KGS, you are an idiot.

In this thread about “alternative treatments” for cancer, you said:

Nothing could be further from the truth, and to think such a thing makes you no more intelligent than people who believe in astrology, psychics, 9/11 and moon landing conspiracies, and Crossing Over with Jon Edwards.

To think that people would be given fake/incomplete treatments just because the “medical industrial complex,” or the rich doctors, would get less money is beyond laughable. I’m not so naive to think that no one is profiting, cause obviously someone somewhere is, but they are doing so from legitimate treatments, and often times they don’t get nearly as much money as you might seem to think. Most doctors that are rich are in private practice, and operate in more elective/less necessary areas of medicine, such as cosmetic surgery. If it’s all about money, why would anyone want to be an oncologist? Hell, a large number of their patients die, and I’m guessing it’s a lot harder to collect a bill from a dead patient than a live one.

Going beyond the money issue then, is the original topic of the thread, that somehow “all natural” foods can cure cancer. This is even more BS than the idea of cancer treatments only being about money! If you can find me one legit study that proves these types of “alternative treatments” work, then I’ll take back everything I said and apologize. At best, this type of treatment can only help to prevent certain types of cancer to a small degree. If the cure to cancer was merely avoiding processed foods, than I’m assuming no one had cancer before the late 19th/early 20th century when they started to appear?

In summary: You’re a fool, a moron, and if you honestly believe that BS you posted, than I hope for your sake you or a loved one doesn’t ever get cancer and seek out these so called “treatments” to avoid giving the evil “medical industrial complex” your hard-earned money.

I came to the Pit expecting that this thread would be started. If it wasn’t I’d be starting it myself.

On top of KGS being an idiot for reasons mentioned in the original thread, if anyone with cancer listened to her they’d end up dead. Pushing that kind of B.S. is highly irresponsible. Of course,it is KGS so I am not all that surprised.

Slee

Oh, poor baby, did I touch a nerve?? :rolleyes:

I don’t recall suggesting that brooklynn should quit modern medicine and follow the alternative path only. If that’s the path he chooses to take, bully for him. (And this is assuming brooklynn isn’t just a troll…which is something we have to consider, naturally.)

And for the record, I have had a family member die of cancer, and I got to watch as the chemo/radiation wreaked havoc with her immune system, gave her a chronic case of shingles which was more painful than the cancer itself, and literally destroyed her esophagus to the point where she couldn’t even drink water anymore. All for what?? She died anyway – maybe bought herself a month or two, for whatever that was worth.

I am sorry she died so badly. And I can see how messing up her immune system in a effort to save her life could lead to her shingles. AND I can see how conventional cancer treatments might’ve bought her only a couple months of life, because in many cases that’s all modern science can do. What I do not understand is how a reasonably intelligent person, like you, can believe that “alternative” medicine might’ve bought her more time. As was explained in the original thread, diet and healthy living might prevent or delay cancer’s beginning, but no PROPERLY DESIGNED study has shown that they have any effect once the cancer is established. Your denial of factual evidence while supporting woo-woo pseudoscience is not only incorrect but (I’m in the Pit, right?) frankly, obscene, irresponsible, and a request, nay, DEMAND that people kill themselves to prove (or, more likely, disprove) your fantastic (note that it is not always a compliment) understanding of the disease process.

Of course money plays a role. We’ve set up such a system that if anyone ever wanted to help people with some treatment, they’d have to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to prove they may have permission. And they can only go and do that if they’ll make millions in ROI. And they can make money only on patentable things.

There are multiple criteria on patentability. I read an article recently about the use of phages (bacteria-targetting viruses) as an alternative to antibiotics for highly resistant infections. They are very promising, but there is a million varieties and each infection needs to be targeted with the right permutation. Problem is that under US regulations, each variety needs to be independntly approved (even though phages are widely recognized to be safe to humans… they are everywhere). Worse, the phages mutate so that approval is even theoretically impossible. Of course, doing any sort of clinical trials on something so non-descript is difficult (scientific method and all). Finally, it’s not clear if you could even patent the things. Hence, things are at a standstill.

I’ve read other instances where doctors forget to administer very cheap, long-proven medicines. In part, it’s because no one is advertising them. Doctors, like mortals, are highly influenced by advertisement. Sure, their ads contain a lot more words in small font that claim to be objective, but marketing is marketing is marketing.

I’m not saying there are secrets that They keep from you. Just saying it ain’t nowhere near a perfect, pristine system!

Irrationalities creep into the system everywhere. We routinely use radiation to try to cure the very thing it induces, but actively ignore the principle of hormesis whereever we see it crop up.

Is it the case you feel other medical systems “not in the domain of private industry” and not “all about profit” are curing individuals where our medical system would fail them?

It’s been my observation that folks with unlimited resources choose the US medical system above all others; that many of the great successes in medicine have occurred here; that for researchers the glory of finding real cures trumps any side-tracking by a cabal of profit-seeking corporations; and that profit-seeking corporations jump all over potential cures to study further because there is always a way to turn the binko-dinko tree’s curative fruit into a marketable, patentable chemical even if the binko-dinko tree itself grows like a weed everywhere and its fruit is widely available at any supermarket.

KGS is a bit of a strange case – he’s occasionally very reasonable, seemingly intelligent, and then he just goes off to Wooville and claims he can read people’s auras over the internet, and that he has ‘direct observational experience of the spirit world’, and things like that. I mean, there must be something weird about you if you manage to have a Der Trihs-pitting backfire on you!

So the reason we do things like chemotherapy is because of private for-profit medical care?

So they don’t give cancer patients chemotherapy in countries that have national health insurance?

Oh wait, it turns out they do. They aren’t relying on healing crystals and homeopathic nostrums over in France, they use the exact same treatments we do over here in the United States.

It touches a nerve for me. My mother decided not to get chemo and radiation after her mastectomy. Cancer came back, then she got the treatment but died anyway. Now it’s SOP to get both after a mastectomy, but it wasn’t then. If she had gotten those treatments, she might very well be alive today. Gonna give me a :rolleyes: too? It is Mother’s Day, after all.

Chemo and radiation are horrible treatments to have to endure, no doubt about it, and it’s very hard to watch someone suffer through them. I would have preferred watching that to watching her die.

But then, KSG has history of rejecting medical advice and some seriously woo-woo thinking. He is not to be taken seriously on these types of subjects, if any, really.

I’m sorry, why would anyone give credence to anything KGS has to say regarding illness after he’s said something so telling?

So anyone who’s had a mental disorder which has been effectively treated (even if by one’s own cognitive-behavioral efforts) can’t have anything legitimate to say about illness?

Way to even further marginalize those with brain disorders. (FTR I have no dog in this fight/thread, I just can’t stand it when people’s statements get dismissed out of hand because they may have had gasp A MENTAL DISORDER OMG!!! What is this, medieval times?)

:rolleyes:

I think you misread the quoted thread.

Seriously, dude. Don’t judge based on the thread title. Go read the thing or don’t say anything.

My parents’ neighbor was diagnosed with testicular cancer. It was caught early, and it should have been easily treatable, mostly likely curable. But his wife was one of these alternative therapy idiots, and convinced him to “treat” his cancer with fruit juice, magnets, and homeopathy. Toward the end, my dad went over to watch him one evening as his wife had to be somewhere. They had some pain medication in the house, but the idiot wife warned my dad not to let him have too much, as it was toxic or some such bullshit, and they had some herbal tea concoction that would work soooo much better. My dad took one look at the poor guy lying there dying in horrible pain, and pumped him up with all the painkillers he wanted. It was the one bit of peace the poor guy had in those months.

In the end, he died from a completely curable disease for no good reason, because bullshit like this prevented him from getting the treatment he needed. He left three or four little kids without a father, and even past the end, his moron wife was still prattling about how if they’d just gone to that one other aura healer in Tiajuana…

She’d be tried for manslaughter if I ruled the world.

Spreading this nonscientific crap isn’t just irresponsible and stupid, it’s outright dangerous, and I have absolutely zero respect for anyone who spouts it.

It’s worse than you think. Dozens of people here have confessed to bipolar/schizo/panic disorders, and yet they are given a free pass, because they maintain the status quo and embrace the comfortable lie of expensive medication and weekly therapy sessions. In other words, it’s all a frickin’ popularity contest, just like every place else. (I guess they’re lucky not to have their so-called mental problems foistered upon them by family members who are covering up some type of unspecified abuse…or have they??)

Brooklynn’s story doesn’t sound so implausible, when you think about it. For starters, he’s already had the surgery/radiation treatment, so no one can claim he was cured by alternative methods alone. More importantly, though, he’s gone from a state where he was a perceived victim, and merely following orders of whichever doctor was treating him at the time, not to mention having his uncle’s situation to compare himself with – but now he’s taken control of his own treatment, and is forging his own path. THAT ACT ALONE grants a significant boost to his self-confidence, his sense of normalcy, and by extension his own immune system.

Never underestimate the power of positive thinking. Sure, it may just be a placebo effect, but that’s still an EFFECT, despite all attempts by rich doctors and deluded scientists to blow it off as meaningless coincidence. Naturally, it doesn’t work for everyone (most people are stuck in the herd mentality anyway) – but if it works for one person, then it clearly has SOME value that needs to be explored further, doesn’t it?

Uh, you really don’t have a clue, do you? Medical science has long recognized the benefits of patients having a positive outlook. Can you cite me a single of example of a medical doctor or a scientist “blowing off” the beneficial nature of positive emotions with regard to recovery success?

And make sure that your cites refer to rich doctors and deluded scientists. Otherwise, they may not be relevant.

This is from the other thread but my reply to it belongs here in the pit.

It’s so irritatingly retarded I don’t know where to start. The idea that an individual would seriously consider “they” decided to make money off AIDS instead of curing it or preventing it is beyond naive. It’s stupid. It’s ridiculous. It’s an example of how dimwittedly gullible some people are.

There is no “they” you moron. No cabal. No conspiracy to promote disease and suffering. A lifetime of riches and honor awaits whoever cures AIDS and many good people have spent their professional careers in relative obscurity with minimal reimbursement trying to solve the problem; corporations would jump at the chance to be the owner of the cure; no one wants to see Africans dying.

There needs to some sort of idiot test which, if flunked, bans you from posting in GQ. At the least please keep this sort of nonsense to yourself lest you manage to persuade even one other equally challenged person.

Since you’re both here and both doctors (I think), do you concur with me?