To say that the "alternative medicine" and conspiracy theorists about Western medicine are dangerous to society?

[YourAmplePlumPoster]

I have a friend I've known all my life. He first of all refused to have the Covid vaccine and then refused treatment for his prostate cancer and said he was going to treat it with homeopathic medicine. Result was that it spread to his hip bone. Luckily he started chemo and it's worked. What is wrong with these people?

The measles outbreak in the US is worrying:
archive.is/1vL8M

"A friend rubbished statins."
Perhaps she'd prefer a stroke . My mum in law had a stroke a few years ago. She had high cholesterol and high blood pressure. She now walks with a limp and has a live in carer. Take your statins and your other meds folks.

I think it's really important to debunk the quacks and the quackery. These people are attention seeking and dangerous.

I see many posts here on food/ daily diet topics where people use the word 'chemicals' in terror, as if these things are all alien and universally toxic. I roll my eyes. It's easy to spot the poorly educated.

People castigate Americans for voting for trump but I strongly suspect if he were to stand for election in the UK, he'd win a seat and probably end up leading a political party to a majority in Parliament.

This sums it up nicely. They're welcome to remove themselves from the gene pool with their 'beliefs'.

I don’t think the mum did have chemo. I think she had a mastectomy which removed the tumour and was recommended chemo & radiation to prevent recurrence. It was that she turned down in favour of alternative therapies. She basically reduced her chances of staying in remission, took a gamble on it which paid off and then claimed that the alternative therapies had cured her.
Which is entirely different to not treating a mostly curable form of cancer at all. It’s a horrific story.

Exactly.

It baffles me how people actually think herbal treatments work in the body if they are not chemical reactions.

That's right, she didn't have chemo.

My son actually only had surgery the first time he had NHL because he had some complications due to where his tumour was located and was too unwell for chemotherapy but for him it did come back 4 months later and thankfully was able to have it then.

Honey is used to treat wounds within GP practices and the NHS.

Sorry but you are just as ill informed as the people you are talking about.

https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/medicine/2015/tu/facts/

Some herbal medicines are highly effective (peer-reviewed, double blind, Nobel prize, meta study effective) with fewer side-effects in many cases. All sorts of western medicine started as ‘herbal’ medicines.

Scientific method matters. And homeopathy doesn’t pass. But many herbal and TCM medicines absolutely do. And the example I referenced above, from TCM, addresses malaria, a field that is underfunded and ignored because it’s black and brown people dying. Tu YouYou is a heroine.

The strange thing about complementary and alternative medicine is that some people choose to believe it's both ineffective and dangerous, it is essentially a mirror to the anti-vaxxer's argument. A more reasoned argument would be to go through each treatment and research whether it is effective or not. A real problem is that natural products such as herbs cannot legally be patented so there is no money to be made in researching them. There is so much money to be made in pharmaceutical treatments for common illnesses... But if you have a rare disease then its not profitable to treat your disease, so alternatives do have their place.

Your link doesn’t work for me but by definition, a placebo has no actual effect. So any positive outcome maybe psychological (very unlikely for serious disease), natural course of the disease or from some other external effect.

I understand how thalidomide etc can and does cause distrust. However, that doesn’t make herbal and alternative medicines more trustworthy or better. Rigorously tested medicines and treatments will still be far far far safer and more effective than alternative medicines, which are not tested for effective side let alone side effects etc.

I did try acupuncture once.
But then I returned home to find my voodoo doll had died so won’t be trying that again.

Also wrong. The placebo effect can have measurable physical effects.

‘By definition’ is the same as ‘common sense’. SCIENCE people! Measure it and see. People did and it does.

We're going through an anti-intellectual period, it happens every so often in any society. You'd have to ask a sociologist why it's happening (or chatgpt).

Ooo my bad thought she did. Even so she got her treatment.

"On one video call, Chantelle says, Paloma said she had a new lump in her armpit, and her mother had told her it meant that the cancer was going out of her body"

How?!

LOL. This is garbage (that you’ve no doubt lifted from somewhere else).

You are just as ill-informed as the people you’re on here ranting about. Take a break.

Not wrong - read my post properly

We are a fully vaxed family and I completely respect modern medicine. However, I would argue that our reliance on modern medicine can be more dangerous than not believing in it at all. Most modern illnesses are completely preventable and could be cured by a healthy diet and active lifestyle. However it is easier to carry on eating chips and demanding medicine from the doctor which just treats symptoms without ever looking at a cause. There has to be a balance.

Based on what? Mine is based on proper studies. Yours is based on the 6th form debating classic, “The Oxford English Dictionary defines placebo as…”

It has physical effects. You are wrong. Just own it. It’s an interesting and counterintuitive fact.

Yes of course but that's different than someone individually choosing to treat their disease in an alternative way and their so called "friends" practically revelling in saying "told you so" now they're seriously ill or people saying "they're just taking themselves out of the gene pool". And it's not like anyone knows what the alternative would be if they used conventional medicine-no one has a crystal ball.

Well there may be some herbal remedies that work according to some but tell me one that works in the case of cancer. Not one.

Whilst I don’t believe in people thinking they can cure themselves of cancer or vaccines are causing autism there are many natural products that are used in western medicine. Example I give before was honey, it’s used in many GP practices and NHS wards to treat certain wounds. Honey and lemon have been proven to help soothe sore throats and many cold and flu medicines use these flavours and extracts of them. In certain wounds they also use maggots to eat the dead flesh. So there are some natural products that can be used and are used in western medicine.

I believe there is a place for alternative/complementary medicine alongside conventional medicine. And for those who think its a placebo, so what? If it make the person feel 'better' then its no different to my ex mil who 'felt better the instant i had the prescription in my hand' her words not mine.
My son (27) has recently been effectively treated using a combination of herbs and acupuncture for a gut issue that conventional medicine could not treat- told it was IBS and he should learn to live with feeling exhausted and ill all the time with no energy to even go for a walk. The practitioner (a qualified GP who trained in Chinese medicine 20 years ago) treated him with acupuncture (7 sessions) and three months of herbs and he's now eating for England (no dietary restrictions) and running 20 miles a week.

As for not getting vaccines, is measles really a good choice for your kid to have? I remember having measles and mumps back in the day. Not very nice. Anyone wanting to inflict this on their kid is a nutter. But not only that, they inflict this on others.

Sorry. You are delusional and being cheated.