http://doubtfulnews.com/2012/09/ben-goldacres-big-pharma-to-be-released-this-week/ I try to avoid buying into conspiracy theories (I read a whole lot of them on these boards). I don't think there's anything conspiratorial in big Pharma, but the money in it can corrupt. There's no actual need for a conspiracy here, just good old fashioned corrupt behavior. (Just ask Doctor Drew, who's in trouble for 'allegedly' taking bribes).
Hrmm. I read Ben Goldacre's previous book (Bad Science) and it was pretty good, well written, well referenced. Also read his blog - similar quality. It definitely highlights a lot of the stupid going on, but I wouldn't say it's all that conspiracy mode - just a lot of "Yeah, this is kind of how things actually happen. It's pretty stupid, and it should change, but there you go".
I'm sorry, I didn't mean to imply that this book is about conspiracies -- I was just trying to preemptively respond to what I thought would happen if I started this topic (it was wrong of me to do so -- I see that now). I agree that Ben Goldacre is a good writer and that this book happens to be timely enough (due to several current scandals involving GSK and other pharmaceutical companies), that I'm hoping that it will expose him to a larger audience. I think that the Doctor Drew scandal is a bit shocking, since it involves one of the few television doctors that I feel seemed to have earned a good reputation. If you are unaware of what I'm talking about, here's a link. /edit And here's another big pharma story (also involving GSK): http://doubtfulnews.com/2012/07/big-pharma-fine-for-glaxosmithkline/
>>TV Doctor >>Good reputation I mean, sure, getting public awareness of medicine isn't necessarily bad... but there's better ways than chucking a perfectly good medical professional up for rent. /cynicism.
Completely on topic, despite sounding off topic... I tried every major anti-depressant/mood stabilizer made in the last two decades. Paxil and Wellbutrin were two I tried. Both had awful sexual side effects that were *NOT* in the published details at the time. They are now, but only because tens of millions of people all reported to their Doctors that they were "suffering" anorgasmia. (The inability to achieve an orgasm.) For the record, I am male, and everything works, but the sensitivity is so low it is not even close to possible to actually do the aforementioned. Sad as it is, antidepressants have a known link to suicides. Especially a few specific ones like Paxil. In particular, Paxil is linked to a specific method of suicide. Massive head trauma. People taking it remain calm and oblivious as they lie down on a train track and put their head on the rail. People shoot themselves in the head. People do all manner of nonsense that they, when deprived of the Paxil for a while would not even consider doing. Any competent Doctor can confirm this. The fact is that antidepressants are vastly overprescribed. People who are suffering mild depression due to life issues cannot usually be helped by doping them up to the point that they do not recognize how messed up their lives are. Children are given antidepressants purely because the parents are often too lazy to keep them in line and enforce proper discipline and behavior. The parents sometimes think the kids are not supposed to be active and energetic. That is what kids are defined by. Please, if you are currently, or may in the future entertain the idea of doping your kids up to keep them from being a pest, remember that they are *YOUR* responsibility. And no pill will teach them how to adapt to the challenges of life nor to behave properly. There is surprisingly little difference between some street drugs and some antidepressants. You want your kids to be druggies? I am Bi-Polar. So my mood fluctuates rapidly. Unlike most Bi-Polar people, my mood can and sometimes does change several times a day. So taking an antidepressant is a bad move since it will last longer than any depression I feel. I have only mentioned two medications in this post, but I have taken more than four dozen different antidepressants and/or mood stabilizers in the past. I take none of these at current. And I feel better without them. With the medications the first thing that you lose is intellect. No kidding. You lose track easily and cannot remember many specific things. The second thing most of those aforementioned medications deprive you of is concern. I mean this in a broad sense. The reason clinical trials show that social interactions are eased with these medications is that you are no-longer as able to feel fear of rejection, and the rejection you encounter is less disastrous to your sense of how things are going. But this is double edged. You sometimes *Should* fear interactions. When you encounter hostile people, interacting with them is dangerous. Some people are simply wired to suspect most everything is dangerous. That helps keep you alive and should not be turned off like a light switch. The third thing you lose to some degree is the ability to change your life for the better. Again this is a broad definition. Since you are not so concerned about your life, and a stupid pill is making you feel a false sense of contentment, you are not going to bother as much to improve your life. An example is cleaning your home. Why clean it? It is clean enough for you to feel comfort, and you are not concerned with how people will react to the abomination you live in. And the worst of this part is that if you take that crap long enough, you form habits of the inaction. I have not seriously cleaned my room in years. Probably six or seven years. I know it needs to be done, but I have always been able to talk myself out of it. Initially because I was doped up on the aforementioned junk. Now because years of not doing anything form habits that are 'effing hard to break. I know this is too long and most will not read it and those that do will be evenly split between those who think *I* am the problem and the drugs are not, and those who think that the newer drugs are better than those. But dare to check on the specific details of this post before you take that junk. If you are currently taking it, examine you life and see how much of this applies to you. Print a copy and examine this with friends who use that junk. Ask them if they think the drugs may be negatives in the ways I illustrated.
Anyone remember when Bayer had to pull a drug from the shelves in the USA due to it being tainted with HIV? Anyone remember that they shipped the entire lot of it to Africa and sold it there without telling people it was potentially tainted? Anyone remember a fine they had to pay for doing so? (I think they paid roughly 3% of what their sales totaled.)
I was not aware of that, so I did some research -- it was a drug for Haemophilliacs. It's bad enough that it was done, then the paltry sum of money that they were forced to pay in damages was a slap in the face to the victims who became infected. Anyway, these kinds of stories depress me.
What makes things truly bad is that these television doctors (Doctor Oz being the most blatantly criminal, and gained popularity through being one of Oprah's favorite guests) is that they mix good advice with bad so that the average person can't tell the difference. They gain people's trust by saying some common sense things, but then push their particular brand of lies, some of which is dangerous on its own, and some of which is just dangerous because people think they are actually treating whatever problem they seem to have and not getting any better, because some joker is pushing quackery. Snake oil sales are greater than ever. BTW, there's this clinic where I go and I happened to be in a conversation with someone --- I was angrily talking about quackery and some passing nurse or whoever she was heard me mention "reiki". She obviously didn't hear any of the conversation, because she started telling me about this other nurse on the second floor who was treating her with reiki. When the quackery has reached medical institutions, you know that something is truly wrong.
Wow, I am amazed you say reiki is quackery in this manner. At least, that's what your post suggests to me. If I am mistaken please forgive me. Now don't get me wrong, some people who say they do reiki may be quacks, but some probably are not. And your conversation could have gone about quacks, I don't know. The fact though that you judge the nurse who was giving the reiki to be an indication that things are truly wrong is what, to me, seems wrong in itself. You cannot have experienced and researched all of reiki yourself. It's like saying all pharmaceuticals are bad. You are taking way too many things and piling them on one heap. For example: do you even know that the reiki the nurse was giving was meant to heal/cure? Maybe it was just for warmth, and maybe it achieved that. Personally I think reiki is very wrong in their setup of how it is taught and especially the fact that "you can only learn it from a reiki master"-part seems silly to me. But that's personal experience and opinion. I would like for you to have a personal opinion about reiki (and maybe other stuff like homeopathics and herbal medicine, other forms of healing with hands/energy etc), and not treat it like you know everything about it and it's all clear to every sensible person. Thanks
Because too much of Reiki is tied up in religious tradition (so much so that the Catholic church has barred Catholics from its practice), I don't think I can effectively go into detail without getting into religion. But I will say that the whole basis of Reiki is one of belief in things that there is no evidence of -- "ki", for example. You may as well base a treatment on invisible fairies. Randomized clinical trials of Reiki have not been able to show its efficacy for the treatment of ANYTHING. Therefor, it has no place being used in a medical establishment.
Well, I don't know much at all about Reiki. I am just speaking in general. I have often found that the most nuanced people, who insist on proofs and reliable sources and studies can suddenly become weirdly prejudiced when things like (since that's what brought it up) reiki come along. It's as if they suddenly forget all their scepticism and logic and write it off based on hearsay.
I'm not writing it off on the basis of hearsay, but on the basis that pseudoscience (non-evidence-based medicine) has no place in medical clinics. You want to practice Reiki on a street corner, then fine, so long as there's a warning that Reiki has absolutely no scientific basis. I don't insist that everything must be based on evidence, (I wouldn't mount a protest against sellers of fortune cookies, for example). I only care when non-medical treatment is being sold as medicine (because any service that is performed at a medical clinic, implies to the consumer that it is based on actual science. It's fraud, pure and simple. Reiki and other sham treatments do more harm than good, simply because they are used INSTEAD of proven treatments. At a minimum, It is unethical to treat someone with a placebo, IF they have an actual physical ailment. It rises to criminal, in the cases where the substitution of sham treatments for real treatments leads to worsening of illness, or death, as it often does. BTW, since it apparently makes little difference whether a patient knows they are receiving a placebo (apparently, the placebo affect 'works' in 40% of cases, and studies have shown that it does not matter all that much if the patient knows), then it would be irresponsible to sell someone a treatment without telling them that it is only a placebo. If you want reiki, get a massage instead -- it's been shown to be as good or better than a placebo in making people FEEL better. And it will cost you a hell of a lot less.
Taking this literal, one step at a time and saying my opinion. Good. 50/50. I mean, if the patient wants it, I think it should be allowed. Especially when there is merit in it, even if it is placebo. I do agree that it doesn't really fit, but on the other hand our society as a whole doesn't offer many alternatives than hospitals for certain things and if you want to compliment regular medicine with something else I feel that should always be your choice. Just like a person should have the choice to stop treatment etc etc. Honest information about it should be given at any rate. This seems to me to be undoable. Why would a scientific basis be presumed and the lack thereof need to be advertised? We live in legal systems where everything is allowed unless forbidden, and that's for a very good reason: it would be quite impossible to list all things that are allowed. On the same basis, since scientific evidence is a subset of the world and not the other way around I would expect scientifically proven stuff to label themselves thus, not the other way around (in fact, you see this often, especially in commercials where then you have to take it with a cube of salt). Completely agree, I am against dishonesty as well. If they are used INSTEAD and if they are shams you're right. However I leave room for the fact some reiki can be given complementary to medicine and I even allow room to say I do not know for a fact that reiki is a sham. I think you present an evil example here, to which I can agree on your point, but then extend that to include way too much (all of reiki, even where it is used complimentary, maybe not even to heal but for warmth, and also that it sometimes might work (placebo or not)). Why? I do not understand why it should be unethical. Of course, if it doesn't have any effect it's useless. But does that make it unethical? Only if you say it's guaranteed to work, in which case it was lying. Thing is, doctors prescribe placebo pills as well. It does do the job. If I can get a placebo which cures me of my minor pain with 90% chance, or I can get some chemical thing which cures me of my pain 100% chance (if that would exist!) but that gives me 5% of being nauseous, I'd take the placebo. Just makes absolute common sense to me. Thing is: I shouldn't know I am taking the placebo, as that diminishes it's effectiveness at least a little (if I understand placebo's right anyway), so then I could willingly allow doctors to lie to me. Wouldn't be bad per definition. 100% agree No idea about that, don't know, can't say, haven't studied it. Didn't know that. I would want to see longterm studies about that though. Telling someone it is fake while you're still conditioned to believe in all pills doctors give you obviously isn't enough to preclude that belief plays a role in it. Also, you say it doesn't matter all that much. How much? I would want to maximize my benefit potential, so I might still not want to know. Nice this, thanks for the opportunity
Well, consider in medical studies, if the results are sufficiently good or bad (i.e. drug turns out to be wonderdrug, cures disease, placebo patients are worsening or the other way around) said scientists are required to switch everyone to wonderdrug / end the trial. I'd say on a similar note that something done in place of proper medical attention is ethically much the same as giving someone placebo instead of an actual drug.
I agree with that. Sure, the placebo effect is here because people think they are getting treatment and thus are more relaxed (or at least supposed to be), and with them being less stressed whatever real therapy they would have gone through would likely be at least slightly more effective. But that's that, you can't heal conditions that weren't caused by stress and/or mental problems with something that really is nothing more than a placebo effect provider. But then again, I do not think "reiki" is totally useless either. I hold the opinion that it does not qualify as a "real" therapeutic method, but it is a good "supportive" treatment because there are people who have problems with relaxing so big that it ruins their bodies, and for these people some sort of stress-reducing placebo effect will be of great help - and because everyone reacts differently to various stimuli (for one, the perfect thing would be acupressure, for the other yoga exercises, for yet another one "reiki"), it is possible that some people will find it more effective than any other such supplemental therapies.
As I said, if you are stressed, get a massage -- it will probably be at least equally affective, your masseuse/masseur won't lie to you about it curing your cancer, and one ailment it won't cause is bankruptcy.
