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from the smoking-stopped-son's-seizures-so-son-siezed dept.
They Let Their 15-Year-Old Son Smoke Pot to Stop His Seizures. Georgia Took Him Away. (archive)
The pharmaceuticals weren't working. The 15-year-old boy was having several seizures per day, and his parents were concerned his life was in danger. So Suzeanna and Matthew Brill, of Macon, Ga., decided in February to let their son try smoking marijuana — and his seizures stopped for 71 days, they say.
The Brills' decision led to the boy, David, being taken away from his parents, who face possible fines and jail time after being charged with reckless conduct for giving him the drug. David has now been in a group home for 30 days, and his seizures have returned. He is separated from the service dog that sniffed out his seizures, and he is able to communicate with his parents only during short visitations and phone calls.
They maintain they made the right decision for their son's health, despite their current predicament. "Even with the ramifications with the law, I don't care," said Mr. Brill, his stepfather. "For 71 days he was able to ride a bike, go play, lift weights. We were able to achieve that with David medicated not from Big Pharma, but David medicated with marijuana."
The Brill parents were jailed on April 20, and posted bond on April 25.
Since The New York Times published the article, Twiggs County Sheriff Darren Mitchum has received media attention and threatening phone calls, one of which he played back for reporters at a press conference.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by RandomFactor on Saturday June 02 2018, @12:22AM (1 child)
Homeopathy sells itself under the colour of medicine in a way that is intentionally misleading to the public. This is a problem which needs addressing. I agree that the fact it is being sold is fine.
В «Правде» нет известий, в «Известиях» нет правды
(Score: 2) by Arik on Saturday June 02 2018, @03:23AM
Medicine is an especially difficult field. The truth about medicine, both "conventional" and "alternative" is more than patients want to hear, more than doctors want to speak. Conventional medicine wants to be seen draped in the colors of Hippocrates and science, but both claims are half-truths at best. "First do no harm?" All surgery violates that maxim, granted emergency lifesaving justifies it, but it's hardly in keeping with the oath even then. And plastic surgeons? No one's still pretending that's about burn victims, they're a tiny fraction of the clients and the specialty would shrink radically if elective surgeries for rich nincompoops ceased. And scientific? Sure, some therapies have some sort of scientific basis (routinely exaggerated) but many don't even have that. And they can't, think about it. You have a time-honored but completely unscientific treatment for a life-threatening condition, you want to scientifically prove it, you need a control group to do that, and just how is that ever going to pass ethics muster? You can't leave patients untreated when you have an "accepted" treatment available that's almost certainly going to improve their chances of survival, not to really *prove* that it works or for any other reason. So it's actually a good thing, but it's still a thing. Medicine is not a science.
And "conventional" doctors use the placebo affect all the time btw. Sometimes they even realize they are doing it.
https://www.webmd.com/pain-management/what-is-the-placebo-effect
https://www.webmd.com/a-to-z-guides/news/20080103/many-doctors-use-placebos-on-patients
And "alternative" medicine? They want you to think it's "natural" but it's hardly any more (or less) natural than conventional medicine. In a sense it's all rebelling against nature, against the inevitability of decay and death, but with apologies to INXS, that's perfectly natural too. There's nothing more natural about a tincture from a dropper bottle versus a pill, and the pill is more convenient. A lot of it amounts to magic, but again the placebo affect is real, and a good witch doctor probably uses it more effectively than your local M.D. (or shrink for that matter.)
If you convince yourself that your expensive tea or homeopathic tincture will give you relief, there's a very good chance it will. Sometimes I wish I was more gullible. That tea may be expensive but still a fraction of the cost of a prescription from a conventional doctor, and for a significant number of patients it will actually work just as well.
I'm not saying that all "alternative" medicine is placebo btw - but a good portion is, and if you and I disagree on exactly which thing falls on which side of that line, well, ok, let us disagree in peace and let everyone buy what they want.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?