| HN Mirror

While I’m not a big fan of chiropractors there it’s important context that few understand. In the US medical malpractice is deviation from the standard treatments, and the standard treatments are heavily influenced by insurance companies which creates a substantial misalignment of interests and often leads to very poor outcomes. Similar to how researchers should be paid to teach and not research because paying them to research pollutes the research with a misalignment of interests. With chiropractors their version of teaching is spinal readjustment, while they’re paid for doing that they can explore other things. Obviously not the best way to organize society but it’s an emergent behavior and a product of history. I did get my PRP treatment done by an enterprising chiropractor long before it became a standard of care, I had researched prolotherapy which was having great success in France for a long time but was unable to find a MD in the US that would do it for me. I had a serious injury that wouldn’t heal for 8 years, 3 months later it was gone.

Take for example in Germany a huge percentage of doctors are into homeopathy and other alternative treatments. I think this is a byproduct of the germ vs terrain school of thought and the revolution of microscopes, antibiotics, and the fact that the Allies won WW2 meant that germ theory won and terrain theory largely was brushed aside. Though not all German doctors are willing to give it up yet. Terrain theory is not always wrong, Japan figured out that lack of B1 was killing a large number of their sailors and fixed that with diet.

My focus is on genetics and dysautonomia, which if you do not have the statistical tools we have today will often look like subtle imbalances caused by environmental factors supporting the Terrain theory. A substantial percentage (~5%) of the population has some level of undiagnosed dysautonomia, probably due to an undiagnosed inherited genetic anxiety disorder. These are exasperated by environmental factors. There is an assumption that humans are generally healthy unless perturbed but for this subset of the population they really should be medicated and stay medicated. The problem is the lack of skill in systems engineering and statistics means doctors are usually unable to find the right medications (they tend to prefer stronger ligands and I think weaker ligands should be preferred) or the right dosing (I think patients should generally be in charge of their dosing and take medication based on how they feel once educated on how the feedback loops work).

The fact that some subsection of medical science can know the right answers but medical science as an institution does not, it has evolved in the past and it will continue to evolve, should indicate that what is currently believed is not based entirely in scientific discovery but massively influenced by schools of thoughts, artifacts of history, fashions, and luminaries. Much like humanities, individuals can inhibit exploration of alternative ideas and science can’t progress past them until they’re out of the way.