It is amazing. My brother goes to two different acupuncturists for treatment of...you guesed it: high blood-suger levels.

And he insists it works.

"Probably hitting yourself on the thumb with a hammer would release endorphins too, and it would take your mind off your headache."

I would agree with that. I have fairly constant (and annoying) neck pain. In december I fractured my fibula and had a 2nd degree sprain. While driving myself to urgent care I noticed that - for the first time in years - I didn't notice ANY neck pain or discomfort whatsoever! It was a [insert winter holiday] miracle!

I know some otherwise intelligent people who swear by alternative medicine. I think the placebo effect might work a bit here. They expect it to "work" so it does. Which is fine so ling as the treatment isn't potentially harmful, but many are. And, many people skip medical therapy that would actually work, in favor of this crap. Which is stupid. I do think you should have to be 18 to choose it. Parents should not be able to fost this crap off on their kids, any more than parents should be able to not vaccinate because of some long-debunked study linking them to autism. I think denying your children the medical standard of care (hello travoltas!) for any reason constitutes child abuse. But I digress. Alt medicine is bunk.

Parents should not be able to fost this crap off on their kids, any more than parents should be able to not vaccinate because of some long-debunked study linking them to autism.

Let's not forget the many cases where members of The Church of Christ, Scientist have denied their children medical intervention because they believe it's all a matter of prayer. They claim that's protected by their right to freely practice their religion. My opinion is that parents shouldn't be allowed to foist THAT crap on their kids either (let alone faith-healing in general), so shall we make that illegal as well?

There's lots of stupid things parents inflict on their kids. Specifics and the degree of possible harm is open to debate though.

So, how do you legislate that? Where do you draw that line? You can get into some fairly Orwellian-Nightmare territory here.

Personally I don't even think people should be allowed to BREED until they can prove themselves psychologically and financially capable of being responsible for their kids. But, I don't see any way government can be trusted to implement any such concept, do you?

Jamie: "Personally I don't even think people should be allowed to BREED until they can prove themselves psychologically and financially capable of being responsible for their kids. But, I don't see any way government can be trusted to implement any such concept, do you?"

No, it's a non-starter. Perhaps we could just have routine contraceptive implants for all, which are removed on demand without question. That way anyone who wants to can breed, but accidents are avoided. It's probably a non-starter too.

I think denying your children the medical standard of care ... for any reason constitutes child abuse.

Not even close. At least not until you can find doctors and nurses who really are saints and not just fallible, mistake prone, maybe smarter than average humans. And not then until we have a medical industry not driven by the profit motive with various executives, marketing pukes, salesjerks, practitioners who want a nicer home, vacation home, boat, plane, ... etc. And not then until we have an FDA that isn't motivated by politics or lobbyists and don't have a revolving door back into Big Pharma.

Until then we have to rely on "informed consent." And sometimes, just to piss you off, people with informed consent can disagree as to the risks, timeliness, effectiveness and many other factors along the way.

So for instance my wife and I vaccinated our kids for most, but not all vaccines. And though we are divorced and can agree on little, studying each individual vaccination and how it is created, how it was studied and tested, how effective it is, and how the kids may or may not be at risk from the underlying illness all goes into our decisions.

If you want to legislate the kids out of the parents hands, or require licenses, or set up kibbutzim to raise them, or provide us liability insurance for your decisions, I say go for it.

Yes, Jaime, I was quite clear: I think parents should be required to provide the medically accepted standard of care for their children. What adults choose for themselves is their own business. So that would include people who's religion tells them no medicine. If my religion tells me to sacrifice nonbelievers, should I be allowed to?

The alt medicine game is driven by profit too, jerry, as is religion. Saying you can't trust people motivated by it means you are moving to a subsistence shack in the woods.

I think your informed consent choice stops when it affects mine and other's health. Nonvaccinated kids affect other's health. Much more so than secondhand smoke, and the government has done a pretty decent job of riding that from out lives.

Seriously, what's the big gripe? It's a non-surgical non-chemical probably-placebo solution that provides some pain relief to some people, and this is a problem --- how?

I think your informed consent choice stops when it affects mine and other's health. Nonvaccinated kids affect other's health. Much more so than secondhand smoke,

Interesting twist on "Your right to free speech ends at my nose." Your take on it is "No free speech for you, because I might get the vapors."

Arguments about "herd immunity" really come down to: a) Get the medical community to better inform citizens, b) Respect citizens ability to make decisions. If you do both a & b AND your science is valid and your testing was done well, you'll get all the vaccinations you need for herd immunity and you won't have to rely on c) Goverment has more shotguns than you do, so vaccinate your kids or else.

If when communicating to a population of informed citizens you can't get the required numbers of them to vaccinate as you wish, it's more likely YOU have the problem, not the citizens.

Within the mind of any sane person is a large region of processing and belief which is not sane. All lives, including your favorite geniuses, are a cobble of sanity plus this other stuff.

People who like to give lip service to order and "rationality" don't want to believe this about themselves. They want everybody to think that the choices they've made are all logical calculations, as if this would make their lives more noble and secure.

But this not-sane region is the source of your identity. Who'd wanna spend time with someone who had no tastes or enthusiasm? (If all is rationality, how come you can't compose music like Bach, design rockets like Von Braun or program computers like Gates? You must not be trying hard enough...)

The not-sane region is what makes human connections. It grows by receiving impressions from the not-sane regions of other people.

Psychologists, especially the good ones (and they're rare) know this about the non-sane region: It demands respect.

It deserves it, too. It's as much a part of your life as your ability to balance your checkbook.

So if it needs to be poked with needles or stinky herbs or weird candlelight ceremonies from toothless women with wrinkly cleavage, what do you care so long as it makes people feel better?

Isn't feeling better what you want for people?

(And yes, there are other, better names for it than 'not-sane region'. Carried us through the blog post though, didn't it? The NSR has other fascinating qualities to be discussed at later date. For now, please break into small discussion groups to consider the implications of all this. Very good.)

Gog said the same thing, shorter

"..All lives, including your favorite geniuses, are a cobble of sanity.."

Crid, you're waxing absolutely poetic these days!

> contraceptive implants for all, which
> are removed on demand without question.
> That way anyone who wants to can breed,
> but accidents are avoided.

I know you weren't entirely serious. But.

First, it's still coercive as Hell. The society is telling it's members they can't be trusted with their own biology, as if born into Catholic original sin.

Second, how many years before Vice-President Biden or Governor Blogojovich decides to take out the "without question" part?

Third, you belittle the broad meanings of the word "accident". I think the vast majority of women who get pregnant do so because they want to... The women who really don't want to get pregnant, at any age, are awfully good about it. When women in decent societies bring their full conscious minds to the matter, it gets taken care of.

But the fact that they might not do that, or might not realize when they don't, doesn't mean that other people get to do it for them.

"Listen, we're just going to take over this central biological function for you until we're sure you're carrying the appropriate certifications, understood? Kthxbye."

That ain;

> poetic these days!

Last weekend I met a man from Nantucket.

Norman: "Perhaps we could just have routine contraceptive implants for all, which are removed on demand without question. "

That is indeed my plan should I ever arrive in the position of supremely benevolent dictator.

Momof3: "I was quite clear: I think parents should be required to provide the medically accepted standard of care for their children. What adults choose for themselves is their own business."

Are you SURE that's clear? "Medically accepted standard of care" can easily include diet/nutrition, exercise, 2nd hand smoke, drinking/smoking while pregnant, and rotting their brains out my letting them watch reality tv. Unfortunately until I get to have the benevolent dictatorship described above, we're in a democracy where you'll find it impossible (or at least impractical) to legislate acting in a "preventive" manner. Law only gets to step in until after the damage is already being done. You can't stop parents from giving their diabetic kid "Quantum Tesla Ionic Water Prayer Therapy" instead of taking them to a doctor for insulin until someone sees the harm being done and takes them to court or calls children's services. Preventive legislation of this sort seems to me to lead to far worse "unintended consequences" than allowing gays to marry. IMO/YMMV

Gog:"Seriously, what's the big gripe? It's a non-surgical non-chemical probably-placebo solution that provides some pain relief to some people, and this is a problem --- how?"

The problem being when it's used as a replacement for science-based medical treatment. However, until you can prove it's doing harm (in which case there you can charge child abuse/neglect), there's not a lot you can do. But I think it's a topic worth discussing - even if there's not a lot you can do OTHER than discuss it.

Use acupuncture to treat a cold instead of taking some cough syrup, probably not a big deal - as you can only treat the symptoms and your body will recover in the same amount of time. Placebo effect can account for a lot here.

Use acupuncture to treat cancer instead of surgery/chemo? If it's an adult, not much you can do - unless you can demonstrate in court that they're not capable of being responsible for themselves. If it's a child, the parent should be up on charges.

Really strange day - I find that I'm pretty much agreeing with both momof3 and Crid.

I don't want parents making bad medical decisions about their kids, and those bad decisions can affect other people.

People aren't always (or even mostly) logical. I don't know if I would say the same about being rational - I don't consider them to be the same thing. People make a lot of decisions that are not the logical one for them, but make them to influence people around them. An example being someone with a bad temper. It may not be logical to be angry and to show it, but it can get other people to give in to you.

I would care at all about alternative medicine, but I don't want people being taken in and I don't want my insurance to pay for it.

Snoop - what does your brother base it on? Can people tell if their blood sugar is high without having a test done? Has he done a fair number of tests after acupuncture was done and had positive results? If not, he's obviously deluding himself (though I suspect you already knew that).

Informed citizens would be great. Unfortunately, people are idiots. If they weren't there would be NO consistently spouted autism link nonsense when talking about vaccines. I actually know more several moms who genuinely think that sanitation and healthy living eradicated polio and small pox, which were of course caused by vaccines.

I have no issue with free speech. You want to spout idiocy, that's your right. What's not your right is to put your non-vaccinated kids in school with my kids, and with kids who legitimately can't get vaccinated for health reasons, and who rely on herd immunity for their very lives. If your kid get whooping cough, maybe they cough a lot and you don't sleep much for a few weeks. Another kids gets it from your kid, maybe they die. Through no fault of their own, from your "right". It's also not your right to sit and pray while your child dies of an easily treatable illness.

I have no real issue with accupuncture, if it's not being given to kids in lieu of actual treatment. I just think alt med in general calls to people who want to believe in a pure, non-profit motivated, honest group, when that's not what it is. And so they don't approach it with the same healthy sketicism that they show to other enterprises.

"Medically accepted standard of care" can easily include diet/nutrition, exercise, 2nd hand smoke, drinking/smoking while pregnant, and rotting their brains out my letting them watch reality tv"

I would in fact include all those. Parents who let their little kids sit and watch tv and eat junk food, and get fat, are going to cost us down the road, at LEAST as much as a mom who doesn't abort a down's baby.

I agree accidental pregnancies are really rare. They do happen though. My mom got preggers on an IUD. Lost the baby, of course, but there you go. .

So if it needs to be poked with needles or stinky herbs or weird candlelight ceremonies from toothless women with wrinkly cleavage, what do you care so long as it makes people feel better?

Crid, stop making fun of the way I practice medicine, or I'll turn you into a horny toad! o.O

For you, I had other ceremonies in mind...

"And not then until we have a medical industry not driven by the profit motive with various executives, marketing pukes, salesjerks, practitioners who want a nicer home, vacation home, boat, plane, ... etc."

A pretty astute observer of markets and capitalism once noted that we rely on the butcher's self interest to provide us our meals, not his saintliness.

Might that be because its in a butchers self interest to keep his consumers alive and healthy so the come back for more meat?

how many meds do you suppose a heathly person takes?

The point of medicene, alt or western, is to relive symptoms, not cure the underlying causes. Except in those rare cases where the symptoms result in death

Loojy, I think you're agreeing with spartee without realizing it.

While I generally think most benefits of acupunture procedures do fall under the "placebo" category, my husband did experience a remarkable recovery from Bell's palsy a few years ago. His primary physician (conventional medicine) said they'd had good luck speeding recovery from Bell's (which can sometimes take years) with acupuncture + mild electrical stimulation. They insterted the needles directly into the affected facial areas, and applied a very mild electrical current. His recovery took only a few weeks.

A pretty astute observer of markets and capitalism once noted that we rely on the butcher's self interest to provide us our meals, not his saintliness.

I agree completely with that. My point is that the butcher occasionally puts his thumb on the scale, or picks the meat up off the ground where it fell.

That's one thing for food, but another if *you* are mandating laws that say I have to inject my kids with certain vaccines.

"My point is that the butcher occasionally puts his thumb on the scale, or picks the meat up off the ground where it fell. That's one thing for food..."

Here in Canada last year, 20 people died of listeriosis contracted from contaminated meat. Can you conclude from this that the meat-processing industry as a whole is greedy & negligent? No, because it is so easy for meat to be contaminated with potentially fatal diseases that if most butchers really didn't care about anything but shoveling out as much meat as possible, then 20,000, or 200,000 people would be dead.

Yes some doctors are greedy quacks, but if the medical profession as a whole was, then we wouldn't be enjoying the high life expectancy & mostly good health that we do. Instead, we'd be living in Robert Mugabe's Zimbabwe, where the life expectancy is about 33.

OT, but -- I didn't know Amy had a brother:
http://consumerist.com/5127559/customer-bills-phone-company-for-time-wasted-gets-paid

Martin, down here in the lower 48 we have an FDA that over the years has allowed thalidomide, bextra, celebrex, vioxx, and early testing in HGV that led to CJD, as well as many many other FDA bungles/corruption cases, etc.

Yes, much of what the FDA does, and much if not most of what doctors do is good stuff. Doesn't mean we don't need to be informed consumers.

And it certainly doesn't mean we should inveigh against informed citizens who disagree with us, or complain they are luddites, or idiots, or selfish, or any of that crap.

There's a good chance they are more informed on the issue than you.

Deja pseu - maybe it helped or maybe not. I've known 2 people have had Bell's palsy. One recovered in a few weeks and the other is mostly recovered in a few month's. I think the recovery period is extremely variable.

Yes yes, Jerry, it's always the informed ones who choose to leave their kids open to deadly diseases. I wish I were so informed.

"Last weekend I met a man from Nantucket."

I'm sure he was much happier than that sports car driver from Boston!

And seriously, loojy:

> The point of medicene, alt
> or western, is to relive symptoms,
> not cure the underlying causes.

What on Earth could make you say something like that? Seriously, I want an answer. Why on earth would you say something like that?

Doctors, by specific intention, cure underlying causes all the time. My favorite example is a friend of my mothers who had best cancer at about the same time I was born. It was a very, very long time ago. She still shows up, spry and warm, at other people's funerals.

William, you are correct that recovery from Bell's Palsy can vary quite a bit from person to person. It all depends upon how quickly the underlying nerve inflammation resolves so that the hemi-facial paralysis subsides. My paralysis lasted less than 3 weeks, but I've known others whose facial paralysis didn't go away for over a month or more. However the real issue with Bell's isn't nerve inflammation or the resulting paralysis. It's the deterioration of the underlying facial muscles during the paralysis. In severe or lengthy cases, there can be significant muscle decline and atrophy. If not treated pretty aggressively or quickly, there can be prolonged or even permanent muscle droop in the face. So the issue isn't how quickly your Bell's goes away, but how quickly you can get your face back to normal.

My doctors went with a course of steroids and active facial exercises. But mild electrical stimulation with needles or electrodes, as deja pseu described, would almost certainly speed the rebuilding of the facial muscles in a Bell's Palsy patient. It's like passive strength training - the muscle contractions could rebuild muscle tissue pretty quickly. But I wouldn't call it an "alternative therapy" as orthopedists and physical therapists have been using a similar treatment on knees and shoulders for years.

On the other hand, I don't really get how acupuncture would help much in this instance. Sure, there may be an initial contraction of a muscle or nerve ending when the needle is inserted, but that's a pretty fleeting moment. For the rest of the time, you're just lying there with sharp objects stuck in your face.

I do think that some alternative treatments can provide brief, supplemental/analgesic relief, but beyond that I remain a skeptic. I occasionally go to the spa for reflexology treatments on my feet and ankles (basically its a kick-ass deep tissue massage). Does it help reduce stiffness in the arthritic ankle that I injured in high school? Definitely. But do I buy into the masseuse's assertions that by pressing on certain areas of my feet, she can diagnose and relieve my underlying liver toxicity, malfunctioning left kidney, and a hinky gall bladder? Umm, no, because I prefer to depend on something called "an annual physical exam and full blood work" which tell me that my liver, kidneys and gall bladder are perfectly fine.

Gog -

Seriously, what's the big gripe? It's a non-surgical non-chemical probably-placebo solution that provides some pain relief to some people, and this is a problem --- how?

Like Jaime said, it too often becomes a replacement for evidence based medicine. And not just acupuncture. There was a relatively recent case where a gent with a diabetes related foot sore decided to use a homeopathic remedy (again, non-surgical, non-chemical - unless you count the "memory" in the water a chemical) to treat it. Long story short, it rotted his foot and before they could take it (when he finally went to the ER at the insistence of his naturalist), the infection made it's way to his brain and he died. He was also a fan of acupuncture, according to his wife.

"He was also a fan of acupuncture, according to his wife."

Acupuncture isn't homeopathy.

He could have been a Niners fan for all that matters (For example, I'm a Niners fan. I know what pain is. No amount of vital essence will relieve my suffering).

As far as acupuncture goes...I've never been a believer but in the last 9 months I've been working for an animal acupuncturist, as in acupuncture for pets. I've seen horses, dogs, cats regain mobility with no traditional medicine. The patients we see are ones that are so bad they've been told by their vets that amputation is usually the only option for their situations. The woman who administers the acupuncture is a registered vet.

Most of the medicine used in hospitals is unproven too, so it's pretty much a crapshoot.

The reason we have a high life expectancy is due to clean water, proper sanitation and nutritious food. You really have to read 'Limits to Medicine' by Ivan Illich.