. For some reason it has to be binary for them. I agree wholeheartedly that lifestyle changes can have a tremendous affect. Also, many people in the US forget about prevention.
July 24, 2012
Chad Haney I don’t think it is just g+…But I think about the obesity epidemic here in the US. That is a simple one (in theory). The reality is that we want our cake and eat it too (all implications intended). We prefer to treat the diabetes, high cholesterol/heart disease, related joint problems with surgery or a pill (or ten) than eating less and moving more. If ever there was a clear binary solution, it is here. Personally if we could attack this one issue, then we could think more clearly about the issues that actually require medical intervention.
July 24, 2012
I think a distinction needs to be made between prevention and cure, and also exactly what disease we are talking about. Diseases like diabetes, high blood pressure and heart disease can be preventable by adjusting lifestyle (healthier eating habits and more exercise). But once a bad lifestyle causes those diseases, relying on diet alone to cure those diseases is naive; at some point it would be a combination of medication and lifestyle adjustment.
Then we come to diseases like cancer (note, I used the plural, because cancer cannot be regarded as just one disease) where there are some links to diet but they are not as clearly defined as they are with heart disease/diabetes/high BP. Sure, adjusting to a healthier lifestyle may play a role in preventing some cancers, but there is not enough data, and we need more research done in this area. It’s silly to make blanket claims about how adjusting diet will definitely prevent all cancers, at this point. Similarly, once cancer is actually diagnosed, it gets even sillier to rely on diet alone as a treatment option. Diet alone has never been shown to cure or treat cancer. Diet may help when used in combination with traditional methods such as chemo, radiation and surgery.
The problem is that people who have an admittedly justified mistrust of an admittedly flawed healthcare system tend to throw out the baby with the bathwater and then also throw out the bath tub, demolish the bathroom, bulldoze the house and then retreat to a cave to live on organic berries while chanting some mantra that an Indian yogi they saw on Oprah was teaching them.
July 24, 2012
I did mention prevention in my comment, just not in the post Buddhini Samarasinghe In my opinion, it’s such a powerful statement from Dr. Lennox, that patients near death could be treated well enough by drugs to be able to go home. I think that’s useful for your fight against anti-vaxxers and anti-med people. On the other hand, those type of people usually have their mind made up and you’re talking to a wall.
July 24, 2012
It is indeed. I think it’s great that drugs against HIV seem to be working so well. I also think that huge steps could be made towards the prevention of HIV with wide-spread use of condoms in Africa but hey, some guy in a pointy hat thinks that’s evil (don’t get me started on that particular soap box!).
Alties (I use that umbrella term to describe anti-vaxxers and anti-med people) are indeed walls. Very very hard to talk to. I see so many similarities with trying to debate evolution with creationists. The only reason I keep going is to provide well-reasoned arguments against the other side so that silent lurkers can make up their own minds based on the evidence. Keep fighting the good fight eh? 🙂
July 24, 2012
I draw the line at anti-science. I go after the people that post crap about science is a religion or science “theories” have been proven wrong once, so they can never be right. Sometimes alties fall into that category and when they do I don’t give up. When they just want to rant about diet or crystals or Sixpack-chopra, that’s OK. I’m not going to lose sleep over that.
July 24, 2012
Yeah, I don’t mind alties that just keep their crazy ideas local. It becomes a systemic problem when their crazy ideas impact us, i.e. when our kids get sick because they don’t vaccinate and so on. I think the diet thing extends a bit when you consider it as the spread of anti-science misinformation. And yes, I come out all guns blazing when they try to use science to justify their craziness.
July 24, 2012
To go back to the evolution example, I don’t mind so much that a religious person truly believes that the earth is 6000 years old and we all descended from Adam and Eve. I do have a problem when they a) make it political, so that it becomes a national debating point, b) try to force school boards to teach it in the science classroom and c) then try to convince everyone else that science is wrong and they are correct.
Quite often the alties and their dogma can broadly be classified in the same manner.
July 25, 2012
“you know, there’s a word for alternative medicine that works, they call it medicine (copyright Tim Minchin and thousands of stand-ups looking to win over a roomful of graduates)”. From http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2012/04/201243095653273383.html
July 25, 2012
Otto Hunt my friend Buddhini Samarasinghe uses that quote quite often.