dras knowledge

Monday, July 31, 2006

Should I Vote for Fluoride in my Tap Water?

Fluoride is an all-natural mineral, it's no more like putting medication in your water than is putting iodine in your table salt, folic acid in your wheat flour, or vitamin A & D in your milk. (sheesh, the fanaticism of some people)

http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/rr5014a1.htm

http://www.cdc.gov/OralHealth/factsheets/fl-surgeon2004.htm

The main risk to community drinking water fluoridation, I felt, was the burden to government and the tax payer. Negligible as it might be, it costs money to initiate and maintain it. Second, like you point out, fluoride in drinking water is not an exact science. Maybe there is a good argument that it doesn't have to be. But, I think I would like it a little bit more precise than it appears. (Based on your suggestion, maybe it can be more precise.) To me, alternative means of Fluoriding our children probably have the same benefit, or risk. Finally, like any decision at the poll booth, political views influenced my decision. It's a fuzzy line where
government responsibility should end, and individual, non-government community, or commercial responsibility should begin. I was not convinced the cost-risk /
benefit ratios supported government fluoridation of drinking water in my community.

nawledge

Thursday, July 13, 2006

Dr. James Duke, basement shaman

>>snip<<<
'--He's an expert, you know, on... allopathic ...[blah, blah]'

---------------

Note that the term "allopathy" literally means "different" medical practice as coined by Dr. Hahnemann in the mid 19th century. He used the term to describe the practice of medicine using techniques that produce the opposit effect of the illness being treated, as opposed to his like-treats-like homeopathy theory. Aside from Jim Duke, who is apparently an "expert", the term is almost exclusively used by those
who do not practice it. (Maybe he's an expert of the allopathy practiced in Dr. Hahnemann's time.)

>>>snip<<<<
If I had an enlarged prostate gland, I’d bet that gland that Saw Palmetto would work as well as the FDA-approved drugs

----------

I therefore insist that he also chew on raw foxglove if he develops dropsy, gnaw willow bark for his aches and pains, and perhaps even use hardware store rat poison for his coronary artery disease. Point is, there's a reason outside the capitalistic conspiracy theory he infers for researching the bioactive ingredients out of nature. (I intentionally left out the elk antlers, but it is an excellent analogy to his flawed point about Saw Palmetto.)

>>>snip<<<
I'd like to
> convince the US medical establishment that holistic
> herbal treatments are often more effective than
> isolated single compounds.” Duke explains that
> many traditional herbal remedies, which he refers to
> as “dragon’s blood”, are effective because of
> a synergistic combination of chemicals, and not
> because of a single, easily replicable, patentable
> molecule – which he describes as the search for
> the “silver bulletâ

-------------------------------

Most of the pro CAM studies use synergistic treatments in study protocols in an elusive attempt to demonstrate just this concept. Problem is twofold. It's well established that more almost always has a greater impact than less. Even more of nothing will show more positive results than less of nothing. Second, how are you ever going to know the right combination of things to try, and how do you know
you're not causing a synergistic BAD effect unless you look at the properties of each entity individually? Incidentally, most modern "allopathic" treatment
consists of many different modalities combined synergistically.

Overall, I find more rhetoric than substance in the presented arguments.

Finally, should anyone really trust medical facts or ideas presented by anyone who calls himself "basement shaman"?

dras

Teen with cancer choose alternative medicine over chemotherapy

This case has hit the national news outlets a couple of times and I'm sure there are journalist hopefuls wanting to go "Oprah" all over this in the hopes it's the next Schiavo-story ratings booster. To point out the parady endemic in our time, everyone takes what issue is popular and slants it in the support of their own agendas. One simple argument used mostly by those with one agenda is, "how can you deny this boy and his parents the freedom to choose whatever type of cancer treatment they want?"

Simple answer: because there is a law. There are laws created with the intention to protect the rights of the individual, including children. In our society, there are laws intended to protect children from a dangerous or otherwise oppressive environment in the home. There are laws that dictate the standards and conduct of professionals, including those in health care and our social servants. There are laws that help protect us from making uninformed, unwise or dangerous decisions. They help ensure that we don't toss our life savings away in a to-good-to-be-true savings and loan investment. They help us to better understand what we are getting when we make a purchase, and that we aren't otherwise swindled, cheated or decieved.

The law that has "denied a freedoom" in this case was created to satisfy one of these cultural altruistic intentions. In this case, by law, health care professionals acted when they felt the child was in danger of morbidity and death when he did not take advantage of treatment that has been scientifically and professionally formulated to be the best course of treatment with the best possible chance for a successful outcome.

For those who scoff at the medical establishment for dictating such care, remember, there are those that scoffed at banks in favor of savings-and-loans. Mainstream alternative medicine is plagued with charletons, crooks, and hucksters who already operate on the fringes of the consumer protection laws outlined above. Which one of them are you singly going to trust in lieu of the whole of modern medicine that is backed by consensus of empiric understanding or science, and that is operating under close scrutiny of government oversight and self-regulation.

Fortunetely, we live under a government that allows us to evaluate the effects of the law and change the statutes by consensus to better reflect our cultural intentions.

The glowing depiction of our health care system above is only in comparison to the alternative of alternative medicine. Our health care system is not above scrutiny or non-deserving of skepticism. Medical science is controlled and directed by social mores and cultural influences.


Cancer is indiscriminate, and there are few things that can enter the lives of
individuals and their loved ones that is more powerful. Many are often left to fend for themselves for everything outside the clinical medical treatment, with little progressive support.

Cancer clinic care is something I have very little experience with. Is treatment sometimes recommended and carried out mostly because if it is not, and outcomes are bad, there will be hell-to-pay, so to speak? I wonder if recommended treatments are
sometimes based too heavily on those 5-year mortality/morbidity predictions and extrapolations. Does it sometimes come across as, for example, "hey, Starchild, we're going to subject you to loosing 9 pounds, having your hair fall out, and basically suffering you through 4-8 weeks of feeling like you have the mother of all flus -again, because in doing so we think you have a 12% better chance of being
better in 5 years than you would be otherwise"? There's also the historical case study of hundreds if not thousands of chemo with bone marrow transplants done on breast cancer woman that were finally shown to be more detrimental than helpful. Finally, one clear conclusion of the recent Dartmouth Atlas Project study was that more treatment and/or more intensive care does not correlate with better outcomes or higher patient satisfaction.

I think maybe it is time oncology care focus a little more on cultural values of the society, the family and the patient, along with the 5-year mortality/morbidity predictions. Then again, maybe it's not that easy.

dras