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We can talk about medicine from mushrooms. The most famous example is penicillin from the fungus Penicillium chrysogenum. The first attempts at mass production of penicillin were done with large fermentation cultures of the fungus, and then the penicillin was purified out. This article was written more than 10 years after the first large scale productions for the Army. Skimming through the data, you'll notice that the peak penicillin production of a fungal culture was 2,000 units/mL at 8 hours. A normal dose of I.V. penicillin for an adult is anywhere from 2,000,000 to 24,000,000 units per day, depending on the sensitivity of the bacteria being treated. A normal course of antibiotics is 10-14 days. Do that math. So, now you know why, at least for penicillin, how the fungus itself is worthless to medicine, but mass producing one of its chemicals in a laboratory has made a global impact on human health.
I'm not having this discussion with you to tell you that you are wrong and to rub your nose in it. I'm talking to you as a skeptic. We are not skeptical enough. If you question everything and accept nothing without reproducible evidence, you won't be had.
For example, did you know that your anti-medicine/pro-alternative health is not actually a stick-it-to-the-man grassroots movement that you probably believe it is? The natural medicine ideal in this country was not only marketed to the American public, but bullishly protected in Congress by lobbyists paid for by the largest nutritional supplement companies (e.g. Rexall/Sundown, Nu Skin, etc.). The result of their public propaganda campaign and millions of lobbyist dollars resulted in the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act of 1994. Thanks to the propaganda campaign the act gained a great deal of public support, and was thusly passed. Misguided Americans successfully fought for, and won, their right to be sold unregulated potentially harmful 'supplements' that promised to cure any and every condition not strictly defined by the FDA (i.e. Energy supplements are marketed as "alertness aids", because "fatigue" is an FDA defined condition).
I just wanted to clarify that the "Big Pharma - money/greedy/evil" attitude is equally valid for the "Big Supplement" companies that push these worthless remedies. And, I say worthless now, and a tentative truth, as none have been proven through scientific methods (ie. clinical trials) to show any significant impact on any sort of disease process.
You touched on the idea that medicine comes from nature. You are 100% correct. Medicine as we know it today, originated from the folk medicine still practiced today "alternative practitioners". The reason that Saw Palmetto has been used for hundreds, if not thousands, of years in folk medicine, but it is not used in Medicine today, is because it doesn't actually do anything. If you are interested in a systematic review of current available data for any of the "huggaballoo", as you called it, you should look at the Cochrane Collaboration. It's an independent non-profit that tries to assess the effectiveness of any 'medicine' available worldwide.
As for not being able to patent novel therapies, that's simply not true. A folk medicine plant can't be patented, but if anyone actually found a compound or family of compounds in a plant that had some medicinal qualities, you bet your bum they would patent it. Big and small pharma/biotech companies do exactly this. They take a 'medicinal plant' use different extraction solvents, and screen their extracts for medicinal compounds. Even known and previously patented compounds can be re-patented for a different purpose. Fluoxetine is the drug in Prozac, which was patented and FDA approved for depression. After the drug went off patent, it was later FDA approved to treat menopausal symptoms, and re-patented under the brand name Sarafem. The point here is that, if something works provable (ie. randomized, double-blinded, placebo-controlled clinical trial), someone is going to patent it and make money.
The brilliant political stunts that the 'supplement' industry pulled off is similar, in that they are selling a product that is making billions per year, but with two big exceptions: (1) They don't have to prove their product is safe. (2) They don't have to prove that their product is effective.
Think about what that means.
Thanks to the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act of 1994, I can put dry grass clippings in a capsule with a bottle that reads, "Ingredients: Organic Bermuda, aerial parts", and sell it to you, because it will cure your breathing problems.
I write "breathing problems", but because you have asthma, you read "asthma", or you have emphysema, so you read "emphysema".
My Bermuda grass cures asthma. It cures emphysema. It cures lung cancer. If you were born without lungs, my Bermuda grass would make you sprout fully functional lungs.
I don't need to prove any of that. But, who needs a clinical trial, when we have the living proof of Ms. Laney Dickinson from St. Louis, MO. She had been suffering from asthma since she was 2 years old. She was on every medication there is, was hospitalized for numerous asthma attacks throughout her life, and was being managed by a whole medical team, including Allergists, Immunologists, and Pulmonologists. Nothing was helping her asthma. So she stopped with Western Medicine, and turned to TheSciNerd's Bermuda grass. After 3 doses her symptoms subsided, and she now takes my Bermuda grass every day, and she lives asthma-free.
Sound familiar? Complete Bullshit, and 100% legal.
Additionally, my neighbor might have sprayed some toxic fertilizer and pesticides on my Bermuda grass. Luckily, I don't need to prove it's safe before I sell it to you for consumption.
I don't understand how consumers are not more disgusted with supplement companies than pharma companies.
So, let's talk about diet. I am a firm believer in preventing disease with a healthy lifestyle. That includes diet, exercise, stress reduction, not smoking, not drinking excessively, etc.. I think you'll find it difficult to find a trained health care professional that disagrees. There are mountains of data supporting healthy lifestyle choices being positive determinants of health, in terms of disease-free life, quality of life, and longevity. The problem is that the benefits of diets that prevent disease are being extrapolated into the realm of treating diseases without any evidence of effectiveness. Is there a place for a modified diet in certain treatment plans? I wouldn't be surprised if diet could serve to improve outcomes of a disease treatment. Can diet alone cure cancer, as in the two stories you told me? No.
I say, no, because I have never seen any documented evident of a single person being cured of stage 4 lung cancer by eating nuts and berries.
Additionally, if a special diet was curing cancer, the evidence would be literally everywhere – in the news, in peer-reviewed science/medical journals, being discussed in classrooms all over the world.
It would only take a small proof-of-concept clinical trial to demonstrate that a certain diet can shrink cancer. It would be so easy, and all of humanity would benefit. There are 'clinics' and 'practitioners' all over the world that will swear by their diet, and tell you how many patients they have cured. The patients of those clinics will even tell you that they are cured! However, not one of them has tried to publish their findings under the scrutiny of peer-review. This is when you should be asking all of those experts why they don't want to prove to the world that their diet is real. There are two possibilities, either the diet doesn't work, and they don't want to lose their revenue when the diet is proven false, or their diet works, but they don't want to share their secrets so that they keep all the revenue! The latter is unlikely, but either way, screw that guy. He's a money-grubbing jerk.
And, that is really what ALL of this comes down to. Money.
Everybody wants to sell you something.
When it comes to disease I can choose a treatment that has to be proven safe and effective, or I can choose a treatment that does not need to be proven safe nor effective.
Both of those treatments are being sold by someone who wants my money.
Guess which one I'm choosing.
http://www.reddit.com/r/bitcoinbeg/comments/1y6f6x/beg_you_know_that_weird_thing_that_you_are_too/cfivihy
