The CAM Thread

[thesummerqueen]

[The Grand Nudger]

My uncle went the CAM route, and then stopped availing himself of effective treatment entirely (the potions didn't make him feel like shit). Easy to fill in the rest.

The purveyors of magic elixirs should be held accountable for the effects of their treatments in the same way that actual medical professionals are held accountable.

[LastPoet]

What grinds my gears is that they thrive on people's desperation and fear

[The Grand Nudger]

A common business model..lol.

[Jaysyn]

[The Grand Nudger]

A loud and resounding "FUCK THAT GUY!"

[downbeatplumb]

A loud and resounding "FUCK THAT GUY!"

Seconded.

[KichigaiNeko]

Another explanation may be found in examining what CAMers are offering that mainstream physicians are not: TLC. By this I do not just mean a hand squeeze or a hug, but an open and honest relationship with patients and their families that provides a realistic assessment of the medical condition and prospects. People are going alternative because in too many instances physicians have become highly skilled technicians—cogs in the cold machinery and massive bureaucracy of modern HMO medicine.

I am thinking that the above statement is the main reason why people are turning to CAM.

Mind you CAM has it's uses. You can't fix a dislocated joint with pharmaceuticals. NO amount of drugs are going to ease a headache caused by spinal misalignment. But homeopathy utterly escapes my reasoning....why would anyone want to use that???

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Ideally, in a controlled experiment, we would like to be at least 95–99 percent confident that the results were not due to chance before we offer our provisional assent that the effect may be real.

I find this comment interesting as most pharmaceuticals are released with less % confidence and many people are diagnosed against a "statistical average norm" whatever that number is (but I am convinced it is less than the 95-99 percentile)

[The Grand Nudger]

If you have a headache caused by spinal mis-alignment you can go to a licensed medical professional and have that dealt with. If you have pain you can get a prescription for medication based on proper diagnosis and it WILL ease the pain. Alternative therapies are not effective at treating anything whatsoever. If they were, they wouldn't be alternative, they would be mainstream. Snake oil, top to bottom. I understand that people may wish that their doctor was more warm or personal (and I doubt that it's impossible to find a friendly doctor), but at the end of the day you go to a doctor to seek medical advice; not friendship. If he is a cold cog in the machine that is medicine, and his treatment is effective, bravo for the machine.

[thesummerqueen]

There are always risks associated with any medication - which, despite what fear mongerers would have you believe, are usually thoroughly tested before they hit the market. Unfortunately, the ones who get the press are the ones who have the negative reaction - some of which isn't necessarily the doctor's fault because we can't control for EVERY variable until it happens, and sometimes people lie about their medical history or are ignorant of it. It's much more than just some shadowy corp. trying to eck money out of everyone.

Most people in this country do not have the tools to do a proper risk assessment, nor the skills to really judge. There are plenty of risks involved for me taking both my birth control meds AND my Imitrex, but I consider them worth it because 1) they are relatively minimal still, even considering my family history and 2) because I don't want to get knocked up/have mood swings (at least as bad as I had them) and hate migraines.

There's a huge disconnect between the medical community and lay people, but it's not always the fault of the doctors - there are plenty of laypeople like my father and a good friend of mine who waste a professional's time with every little sniffle, sneeze, and cough rather than taking some robitussin and getting over it, thus cutting into MY appointment time when I need to get something that truly disrupts my life checked out. People do not educate themselves in the slightest, and then when they do it's easier to turn to CAM because the "principles" are easier to grasp.