Why not? It can be scientifically proven to work, and work well, and it is certainly not harmful or dangerous. So why would it be against AMA policy? There might be "proper" meds which work better, but I was also not given those, even though the doc knew I will have trouble after all those antibiotics. So why not give me any of the proper meds *before* I got the issue?

There are, in general, a lot of "natural" remedies, which are proven to work, and yet not sanctioned by AMA, I hear. Kefir/yoghurt is just one example, but there are many others.

This is what I am talking about. AMA has its stupid rules which allow to prescribe untested and unsafe drugs (thus all the action law suits) but a natural and proven solution like kefir is frowned upon just because it is non-pharmaceutical?

It makes me think that the reason such solution are frowned upon is because its the diary farmers and grocery stores who make profit. Rather than pharma companies and drug stores who spend fortunes to lobby AMA. Combine it with the fact that most doctors should never have been doctors to begin with, and you have the present-day american medicine in a nutshell. Its a mess, by and large, driven by big money and even bigger interests. Not much unlike NRA, just to give one example.

So I can sort-of understand the whole disillusion people have with the "proper" medical methodology when I look at it in this light. And I have to admit, I can't blame them much. Which is not to say they are always right, but they do have a point worth listening to.

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- Bantari
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WARNING: This post might contain Opinions!!

Garlic is supposedly a strong anti-bacterial immune-enhancing thing (scientifically tested, AFAIR) so, every time I feel close to catching a cold or sore throat (I'm relatively prone to it in winter because I'm too sensitive to temperature changes, hence, sweat a lot by going from 10 out to 25 in, thus may freeze when going out again) I swallow a full/half a peeled clove of garlic (depends if it is large or small.) I haven't ruled out placebo effect, but this has kept me sore-throat free for 2 years (before I had at least 2 a year on average.) I don't mind the placebo effect at all, in any case.

Another tip, for sinusitis sniff a minuscule amount of powdered cayenne pepper. It will get you heavy sneezing within minutes, clearing up whatever is around there. Repeat a few times a couple of days and the immune system will take care of the rest. Also prone to sinusitis (more than two a year) this has essentially made it a matter of 1 day things instead of dragging it along a couple of weeks and having to eventually resort to antibiotics to kill it off.

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Geek of all trades, master of none: the motto for my blog mostlymaths.net

(my emphasis)

I'm sorry but I laughed very hard at this.

Firstly, I never called you dumb. Although if you really check your medical conditions online and trust in everything Google offers then yes, I indeed called you dumb.
If you refered to the extremist part of my last post: The "you" was not directly targeted at you but towards people who can only see black and white (thus the reason why I laughed so hard at your remark above).

Secondly, I acknowledged the good and bad in homeopathy in all my three posts so far.
I acknowledged "it has no medically effect (scientifically speaking)".
I said: "I never claimed, homeopathy will cure everything" and I condemned extremist behaviour, which also counts when people mistreat their children ("children" seem to be en-vogue right now when you want to argue a cause).


Undoubtedly true (I even read some of those studies), and here I use it and it helps me. Maybe just emotionally or psychosomatically, I don't know and honestly I don't really care. As I said since it has no proven medical effect, it has no side-effects, I love this part.

Baseline for me: It helps people - somehow. It in itself has no side-effects. If people misuse it, they die - an inconvenient truth but as old as human race. People rip off other people everyday everywhere, that's not homoepathy's fault. A lie has to fall on fruitful soil to grow. Focus on education instead of homeopathy, I would say.

And finally: I'm totally fine with people not using homeopathy, I'm not here advocating it. Freedom of choice, anyone? =)

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My "guide" to become stronger in Go

Actually, it does not help you. It may trigger the placebo effect, and then the placebo effect helps you, but the homeopathic medicine is not doing anything. If someone swapped out you homeopathic medicin for sugar pills, you would experience the same effect.



Nope, it does absolutely completely nothing. Zip, zilch, zero, nada.



By going on the internet and saying things like "homeopathic medicine helps me, homeopathy helps people", you are advocating it. As you said, people are stupid, and believe things they read on the internet, and make decisions based on that. By perpetuating the myth that homeopathy has any value whatsoever, you are actively working against educating people. Effectively, you are contributing to the death of children.

You have freedom of choice, and freedom of speech. It is absolutely your prerogative to lie to people. But if you lie to people, and those people then harms themselves and others, you don't get to absolve responsibility by saying "people are stupid, I am not responsible if they believe what I say and act on it". Either don't lie, or have the guts to take responsibility for your words.

Lots of garlic, ginger tea and liposomal vitamin C and a generous dose of colloidal silver. That is all the medicine which is needed at the first sign of a cold. No one in our family has had a bad cold in many year because of this regimen and between us we have only required a single course of antibiotics in all that time.

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Still officially AGA 5d but I play so irregularly these days that I am probably only 3d or 4d over the board (but hopefully still 5d in terms of knowledge, theory and the ability to contribute).

Your point is?
I swap the thing, which has no proven medical effect, with another thing without medical effect and it would work the same. So I can just stay with the first thing, can't I?
Again (and again and again) I know the data and it still works. I don't care why it works for me and I'm glad I can take something which does not have page-long side-effects.



In all seriousness, what was the thing about seeing the good and bad in a topic as a sign of intelligence?

If people misinterpret my words, it's because they choose to do so, because they want it and not because I made such a strong case (or any for that matter). Again, a lie only works when there's fruitful soil.
Most certainly I am not against educating people. I know it has no proven medical effect (I even wrote in multiple times by now) but it still works for me and thus I make my very own educated choice to take homeopathy.

By the way, I never said it will help everyone or that it can treat anything (I explicitely stated the opposite), I only said it works me. I stand by these words but by these words alone. You (or anyone really) are in no position to call me a liar when I tell you about my personal experiences.






post scriptum: Oh, yeah, I wrote it helps people. Okay, I was a bad. This was another part of my anecdotal evidence, sorry.

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My "guide" to become stronger in Go

As I said, you have the right to lie, and people are responsible for their own actions. Personally I think lying to people is an objectionable thing to do, and if I spot someone lying online then I will respond to correct them and to try and prevent others from being mislead. That's what I'm doing in this thread.

Happy birthday!


You choose to read my words as lies and you are of course free to do so. I find it presumptuous, though. All I do is telling personal experiences and you have no way of knowing whether they are true or false.

I try to keep an open mind in this thread ; )

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My "guide" to become stronger in Go

I'll stick to garlic and occasionally ginger. I like ginger. But why should you need antibiotics for a cold? A mildly sore throat is really far from "need antibiotics" sore throat, at least for me (and I hope most MDs in my country.) I only thing I need them when I have a hard time swallowing and speaking.

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Geek of all trades, master of none: the motto for my blog mostlymaths.net

This whole debate started with:



You aren't just saying "works fine for me", you're saying "it does no harm" and "it's misplaced to argue about it". Those of us disagreeing have been pointing out that it does harm, that there are dead people to show that.

Look, let's say I take somebody up skydiving, hand them a parachute bag filled with pillows and wait for them to jump out. By your logic, the fake parachute did no harm, they just didn't have a real parachute. You've got to be dumb to not double check that, so it's there fault anyways. No. That would still be murder. Harm by tricking is still harm.

Homeopathy isn't drinking water, homeopathy is drinking water to cure ailments. Homeopathy is telling people "this cures diseases". To then turn around and say "well, if they use it instead of antibiotics to cure a disease, you can't blame the theory that told them that would be a good thing to do". Of course you can! The harm homeopathy does is that it's put in opposition to other medicines, either directly like the quote earlier, or indirectly because if it cures a disease, why would you also take medicine with nasty side effects?

As for the use of children as examples, I only took that path because you've been implying it's the homeopaths faults for being dumb. The dead children examples aren't to stir up stranger-danger, they're to demonstrate that even if you're willing to overlook people killing themselves, they're also killing others with no agency in the decision.

I'd strongly recommend against taking colloidal silver particularly, unless you like the idea of having argyria.

Thanks!

You can quibble over the meaning of the word lie, i.e. if someone thinks that what they are saying it true when it is in fact false, are they lying? I'm using it here in the sense of "saying something that is false" (i.e. regardless of whether that is deliberate).

The statement "homeopathy helps people" is false. This a a proven fact, and you have admitted as much.

The statement "homeopathy helps me" is also false, and this is where you apparently disagree. The fact that you, personally, feel that homeopathy helps you is not really relevant, because it is not reliable. People are very good at lying to themselves. There have been plenty of examples posted in the thread about that.

IMO opinion, even the statement "science shows that homeopathy does not work, but I personally have the experience that it helps me" is harmful, because it perpetuates a falsehood. How would you feel if a family member or friend took your personal testimony as a reason to choose homeopathy over medicine? How would you feel if they died from a preventable cause because of that?

It's a lovely day.

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"This is a game that rewards patience and balance. You must think like a man of action and act like a man of thought."
-Jonas Skarssen

There's an interesting, if perhaps extravagant theory that goes like this: Linus Pauling, after winning two Nobel prizes, followed a long history of Nobel winners in descending into badly done research, setting out late in life to cure the common cold and proclaiming triumphantly that large doses of vitamin C do the trick. This had actually already been researched by this point, and at best there was disputed findings that it might slightly reduce symptoms. His lab had no significant new research, again just the possibility of a minor relief effect. But Pauling set off evangelizing vitamin C as the cure for the common cold, and to this day people reach for vitamin C supplements and orange juice at the first sniffles and coughs.

Senility and bad science was the conventional wisdom, another great scientist who lost sight of how science works. But there's an alternative theory that Pauling knew full well that there's no evidence vitamin C can cure the cold. Instead, he wanted to give the world a placebo. He used his immense stature as a two-time Nobel prize winner to push this theory out into the public without normal scientific process having the chance to discredit it. And certainly, that vitamin C helps a cold is now a common home remedy.

As hard as it is to overdose on water, it's even harder to overdose on Vitamin C. As a water soluble vitamin, excess washes directly out of the body. And unlike homeopathy, it was advocated for a very particular, minor, incurable ailment.

Which is to say, I have no issue with placebo and prayer to help a person. I can see many reasons a homeopathic regimen could help a person feel better (some people go to a homeopathic "doctor" who listens carefully and with empathy to the sufferer. Interestingly, just being able to talk about how one feels seems to help a lot of issues, regardless of whether a medicine is then consumed). But I would differentiate between 'responsible' placebos, offered to help something for which cures don't exist, and which is unpleasant rather than deadly, and 'harmful' placebos like homeopathy that are offered as cures for serious ailments. Homeopathy isn't for a particular disease: it just kind of cures anything if you mix it right.

Interestingly, I would say this is exactly the same issue as overuse of antibiotics otherwise alluded to here. Antibiotics only help bacterial infections, and only when consumed properly, taking the entire course of pills. When used correctly to cure potentially fatal infections, they're an amazing drug that drastically improved human lifespans. When used as a fix-it-all, serious harm is done.

I take vitamin C as an example of placebo done right, relief of suffering for the masses at little cost. I take homeopathy as an example of placebo done dangerously wrong: not targetted at some simple ailment but sold as a cure-all and then used to the exclusion of working drugs causing preventable deaths.

I'll admit defeat here but let me end with another anecdote:
I started a thread about homeopathy in another forum. Five posts later a soon-to-be-doctor (yes, I know him) chimed in and wrote figuratively, what heals, is right. He added that there are dangerous tendencies in homeopathy where people are promising others pie in the sky but for minor diseases homeopathy has its place as long as people get better.

I agreed and the thread died down.

No news of dead children, no accusations of assisted suicide or lying...

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My "guide" to become stronger in Go

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Patience, grasshopper.

It takes way more than is consumed in order to cause that. Small does are okay for a healthy body.

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Still officially AGA 5d but I play so irregularly these days that I am probably only 3d or 4d over the board (but hopefully still 5d in terms of knowledge, theory and the ability to contribute).

Do not take colloidal silver, it is quackery. It has no know medical benefits but does carry risks.

Herman, that quote from Wikipedia goes a long way to confirming that colloidal silver is good for you. Why else would the very people who stand to lose financially by its us be so adamantly opposed to it? Plus, Wikiepedia is not exactly know for the accuracy of its information.

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Still officially AGA 5d but I play so irregularly these days that I am probably only 3d or 4d over the board (but hopefully still 5d in terms of knowledge, theory and the ability to contribute).

Sorry, but I can't resist:



XKCD rollover text: What do you want me to do? LEAVE? Then they'll keep being wrong!