Sarah 16's Message Board

Hi Dear,



Belated Happy Birthday……
I Hope so you have Great Day…Enjoyed that one……

Regards,
Team Community Outreach – Royal Wiki Guide

Sarah on a question of abusive relationships of a spouse witholding affection. I went into the site and went to my answer and was improving it. For some reason your answer popped up. I then started to delete some to rewrite it. I realized then it was not mine. I have no clue why I was allowed to improve your answer not mine. So you have some blanks in yours. I think it was May 10, I do so apologize for this. It was a mistake. I would never change anyone's opinion or answer. Especially your contribution was great. So if you get this you can finsih you input. Forgive me again.
golden

Thanks for helping me understand myself a little bit more. I have ADHD myself, and my parents have mostly denied me caffeinated beverages, as they thought it made me hyper. But, now that I talked to them about this, my parents and I don't have to worry about me drinking coffee. (Yay, now I can have a coffee maker in my room. :D)

Hey there,
Here's a special "Happy Birthday" all the way from India.

जन्मदिन मुबारक हो ! (Janmadin Mubarak Ho !)

Enjoy!
~Salil91

Sarah
Today is a very special day, I can hear the singing, the horns blowing and much revelation going on, "Happy Birthday".
Rudy
P.S. Save me some cake!

its shamiyah2@igoogle.com or bitch s9601@gmail.com

girl email ne and do you live in paterson and girl this is serious stuff were reading love shaya 09

HOLD ON

hey i just wanted to say hi

Continued…


"There are exceptions to the general protection of speech, however, including the Miller test for obscenity, child pornography laws, and regulation of commercial speech such as advertising. Other limitations on free speech often balance rights to free speech and other rights, such as property rights for authors and inventors (copyright), interests in "fair" political campaigns (Campaign finance laws), protection from imminent or potential violence against particular persons (restrictions on Hate speech or fighting words), or the use of untruths to harm others (slander)."

So it's not that there are no exceptions in the US. I'd be surprised if they were really much different from the UK.

"British free speech is very hindered"

I assure it is certainly not 'very hindered'!

"and it is one reason that America was founded."

The restrictions we have are relatively new and were not in place in the 17th century. Anyway, wasn't it more to do with religious freedom?

Back to medical matters…

"There have been studies which have shown that many drugs did not work better than a placebo, and so they are not used."

Of course! But this doesn't help your argument for any alternative medicine.

"If every herb could be tested, it would help us to make similar decisions."

Absolutely! And many pharmaceutical companies do investigate plants. But that's only part of the problem. Finding that a plant cures a condition doesn't mean that we should all start growing that plant. What's the dose? What if my plant is a different strain than yours? What if my one becomes poisonous because I left it to flower too long? What if there is another constituent of the plant that causes brain damage in some people? How do you control these things? The only way (and the tried and tested one) is to find out exactly which constituent of the plant is the good bit, understand how it works, either extract it to create a uniform potency, or create it synthetically. Oh! And test it thoroughly. Only then will you be sure you have a medicine that is safe and effective and can be prescribed to anyone.

"What I am advocating primarily is a different approach to life. A good, balanced diet combined with exercise will leave people healthy enough to make important decisions, and will prevent most diseases."

You'll get no disagreement from me on that! That would certainly make a huge difference to the incidence of heart problems, strokes, etc, but I'm not so sure about most diseases.

"I believe that PH and oxygenation have a lot to do with the cause of disease."

A lot of disease is caused by viruses and bacteria. Are you saying this is not the case?

"Thus, I think that there is credence in trying to alkalize people to treat disease."

Eh? An article on your website says (I'm not sure who the author is):

"If a body is made too acidic by diet, toxins, or a suppressed immune system, then things no longer work as they are supposed to. Excessive acidity impairs the immune system which is the core of life itself. When the immune system is compromised, the body loses its ability to alkalize itself, and then the body loses its ability to absorb oxygen effectively. When the body is in its healthy alkaline state it absorbs and retains oxygen at a rate of 1,000 times better than its unhealthy acidic state."

As far as I can tell, this is complete nonsense! However, if you think this is a correct understanding of human physiology, then please point me in the direction of any research that shows this. In particular, can you explain the bit about the body losing its ability to absorb oxygen?

"I oppose forced medication (such as fluoride in the water supply)"

There are many who also disagree and many who don't.

"and I want more investigation into groups like the FDA and their financial ties with corporations."

OK. Might be a good idea.

"I do want pharmaceutical corporations to take responsibility for their side effects, especially those that are not disclosed, and instead withheld as "commercial trade secrets"."

Can you give some concrete examples of a manufacturer withholding information about side effects? I assume you'd also be willing to support an investigation into the contaminants in herbal preparations?

"Several studies have also reported various types of contamination of herbal medicines. Contaminants in herbal medicines that have been reported include other herbs, microorganisms, toxins produced by microorganisms, pesticides and toxic heavy metals. In addition there are many reports of herbal products being adulterated with conventional drugs. Several of these problems have resulted in deaths." (Source: Cornell University)


It looks like we do agree on some things, but there are definitely things (evidence, science, trials, etc) where we do not agree!

Best regards.

Zeno

Sarah

You said: "I have not, and will not, deny that science has helped us in many ways to develop as a civilization."

I'm glad to hear it! My apologies for assuming you were somewhat anti-science.

"I still don't know why you have trouble believing that some herbs are effective"

I have never had trouble believing that some herbs are effective and I did refer to two (willow bark and foxglove) in my last message. There are many other modern medicines that are based on plants from all over the world. What I cannot accept is that there is evidence that all the herbal medicines that are sold these days are either effective or safe. Additionally, it's the whole mindset that herbs can cure all manner of ills that dissuades people from sometimes seeking professional medical help when it is needed.

I have no problem with someone wasting their money on whatever herb to 'cure' a cold or help heal a bruise (as long as they are safe), because these are generally not life-threatening or dangerous conditions – they will heal all by themselves without any intervention. If the person thinks they feel better, then so be it. It's the more serious conditions that are very worrying.

"I think that it is only logical to work with what we can see as true."

If by 'we' you mean you and I (rather than someone with the knowledge, experience and expertise), then it is neither logical nor safe. It is well known that we are all very easily fooled, either by others or by our own desires. This is no sleight on you personally – it is something we are all prone too. We all believe what we see daily: we just couldn't get through a day without believing what we see and doubting little of it. We simply could not doubt everything and we quickly learn from our (usually not too serious) mistakes. However, things are different when we are advising others what to do: we need to have a far higher level of certainty about the correctness of that advice because it's not just ourselves that is affected. It gets even more critical when it is advice on someone's health we are giving. Do I think that some stories about 'something working for them' is adequate? Absolutely not. As I've said before, the only way we can know with any degree of confidence that something is both safe and effective is by carrying out properly controlled tests. There is no other way – if we want to be caring, responsible fellow human beings.

"The guy with the stage 3 lung cancer returned to the doctor for tests, to be pronounced cancer-free."

The problem here is there is insufficient and uncorroborated evidence here with which an impartial third party can concur with the conclusion being made. One anecdote does not make data. There are numerous other possible – and I would hold far more possible – reasons why this person appeared to recover. These are well documented elsewhere.

"I don't believe that the FDA picture is wrong, and the money trails really are there."

What money trails? Is there concrete evidence that would stand up in court that the FDA is corrupt? If there isn't, perhaps it's because there is none or at least it is grossly exaggerated? Is it just the FDA you have no confidence in or do you not trust other Governmental departments and agencies?

"As for "Cancer Research Foundations", I don't think it is a great conspiracy that they have plenty of incentive to keep searching for miracle cures."

Of course they do! They want to save lives and reduce suffering! That's why they fund research.

"The cancer industry is booming, and a huge portion of money is spent on direct-to-consumer advertising."

Only in the US. In the UK, our free speech restrictions prevent them from preying on people who might be vulnerable. :-)

"The next miracle drug will surely come along soon."

Let's hope so. And let's hope it's been tested for safety and efficacy.

"Cancer will never be cured with a drug, because it is a systemic disease."

Never is a very long time and I'm not sure what you mean by 'systemic'. What makes you think we won't ever come up with a cure for all (or at least most) cancers?


"Nick Griffin was charged under the 7-year prison sentence law whilst I was there."

In 1998, Griffin was charged, tried, found guilty and sentenced to a 9-month sentence, suspended for two years, which meant he never actually in jail. In 2006, he was tried and re-tried, but was found not guilty both times. So, I'm not sure where you got your information about this '7-year prison sentence law'. However, I'm not saying that we don't have limitations on what people can say. Griffin alleged crimes were incitement to racial hatred and I'd be surprised if you didn't have something similar in the US. Wikipedia says:

…Continued in the next post…

This is the second part of a fairly long comment! See below for the first part.

"Sorry, but I just noticed your first message. I am British originally, and so I know about the British version of free speach. Seven years in prison if you say the word Asian last time I checked....yes, I know all about it."

I hope you were being sarcastic? If not, what utter nonsense!

"The supreme court has held previously that such a law would hinder the right to freedom of speak. America was created because of those sorts of laws."

I have no idea what you're trying to say, but it matters not.

"The reason that I contacted you was not to stop you from answering questions, but to request that you stop removing previous answers."

Which I have done.

"While you do not have evidence that alternative medicine is effective, you do not have evidence that it is not."

I beg to differ. There are ample trials of many 'alternative therapies' (including homeopathy and some herbal preparations) that have shown that they just do not work any better than placebo.

"In fact the Pharmacopoeia (physicians guide) of the early 20th Century mentions many herbs as treatments, and how to prepare them."

Of course it does! There are many modern preparations that were derived from plants. I'm sure you're aware of the two most oft-quoted ones: aspirin and digitalis. Thankfully, instead of having to go out and pick our own for these, with all the problems of quality, purity, strength, safety, etc, scientists investigated them to see what it was in them that actually helped. They took them apart, found the active ingredients and worked out how to prepare them and make them consistently. They did this using the scientific method and controlled trials.

"I agree that trials would be helpful in understanding the effectiveness of herbs and alternative medicine."

So do I. But many alternative treatments have already been tested and these show them as somewhat lacking in efficacy.

"The trouble is, there are no great corporations that will fund such studies for a substance that they cannot patent."

The CAM industry is a massive and profitable business. 10 years ago, the UK spent £1.6 billion annually on CAM (source: House of Lords report http://www.parliament.the-stationery-office.co.uk/pa/ld199900/ldselect/ldsctech/123/12303.htm). In the US, it was estimated that $2.7 billion was spent annually on CAM. Worldwide it's worth $60 billion. CAM purveyors are not poor. I'm sure some of the big manufacturers could spend a small fraction of their profits on proper research, rather than pocketing the profits. Just think what would happen to their sales if they had scientific proof that just one remedy was effective?

The NHS (National Health Service) recently announced a £1.6 million grant to research CAM in just one area. There are many more such examples. The House of Lords report also recommended even more funding for a variety of sources, so research is still going on.

"My experiences have shown, however, that homeopathy is useless in any sort of treatment."

I'm glad we agree on that! :-)

"I have had success with alternative medicine, though; as have many people that I know of. One of those people was basically sent home to die by modern medicine, after he was diagnosed with stage-3 lung cancer. He should be dead now. He's not. He's healthy."

There is far too little information here for me to make any kind of judgement about this one case. However, as I said previously, one anecdote does not make data and it is wrong to base health advice on just anecdotes. What we need is impartial evaluation using properly controlled trials.

"A 2007 study showed that exercise is just as effective a cure for depression as Paxil and Zoloft. Alternative medicine is providing healthy alternatives, and teaching people to take control of their own health; through better diet, and a better lifestyle."

Exercise, good diet, etc are mainstream treatments that every physician will be prescribing every day. This is not 'alternative'. I fully agree that many are ill-informed about diet and exercise (and get far too little of it).

If that is all you are proposing, then I doubt there is any disagreement between us. Can you tell me what other 'alternatives' you advocate?

"Again, please do not delete the answers of other contributors, but feel free to add your own input. If you do continue to delete other peoples' answers, I will feel obliged to block you to protect the work of everybody else."

Again, I have not done this since you first pointed it out.

Best regards

Zeno

Sarah

Thanks for your reply.

You said: "The drastic change in life expectancy has more to do with our civilized society than to our old medicines. For instance, our access to clean food and water, our increase in knowledge"

Well, yes. It certainly had a lot to do with improving hygiene. But it was science that gave us those changes, when they realised that the world did not work with 'humours' and other nonsense. The start of this major breakthrough were people like Lind evaluating lemons as a scurvy cure, Florence Nightingale using science and her extensive knowledge of statistics to improve hygiene, the work of John Snow on cholera and the work done by Alexander Hamilton on randomised controlled trials. That was the start of scientific, evidence-based medicine and medicine has grown from strength to strength since then.

"…and our less willingness to kill each other."

This doesn’t stand up to any scrutiny. In the Second World War alone, about 70 million were killed. I've not researched it deeply, but I suspect this dwarfs any previous century. Even the Mongols only managed to kill 30 million to 60 million in the 13th century.

"Of course, modern medicine does a wonderful job with emergency medicine (car crashes, broken legs, etc)."

Of course it does and I've yet to hear about any alternative therapy treating any such condition.

"Chinese medicine is no longer TCM, and their life expectancies are once again due to the quality of life that they often endure under such a government."

I assume you are aware of why the Chinese healthcare system did focus on TCM for many years last century? However, the dreadful legacy of Mao Zedong still lingers and many millions have no choice but to try to rely on TCM with devastating results.

"I'm not advocating Reiki, or Yoga to treat an illness. I don't believe in mysterious energies that travel the air"

I'm glad to hear it and I apologise for lumping you in with those that do believe in that nonsense – there appear to be several of them on here.

"…but merely in what I have seen to work time and time again"

There is still the problem of reliable evidence I talked about in my last comment, which you've not addressed.

"…and what those who profit from modern medicine see to suppress."

Ah! It's Big Pharma, isn't it and the corrupt FDA and the physicians in the pockets of Big Pharma and the politicians just looking to line their own pockets at everyone else's expense and the only ones looking out for the poor man in the street are those who advocate 'natural health'? Is that a more or less correct picture of the situation as you see it? Well, of course it is not a perfect system, but this conspiracy picture is so misguided and wrong.

"It has been known for a LONG time that chemotherapy is only effective at 2 - 3% of cancers"

I have no idea where you get that 'fact' from! There are some cancers with a low survival rate, but to imply this applies to all cancers is a gross misrepresentation of the facts:

Breast cancer: "64 out of every 100 women diagnosed recently with breast cancer (64%) will live for at least 20 years."

Prostrate cancer: "Around 7 in 10 newly diagnosed prostate cancer patients now survive beyond five years. In the 1970s it was only 3 in 10."

Bone cancer: "Overall, more than 4 in 10 men (over 40%) and more than half of women (over 57%) will live for more than 5 years after their primary bone cancer is diagnosed and treated."

(Source: Cancer Research www.cancerresearchuk.org, or do you think they are in on the conspiracy too?)

Of course these numbers vary with type of cancer, but you get the picture?

"…but it is used anyway, and no new cures are appearing from your end"

If, by 'my end', you mean science and medicine, I have no idea what on earth gives you that impression. Just look at some of the news stories in the Cancer Research website. For example, "NICE [National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence] recommends new lung cancer drug MONDAY 1 DECEMBER 2008" (http://info.cancerresearchuk.org/news/archive/newsarchive/2008/december/18905715). NICE are like the FDA and determine what should and what should not be prescribed.

"Instead, cancer is a booming multi-billion dollar industry."

It's not the cancer that's an industry, but the cost of producing effective treatments for cancer is certainly very expensive. I assume you know about Phase I to IV trials?

Continued…see above.

Sarah 15

You said: "If you do continue to delete other peoples' answers, I will feel obliged to block you to protect the work of everybody else."

I am not continuing to delete other peoples' [sic] answers', so there will be no need to do that.

I will address your other comments later.

Zeno

Continued from previous message below:


I have read the page you gave the link to. It is misguided in several ways, but I'm sure you've been told that already and are not interested in hearing it all again. However, I'll leave you with one thought. For all the thousands of years various 'alternative' medicines/therapies/modalities (call them what you will) have been practised; for all the claimed success rate and lack of side-effects of natural remedies; for all the 'wisdom' about these, handed down since decidedly more primitive and ignorant times, life expectancy changed little, being around a paltry 18 (yes, 18) in the Bronze Age, to around 30 at the start of the 20th century when evidence-based medicine began to take over from medieval myths of four humours, meridians, 'vital life force', etc. Current life expectancy worldwide is 66 and about 80 in the US (China, for all its TCM has a life expectancy some 7% less than the US). This vast increase has had nothing whatsoever to do with homoeopathy, herbal medicines, Reiki, or whatever. It has been the application of science that has allowed you and I to be here now discussing this. (And I won't mention infant mortality rate.) This happened because scientists discovered how to properly evaluate medicines and discovered that there were no such things as the five humours and there was no 'vital life force' - they abandoned all these medieval 'explanations' of how the human body worked.

It is, through the application of science and the scientific method, an awareness and increasing knowledge of how the world works, how chemistry and biology works, physiology and anatomy and how this knowledge can be applied to improve human life, that has reduced pain and increased life expectancy. Alternative 'remedies' have had nothing to do with it - they have had thousands of years of 'consumer trials' and they have failed.

Have a good New Year.

Zeno

Sarah

The number who agree or disagree with an idea is no indication of the validity of that idea (an ad populum fallacy). What is important - especially where a person's health is concerned - is the evidence that a particular treatment does actually work and is safe. It is therefore irrelevant what either of us 'believes'.

What the WikiAnswers policy says is: "For Q&As seeking medical or legal information or advice, please do your best to be accurate. Our readers take these categories very seriously."

Because of the non-existence of proper evidence for things like homoeopathy, it cannot possibly be considered 'accurate' (nor responsible) to give an answer that a particular homoeopathic preparation will cure any condition because that cannot be impartially substantiated.

I also note the policy says: "And, ideally, we want one answer with a neutral point of view."

So, to not give a neutral or balanced view (where one is available) would be wrong (just what balance is perhaps something else that might need discussed). Therefore it is entirely appropriate to point out that there is no scientific evidence for these 'alternative' remedies nor is the claimed mechanism for action scientifically credible. In fact, if there was credible evidence for them they would cease to be 'alternative' medicines and become simply medicines.

I also take issue with your understanding of free speech. We have a similar situation in the UK, but that does not extend to being allowed to say absolutely anything you want where that might cause harm to others and that specifically includes promoting 'cures' for cancer where they either do nothing or cause more harm.

Now, would I be right in assuming that you believe that anecdotes about a treatment gives credence to that treatment? (If I've made an incorrect assumption, please accept my apologies and let me know.) However, this idea is mistaken: if a lot of people seem to agree that something works for them, then it is an indicator that there may be something worth investigating properly. The main problem with anecdotes is bias - intentional or otherwise - but it would take a while to explain that properly, but for starters, consider the following:

Let's take homoeopathy as an example. Just suppose someone 'knows' that a particular preparation worked for them (ignoring for the time being other, more plausible, explanations). How would we know it would work for someone else? Perhaps it only works for people who are over a particular age or someone who is more than 5 feet tall or have a particular hereditary gene? In fact, it might be very dangerous to someone with a different genetic makeup. I'm sure you would agree that it would be worth finding out just who it was safe for as well as whether it also actually worked for them, rather than just assuming it would be OK, before advising them to use it? Perhaps you'd give the homoeopathic preparation to a few friends (perhaps some sick, some well) and see what happened. Well, you'd actually want to give it to a fair number of people so you could know you could rely on the results. You'd note if they got better or worse. Of course, you'd know what you'd given them and they'd know what they were taking and you'd all want it to work, wouldn't you? Do you really think that you'd all be impartial observers? I can assure you (and provide substantial evidence) that such bias is an extremely potent factor in determining what results are obtained. What you really need to do is not tell them what they were taking, give others a dummy pill, give others the current best available medicine for the particular condition. But it's not even you who can dispense these in case you (inadvertently) give them some signal that they were actually taking the dummy one or the real one (this also makes a huge difference and is well documented) and you'd want to randomly decide who got which pill and you'd want to ensure that whoever decided who got better was impartial as well. That's the essentials of a double-blind, placebo controlled, randomised trial. These precautions need to be done to ensure you really do have a medicine that works and is safe before people rely on it to cure serious conditions - and it is the tried and tested method to do all that. This should be done for homoeopathy. In fact, it has already been done. Of course, some of these trials show a slight or significant effect for homoeopathic preparations. However, the ones where there are a reasonable number of people taking part; the ones where neither the patient, nor the prescriber nor the evaluator of the results were all properly controlled and where the randomisation was done properly all show that homoeopathy has no effect over placebo. And the oft-quoted 'homoeopathy isn't amenable to DB RCTs' cuts no ice.


Continued...

Hi Sarah

Thank you for your advice. I was not aware of the protocol about not removing other answers as I had seen this being done on other answers, so I assumed that it was OK if the person had better information about the question or it was necessary to delete existing text in order to correct a completely wrong answer.

You say that 'people deserve the right to find information' about alternative therapies. Surely you agree that it is appropriate to supply correct information, rather than wrong or misleading information. The point of answers.com is to provide answers and surely those answers should be factually correct answers wherever possible, and not ones that are misleading. I accept that there are sometimes no correct answers to some questions and that in such instances, opinion may be given. However, I would expect such opinion to be clearly identifiable as such so that questioners are not misled into thinking it to be factually accurate.

The questions we are discussing here are all to do with medical conditions and treatments. Because of the potential seriousness of some of the questions in this category and because many might act on the answers given, it is incumbent on the answerers to provide accurate data and not to provide data they are not medically qualified to give. To not do this is to do this is negligent and potentially dangerous. As I alluded to in one of the discussion pages, making claims about alternative 'remedies' for cancer is illegal under the 1939 Cancer Act in the UK and I suggested that the answer probably either came close to - or definitely breached - this Act.

To get back to the question of deleting text. You say: "Removing information written by another contributor is not done unless the previous answer is...completely wrong." For some of the questions where I provided an answer, the previous answer was completely wrong and I feel I was completely justified in deleting previous text. I suggest that if someone thinks there are data that substantiate a medicine or treatment that is not conventional, that they provide the details of the scientific validation of that medicine or treatment. If such is not forthcoming, they should consider very carefully whether or not their unsubstantiated answer should be given, given the possible repercussions I outlined in the last paragraph.

You also said: "For example, in the question, "What are alternative therapies for musculoskeletal problems", your advice to see a physician was inappropriate as they were asking for another way to solve the problem."

I disagree: all musculoskeletal problem should be seen by a physician although minor problems are amenable to self treatment (possibly rest, ice packs, cold compress, analgesic or anti-inflammatories). I know of no scientific evidence that demonstrates that alternative methods of treatment (with a few minor exceptions, eg acupuncture for joint pain in the knee) have demonstrated any efficacy over placebo. It is there fore inappropriate to suggest their use.

I noticed that there were many questions that were about conventional medicine but which had been categorised to include the 'Alternative medicine' category by various contributors. Can you tell me why this is happening?

I note that you have simply changed my answers back to the previous ones. Why are you not merging them with mine as you have suggested I do? I will go through them again and merge in my answers with the previous answers given, as you suggested.

Best regards

Zeno

MERRY ChRiStMAS!!! :D

hi sarah i read what u have given has ur profile its realy interesting but i want u to chat to me plz one time give me ur time u can e mail me on khumayun95@yahoo.com and u can give me the time when we can chat plz