Re:%75 as effective as a prescription 3% the price
on
Science vs. Homeopathy
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
Placebo effect is very important, especially in things like depression, anxiety, and agitation (its a real clinical status, look it up!) where behavioral therapy may improve symptoms. I'll let it slide that homeopathy for these things is hard to justify, what with the "like cures like" and all (can we get a 100000x dilution of sad juice?), and stick to the placebo effect which I think is your main point.
Also, we can pretty much write off Prozac because it has become the Ritalin of middle-age. By that I mean that a wide array of causes, behavioral, social, or chemical, are causing a problem, and instead of resolving it (through behavioral therapy or psychological analysis) the doc is just writing for the same treatment. Bobby is loud, give him Adderall. Bobby is sad, give him Prozac. Some people really need the chemically altering action of Prozac to be happy- some people just want to buy a month's worth of 10mg Problem Solver from CVS... i digress..
When administering or justifying a placebo as a treatment, take care not disregard the importance of real medicine. Placebo effect is significantly less present with things like hypertension, electrolyte imbalance, heart problems, diabetes, kidney and liver diseases, obesity, hypercholesterolemia, and other more corporal diseases. There is no "I think this will resolve my congestive heart failure" placebo effect that stands on its own.
As far as "sugar pills have no side effects" is concerned, look at and drug study that reports side effect profiles - placebos can have many of the same adverse effects as the "medicine" medicine. People will report dry mouth, sweating, fatigue, headaches, sleeping problems, and even sexual problems because ordinary people will have all of these things randomly on a day to day basis. The only thing thats different is that the FDA makes them report every single thing as a "possible side effect" if it occurs during a trial...So, if you wake up and feel tired (who does that??), you are experiencing possible drug-related fatigue..
If you wanted to market sugar pills as an FDA approved drug, your drug monograph would be as bleak as that of any other drug with regard to side effects. I'm not trying to say that pharmaceutical compounds dont have side effects, but the same effect that makes people feel better regardless of drug action can also make them feel worse.
Homeopathic drugs will never be superior to prescriptions because they are just water. Literally, in some formulations there is actually NO drug - just the solvent, because they have diluted it to such a degree that you could have an entire lot without a single molecule of the effective chemical. It would be nice if all of our healthcare issues could be resolved by just "thinking and feeling as though one is receiving a cure," but almost every time, this is not the case. People who have needs for medicinal intervention can not afford to be distracted by things like this at a cost of delaying real medicine. Real medicine and real doctors and real pharmacists who make people better through real science.
There is a direct, positive correlation between BMI and cardiovascular disease. Fat people tend to have high BMIs, and they also tend to have heart attacks. STATISTICALLY, a BMI can be a good indicator of whether or not you will have cardiovascular problems, need blood pressure meds, become diabetic, or have a heart attack.
This does not mean you can guess ONE PERSONS risk by BMI, but you can guess that a group of people with BMI >30 will have more health problems than a group with a BMI 24. This is, as a matter of fact, very very useful to an insurance company. They are betting against you getting sick/ having to go to the hospital/ etc., so if you have a low BMI, they will bet more (aka charge you lower premiums) that you'll be ok. On the contrary, if you have a high BMI, they will charge you more, because odds are higher you'll end up in the ER costing them money.
And while BMI is not the most terribly accurate measurement, most people with a BMI over 30 are not in good, or even fair shape. Feel free to rationalize as necessary, but don't get carried away associating yourselves with NFL athletes or pro body builders just because you have a high weight/height ratio. I mean, this is slashdot.. if you are anywhere approaching that kind of physique, you have wandered a long long way to get to this website =)
I spent all day yesterday giggling at "eLfavirenz" (its efavirenz- no L). While HIV/AIDS is far from a humorous disease, images of brazilian midgets with big ears and curl-toed shoes sneaking around with big bottles of pirated protease inhibitors kept jumping in my head.
For a second treat, google ELFavirenz and see the 260+ web sites that took the exact same text and put it up after/.'s error!
The story existed long ago, but the character's likenesses can still be copyrighted.
Not all sets of seven dwarves look like that. Same would go for an "Aladdin" character- you can put anyone in a turban and call him Aladdin, but if he looks like this you could get in trouble for infringing on original artwork.
(article 1)
"They found Ribena did not contain the advertised level of vitamin C. GlaxoSmithKline didn't reply when the students approached the firm with their findings, so they took their results to a TV show.
Then the commerce commission got involved, leading GlaxoSmithKline to plead guilty to 15 advertising-related charges on Tuesday."
(article 2)
"After attempts to contact Ribena resulted in a brush-off, the duo went to Fair Go. As well as filming the story, the organisation told the girls to contact the Commerce Commission, which they did."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_Go/
They took it to a 'investigative journalism' TV show first (aka 'The Press' - their motto is "If you've been ripped off, short-changed or given the runaround and nobody wants to know...we do!"), and then the TV people suggested that they take it to the CC.
Yeah, i thought that the end of this article summary was a little odd.. propaganda i say!
why wouldnt a company take a little loss to honor a legit customer's purchase? and who the heck thinks someone would buy two copies of vista if the first one they payed for didnt work??
don't ascribe silly ideas to a company because you dont like them. i think this kind of pontification on a news website is bad journalism of the highest degree.
Ray: What he means is Old Testament, Mr. Mayor, real wrath-of-God type stuff.
Venkman: Exactly.
Ray: Fire and brimstone coming down from the skies, rivers and seas boiling.
Egon: Forty years of darkness. Earthquakes, volcanoes-
Winston: The dead rising from the grave-
Venkman: Human sacrifice, DOGS and CATS living together.. Mass Hysteria!
An excellent article, but the catch is this. The reason that AIDS drugs exist is because of research. Drug companies have to pay for research, and research costs an extraordinary amount of money.
Especially with a disease like HIV, more and more research is needed to combat the ever-changing virus. AIDS today is not AIDS of a few years ago, and even with excellent compliance to medical regimen, our current array of antivirals will soon be inadequate therapy for HIV and AIDS patients.
Now, I agree that 10-15k a year is a lot for medicine, especially if it is a lifesaving and widespread phenomena like AIDS (there are some drugs in the hospital which cost several thousand dollars to produce a dose, but are very rarely needed) and that drug companies should do much much much more to make these drugs available and affordable. However, cutting them off at the neck, violating their patents which cost billions to develop, and giving them nothing in return as Brazil has done will end up stunting research entirely, which nobody wants.
Drug companies need to seriously re-think their distribution and pricing for the sake of humanity. The world needs to support drug companies financially to promote research and new medicines. What we need here is a happy medium.
Re:This is cronyism at its finest
on
More A's, More Pay
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
No way. Not even close.
Public education programs like M2M in Georgia (majority to minority) give kids from downtown atlanta a chance to get a better public education in the 'burbs on the state's dime. Many of these kids are from low income families where education is not exactly an emphasis.
A lot of these kids who I graduated with were insistant on getting formal "college prep" education, and the schools downtown focus on "job prep" degrees.. in a free market, these students would have been lost in the ghetto forever.
As for "no truely competitive markets that are bad for the poor" - the only thing more ridiculous than liberal idealism is economic idealism. There is no such thing as a "truely competitive market," and if there was, the poor would be the last ones to be able to take advantage of it. Poor people are at the disadvantage of not being able to drive around like people with cars and BP cards, so shopping around isnt exactly an option. Maybe you've heard of the "food desert" theory of urban nutrition? People without vehicles have to go where they can walk or where the bus can take them. You would leave a lot of kids out in the cold - the whole American Dream(tm) where a kid from the most humble upbringing can get an education and a good job depends heavily on standardized public education.
Now, our public school system as a whole is very corrupted, but I think that the tenure system put in place by teachers unions is the root of the problem. Young, freshly educated teachers are put in the worst possible situations and have to spend years to get anywhere in the system, while old crotchety dinosaurs climb the ranks and get the raises merely because they have been there the longest... not exactly a good formula for growth and development, eh? Also, it leads to a lot of "I put my time in, I'm getting mine" behavior - there was a scandal around here with teachers 'retiring' and getting rehired immediately so that they could be drawing pensions AND getting paid their salaries.. its stealing, plain and simple. Taking twice the paycheck for doing the same amount of work, taking money away from the education system in the process. SOMETHING needs to change, but I don't feel like a Free Market system would be the right choice.
Im all for a free-market TEACHER system with standardized testing. Maybe try and adjust it with a baseline score to reflect improvement versus just raw scores to avoid punishing educators in less educated-oriented environments.. Give raises to the teachers who TEACH. Just make sure they dont take a dive for the pre-test...
This is all a ramble- its like 3am here and i've been studying medchem all day.. take from it what you will. Remember though, its like grandaddy said:
"if there was an easy answer, no one would have to argue about it, would they?"
A bear from the Smokey Mountains and a bear from the Arctic are dropped into the water.
Which one dissolves first?
The one in the arctic, because it is POLAR
Wow, someone replying to a slashdot article that deems it dated. I'm sure you know that this windows vista news was originally revealed on the rosetta stone thousands of years ago, and that we are all tattooed with it on our bottoms at birth. Think of all the time slashdotters wasted re-reading something they already knew!
Or, the majority skipped over it if they had seen it, or didnt have anything interesting to say? How much time do you people waste making a post that proves how well-informed you are? Seriously, if/. is not cutting-edge enough for you, perchance you might find comfort knowing that no one gives a shit.
(its been a lonnggggg day, and i just really needed to flame. my apologies.)
Dinosaurs are reptiles.
Reptiles are wayyyyy closer to birds than frogs. Let alone the fact that you'd think they would make sure with all the science involved to at least pick one of the thousands of frogs that doesn't pull an elton john whenever it wants...
the science major in me makes me point this out to every one i know, im sorry.
Statistics.
"The Google white paper argues that the opportunity for power savings is immense by deploying the new power supplies in 100 million desktop PCs running eight hours a day, it will be possible to save 40 billion kilowatt-hours over three years, or more than $5 billion at Californias energy rates."....
Someone must have been aiming for a $5 billion goal to raise eyebrows with this sentence. Either that or google studies only use units like California-powerbill-equivalent-kilowatt-hours/tri ade.
thats why people list sources... otherwise, "credit" for the writing/research is automatically subcribed to you. I understand that there is zero malicious intent, and that you dont actually get anything out of it, but thats what your teachers were talking about when they told you about plagiarism - repeating others work without credit.
Slashdot Mirror
Placebo effect is very important, especially in things like depression, anxiety, and agitation (its a real clinical status, look it up!) where behavioral therapy may improve symptoms. I'll let it slide that homeopathy for these things is hard to justify, what with the "like cures like" and all (can we get a 100000x dilution of sad juice?), and stick to the placebo effect which I think is your main point.
..So, if you wake up and feel tired (who does that??), you are experiencing possible drug-related fatigue..
Also, we can pretty much write off Prozac because it has become the Ritalin of middle-age. By that I mean that a wide array of causes, behavioral, social, or chemical, are causing a problem, and instead of resolving it (through behavioral therapy or psychological analysis) the doc is just writing for the same treatment. Bobby is loud, give him Adderall. Bobby is sad, give him Prozac. Some people really need the chemically altering action of Prozac to be happy- some people just want to buy a month's worth of 10mg Problem Solver from CVS... i digress..
When administering or justifying a placebo as a treatment, take care not disregard the importance of real medicine. Placebo effect is significantly less present with things like hypertension, electrolyte imbalance, heart problems, diabetes, kidney and liver diseases, obesity, hypercholesterolemia, and other more corporal diseases. There is no "I think this will resolve my congestive heart failure" placebo effect that stands on its own.
As far as "sugar pills have no side effects" is concerned, look at and drug study that reports side effect profiles - placebos can have many of the same adverse effects as the "medicine" medicine. People will report dry mouth, sweating, fatigue, headaches, sleeping problems, and even sexual problems because ordinary people will have all of these things randomly on a day to day basis. The only thing thats different is that the FDA makes them report every single thing as a "possible side effect" if it occurs during a trial.
If you wanted to market sugar pills as an FDA approved drug, your drug monograph would be as bleak as that of any other drug with regard to side effects. I'm not trying to say that pharmaceutical compounds dont have side effects, but the same effect that makes people feel better regardless of drug action can also make them feel worse.
Homeopathic drugs will never be superior to prescriptions because they are just water. Literally, in some formulations there is actually NO drug - just the solvent, because they have diluted it to such a degree that you could have an entire lot without a single molecule of the effective chemical. It would be nice if all of our healthcare issues could be resolved by just "thinking and feeling as though one is receiving a cure," but almost every time, this is not the case. People who have needs for medicinal intervention can not afford to be distracted by things like this at a cost of delaying real medicine. Real medicine and real doctors and real pharmacists who make people better through real science.
fat people tend to have high BMIs
fat people tend to have more heart attacks and cost more money in healthcare.
people with high BMIs tend to have more heart attacks and cost more money in healthcare.
Thats all this is about.
There is a direct, positive correlation between BMI and cardiovascular disease. Fat people tend to have high BMIs, and they also tend to have heart attacks. STATISTICALLY, a BMI can be a good indicator of whether or not you will have cardiovascular problems, need blood pressure meds, become diabetic, or have a heart attack.
This does not mean you can guess ONE PERSONS risk by BMI, but you can guess that a group of people with BMI >30 will have more health problems than a group with a BMI 24. This is, as a matter of fact, very very useful to an insurance company. They are betting against you getting sick/ having to go to the hospital/ etc., so if you have a low BMI, they will bet more (aka charge you lower premiums) that you'll be ok. On the contrary, if you have a high BMI, they will charge you more, because odds are higher you'll end up in the ER costing them money.
And while BMI is not the most terribly accurate measurement, most people with a BMI over 30 are not in good, or even fair shape. Feel free to rationalize as necessary, but don't get carried away associating yourselves with NFL athletes or pro body builders just because you have a high weight/height ratio. I mean, this is slashdot.. if you are anywhere approaching that kind of physique, you have wandered a long long way to get to this website =)
Gotta get a spell check.
/.'s error!
I spent all day yesterday giggling at "eLfavirenz" (its efavirenz- no L). While HIV/AIDS is far from a humorous disease, images of brazilian midgets with big ears and curl-toed shoes sneaking around with big bottles of pirated protease inhibitors kept jumping in my head.
For a second treat, google ELFavirenz and see the 260+ web sites that took the exact same text and put it up after
The story existed long ago, but the character's likenesses can still be copyrighted.
Not all sets of seven dwarves look like that. Same would go for an "Aladdin" character- you can put anyone in a turban and call him Aladdin, but if he looks like this you could get in trouble for infringing on original artwork.
FTFAs
(article 1)
"They found Ribena did not contain the advertised level of vitamin C. GlaxoSmithKline didn't reply when the students approached the firm with their findings, so they took their results to a TV show.
Then the commerce commission got involved, leading GlaxoSmithKline to plead guilty to 15 advertising-related charges on Tuesday."
(article 2)
"After attempts to contact Ribena resulted in a brush-off, the duo went to Fair Go. As well as filming the story, the organisation told the girls to contact the Commerce Commission, which they did."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_Go/
They took it to a 'investigative journalism' TV show first (aka 'The Press' - their motto is "If you've been ripped off, short-changed or given the runaround and nobody wants to know...we do!"), and then the TV people suggested that they take it to the CC.
Dont be a hater =)
Yeah, i thought that the end of this article summary was a little odd.. propaganda i say!
why wouldnt a company take a little loss to honor a legit customer's purchase? and who the heck thinks someone would buy two copies of vista if the first one they payed for didnt work??
don't ascribe silly ideas to a company because you dont like them. i think this kind of pontification on a news website is bad journalism of the highest degree.
Venkman: Exactly.
Ray: Fire and brimstone coming down from the skies, rivers and seas boiling.
Egon: Forty years of darkness. Earthquakes, volcanoes-
Winston: The dead rising from the grave-
Venkman: Human sacrifice, DOGS and CATS living together.. Mass Hysteria!
An excellent article, but the catch is this. The reason that AIDS drugs exist is because of research. Drug companies have to pay for research, and research costs an extraordinary amount of money.
Especially with a disease like HIV, more and more research is needed to combat the ever-changing virus. AIDS today is not AIDS of a few years ago, and even with excellent compliance to medical regimen, our current array of antivirals will soon be inadequate therapy for HIV and AIDS patients.
Now, I agree that 10-15k a year is a lot for medicine, especially if it is a lifesaving and widespread phenomena like AIDS (there are some drugs in the hospital which cost several thousand dollars to produce a dose, but are very rarely needed) and that drug companies should do much much much more to make these drugs available and affordable. However, cutting them off at the neck, violating their patents which cost billions to develop, and giving them nothing in return as Brazil has done will end up stunting research entirely, which nobody wants.
Drug companies need to seriously re-think their distribution and pricing for the sake of humanity. The world needs to support drug companies financially to promote research and new medicines. What we need here is a happy medium.
No way. Not even close.
Public education programs like M2M in Georgia (majority to minority) give kids from downtown atlanta a chance to get a better public education in the 'burbs on the state's dime. Many of these kids are from low income families where education is not exactly an emphasis.
A lot of these kids who I graduated with were insistant on getting formal "college prep" education, and the schools downtown focus on "job prep" degrees.. in a free market, these students would have been lost in the ghetto forever.
As for "no truely competitive markets that are bad for the poor" - the only thing more ridiculous than liberal idealism is economic idealism. There is no such thing as a "truely competitive market," and if there was, the poor would be the last ones to be able to take advantage of it. Poor people are at the disadvantage of not being able to drive around like people with cars and BP cards, so shopping around isnt exactly an option. Maybe you've heard of the "food desert" theory of urban nutrition? People without vehicles have to go where they can walk or where the bus can take them. You would leave a lot of kids out in the cold - the whole American Dream(tm) where a kid from the most humble upbringing can get an education and a good job depends heavily on standardized public education.
Now, our public school system as a whole is very corrupted, but I think that the tenure system put in place by teachers unions is the root of the problem. Young, freshly educated teachers are put in the worst possible situations and have to spend years to get anywhere in the system, while old crotchety dinosaurs climb the ranks and get the raises merely because they have been there the longest... not exactly a good formula for growth and development, eh? Also, it leads to a lot of "I put my time in, I'm getting mine" behavior - there was a scandal around here with teachers 'retiring' and getting rehired immediately so that they could be drawing pensions AND getting paid their salaries.. its stealing, plain and simple. Taking twice the paycheck for doing the same amount of work, taking money away from the education system in the process. SOMETHING needs to change, but I don't feel like a Free Market system would be the right choice.
Im all for a free-market TEACHER system with standardized testing. Maybe try and adjust it with a baseline score to reflect improvement versus just raw scores to avoid punishing educators in less educated-oriented environments.. Give raises to the teachers who TEACH. Just make sure they dont take a dive for the pre-test...
This is all a ramble- its like 3am here and i've been studying medchem all day.. take from it what you will. Remember though, its like grandaddy said:
"if there was an easy answer, no one would have to argue about it, would they?"
I dunno about this.. Both unexpected tarantulas and too many chili peppers can make you poop yourself..
A bear from the Smokey Mountains and a bear from the Arctic are dropped into the water. Which one dissolves first? The one in the arctic, because it is POLAR
Wow, someone replying to a slashdot article that deems it dated. I'm sure you know that this windows vista news was originally revealed on the rosetta stone thousands of years ago, and that we are all tattooed with it on our bottoms at birth. Think of all the time slashdotters wasted re-reading something they already knew!
/. is not cutting-edge enough for you, perchance you might find comfort knowing that no one gives a shit.
Or, the majority skipped over it if they had seen it, or didnt have anything interesting to say? How much time do you people waste making a post that proves how well-informed you are? Seriously, if
(its been a lonnggggg day, and i just really needed to flame. my apologies.)
They left out the most important one..
[arnold]
"Who is your daddy, and what does he do?"
[/arnold]
...it gives ME wood!
Dinosaurs are reptiles. Reptiles are wayyyyy closer to birds than frogs. Let alone the fact that you'd think they would make sure with all the science involved to at least pick one of the thousands of frogs that doesn't pull an elton john whenever it wants... the science major in me makes me point this out to every one i know, im sorry.
Statistics. "The Google white paper argues that the opportunity for power savings is immense by deploying the new power supplies in 100 million desktop PCs running eight hours a day, it will be possible to save 40 billion kilowatt-hours over three years, or more than $5 billion at Californias energy rates." ....
Someone must have been aiming for a $5 billion goal to raise eyebrows with this sentence. Either that or google studies only use units like California-powerbill-equivalent-kilowatt-hours/tri ade.
I, for one, welcome our new ass-robot overlords..
thats why people list sources... otherwise, "credit" for the writing/research is automatically subcribed to you. I understand that there is zero malicious intent, and that you dont actually get anything out of it, but thats what your teachers were talking about when they told you about plagiarism - repeating others work without credit.