From: dyer@spdcc.com (Steve Dyer)
Subject: Re: Homeopathy
Organization: S.P. Dyer Computer Consulting, Cambridge MA
Date: Tue, 13 Oct 1992 05:48:28 GMT

In article <1992Oct12.175322.7873@ide.com> cda@davos.ide.com (Charlotte Allen) writes:
>|> When you've got something really screwey like homeopathy, you
>|> simply have to demand a lot of evidence for any effect.  This is true of any
>|> outrageous claim for a therapy which doesn't have a history of controlled
>|> evidence behind it.  
>
>Like gold injections for arthritis?  When I was a grad student at UCSF,
>this was the standard treatment at the rheumatology clinic.  The MD who
>headed the clinic, and taught some of my classes, said, when I asked him
>to justify this practice, "They like it and it doesn't seem to hurt them."

Well, it's nice to see you've done your research there.  A smart-ass crack
from someone does not constitute anything other than an example of sarcasm.
This guy was janking your chain.  If you were a graduate student at UCSF,
the literature on the use of gold therapy in rheumatoid arthritis was at
your fingertips for you to look up.  Yet you "asked him to _justify_ its
usage?"  Get real, get off your butt, and look at the evidence that's
there for you to discover.  But that's nowhere as satisfying as whining
and making a fool of yourself, is it?

Gold does have a so-called "disease modifying" effect in certain
cases of rheumatoid arthritis.  It's certainly not "standard treatment"
except in very serious cases of the disease, but then, those are the kinds
of cases you're going to see at a rheumatology clinic anyway.  Gold is one
of a few treatments along these lines (the antimalarial hydroxychloroquine
and the antifolate methotrexate are two others.)  It is certainly NOT the
case that "it doesn't seem to hurt them".  Gold is a heavy metal and has
its own characteristic spectrum of side effects, including sore mouth,
skin rashes, blood disorders, and several other serious side effects.
It's not used lightly or without close supervision.

>And what about the previous standard medical practice of treating tuberculosis
>by collapsing the patient's infected lung?  

What about it?  It was useless.  That's why it's not done anymore.
If this were homeopathy or chinese medicine, we'd be listening to
their hornblowers parrotting that this has been done for YEARS with
empirical success; how dare we question its utility?

>Or the current extremely lucrative practice of implanting silicone into
>women's breasts and vacuuming out fat cells from their bottoms?

Right, especially when they're kidnapped off the streets of Beverly Hills
against their wills.  I'm sorry, if you are trying to be taken seriously,
you're failing miserably.

>Seems to me that MD's operating well withing the AMA's "generally accepted
>paradigm" have managed to come up with as many really screwy and outrageous
>treatments as any homeopathist or psychic surgeon.

Well, you'll have to make up some new examples.  What exactly did you
study at UCSF, anyway?  I'm having a difficult time imagining.

>The big disadvantage to MD's is that they charge ten times as much for
>their "medically approved" treatments and are insufferably pompous and
>self-righteous in their own justification and their attacks on anything
>outside of what they learned in school.

"Insufferably pompous and self-righteous".  These people are impervious
to irony.

-- 
Steve Dyer
dyer@ursa-major.spdcc.com aka {ima,harvard,rayssd,linus,m2c}!spdcc!dyer