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It doesn't matter that homeopathy is outside of science when health to a large part is outside of science.

To paraphrase Pauli, that statement is so incorrect it isn't even wrong.
Keep reading this site until you understand better, please.
https://sciencebasedmedicine.o...

All negations of homeopathy are based on chemistry but you are not a sack of chemical reactions gone wrong.

"Negations of homeopathy" are based on a very facile understanding of chemistry and the causes of disease. Your body is a sack of unbelievably complicated chemical reactions operating under ideally homeostatic conditions. It's common for those processes to go out of whack from time to time. Usually your body can fix those processes itself. Sometimes it needs help. That's what modern medicine is for.

And accupuncture works quite fine, no idea why americans are so anti to thousands of years old proven working technologies, that basically cost nothing und rarely have side effects.

Replace "americans" with "rational people" and you will get an answer.

For example, you will learn that the whole
"thousands of years" is bullshit.

Oops.

You don't know the difference between your opinion and evidence?

https://www.webmd.com/diet/fea...

Benzyl Alcohol, Benzoic Acid, and Sodium Benzoate are safe:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/p...

Azodicarbonamide is safe:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/p...

Aspartame is safe:
https://jamanetwork.com/journa...

No evidence that organic based foods are safer than regular foods (a review of 240 studies)
http://annals.org/aim/article-...

No evidence that GMOs pose health risks:
https://www.csicop.org/si/show...

What is actually going on here:
https://sciencebasedmedicine.o...

Lol....try again stupid.

https://sciencebasedmedicine.o...
https://theskepticalcardiologi...

A good summary of the study, by a neurologist: https://sciencebasedmedicine.o...

[Citation Needed]

It falls on you to back up your claim, first.

Uh, that post is almost certainly trolling, in the original internet sense of the word: somebody who is posting for no other reason than to get a reaction. Responding to him in any way does nothing other than feed the troll; the correct reaction was to ignore him and wait for him to be moderated "troll".

It's too late for that now, though. To deal with facts: the actual response is that autism rates are not declining: http://blogs.discovermagazine....

Here's a good correlation graph, if you're looking for correlation: https://www.sciencebasedmedici...

Here is the deal for my jurisdiction -- Québec Canada
No vaccination, homeschooling. No vaccination--no public schooling access. No college or university access (which all are greatly funded by the government) and its likely your child won't have a playmate, unless the other is also home schooled.

And when these people arrived from Somalia, who did they encounter?

Good old Andrew Wakefield, a walking argument for supporting the death penalty.

Let me quote from the nice article above:

The graph above shows what can only be described as a catastrophic plunge over the course of just one decade in MMR uptake among American-born children of Somali descent, from 92% to 42%. There is, for all intents and purposes, no herd immunity in this community. The interesting thing here, though, is that this plunge is very specific. It’s noted in the story that there is not a fear of vaccination in general among the Somali immigrant population. Rather, it’s fear of just one shot: the MMR.

It’s not clear exactly when Andrew Wakefield first made contact with the Minnesota Somali community, but I do know that Age of Autism was on the case as early as August 2008 and that the founder of the antivaccine group Generation Rescue J.B. Handley published “An Open Letter to the Somali Parents of Minnesota” in which he told them it was the vaccines and that they can’t trust the local health authorities. He even went so far as to urge them to declare a “state of emergency within your community and create a new vaccine schedule for your kids.” Meanwhile, also as early as August 2008, David Kirby had been writing stories like ‘Is Autism an “American Disease?” Somali Immigrants Reportedly Have High Rates.’

[Citation Needed]

It falls on you to back up your claim, first.

Uh, that post is almost certainly trolling, in the original internet sense of the word: somebody who is posting for no other reason than to get a reaction. Responding to him in any way does nothing other than feed the troll; the correct reaction was to ignore him and wait for him to be moderated "troll".

It's too late for that now, though. To deal with facts: the actual response is that autism rates are not declining: http://blogs.discovermagazine....

Here's a good correlation graph, if you're looking for correlation: https://www.sciencebasedmedici...

There might be something to be said for therapeutic touch, strectching, pain induced pain relief (one of the theories about how acupuncture works) but the notion of subluxation theory was put to rest decades ago. (Mayo Trained M.D.)

Many US states have "right to try" laws, and this is the sort of thing that those laws are designed to allow.
On the supply side you have charlatans, well meaning doctors who have a dud treatment they truly believe in, and well meaning doctors who have a working-but-unproven treatment they truly believe in. On the demand side, you have patients who want to pay for a miracle and have bought into the (often hard-sell and deceptive) sales story of the supply side. These combine to try to push politicians into allowing unproven medical treatments. The medical establishment objects, but are often drowned out.

You can find lots of criticism of "right to try" here.

It would be 'ethical' to find a population that's already deficient, then supplement half of them.

Okay, let me give you a few cites so that you know where I'm coming from.

https://sciencebasedmedicine.o...

There was a time when we had a pretty awful approach to medical experimentatino on humans. The Tuskegee syphilis experiment is one of the worst examples. There was another STD experiment called the Guatamalan syphilis Experiment. And by the way, given the nature of the experiments, good luck in getting cooperation from dark pigmented people as they have a well earned distrust of medical experimentation. And Black women in northern climates are probably the number one risk group.

You will probably really stand up for the experiments on children during the mid-1960's At the Willwbrook State School in Staten Island, a school for the mentally deficient, they intentionally injected children with Hepatitis in order to see if Gamma Globulin could cure it. That's pretty sweet and kindly.

http://ethics.iit.edu/eelibrar...

Anyhow, they rationalized it by declaring that since so many of the children became infected with Hep, it wasn't a big deal. Oddly enough, it was never made clear why they didn't test Gamma Globulin on the children who already contracted hepatitis.

In 1948 REsearchers gave over 800 pregnant women "vitamin drinks" that contained radioactive iron to examine the placental/ mother's blood transfer. At the Massachusetts based Walter E. Fernald State School, the AEC and Quaker Oats performed a experiment of given them oatmeal with radioactive Calcium in it to track digestion of Calcium. The students were told they were joining a science club.

There are a lot more, but when these abuses - and I seriously hope you would also consider them abuses, a lot of ethical concerns, and eventually ethics committees and regulations came into existence.

While there might be some clandestine stuff still going on, any program such as one that is aimed at studying autism causes is going to be closely studied for three reasons. One is that it's an obvious one, to possibly help children avoid becoming autistic. The second one is that it involves mothers and children at all, so it will have ahigh priority. The thirs is a bit of an embarrassment, because people who for some reason are heavily invested in the belief that vaccines cause autism, will want to debunk the experiments in any way possible. If you don't believe me, just look at what happened when they removed the original "cause of autism" th emerthiolate from vaccines, and it had no effect. So without any proof, the anti vaxxers just decided it was "something else".

Test it with existing data. If it's true, populations more likely to be vitamin D deficient (darker skins at higher latitudes) will already have higher autism rates. Do black folks in Chicago have higher autism rates than in the south? (Where we know the population migrated from, mostly less than 100 years ago.)

Data will be called racist, so compare dark skinned folks at different latitudes.

Good luck with African descent people to agree with any test like you suggest. They don't trust the medical profession in that way, and they have a good reason not to.

Yes, some dentists have given up trying to convince people of the safety and advantages of amalgam fillings and do great business taking advantage of the fear mongering that is so common on the internet these days. Some guys even go as far as wearing hazmat suits while they take out amalgam fillings.
https://www.sciencebasedmedici...
It's great theater! If they just took out all the silver fillings and replaced them, you might never mention it to your friends, but if they wear hazmat suits and respirators while they do it, it's all but guaranteed that you're going to tell everyone you know about it. That will get a few of your more easily influenced friends to start wondering, and pretty soon they are calling up your dentist.

If your filling fell out, it either broke (less likely) or you developed decay under it (more likely), or the tooth fractured (possible) or a combo of those (also possible).

The Bt toxin produced by GMO corn (itself - not sprayed on) is every bit as bad. It's an insecticide. It works by chemically punching holes in the digestive tract of insects that try to feed on it. When humans eat this corn over time, it has a similar effect. This produces an autoimmune condition known as "leaky gut syndrome".

So-called "leaky gut syndrome" is complete, utter bollocks.

- T

For several years the anti-fructose movement has been making noise and has been showing increasing insight is the underlying mechanisms. Famous example spokesperson of this movement is Dr Lustig, and googling his name alone gives a boatload of references.

An MD claiming a single chemical is mostly responsible for obesity? BS detector starts ticking up...

https://www.sciencebasedmedici...
http://blogs.scientificamerica...

BS readings confirmed.

No,

wrong way around.

His idea:
Fructose is causing metabolic syndrome and partly responsible for weight gain by sabotaging leptin response.
He claims obesity isn't the problem. People don't die from fat, they die from metabolic syndrome.

For several years the anti-fructose movement has been making noise and has been showing increasing insight is the underlying mechanisms. Famous example spokesperson of this movement is Dr Lustig, and googling his name alone gives a boatload of references.

An MD claiming a single chemical is mostly responsible for obesity? BS detector starts ticking up...

https://www.sciencebasedmedici...
http://blogs.scientificamerica...

BS readings confirmed.

How she's not been reported to her state's medical board is beyond me.

This is why:
https://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/the-trojan-horse-called-integrative-medicine-arrives-at-another-medical-school/
The Faculty of Medicine and the Leslie Dan Faculty of Pharmacy at the University of Toronto seek a Director to lead their new interdisciplinary program in complementary and integrative medicine

This plus ISIS plus "crystal power" plus conservative Christianity (note the commonalities between them?) is a sure sign that the end of the modern word is soon at hand. I grieve for my children and their (not yet) children.

The question of whether acupuncture (in any of its hundred or thousands of forms) is more effective than control (a.k.a. "placebo effect") has been answered conclusively -- it is not. Acupuncture is indistinguishable from sham acupuncture in numerous, well controlled studies. It is the theatre, not the treatment that has any effect; and those effects are only measurable in the short-term against subjective outcomes. In other words, it's risky (infection, organ/vessel piercing), has no more benefit than just talking to someone or sitting quietly for a half hour, and does not improve health in any known objective measure.

The placebo effect "works" for a very narrow definition of "works", which is far less than what practitioners of these worthless treatments claim.

Um, actually, they do: See:

https://www.sciencebasedmedici...

and many many others.

AC

How is homeopathy any different from traditional medicine in that regard? Yet people still use it, and on their kids. I immediately thought if this recent news story up here in Canada... sad.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/aborigi...
http://www.sciencebasedmedicin...
http://news.nationalpost.com/2...

The more recent article on fecal transplants is interesting and thought-provoking in that obesity may be linked to imbalanced gut flora, but Taubes is dishonest and overstates the case for his hypothesis:

http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/gary-taubes-and-the-cause-of-obesity/

It already is to some degree

More BS. Read here - http://www.sciencebasedmedicin...

What we have here is an educated idiot. Unfortunately they're everywhere.

She's a loony alright.

She's well known for her anti-vax "reporting," so she's got more than a smidge of a credibility deficit.

http://www.sciencebasedmedicin...

Is this you? If so, I'm concerned by the prospect of certain liberties having been taken with facts in your practice.

I find it somewhat ironic that this is your "Homepage" URL.

"Communicating with the Locked-In" by Yale Neuroscientist and scientific skeptic, Steven Novella: http://www.sciencebasedmedicin...

It discusses the science (imaging, brain-machine interfaces) vs pseudoscience (facilitated communication) relating to communicating with the locked in.

Remember, if AZT was in trials during the time period - if it had been found to have fatal side effects, there wouldn't be an oscar-winning movie about the guy... or if there were, he would be the bad guy. He wanted to make money, he got lucky. It happens.

Woodruff WAS the bad guy who smuggled non-effective medicine. He SHOULD have been the bad guy of the movie: "Worse, the real Woodruff rejected the one truly promising drug at the time, AZT, as hopelessly toxic and instead smuggled drugs like Peptide T, which never panned out. " (from Science Based Medicine).

Prior to a recent FDA updated guidelines for bioavailability some generic may have had the same active ingredient, but id the other part of it are different, it may behave different. Specifically, release the medicine quicker or slower then non generics do.

Here is a good break out of the whole thing:
http://www.sciencebasedmedicin...

You misunderstand the placebo effect. No objective measures of health are affected by placebos, only subjective measures.

For example, no placebo will change your blood sugar level like insulin, nor will it kill the bacteria in a bladder infection. It can, however, change your perception of fatigue or pain. Placebos can make a person feel better, but it won't make them better.

The power of positive thinking has very little real-world effect on objective outcomes. You can't wish a broken bone back together or believe a clogged artery into opening.

The placebo effect is nothing more than what happens when a parent kisses a child's bruise and it feels better. Kind attention results in patients feeling better. Most diseases are self-limiting. When the patient feels better and the disease follows its natural course and resolves itself, it seems like placebos healed the patient. Note that feeling better is not the same as actually being healthier. You can forget your pain for a while, but if the underlying issue isn't resolved, it'll come back.

For more information: http://www.sciencebasedmedicin...

While Chiropractic might have some positive effects, too often Chiropractors sell their services as a cure-all. My parent's childhood chiropractor wanted to be our primary care physician, claiming that Chiropractic could cure colds and other diseases. Chiropractic's founder, D. D. Palmer, claimed his technique cured deafness, even though there are no nerves related to hearing that pass through any part of the spinal column. So even if Chiropractic has some benefits, its practitioners certainly do claim that it can do far more than it actually does, a habit which damages any credibility it might otherwise gain.

http://www.sciencebasedmedicin...

Which is why I prefer Science based medicine.
http://www.sciencebasedmedicin...

"There's plenty of hokum peddled by physicians, too. "
true, but it's not medicine. And Dr. should lose there license when the peddle that crap.

" which is why you end up getting the "X is bad for you! Don't do/eat/use X!" "
nope. You get that because the media reports on 1 study when they think that 1 study will get viewers. They never look at the body of research. That's for most of it.

The other part of that is science learns something unexpected and the previous 'bad' for you' statement becomes more nuanced.

Yes, piecing the skin with a sharp object provokes a response. Gee fucking whiz.
Acupuncture as been thoroughly studied with the highest level of rigor and it doesn't no more then talking to a Dr.

NIH's NCCAM has NEVER shown a positive result, and exists solely becasue a senator who believe in Woo forces it to exist at the cost of millions and million of dollars.
It needs to be cut.

http://www.skepdic.com/shamacu...

http://www.sciencebasedmedicin...

http://www.sciencebasedmedicin...

http://scienceblogs.com/insole...

Yes, piecing the skin with a sharp object provokes a response. Gee fucking whiz.
Acupuncture as been thoroughly studied with the highest level of rigor and it doesn't no more then talking to a Dr.

NIH's NCCAM has NEVER shown a positive result, and exists solely becasue a senator who believe in Woo forces it to exist at the cost of millions and million of dollars.
It needs to be cut.

http://www.skepdic.com/shamacu...

http://www.sciencebasedmedicin...

http://www.sciencebasedmedicin...

http://scienceblogs.com/insole...

The first thing you should do is learn to read and evaluate papers and studies.
Correlation does not imply causation.

http://www.sciencebasedmedicin...

Look at who is vehemently perpetuating this pseudoscience. People like Orrin Hatch have neutered the FDA in regard to dietary supplements.
http://www.sciencebasedmedicin...

When you're sick enough to (feel you) need medication, stay at home. Don't spread germs all over the workplace / auditorium / public mass transport.

Nice idea, but almost useless....

The typical incubation period for influenza is 1—4 days (average: 2 days). Adults shed influenza virus from the day before symptoms begin through 5—10 days after illness onset. However, the amount of virus shed, and presumably infectivity, decreases rapidly by 3—5 days after onset in an experimental human infection model. Young children also might shed virus several days before illness onset, and children can be infectious for 10 or more days after onset of symptoms.

What this basically means is that you are infectious the day before you show symptoms.....therefore you will not be able to ever stop the flu, at least not without a better vaccine (no, don't go pulling that Jenny McCarthy shit or I'll have to slap you); we can just mitigate some of the spread. It is incumbent upon the uninfected to keep from getting infected, as those who are will not know they are until its too late.

The science is that fever is an adaptive response to an infection. Yes, fever is what makes you feel like crap, but it changes the kinetics of viral (and bacterial replication). Ever notice that microbiological (especially bacterial) incubators are set to 37 deg C? That's the sweet spot for replication....change it and you put the invader at a disadvantage. Modern medicine unfortunately has taken on the dogma that: "If it ain't right, it needs to be fixed", a few (and growing) are starting to learn that not all that is wrong is bad....I continually rally against treating fevers less than 40 deg C (above that is concern for brain injury), but I have an uphill fight against an entrenched culture.

My personal strategy? I take the anti-pyretics so i can sleep or function, but reintroduce the elevated temperature by bundling up and keeping my core above 37 deg C. This is not scientific, just what works for me, YMMV and I won't be held responsible if you up and die from the flu as this is not my official advice.

Joel Fuhrman has published popular books himself, but he hasn't published much in the scientific literature, and he makes outlandish claims which show that he doesn't know what he's talking about.

http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/your-disease-your-fault/

He claimed in 2002 that he could cure autoimmune disease on a water-only fast. Since he hasn't won the Nobel prize yet, it doesn't look like anything came of it.

Association isn't causation. People have been comparing Chinese diets to Western diets and other factors for 30 years trying to figure out what's responsible for the differences in disease. They haven't found much. If Fuhrman had found something, he'd be publishing it in the New England Journal of Medicine and the Journal of the American Medical Association, which publish stuff like that all the time.

The problem isn't that the idea of including groups for sexes is questionable - it is the subdividing of small groups into even smaller groups based on numerous criteria. This is commonly done in small pilot studies that turn up marginal results which are later shown to be erroneous. Normally this is a non-issue. It is part of the scientific process - look for phenomena and then follow up with further study.

But when the study becomes the basis for stories in the media - watch out. We see this over and over. A small study of (insert food, chemical product, alternative treatment here) that checks a bunch of different variables shows a significant change in one or two. The media runs with the story and people begin to act as if the study is "scientific truth". When the follow up studies show that the whole thing was nonsense, it is too late. The idea has already entered the public consciousness as fact.

Here is a nice article about the effect of these sorts of preliminary results on the practice of medicine. It has some nice links to other sources on things like publication bias and researcher degrees of freedom that lead to the publication of false positives.

"Specifically taking probiotic supplements, yogurt, etc?"
no, becasue they don't work. Clinical probiotics MIGHT have an effect. :
http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/probiotics/

. All the rest of you, don't mix it with alcohol or take it for a hangover. The toxicity is cumulative

From what I gather from the literature, you are right about the hangover, but wrong about the mixing with alcohol. The blood concentration of the toxic degradation product is lowered when paracetamol is taken with alcohol, probably due to the alcohol successfully competing with cytochrome P450 in the liver, in much the same way that alcohol can be used to treat methanol poisoning (though another enzyme is competed for here).

However, there seems to be no reason to not use inbuprofen or naproxen:

All NSAIDs are hazardous, but but some have higher toxicities than others. For occasional and long-term use, products like ibuprofen and naproxen are safer and as effective as other NSAIDs.

Except, of course, individual problems, like you mention with Tylenol.

Cell phone radiation is non-ionizing. There is no known, plausible mechanism by which non-ionizing radiation can cause cancer. That puts the burden of proof on the people who claim there's harm. No such effect has been documented in animals. No such effect seems to exist in epidemiological studies in humans.

It's depressing that science education is so poor that ordinary citizens don't seem able to evaluate these facts appropriately.

It's depressing that journalists do such a lousy job that they keep on reporting on a manufactured controversy as if all evidence were of equal value.

It's depressing that funding agencies such as NIH continue to give money to this type of junk science, and that scientific journals continue to publish it.

Maybe you should understand what a* placebo effect is before asking about it?

  a placebo effect doesn't cure anything.

http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/index.php/the-placebo-myth/
http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/index.php/the-prostrate-placebo/
http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/index.php/cam-the-beer-goggles-of-medicine/
http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/index.php/the-rebranding-of-cam/#more-18610

When something is 'not better then placebo' that means 'not better then this stuff we know has no effect'
The term has been greatly abuses by SCAM practitioners for years, so it's actual meaning isn't know to many people.

*note the 'a' and not 'the'

Maybe you should understand what a* placebo effect is before asking about it?

  a placebo effect doesn't cure anything.

http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/index.php/the-placebo-myth/
http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/index.php/the-prostrate-placebo/
http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/index.php/cam-the-beer-goggles-of-medicine/
http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/index.php/the-rebranding-of-cam/#more-18610

When something is 'not better then placebo' that means 'not better then this stuff we know has no effect'
The term has been greatly abuses by SCAM practitioners for years, so it's actual meaning isn't know to many people.

*note the 'a' and not 'the'

Maybe you should understand what a* placebo effect is before asking about it?

  a placebo effect doesn't cure anything.

http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/index.php/the-placebo-myth/
http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/index.php/the-prostrate-placebo/
http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/index.php/cam-the-beer-goggles-of-medicine/
http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/index.php/the-rebranding-of-cam/#more-18610

When something is 'not better then placebo' that means 'not better then this stuff we know has no effect'
The term has been greatly abuses by SCAM practitioners for years, so it's actual meaning isn't know to many people.

*note the 'a' and not 'the'

Maybe you should understand what a* placebo effect is before asking about it?

  a placebo effect doesn't cure anything.

http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/index.php/the-placebo-myth/
http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/index.php/the-prostrate-placebo/
http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/index.php/cam-the-beer-goggles-of-medicine/
http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/index.php/the-rebranding-of-cam/#more-18610

When something is 'not better then placebo' that means 'not better then this stuff we know has no effect'
The term has been greatly abuses by SCAM practitioners for years, so it's actual meaning isn't know to many people.

*note the 'a' and not 'the'

It's been 6 years since that study, and none have overturned its conclusions. Yet SSRIs are prescribed to the moderately depressed every day. I've asked psychiatrists how they can justify this in light of the data, they've responded with their own confirmation biases. I don't see any way to interpret this but to conclude that psychiatry for depression is almost entirely a scam.

Quite a stretch. You may be putting too much on this study. I'd read at least this before concluding "it's a scam".

for example... "The study has numerous weaknesses, however. Because the study only looked at pre-approval clinical trials it did not account for all available data. Also, once a drug is approved study designs are more variable as they are no longer specifically designed to meet the criteria for FDA approval and may be more relevant to clinical practice. The analysis only considered a single measure of depression (Hamilton Rating Scale of Depression – HAM-D), and it is possible that other measures of depression may have yielded a different result. The study also included data mainly for severe depression, with only one study of moderate depression and now studies of mild depression. Finally it should be noted that meta-analyses in general are not highly predictive of the outcomes of later large definitive trials. The process of performing a meta-analysis itself has the potential to introduce bias and error."

You should read this:
http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/index.php/the-flu-vaccine-and-narcolepsy/

". The recent HIV studies are very poor, and quite frankly, bad science "
I disagree. please site specific study and flaw with methodology.

Please prepared to defend that along with the mountains of other data. IN short, I have studied this, and IO will destroy you with actual science and facts.

http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/index.php/the-case-for-neonatal-circumcision/#more-3310
http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/index.php/the-kindest-cut/#more-431

". The recent HIV studies are very poor, and quite frankly, bad science "
I disagree. please site specific study and flaw with methodology.

Please prepared to defend that along with the mountains of other data. IN short, I have studied this, and IO will destroy you with actual science and facts.

http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/index.php/the-case-for-neonatal-circumcision/#more-3310
http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/index.php/the-kindest-cut/#more-431