Haukur Þorgeirsson wrote:
Wow! The
choice is between accepting the indignities of modern
medicine, or accepting that childbirth is God's punishment for being a
woman. There are no alternatives because you don't believe in them.
That sounds like pretty fucked-up thinking.
I don't understand what you're saying, much less
how it relates to what I was saying.
IIRC you were the one carrying on about childbirth being "punishment for
Eve's transgression"
We all know
about your obsession against homeopathy. Even if
homeopathic medicines turn out to be inert placebos, placebos still have
a level of effectiveness that exceeds doing nothing. It is far too easy
to dismiss the powers of the mind in our attempts to build a purely
rationalistic model of medical practice.
Your wording is interesting. You say that even if homeopathic
medicines *turn out to be* inert placebos etc. Accordingly you
seem to acknowledge a possible state of existence where
homeopathy has been categorically proven not to work. From my
point of view this has already happened. What would it take
for you to be convinced that we have entered this state? What
test would be conclusive enough for you?
Achnowledging a possible state where homeopathy might not work is
different the inflexible POV that it has already happened. Your, "What
would it take for you to be convinced that..." attitude suggests
inflexibility. There can be no consensus if you prejudge the result.
As far as the placebo effect is concerned it is well
known to
modern medical science, though it is inherently somewhat difficult
to study. It is by no means dismissed by the rationalistic model
of medical practice. Here's the summary of a recent article:
"The placebo effect is well known, but there are many misconceptions. One
of these misconceptions is that one-third of patients respond to placebos.
This misunderstanding is probably due to methodologically poor research
conducted in the 1950s. Another error is that the effect in the placebo
arm of a clinical trial is often confused with the placebo effect. The
belief in the placebo effect is enormous, but the quantity and quality of
data to substantiate this belief are very limited. Investigating the
placebo effect is methodologically difficult, not easy to get financed and
considered unrewarding." (
http://tinyurl.com/7abcq)
Your link redirects me to an nih site on nucleic acids and the word
"placebo" does not appear there at all.
I certainly can neither deny nor confirm that there is a one-third
response to placebos; my best guess would be that the rate would vary
with the medical condition involved. Without a belief in the placebo
effect referring to it in clinical trials would be meaningless. We
would do just as well comparing the medicine being tested with doing
nothing at all, or with a medicine that has an established track record.
I certainly don't doubt that investigating the placebo effect would be
difficult and expensive. "Unrewarding" suggests that whatever tests are
undertaken would not result in big financial rewards to the
pharmaceutical industry; they are not in the business of funding pure
science. If the data on the placebo effect is of such poor quality it
does not strike me as scientific to novertheless use it as a reference
standard.
How does the "effect in the placebo arm" differ from the "placebo
effect"?
Ec