How Scientific is Modern Medicine Really?

Amina Motzer: Are you kidding? She's even a doctor or a scientist. Modern medicine is one of the most proven, peer-reviewed and thoroughly tested fields of science in the world.

Lupe Sancen: Well, of course modern medicine uses science. It's how it is interpreted, IF interpreted. It is a lack of honesty and ethics that is the problem. But, modern medicine and the FDA have their sheep (like angry doc) who says that medicines have to be proven effective or they wouldn't be available. Medicines can be (and are) pushed through, promoted, and used based on little evidence, the goal of making the pharmaceutical company more money - NOT the health and welfare of the patient.Take for example the recent information that came out about OTC children's cough and cold medicines being ineffective or worse, harmful to children. These products have been on the market, with FDA approval and pharmaceutical advertisements for their effectiveness and safety for decades and decades. ! Vioxx is another. Psychiatric medications is another can of worms (as the editor of the Lancet states): ...." Doctors were seriously and deliberately misled. This is not an uncommon practice’.… ‘Hiding negative data: The classic recent example concerned Paxil (GlaxoSmithKline). The hidden trials showed a pattern suggesting limited efficacy of the drug and risks of potentially fatal adverse effects. The available published evidence indicated a very different story.’‘… But the continuing privatisation of much of science (science in the service of wealth creation rather than health improvement) threatens to make independent research almost impossible to do.’‘… Ghost-writing: It is standard operating procedure for pharmaceutical companies to seed the medical literature with ghost-written editorials, reviews, and opinion pieces emphasising off-label indications of licensed drugs. These papers are commissioned to a specific marketing-driven brief and are writt! en by non-specialists. A company friendly expert is then paid ! to have his or her name appear on the article, facilitating publication in a respected journal and thus enhancing the impact of the message.’He concludes by stating:-- ‘The compromised integrity of medicine's knowledge base should be a serious concern to politicians and public alike. It is surprising and disappointing that this danger does not seem a serious priority within medicine itself.’Please pause, and remember and think: the above information is not from a crank rant, it is the Lancet editor, Horton, giving evidence to the UK Parliamentary select committee.EDIT: Yes, Gary Y, people that pursue Alternative medicine would like to focus on Alt med. While those whose preferred method is modern medicine should be focusing on, yes, modern medicine. There seems to be a lot of projection going on with you skeptics. Don't like it thrown back at you I see. There are weeds in your grass and I would think that if you really cared about safety and effectiveness, you'd focus! on your own backyard where a lot of people play and hundreds of thousands are harmed or die each year, and quit looking over Alt med's fence looking for weeds. Seriously, if you really were concerned about the welfare of people in general rather than the selfish pursuit of pushing your own agenda on others who don't agree with you, (ie:control), you would focus on the duping and the danger that goes on within your own world. Put your own oxygen mask on first as they say.......Show more

Todd Stogner: Oh dear god, that's a good one. Dana Ullman? 'Researcher'? Why not call him what he is, a book salesman. Ullman's such a blathering blowhard he got kicked off Wikipedia - and they let 14 year olds write about Dragon Ball Z on there.Ullman's notorious for showing up on various blog sites, shooting his head off and then trying very hard to change the subject when whatever miraculous evidence he's touting about turns into vapor and blather. To quote one of Wikipedia's most a! ccomplished editors: "While there is strong evidence of Ullman making s! ystematic errors and grandiose claims, I do not believe that Ullman’s behaviour is evidence of intent to deceive. There is quite a bit of evidence to show that Ullman is simply very sloppy, and has an inflated opinion of his own abilities, which combined with the significant investment he’s made by having spent his entire adult life advocating for homeopathy, causes him to rate things that support his views much higher than he should, while rejecting anything that does not support his views as unimportant or insignificant. While this does mean that he probably genuinely believes what he says at the time, unfortunately, this causes him to be an unreliable source.“…prone to confabulation, creating false information that sounds like it might be true but evaporates when investigated.”...Show more

Ismael Sixon: I hope Dana Ullman will be able to reach out to the world and educate others. Also, can you tell me what herbs are good for heart conditions, like maybe a! n herb that would calm a rapid heart beat? I made a homeopathic remedy from Hawthorne herb at 15 c. & it seems to working well, but I'm just wondering if there are any other herbs that are good for the heart?...Show more

Maynard Reevers: Usually very.For a treatment to be used on humans, it usually has to go through in vitro testing, one or more animal models, several phases of clinical trials. All that is followed up by continuous monitoring. Alternative medicine never passes these tests.There are of course issues on improving treatment due to ethical concerns. For example, you can't try a new treatment alone in place of a proven one since you cannot deny effective medical care to a person.New treatments for conditions that lack an animal model are difficult to get approved for clinical trials.Then there are issues with genetics. A drug might not work at all in some people due to different genetics, but identifying this is difficult.The efficacy of modern medicine! is easy to show. Compare the life expectancy and infant mortality rat! e now to a century ago. Anyone who argues with this is delusion....Show more

Rosalva Steinmann: Medical Marijuana Pill . Founded by the University of Irvine.

Clemmie Burkleo: Not scientific at all!Last week I went to my doctor and he started chanting and dancing around the room! He then threw chicken blood on me and told me i was cured of my lymphoma!Science my a**!...Show more

Nilda Bafia: Call a pharmacy, tell them you have small children and you found a pill on the floor, and your concerned what it may be, and they will look it up in thier book!!!!

Lou Rought: impossile to tell. the only thing that information gives you is that this pill contains 420 milligrams of the active ingredients. a pharmacist MIGHT be able to tell you. but when in doubt, don't touch the stuff.

Wally Perrien: People are suffering *less*, not more, due to the advent of modern medicine. > According to what source? The Kevin Trudeau Daily Snivel? > Yeah, I guess the Sma! llpox Virus just got bored one day and decided to eradicate itself. (Pull the other one.) > When? Pharmaceutical companies are the first to admit that true-blue *cures* are few and far between. In most cases, the best we can realistically hope for is *treatment*, which is often just as good as an outright cure (not to mention less expensive). I'll take the industry selling AND delivering actual treatments over the alt-med whackadoodles who promise cures and deliver nothing. > I believe you mean "course", and you're still wrong....Show more

Oswaldo Rayburn: Than why do so many die needlessly under its scope? What is it estimated that in the US alone about 1/3 of all major surgeries unnecessary?

Jeannine Vassie: I have mixed weed alcohol and pills for years so your prolly fine because if it doesn't say on the perscription that you can't take it with alcohol then you can drink on it. And since you can't OD on weed and bc its natural you can do weed on any drug its! just drinking you gotta be careful with.

Rashad Marecki: While I! do agree most of the time with the politics section of Huffington Post, I find their medicine and lifestyle section to be a depository of alt med and new age quackery (the kind you like nosey.)You seem to have absolutely no idea how modern medicine works. Nothing is done without evidence of its effectiveness. A new drug will not be used if it has not shown any effectiveness. A new procedure is not tried if it is found to be of less or zero benefit. These things are done because it would be both ethically and legally wrong to treat patients with unproven remedies like the alt med quacks do. What about your silly alt med therapies? Do you have peer-review or evidence based clinical practice guidelines? You don't....Show more

Shan Lanen:

Heidy Fujikake: Its Tiazac. Its for treating high blood pressure.

Florencio Dingle: I gained weight on Abilify, Seroquel and a little bit on Saphris but "the hungries" went away in about 2 weeks so I did not gain much. ! I did not gain any weight on Geodon but hey... here is the greatest thing! There is a new anti psychotic called Latuda that I am on now and it actually DECREASES appetite and I hava managed to lose weight on it. Side effects were nausea and lose of appetite. Ask your doctor about it.

Donita Desjardin: i'm not a stoner or an alcoholic. just good info to have :)

Jonathon Labonne: idk i guss not that good if there is still no cure for cancer

Mickey Isle: go to webmd.com and look up meds

Efren Clankscales: I am ****** in the *** 3 times sideways. I have bipolar with psychosis and I weigh 340 pounds. My "psychiatrist" put me on saphris and I gained over 60 pounds in 4 months! It doesn't matter what medicine I am put on or what I seem to do I gain weight on every single medicine. I did some research on the internet and every single medicine I researched causes weight gain! . I stopped taking the saphris for 2 weeks and despite the serious withdrawl effect! s I had lost over 12 pounds. I now started taking saphris again because! I couldn't handle the withdrawl symptoms anymore and I gained the 12 pounds back in 2 days! I am just seriously ******! There's no way to "beat" this disease without medicine and if I take medicine I'll be put in the ******* ground before I'm ******* 40 (i'm 26 now). It just isn't fair! Not to mention my risk for diabetes is going to be increased 4 fold. I've dodged that bullet for almost 10 years... Just **** life... .seriously.... unless somebody knows of a medicine that I didn't get in my research searches......Show more

Clemmie Burkleo: The question has nothing to do with alternative medicine, and the article provides no evidence for the efficacy or safety of any alternative medicine. Attacking mainstream medicine does not prove that alternative medicine works, and that's where you need to focus your efforts.-------EDIT: Flashflood, if alt medders would stop making bogus claims, they wouldn't have skeptics on their case. Perhaps you should go and get your cha! kras balanced and think about that....Show more

Son Ahlers: LOL...I nearly forgot about that quack. Dana Ullman is an expert in magic water aka homoeopathic medicine. Which means he demonstrates a complete disregard for science to begin with. He lacks the irony gene too..and ignores the fact the 0% of homoeopathic remedies have been demonstrated to work in high quality trails. So even if conventional medicine isn't as effective as he claims, this STILL does not prove efficacy of altmed and it does not make modern medicine any less scientific.I want to quote something the guys at SBM said, "In any discussion involving science or medicine, being Dana Ullman loses you the argument immediately…and gets you laughed out of the room." OK I digress, I am aware I am attacking the person and not his content which is a fallacy. All drugs go through vigorous scientific testing and processing, only a handful of drugs make it through the trials. Basically, scientific method re! ports probabilities of cure or reduction of symptoms. We publish our re! sults for all to see, and what Dana is essentially doing is criticising modern medicine for being honest about its limitations. At least conventional medicine is increasing based on reproducible results....unlike AltMed.You also have a collective short term memory, Nosey. Life expectancy has doubled as a result of SBM. You cannot attribute that alone to cleaner living....Show more

Krystal Cordovano: Check with pharmacist. Many meds are less or ineffective when alcohol is taken.

Arleen Bussing: You could call a pharmacy, but 9 times out of 10 they won't have the time to look it up and will refer you to poison control. If you call poison control they will be able to tell you what it is.1-800-222-1222Hope this helps!

Toney Flaten: Try using a "physicians Desk Refrence" (PDR). I'm not sure if you can access a pdr on-line, however, you can find one at your local library. The pdr lets you look up pills by color, markings, manufacturer, etc......Or you can try ! your local pharmacy, usually the pharmacist or tech are happy to help.

Arnette Dominici: a 1978 u.s. office of technology assessment study found that the majority of the most common medical treatments are without scientific basis.

Mahalia Brindle: no u cant the alcohol will interfere with the dexamthasone, and it wont have the same effect, besides youll probably end up acting a like a nut