[SeanLuke]

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

Please provide your extraordinary evidence. Ideally in the form of multiple strong, well-vetted and well respected studies in peer-reviewed journals. Otherwise I'll presume you're full of it.

[feralimal]

Absolutely. Let's look at the claims.

What is the first claim though? Is it that extraordinary evidence needs to be provided for the claim that a poison (chemotherapy) is a cure for cancer?

You will likely say that there is evidence in "multiple strong, well-vetted and well respected studies in peer-reviewed journals".

But then I would question the authority of peer-reviewed journals. Do know about replication crisis?

https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-39054778 : "According to a survey published in the journal Nature last summer, more than 70% of researchers have tried and failed to reproduce another scientist's experiments."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replication_crisis : "a number of efforts have been made to re-investigate classic results, to determine both the reliability of the results and, if found to be unreliable, the reasons for the failure of replication."

Another reason I dismiss most scientific authority is on account of funding. If funding is controlled by government, the military and private corporations (as it is), then this triad can cooperate to fund or de-fund whatever studies they like.

To see what I mean about funding, we can look at my imagined idea that 'you want to prove the health benefit of cold potatoes'. First you can fund 10 studies. Let's say 2 support the thesis, 2 refute it and 6 are inconclusive. You can then further fund the 2 that support it. And rinse and repeat. Pretty soon you could have enough studies to create a whole new field exclaiming the wonder of cold potatoes.

Unfortunately, this really is how science works. Science is a money making operation, and is politicised. A common sense idea like fasting for cancer, or not eating carbohydrates to get rid of diabetes, has no economic benefit. Scientists themselves can work within the system with good intentions, but can be more or less unaware of the machinations and agendas at play.

If you want to talk about solutions, you would take a totally different tack. At present we have a sickness not a wellness industry. Companies get money from you when you are sick. The more sick you are, the better it is for their monetary return. The ideal patient is someone who will be ill for a long time, which is a perverse incentive. Really, you want a wellness industry, where if you are well, those ensuring your health get paid. As they are incentivised to keep you well, you should expect good advice - their financial well-being depends on it.

[Delk]

> Is it that extraordinary evidence needs to be provided for the claim that a poison (chemotherapy) is a cure for cancer?

Let's start by not conflating all kinds of cancer and all kinds of chemotherapy, because it's not a single disease, and the outcomes vary greatly.

But, for instance, survival rates for testicular cancer have risen significantly (or even dramatically) since the invention and introduction of the chemotherapy treatment that is being used for it today. If detection isn't overly delayed, the cure rate in the developed world today is around 95 to 100 percent.

So let's please, please, please, not go for cheap "chemotherapy = poison" rhetoric. I have first-hand experience with the adverse effects, but you can't dismiss a nearly 100% cure rate.

--

Regarding what you more generally wrote, it's true that financial interests affect and direct the pharma industry. There are several adverse effects from that, such as research not being directed at areas with potential health benefits but low profitability, and also over-marketing (and thus possibly over-prescription) in other areas. It would also be great if medical research were less tightly bound to funding from the industry and rather got its funding from public sources instead. (That wouldn't make it non-politicized, but direct financial interests might not be as significantly involved.)

But it would be rather misguided to think that there aren't actual working treatments coming out of the industry and research as well. Sometimes those treatments are the difference between life and death. Let's not discount that.

--

The significantly improved survival rates for TC are pretty well-known, but a couple of sources:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Testicular_cancer#Prognosis

https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/181433

https://ascopubs.org/doi/full/10.1200/JCO.2014.56.0896

edit: line breaks between URLs

[feralimal]

Thanks for your thoughtful reply.

I don't say that there are no good things coming out of the medical industry. Sometimes there are good things, and when it comes to bodily trauma, I think the medical profession is excellent at stitching people back together again.

But I'm especially interested in wellness and optimal living. I genuinely don't feel the industry has anything to offer on that front. Food is probably the most important 'treatment' we can do, but the industry is pretty silent on this.

My anecdotal experience, is with a relative who was diagnosed with diabetes. It was never explained to them that if they don't eat carbs they won't have the disease - cutting out bread, rice, etc was too 'out there'. The advice was about how to manage the process, cut back a little on the bread, inject insulin etc - the relative ended up on a high level of medication. I think all that could have been avoided by eating appropriately for the disease, advice which that person has taken (a bit) with a corresponding drop in symptoms + medication. To my mind, it is not so radical to cut those foods out of the diet completely if they are harmful!

Its not that doctors intend to be mean or harmful, but they are taught in such a narrow way with medication at the heart of what they do. If they advise 'off menu' they stand to lose their license. The medical industry is in fact captured and beholden to big pharma.

Did you even know that there are alternative theories of disease? Namely - the terrain theory (Beauchamp). That what you eat and how you live is the main cause of disease. That disease (of all sorts) is a natural bodily process, as your body tries to heal - including cancer. Eg, at a lower level, when you have a cold, this is your body clearing your system. There is mucus and a fever. The worst thing to do is to take medication to suppress this process - but that is the first thing most of us will do.

Anyway, for that and other reasons, I find the terrain theory makes a lot of sense, and it is something that does not require an intermediary to tell you what you need to do (eg a doctor, testing, etc). If you get it right you enjoy optimal health. That is the position that I'm arguing from - that food and proper management of what and how we eat (inc breaks such as fasting) is probably the best healer. If I were ever seriously ill, my first course of action would be as per my initial comment - a prolonged juice fast.

Cheers

[Delk]

I don't know that particular theory, but I don't think it would really make sense to try and have a unified theory of disease, alternative or otherwise. (I don't think medical science really even tries to have one.)

Various diseases have such different causes that we cannot really expect to proscribe a common theory to them. The symptoms of cold are mostly caused by the immune reaction (and medical doctors also acknowledge that). Sometimes you may need to curb that immune reaction e.g. with antipyretic medication because the reaction could be disproportionately strong and be dangerous in and of itself; sometimes it may be best to just let it be. Sometimes it doesn't really matter one way or the other, and you could either take symptom-relieving medication to ease how you feel or elect not to.

(FWIW, I generally prefer not to take medication for a cold, partially because it doesn't help the healing -- in the case of cold, only time does -- and partially because artificially improving the symptoms might make you feel better than you actually are and thus make you believe you can already do more when you should still rest. So I kind of agree with you that people may take medication too lightly in some cases, but I certainly wouldn't treat all disease the same, because different disease are very different in many regards.)

In cancer, your own cells have begun to divide and grow uncontrollably. Normally cells have various kinds of built-in controls for growth and longevity; in cancer those controls have failed, and not just one of them but a number of them at once. Since there's always a nonzero probability of a mutation causing one of those mechanisms to fail, there's always a smaller but still nonzero probability of enough of them failing that the result is going to be a malignant tumor.

I fail to see why we should consider a tumorous growth as a reaction of the body trying to heal itself from something else. First of all, from what; and secondly, how would that even begin to accomplish the goal? On the other hand, the generally accepted understanding that it's just cells where enough things have wrong that they have gone into uncontrolled division and growth makes perfect sense.

Again, your immune system is going to (or at least should) react to that, but that's not what causes the disease, or perhaps not even most of the symptoms. (I lack the understanding to comment on how much of the immediate symptoms of cancer are caused by immune reaction, not to mention that cancer is again not a single consistent disease, but in any case, let's not pretend that cells that are nonfunctional and uncontrollably taking over space from your healthy tissue isn't going to be a disaster in most cases regardless of that.)

Also, many factors influence the risk of cancer, including nutrition. That's also undoubtedly true of many other diseases, and medical science agrees on that. (Different studies might come up with different results on what exactly those factors might be, but that's largely due to the complexity of the topic.) In some disease (e.g. cardiovascular) it might even be the most significant one.

--

It's true that medicine traditionally focuses on treating disease, not on what generates wellness beyond that. I agree that there's a lot that can be achieved outside of medicine that can be beneficial for wellness (and even health).

It's also true that big pharma probably has an effect on doctors and their education. However, I don't think that makes medicine generally suspect. Rather, the truth is more nuanced and in between. Doctors, especially at major hospitals, have significant clinical experience in their fields, and that's not immediately affected by pharmacological research. Also, not all medical (or even all pharmacological) research is funded by the industry. Criticism of big pharma or even medical research is not without merit, but I think the impression I get from your comments is too cynical of the field.

While wellness is something where it's often best to listen to yourself, I would urge anyone with serious illness to seek medical treatment. That's certainly so at least in case of disease such as cancer which have well-established and evidence-based treatments.

[feralimal]

Thanks again for your thoughtful reply.

The terrain model is well worth looking into. It works of the principle that the body has all the abilities it needs to manage itself, but that issues arise when we overload it. So if we eat bad food, too many toxins, etc our system cannot cope and force a response. Initially that would be something like a cold. But when things are more serious, it progress and tries to isolate toxicity, hence cancer. Did you know that cancer does not survive in an alcaline environment? But that sugar, coffee, carbs, etc are acid forming?

I think your instinct is right about allowing a cold to proceed naturally. Medical intervention is not necessary. What you really want is dark mucus to be released - you are really clearing out your system at the point.

You are right to say that I am very cynical about big pharma. I am. There is simply no incentive for them to heal you, and every incentive for them to support you in a protracted disease. Their profits are best when they are managing you all the way down.

Unfortunately, if you are working on a very long term plan, and have huge resources, it isn't as complex as you think to create a situation where the medical establishment works in service of big pharma. You would need to capture the governance steering apparatus only - ie that bit that gets to say what is a valid treatment or not. And then you wait for that to feed through the system. I think that the US medical system has been run that way since 1940's.

[SeanLuke]

So... you have nothing? That is what I figured.

[feralimal]

I'm saying neither of us has anything.

But that you are making a mistake in thinking you do have something.

[SeanLuke]

I asked for evidence. Rather than providing any you went on a diatribe about science. Until you can provide any reasonable evidence of your claim, you are nothing but a crank.

[feralimal]

Yes - it was a diatribe about science but I thought there was a reason for it.

You assume that poisoning people to kill the cancer is a sensible treatment. There is supportive evidence for that, but I'm saying the evidence is actually PR for big pharma, not the unbiased evidence you think it is.

So, from my point of view, we both have no evidence.

But I am saying you are mislead when you think you have evidence.