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Finding a Crowdsourced Cure For Brain Cancer
Hugh Pickens writes "Salvatore Iaconesi, a software engineer at La Sapienza University of Rome, writes that when he was recently diagnosed with brain cancer, his first idea was to seek other opinions. He immediately asked for his clinical records in digital format, converted the data into spreadsheets, databases, and metadata files, and published them on the web site called The Cure. 'The responses have been incredible. More than 200,000 people have visited the site and many have provided videos, poems, medical opinions, suggestions of alternative cures or lifestyles, personal stories of success or, sadly, failures — and simply the statement, "I am here." Among them were more than 90 doctors and researchers who offered information and support.' The geneticist and TED fellow Jimmy Lin has offered to sequence the genome of Iaconesi's tumor after surgery, and within one day Iaconesi heard from two different doctors who recommended similar kinds of 'awake surgery,' where the brain is monitored in real time as different parts are touched. A brain map is produced and used during a second surgery. 'We are creating a cure by uniting the contributions of surgeons, homeopaths, oncologists, Chinese doctors, nutritionists and spiritual healers. The active participation of everyone involved — both experts and ex-patients — is naturally filtering out any damaging suggestion which might be proposed,' writes Iaconesi. 'Send us videos, poems, images, audio or text that you see as relevant to a scenario in which art and creativity can help form a complete and ongoing cure. Or tell us, "I am here!" — alive and connected, ready to support a fellow human being.'"
Sounds like he's got it about right, considering there's never been any evidence for homeopathy working that's stronger than the placebo effect. Maybe YOU could explain for us how homeopathy works, since you seem to think you know, and nobody else has been able to verify it working, much less *explain* its workings.
We're not talking "chew willow bark to relieve a headache" type of "alternative medicine" - willow bark is simply a natural source for a well-studied and well-characterized chemical - acetylsalicylic acid, or aspirin. We're talking about "soak a piece of willow bark in a bit of water or alcohol, and continue diluting until no trace of any salicylate from the willow bark can be detected in the water or alcohol, and then expect it to have an even more potent effect than the willow bark itself."
That's the shit that is completely bogus, and completely without merit, except as a placebo.
No, it's not. The first thing you learn when you look into Chinese medicine is that everything is done a little bit differently by each practitioner. When an actual clinical trial of some technique or concoction fails to show an effect the first criticism from believers is usually "oh, you didn't do it right. You have to do it the way THIS school/practice/group/individual does it!" If you do a clinical trial of Advil, Adex, Actron, Anadin or any of the other Ibuprofen brands, you get the same results, because each of them is exactly the same thing.
No. The placebo effect is quite strong. It can be measured and quantified, although it does depend on the circumstances and the effect in an individual depends very much on that individual's psychology and how they view the treatment they're getting. Modern clinical trials peg the placebo effect at around 30%. Homeopathic remedies HAVE been run through randomized clinical trials and they do not perform better than a placebo.
I don't think you know what homeopathy is. Homeopathy specifically involves diluting substances (ranging from herbal extracts to things like arsenic) until there it is very unlikely there is even a single molecule of the active substance remaining. That is, homeopathic remedies are water. The "theory" underlying homeopathy is that water molecules have a memory of other molecules they've been near and somehow this memory effect turns the water itself into an active drug.
The camomile example you give sounds like an herbal remedy. Many people confuse the two. Many "homeopathic" practitioners probably hope people confuse the two since herbal remedies have a LOT better chance of actually working (i.e. greater than zero). Herbs do indeed contain active ingredients that could potentially be purified, standardized, and validated. However, studies to date (and the US government has invested billions in doing these studies) have resulted in finding one traditional herbal remedy (that hasn't already been turned into a drug) that performed better than placebo: ginger for nausea. Other plant extracts are already used extensively. Aspirin (from willow bark) is the standard example. Currently drug companies are "mining" tropical rain forests looking for drugs.
I'm afraid you don't know what you're talking about, regarding homeopathy or anything else you've mentioned. Please stop trying to educate other people. And no, I'm not being harsh. People like you and the quacks that practice homeopathy are screwing around with people's lives. I have one friend who lost her mother because by the time they realized the alternative "medicines" weren't working it was too late. I remember the day she asked me if I could recommend a good oncologist.