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Placebo Medicine |
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Placebo Medicine |
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(Introduction by Abram
Hoffer, M.D.: Since performing the
very first double-blind controlled therapeutic trials in psychiatry, I have
followed with interest the history of this type of experimental research. I
was never convinced it was the best way or the only way. In 1952, we did the
first experiments double-blind because that was the condition to obtain a
research grant for testing vitamin B-3 as a treatment for schizophrenia.
Since then, I have become disillusioned with this type of trial. I do agree
that controlled trials are needed, but not necessarily double blind ones. The
PLACEBO MEDICINE by Andrew W. Saul Ever since I first watched comedian Steve Martin do a stand-up routine about being "high on a new drug called Pla-cee-bo," I've questioned the scientific method a lot more often. The great majority of all illnesses are self limiting. About eighty percent of all sick people will either get better anyway or die anyway, no matter what the doctor does. So why have doctors? For the twenty percent who need intervention, common sense would tell us. Just how much bias enters into medical practice? In so-called double blind studies, where neither experimenter nor subject know who got the active medicine and who got the sugar pill, there can be little doubt. Yet only about twenty percent of all medical and surgical procedures have ever been double-blind, placebo tested. Let's see if we've got this straight: Only twenty percent can be helped, and only twenty percent of what will be tried is known to help. I haltingly say that twenty percent of twenty percent is..., ah, is... is a small number. And then there is the opportunity
for bias in the interpretation of what results you do obtain. Example: as a
student at the Well, we have. In a little-publicized (and downright embarrassing) chapter of 19th century medical history, there was a movement among some physicians who had good reason to believe that the cures of the day were worse than the diseases. he very term "quack" was in fact first applied to medical doctors who gave their drug of choice, mercury, for almost anything. They were called "quicks," actually, for using "quicksilver," mercury's nickname. Some doctors rebelled against what we today would consider to be bona fide medical barbarism, such as bleeding by the pint, uterus removals for female hysteria, lower rib removals in woman so they could fit into corsets better, arsenic treatments for syphilis, and so forth. So along come some dissident doctors who choose to give no medicines at all, just placebos. Their cure rate was very high, their death rate very low, their popularity with patients very strong, their names today very much unsung. Just try to find information about them at you local medical library or museum. On the other hand, it would take no effort at all to hear our doctor-loving press promptly preach that today this has all changed. Surely modern medicine has progressed so far as to become so safe, so scientific and so successful! So sorry: it hasn't. The war on cancer has been a 50-year flop. The medical-pharmaceutical wars on AIDS, the common cold, and even the number one killer, cardiovascular disease, have all been defeats. They continue, like all badly managed campaigns, wars or businesses, only because of a huge influx of funding. To go point by point: Cancer: over the past four decades, five-year survival rates are virtually unchanged for the cancers that kill the most people. AIDS: according to a recent international AIDS conference
in Colds: any physician will tell you that there simply is no "cure" for the common cold. Heart disease: if there were a cure for cardiovascular disease, you would have heard about it. What progress has been made against heart disease is primarily due to advances in nutritional knowledge of fats, fiber, vitamins and minerals. There is not one successful example of the "one drug, one disease" dogma among these illnesses. Modern medicine is merely the warmed-up leftovers of the bad old days of polypharmacy, heroic (read "expensive") measures, and monolithic thinking. The poverty of philosophy in medical schools is appalling. Anarchy among physicians, and nurses, and patients is inevitable if word of this gets out. There are leaks, from time to time. The medical cartel calls these informants "quacks." Talk about the pot calling the
kettle black. Well, the best defense is a good offense, and
institutionalized medicine is about as offensive as it gets. A single example
is adequate to prove this: What is the biggest spending professional
special-interest lobby in the What's
worse, the medical profession reviles emerging nutrition-therapy doctors,
eating its own like some demented hamster. I had two colleagues,
both I was stunned. "Why you?” I asked. “I've seen patients of yours, along with your written instructions for their meal planning and supplementation. You are helping everybody and killing nobody!" "Helping people is not what medical practice is about now," he told me calmly. He sounded just like the perfect doctor you dream of reaching with a 3 AM emergency: confident, capable, friendly, relaxed, assured. "The insurance companies run things now. You can only prescribe a vitamin for its approved purpose, which to them, is simple deficiency. Physicians are simply not allowed to cure illness with supplements. I tried, somebody complained, and that was the end." Here is an exact transcript of what this dangerous man directed his patients to do: SUGARS: Avoid all sugars, white or brown. Use concentrated apple juice or barley malt extract. Honey can be introduced after one month. If tolerated use sparingly. (Note: Molasses & honey when used in baking seem to be well tolerated in general.) FLOURS: Avoid all refined white
flour including unbleached white flour. Permitted VEGETABLES: All vegetables permitted. except possibly corn. Corn (with caution) after months. If tolerated, use in moderation. FRUITS: All fruits permitted except excesses of dried fruits. MEATS: All meats permitted except pork. Avoid bacon and commercial cold cuts. (Cold cuts permitted if made without fillers. DAIRY PRODUCTS: All dairy products permitted (except those containing sugars). Avoid processed or cheese spreads, ice cream, flavored yogurt, etc. (Cream cheese is OK) BEVERAGES: Permitted are tea, decaffeinated coffee, herb teas, unsweetened fruit and vegetable juices. Bottled or distilled water preferable to tap water. SMOKING: Don't smoke. All American tobacco is sugar cured. ALCOHOL: Avoid drinking beer, liquor, or wine. SEA FOODS: All sea foods are permitted. CEREALS: Permitted are oatmeal,
shredded wheat, millet, buckwheat, natural grain MISCELLANEOUS: Permitted are all soy products, nuts, seeds, whole grains, carob, and tofu. You should not be hungry. when first going on a diet. If you are, increase
your carbohydrate intake (i.e., up to six slices whole grain bread and up to
three medium Remember to read all the labels!! Add vitamin supplements, and that was his protocol. I couldn't believe that a fully qualified MD could be called on the carpet for this, or if he were, that it could possibly be made to stick. To me, the medicos had always been the top bananas in health care. Doctors like him were not in the same class as self-styled nature-cure quacks like me, working out of my basement, ineligible for third-party insurance coverage. I sincerely regretted his leaving the area, told him so, and wished him well. Always the gentleman, he paid me a compliment and that was the last I ever heard from him. And then it happened again. Another acquaintance of mine, a board-certified with at least 20 years in his specialty, was kicked out of one of his two insurance companies. Since he was my primary care doctor at the time, I was mostly naked, wearing a light blue faded paper gown and in the midst of a physical when he told me. "I've made too many enemies," he said. "I tell patients to take a lot of vitamins. I prescribe herbs. I've told other doctors at the local medical society that they didn't know what they were doing. Big surprise that they got me, eh?" Not long after that, he voluntarily left his other insurance company. "They were going to drop me anyway. I just beat 'em to it." If medical doctors will not listen to their own, or to Nobel Prize winners like Linus Pauling, they are certainly not going to listen to an outsider like me. To try to influence the medicos would be a lot like speaking in a large auditorium, with nobody there, and the microphone off. And if the room were full, they wouldn't hear anyway. And if the mike were on, they wouldn't listen. And if they actually heard you, they'd leave. I've got another for you. Back in the 1970s, Dr. Benjamin Feingold, an allergist, noticed that some children seemed to be noticeably sensitive to artificial colors and other food additives. He worked primarily with hyperactive kids, had their parents clean up their diets and go chemical-free, and the hyperactive behavior stopped. From this came a classic book, Why Your Child Is Hyperactive. Feingold was an MD. He was credentialed in every way and then some. I posses correspondence from him and you should see just the letterhead. Feingold's diet was so effective that Feingold Associations, grass roots groups of parents, sprung up across the nation. Basically all they did was keep painted foods out of their children's stomachs. The food industry's response was predictable. Study after study has been bankrolled to show that food additives, and sugar, for that matter, have no negative effect on children's behavior. Yeah, right! Been to a kid's birthday party lately? Ever taught school during the week following Halloween? Ever tried to nap a toddler full of M&M's? Most importantly, did you ever read Feingold's book? This man knows what he is talking about and got good results. As long as we let kids eat chemically dyed "foods" and "drinks," we might just as well give them a can of Sherwin-Williams housepaint and a spoon. The worst that can be said about the Feingold approach is that it doesn't work for all children. Somewhere around 45% to 50% of kids will improve on his program. Maybe it is no more than a placebo effect. But it may still be worth a try because there is no harm to it. Doctors give chemotherapy with a success rate of under 30%, and chemo has serious side effects. What is the down side of not feeding kids food paint? How can it possibly hurt to try avoidance of unneeded chemicals? What really rankles you is that allergists have made a subculture out of avoiding various molds, pollens, hairs and foods... all substances that we have had millions of years of evolutionary exposure to. Allergists will be quick to tell you that your child is allergic... but not, of course, to an industrial synthetic chemical dye. For it would somehow seem to them that only substances found in nature can produce an authentic allergy. Factory foods and artificial colors bearing molecular names a yard long cannot cause hyperactivity. But corn can. Logic like that does not even pass
the straight-faced test. Copyright C 2004, 2003 and prior years Andrew W.
Saul. Andrew Saul is the author
of the books FIRE YOUR DOCTOR! How to be
Independently Healthy (reader reviews at http://www.doctoryourself.com/review.html
) and DOCTOR YOURSELF: Natural Healing that Works. (reviewed at http://www.doctoryourself.com/saulbooks.html
) For ordering information, Click Here .
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