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The California medical board is threatening to revoke the license of Dr. William Edwin Gray III for selling homeopathic sound files over the Internet that he claims—without evidence or reason—can cure a variety of ailments, including life-threatening infections such as Ebola, SARS, swine flu, malaria, typhoid, and cholera.
If that can cure me of my old age too, I'm all game! Which button must I press?
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Sound Waves for Curing Ebola - and Anything Else Too
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Any woman is a volume if one knows how to read her.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by requerdanos on Sunday May 27 2018, @03:37PM (10 children)
FTFS:
Okay, that's nutty as trail mix [thehealthymaven.com], granted. But it gets better!
FTFA: [arstechnica.com]
So not only is he a practicioner of homeopathy (the pathological belief that dilution to oblivion imparts strength [respectfulinsolence.com]), and claiming that the homeopathic properties of a non-cure can be captured in a recording (plausible; if it doesn't work as administered, it should fail to work just as reliably if you just listen to it rather than take it), but now you don't even need the full recording, just that narrow range of voice-inspired frequencies [uoverip.com] that a telephone reproduces.
Maybe that's an analog to dilution to oblivion?
And the worst part, of course, is telling people that they can get a 100% Ebola cure rate by sending him $5 and listening to the sound of his bank deposit. No need for vaccines nor medical treatment, no need for sanitary precautions, pfft. Just hire a professional hand-waver over the Internet.
If you think about it (and if "homeopathy" is among your beliefs, you assuredly didn't), that's a great recipe for expanding the scope and death toll of a given Ebola epidemic. Through this means, homeopathy is actively killing people, something they criticize modern medicine for doing, and something they falsely claim that they don't do.
(Score: 2) by BsAtHome on Sunday May 27 2018, @03:46PM
Well, a sucker is born every minute. Better to get rich now then to tell the truth or do the Right Thing(TM).
It is amazing that people fall for this. On the other hand, desperate people do desperate things. This is so blatant exploitation of people that revoking the license would not be enough. I think fraud charges would be appropriate here.
(Score: 3, Touché) by HiThere on Sunday May 27 2018, @06:12PM (8 children)
The unfortunate fact is that modern medicine *is* killing people. Look up "iatrogenic". That they heal more people than they kill doesn't mean that they don't kill people who would otherwise have had a minor complaint.
Probably the only way around most of this is **EXTREME** sanitation measures. Something like resurfacing the room walls between patients. Less extreme actions have cut down the problem, but not eliminated it. And, of course, that means that the rooms need to be designed to be sanitized. One recent case I heard of was traced to room divider curtains that neither patient had touched.
So the question becomes, "At what point do the heroic measures cease to be worthwhile?". Different people will give different answers to that question.
That said, actual homeopathic treatment for actual serious conditions is a lot worse. But I've got a cough syrup that falsely claims to be homeopathic, but is a decent cough syrup. The best I've found that doesn't contain sugar. (Or maybe *they* think the sugar is the active ingredient, so they aren't falsely homeopathic, but only mistaken.)
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 2) by requerdanos on Sunday May 27 2018, @06:29PM (2 children)
That's not in doubt nor at issue here. Doctors don't try to hide it and make sleazy lying claims like "medicine is 100% safe and medical procedures are totally not harmful" (instead, they generally give their estimates of the patient surviving the treatment--and it's never 100%). Homeopaths DO make these sleazy lying claims.
In addition, saying that modern medicine (or the processed foods industry, or air travel, or the secret chemtrail conspiracy, or thinking dirty thoughts) *is* killing people in no way supports the claims of homeopathy. They just aren't connected. That's too far a stretch to even say it's a decent strawman.
Sure, there are medical procedures with side effects, and sometimes fatal ones.
That's because medical treatments have a PRIMARY EFFECT, which can possibly heal a patient. Homeopathy can never say that it can heal a patient, from an evidence-based standpoint, but there exist medical treatments which can have a healing effect.
But what if some medical procedures can kill a patient? Then Homeopathy can never say that it can heal a patient, from an evidence-based standpoint, but there exist medical treatments which can have a healing effect.
But what if hospitals are dirty and you can catch something there? Then Homeopathy can never say that it can heal a patient, from an evidence-based standpoint, but there exist medical treatments which can have a healing effect.
But what about this? Ok, in that case, Homeopathy can never say that it can heal a patient, from an evidence-based standpoint, but there exist medical treatments which can have a healing effect.
But what about so and so? Well, then Homeopathy can never say that it can heal a patient, from an evidence-based standpoint, but there exist medical treatments which can have a healing effect.
See how it doesn't change?
Cost/benefit is always an important question to answer, not just when a problem comes up. And if that answer is evidence-based, as it should be, it will never be "Um, dude, we totally better treat only with homeopathy because it doesn't have the potential for problems with nosocomial infection."
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Sunday May 27 2018, @10:58PM (1 child)
Umh...the problem I was addressing wasn't that some of the procedures are dangerous. It's that hospitals are becoming more dangerous in ways that have no connection to what you are being treated for. This is related to the way that some bacteria are becoming resistant to antibiotics, but is actually a separate problem. Hospitals are continually changing their procedures to address the problem, but it's like fixing software bugs...the new fix sometimes opens new holes...and you don't always catch them before they bite you.
The (great-?)grandparent post wasn't exactly clear about what he meant by medicine being unexpectedly dangerous, but to me he seemed to be dismissing the idea.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by requerdanos on Monday May 28 2018, @01:44AM
A "nosocomial infection" is an infection contracted in a clinical treatment setting.
It's one of many reasons that medical treatment isn't 100% safe.
Homeopoaths often criticize medicine for not being 100% safe, and for even killing its patients at times... Then, they claim that homeopathy is 100% safe.
However, this is hypocritical because in the case in TFA, promoting homeopathy (i.e. no treatment) as a treatment for Ebola, a highly communicable disease with only about a 50% survival rate even with first rate-treatment, is one of the many cases where homeopathy is much more likely than medical treatment to result in death.
Some random real-world examples.
"Michorius Homeopathy" [michorius-homeopathy.com]:
... They are saying that it's 100% safe to depend on no treatment at all for AIDS and Cancer. That's evil.
"Homeopathy Safe Medicine" [blogspot.com]:
...Their criticism here of the dangers of medical care has as its answer not washing curtains between patients, but saying that depending on homeopathy is totally not Russian roulette.
The issue is not denying the common-sense fact that there are risks inherent in medical care.
It's that proponents of something with much higher risk--people with deadly diseases staying away from medical care and believing in homeopathy instead of seeking treatment--criticize lifesaving medical care while they claim that their homeopathic way resulting in death is 100% safe.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Monday May 28 2018, @05:19AM (4 children)
Extreme measures would be needed for 100% reduction, but very reasonable measures would us most of the way there. Enforcing hand washing alone would eliminate a lot of the problem. Banning ties goes a long way as well. They could do a lot more for room design. For example, sealing the floor tiles so nothing can grow in the cracks. Likewise, seal the places where fixtures adjoin the walls. The divider curtains should certainly be changed every time a new patient is brought in.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Monday May 28 2018, @06:34PM (3 children)
The hospitals that I'm aware of already enforce hand-washing, and most of the other easy steps. They often even use disposable plastic gloves. (I suppose it depends on what they're doing.)
The problem is bacteria keep evolving. Methods that were safe turn out to have holes that can be evolved through. I don't suppose they'll be able to evolve directly through disposable plastic gloves, but and indirect approach involves changes in the mode of transmission. Perhaps UV will be needed to sterilize the air.
All that said, currently I generally trust the hospitals I go to. (Not, admittedly, the waiting rooms....they need serious work.) But current safe practices won't continue to be safe, so it's important to catch the leading edge and suppress it. Of course, the basic problem is dense populations mixed with fast transportation. Without that most of these things wouldn't spread. And the very idea of a hospital is an invitation to invasive organisms. But centralized expertise is necessary, and so are sterile environments for many procedures. Also, if we were to live in sterile bubbles, we'd be attacked by our own immune systems.
There probably isn't a perfect answer, but the optimal answer seems to be to keep watching over things, catch the leading edge of changes, and don't get complacent. Also to accept that perfection doesn't happen in this universe.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Monday May 28 2018, @07:50PM (2 children)
Measures to kill germs outside of the body are much more sure than those to control an infection. At some point, the only way for any microbe to survive the sterilization is to evolve to a point that the human body is no longer a good environment for it. Even extremophiles have their limits and generally, the price of being able to live in the extreme condition is an inability to compete with more typical organisms when the environment is less extreme. No amount of evolution will make a microbe survive incineration.
I have seen some discussion of atomizing propylene glycol to limit airborne transmission (the PG dessicates bacteria).
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Monday May 28 2018, @11:44PM (1 child)
The trouble is if people have to be in that same environment. And various spores evolved to resist autoclaves...I don't know how well, but I know that was mentioned when I asked why autoclaves weren't use much anymore.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by sjames on Tuesday May 29 2018, @12:52AM
Germs, even resistant ones still die in an autoclave. However, prions aren't destroyed, so surgical instruments need to be disposable anyway. Since autoclaves can be quite expensive to run and maintain, disposables are often cheaper anyway. They are, however still used for processing medical waste so it can be disposed of safely.