6 replies to this topic

[Stacks]

Inspired by the "Teeth" thread and the idea that capitalist societies produce the best possible products.

http://video.google....04572198377643#

Though overlong, I recommend the whole documentary, it's a very critical look at psychotropic drugs and psychiatry. But it can get depressing (no pun intended), so skip to around 42:00, if you're interested in supposedly objective reseach. It goes into ghostwritten medical articles, medical journals funded by ad revenues from pharmaceutical companies, etc. Of course, this is only one documentary that covers only a small-ish segment of the health industry/profession, but the implications go far beyond that, of course.

Seppo has been getting some shots in at the natural health industry lately, and I thought it would be only right to fire a couple rounds at good old, impartial Western science and industry

(Oh, and you might want to bear in mind that the documentary was financed by an organization backed by scientologists. Discretion is encouraged, as always.)

[Seppo]

There's no denying that the current state of medicine is not ideal.

Though we have to separate this into two parts: human nature and scientific medicine. As is plainly obvious humans aren't perfect. We are greedy, selfish and don't usually act in the best interest of our specific as a whole.

What's wrong with medicine today can be blamed on human failings more than anything else. Corporate greed and corruption are probably the two biggest factors.

But just because humans aren't perfect it doesn't mean scientific medicine wouldn't be the right thing to do. It has led to massive improvements in general health, human lifespan and the quality of life for all of us here.

There's no questions scientific medicine offers better and more effective treatments than what alternative medicine can offer. If we only had herbs and so-called natural cures we would still be battling with polio, tuberculosis and many other diseases my generation only reads in the books.

So yeah, the system isn't perfect but it's the best we have so far.

Just as a disclaimer I want to say that I'm not interested of any particular ideology anymore. I used to be more into natural health and healing, but having since learned that most things there plainly don't work I've dropped that ideology. I'm interested of what works, that's all.

[Stacks]

I'd like to separate human nature from scientific medicine, too, but scientific medicine isn't some autonomous organism doing its thing in a petri dish.  Of course scientific medicine IDEALLY is better than any sort of alternative medicine. Ideally we wouldn't need alternatives because the orthodox system works! But it doesn't.

We have a system that's rotten to its core. Prescribed psychotropic drugs kill more people than homicides in the US. What about chemotherapy? "A review of 600 cancer patients who died within 30 days of treatment found that in more than a quarter of cases it actually hastened or caused death." http://news.bbc.co.u...lth/7722626.stm *

I don't mean to rant, but I find it maddening that people aren't up in arms about shit like this.

Oh, and when I referred to "ideology" I was speaking more in terms of political beliefs (i.e. "free markets -> best products")

[Seppo]

Let me answer all your points in this discussion, so we don't have to keep going in two places.

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Actually as the emphasis on marketing reveals, they tend to focus on creating artificial needs.

We can debate this until cows come home, but it's very hard to create a sustainable business based on artificial needs. Marketing really isn't about creating needs. It's about making a persuasive case for people to buy your product or service. It's about presenting it in a way that makes people want to buy it. But it still has to fill some need or otherwise people wouldn't buy it many times. We all get buyer's remorse when we buy things we don't really need.

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Again, maybe in theory, but when does this happen? When is the last time someone ("the little guy") came up with something out of the ordinary that put a dent in big business? I'd honestly like to hear an example, any area of business will do.

Doesn't have to be a little guy. The business world is full of examples where new comers to the field transform it by offering a better product at a better price. Out of the top of my head.

• Amazon
  
• What apple did in the smart phones market
  
• What cell phones did as a category to landlines
  
• The rise of budget airlines at the expense of established big guys
  
• What Google did to Yahoo and MSN in the search market
  
• What Facebook did to MySpace

I'm sure someone could list hundreds of more examples. Those were just out of the top of my head.

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This is an idea that just popped into my head, but all those medical advances you rightly praise-- when's the last time a breakthrough of that magnitude happened? The medical industry started becoming corporatized around, say, the early 20th century, and really got going in the post-war years. And now we have all these "new" diseases - cancer, AIDS, etc. And they still use the same tools to treat cancer as they did in the fifties: chemo, radiation, and surgery. There has been no progess since? Come on. There has to be something fishy going on.

Contrary to what Mike Adams and other natural health nuts would have you believe, these aren't easy conditions to treat. And I have to say that I'm not the best person to answer this since I don't have my ear to the ground as far as medical developments count. But I can say that there has been tremendous strides made in improving the quality of life of HIV patients, as an example. With new anti retro viral drugs available it's not such a dead sentence it used to be. In fact many HIV victims are living so long that they die of other complications - some from the very drugs that kept them alive.

Also I know there's tremendous research and progress being made at regenerating human limbs and organs. Not too much into the future we can probably regenerate whole human limbs, so that your amputee leg can grow back. Also soon we can grow human organs just from your DNA. Imagine the benefit to all the people who currently die because an organ transplant is not available. There's a lot of progress being made in restoring damaged eye sight and hearing to people. Again probably within our lifetime we can actually help blind people see again. There's some development made already in hooking up a camera system to the visual cortex in the human brain.

I'm fairly certain there's also progress being made in treatment of cancer and other diseases. I'm just not the best person to talk about those developments.

I'm the first to agree that there's plenty of thing going wrong with pharmaceutical companies. Probably not nearly to the extreme that Mike Adams et al would have you believe, but still. It just doesn't make sense to paint a black and white picture of it.

It's actually incredibly arrogant position to hold. Doctors are among the brightest and highly educated people we have. It's insulting to the entire profession to claim that all of them are corrupted by drug company money. And that all but a selected few can't see what's going on. And that it takes an outsider with absolutely no experience in the field to see what's wrong. Imagine that some total outsider would come pissing on what you are doing. How much faith you would put on their words?

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You got money (billions!) for free samples, but not research?! Also, the annual revenues of the drug industry are §500 billion-- you do the math. (I realize I'm making no difference between academic and corporate research here-- but the two are heavily interlinked anyway.)

You may also find this interesting, a recent study published by the London School of Economics, which in addition to pointing out how the costs of drug research are greatly exaggerated, concludes:

It's a free market and companies are free to choose how they spend their money. Anyway, I do see the point you make.

There's actually a lot of talk among doctors about drug company influence on research and research outcomes. It's ironic that the place where medicine-bashers get their data is from medical journals. It's seen as a problem and it's being measured and tracked by the very people who are supposed to be too corrupt to care.

You raised the point of people being killed by medical treatments and doctor errors. I suggest that you check out this post: Death By Medicine. Again it's ironic that this data comes from medical journals. This is seen as a problem and people are taking action to address it.

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It's an unbelievably sick system. I'd like to think it wasn't, but I'd be deluding myself. "Free" markets at work. Less "regulation" and "market barriers" won't exactly help to create "better" medicine here.

Actually this is precise free markets NOT at work. This situation can exist because of corruption, not because of free markets. Without corruption we could set good legislation to prevent introduction of new and essentially useless drugs to the market. And my point is not to advocate completely free markets. It's an ideology and if allowed to run unconstrained would lead to disaster. We do need some regulation.

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That's a good point. Still, we can do way more for our own well-being than any doctor with any pill-- for that knowledge, I have you, among others, to thank.

In some cases we can. In other cases we can't. In case of HIV infection I would gladly take the ARV drugs. In case of diabetes I'm glad that the doctor can hand me some insulin. Without these I wouldn't live very long.

In many cases not going to the doctor and relying on alt med treatments can do you massive harm. For more info, please check out this website: What's the harm?

If I may, I would suggest you read also some other things than just Natural News and other alt med mouth pieces. If for no other reason than to get a more balanced view. Natural News used to be a great website, but now it's just deteriorated to hate-filled fear mongering machine with little to no credible info anymore.

This is a good one that I like: http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/. Written by actual doctors, imagine that

[Stacks]

Seppo, on 23 May 2011 - 01:18 PM, said:

We can debate this until cows come home, but it's very hard to create a sustainable business based on artificial needs. Marketing really isn't about creating needs. It's about making a persuasive case for people to buy your product or service. It's about presenting it in a way that makes people want to buy it. But it still has to fill some need or otherwise people wouldn't buy it many times. We all get buyer's remorse when we buy things we don't really need.

Man, to me the debate doesn't even exist, and I'm not saying that out of arrogance. Every single person I know has bought things they don't need simply because of the constant onslaught of commercials convincing us we NEED this and that. You sound like a marketer telling me what "marketing" is in some idealistic bubble. The reality is I got "persuasive cases" coming at me from EVERYWHERE. Mail, the telephone, public transportation, TV, radio, the street, the Internet. The only place I'm "safe" is my sleep where I have to process those commercials only trying to sell me things I supposedly want. The world is full of ridiculous goods and services that people wouldn't even think of needing, unless some marketing genius came up with the idea of selling it to them.

Seppo, on 23 May 2011 - 01:18 PM, said:

Doesn't have to be a little guy. The business world is full of examples where new comers to the field transform it by offering a better product at a better price. Out of the top of my head.

[list]
[*]Amazon
[*]What apple did in the smart phones market

etc.

You say it "doesn't have to be a little guy", when that was my point. All of the companies you listed are backed by MAJOR capital: you need some major financial backing to become big in this day and age. And the capital won't come near you, unless they smell more money to be made. If your livelihood (lifestyle might be a better word when speaking of the rich), your whole industry depended on some product not being made, wouldn't you do everything in your power to prevent that product from entering the market? Let's be honest; people in those positions tend to be ruthless and they have the money to realize their goals. If I came up with any kind of "natural," "free" cure that couldn't be trademarked, where would I get the billion dollars (or so they claim) needed to bring that drug into the market place? From the capitalist whom that cure would make bankrupt?

And none of the examples you listed did much to change existing power structures. You replace one capitalist with another; that's normal competition. The type of example I was looking for would make telephones/airlines/etc. obsolete; killing the whole industry. Sure, it happens, but almost always by chance. Take the music industry: in their arrogance they couldn't see the current situation coming. And you can bet they have their brightest minds figuring out ways to make music profitable again for them (not the artist, mind you).

I just actually raised the HIV argument with my friend: today you don't die from AIDS (unless you live in the third world!), sure, but you'll be paying for those drugs for the rest of your life. A perfect customer. Meanwhile the virus just keeps baffling everyone everywhere. Yet when the new flu pandemic hit, they were happily shipping the antidote (in some ways more dangerous than the pandemic) by the millions. I don't say conspiracy, I say big business. FYI, I just came across Mike Adams for the first time a couple of days ago.

Seppo, on 23 May 2011 - 01:18 PM, said:

Also I know there's tremendous research and progress being made at regenerating human limbs and organs. etc.

Absolutely no disagreement. Yet, you overlook one crucial detail: all this progress you speak of has the potential of helping people AND bringing in MORE money. Look, I'm not trying to disparage the average doctor or the average person working at a drug company. They aren't the parties to blame here.

Seppo, on 23 May 2011 - 01:18 PM, said:

I'm fairly certain there's also progress being made in treatment of cancer and other diseases. I'm just not the best person to talk about those developments.

Fairly certain? How about some facts, please. Cancer death rates are on the decline, agreed, but I wouldn't be surprised if TREATMENT had little to do with that. Again, chemo, radiation and surgery. They sure as hell aren't growing limbs using 1950s (or even earlier) technology/ideas.

Seppo, on 23 May 2011 - 01:18 PM, said:

It's actually incredibly arrogant position to hold. Doctors are among the brightest and highly educated people we have. It's insulting to the entire profession to claim that all of them are corrupted by drug company money. And that all but a selected few can't see what's going on. And that it takes an outsider with absolutely no experience in the field to see what's wrong. Imagine that some total outsider would come pissing on what you are doing. How much faith you would put on their words?

Doctors tend to be bright and highly educated, yes. They are also human. It's insulting to humanity to think that these individuals are above the rest of us, and resistant to outside influence, marketing, and corruption.

When I was twelve, my appendix burst after a week of severe pain because my doctor was sure there was nothing wrong with me because I could jump around with no increased pain (!). After that, they were sure that antibiotics would calm down my appendix before it could be cut out. Next thing I know, I'm hospitalized in a foreign country while on vacation. I came back home, too risky to operate-- I was allowed to continue my vacation. Result: I was driven to a hospital from the middle of nowhere in the middle of the night and had my appendix removed on the spot.

Now I didn't write this down because I think the doctors that treated me were incompetent or, God forbid, "corrupt"; the whole ordeal helped me figure out their humanity and infallibility early on, which I am now extremely grateful for. Doctors do not have the power to heal, they're simply following a text book called Western medicine to their best ability. That text book is by no means the final truth, nor is it fool-proof or without errors, nor is it uncorrupted or incorruptible. Ultimately, what I'm saying is that as long as MONEY can be made out of sickness, there will be countless people in the medical industry and its fringes exploiting that opportunity at the expense of people's health. In a free market, you're free to pursue <i>any</i> goals, unfortunately.

Yes, drug companies are "free to choose how they spend their money," and I'm surely "free" to criticize the destructive ways they spend their blood money. I think it was in Florida where they found that prescription drugs kill 300% percent more people than illegal drugs. Something to consider, I'm sure.

Seppo, on 23 May 2011 - 01:18 PM, said:

There's actually a lot of talk among doctors about drug company influence on research and research outcomes. It's ironic that the place where medicine-bashers get their data is from medical journals. It's seen as a problem and it's being measured and tracked by the very people who are supposed to be too corrupt to care.

I don't believe even these Mike Adams types think that doctors are too corrupt to care. I have no doubt in my mind that the average doctor goes into medicine with the intention to help people. But talk among doctors is pretty cheap when you're actually facing a multibillion industry. The goal of a capitalist business is to turn profits, not to help people. In the case of a drug company, actually curing people would go against the very idea of business. I find absolutely nothing controversial about this: drug companies are not interested in curing people.

Seppo, on 23 May 2011 - 01:18 PM, said:

You raised the point of people being killed by medical treatments and doctor errors. I suggest that you check out this post: Death By Medicine. Again it's ironic that this data comes from medical journals. This is seen as a problem and people are taking action to address it.

You seem bent on lumping me in with some imaginary (or very real, I wouldn't know) natural health armada who overlook all the good that doctors do... I don't have any major disagreements with that post, except its idiotic conclusion: "The biggest cause of death is not medicine, but a failure to use medicine." I'm assuming the writer uses "medicine" to describe the stuff she and her ilk prescribe.

And ironic to whom? Much of the data I've linked has come from medical journals. I believe the tampering happens way before the articles reach, or DON'T reach, medical journals. Like some psychiatrist says in the video above, once he saw a four page color ad for some drug company in the national psychiatry association's journal, he immediately resigned from the association. You got scientific, supposedly impartial and objective journals receiving ad revenues from drug companies whose products are reviewed in those very same journals? The conflicts of interest should get ANY "bright, well educated" person's blood boiling, yet they don't. I wonder why, I really do.

Seppo, on 23 May 2011 - 01:18 PM, said:

Actually this is precise free markets NOT at work. This situation can exist because of corruption, not because of free markets. Without corruption we could set good legislation to prevent introduction of new and essentially useless drugs to the market. And my point is not to advocate completely free markets. It's an ideology and if allowed to run unconstrained would lead to disaster. We do need some regulation.

Yeah, I was playing the devil's advocate there. But since I think a truly free market is a pure pipe dream, I find it funny that someone would pull the "less regulation" card when the negative results of that can be seen all over.

Seppo, on 23 May 2011 - 01:18 PM, said:

In many cases not going to the doctor and relying on alt med treatments can do you massive harm. For more info, please check out this website: What's the harm?

If I got a sudden, unexplainable rash, I most likely wouldn't go to a doctor (why? my brother has done so three times, the doctors are baffled, and he gets prescribed cortizone without fail). If I start bleeding out of the blue, I will go. To me, both of these examples above are dictated by sense. That What's the Harm site would appear a bit more balanced if they included the millions killed by Western medicine, too.

Seppo, on 23 May 2011 - 01:18 PM, said:

If I may, I would suggest you read also some other things than just Natural News and other alt med mouth pieces. If for no other reason than to get a more balanced view. Natural News used to be a great website, but now it's just deteriorated to hate-filled fear mongering machine with little to no credible info anymore.

I know this is the internet, and there are all kinds of people here, but for the sake of good discussion, it would be nice if you didn't just assume I'm some natural/alternative health nut. I've visited the Natural News site once in my life. I have not knowingly touched a herb that isn't basil, and I have no idea what a homeopath or a naturopath does. In fact, in many ways I'm a lot more orthodox than you are. I would even go as far as saying that some of the zaniest, most unorthodox ideas I've gotten or had about health and diet are Clear for Life related. Raw food? MMS? I've never felt more ridiculous than dragging that magnet over my head as per your instructions. Holosync? Your mind-body connections are pretty extreme in the eyes of Western science, too. That final bit is not a criticism, by the way, I have an open mind and am willing to try most things, but I'm also smart enough to stop when I don't see any results.

If I seem to favor "natural" alternatives, it's only because my experience has showed them to be superior, not because some guy on the internet told me so. Even if that guy wears a white coat and has a degree on his wall. And especially if that guy is catering to some need I never even knew about.

[Seppo]

Sorry if I lumped you into with natural health types. What you said was exactly the same I read every day from Natural News and other less than objective places.

Let me see if I can get to the root of our disagreement here.

Would it be right to say that your point is that the intent of making money is what's causing the problems you refer to?

If so, I would have to agree with you. Profit motive and the fact that humans are easily corruptible is the main issue here.

The big pharma certainly affects medical education and publications too much. And there are studies that show that drug company interaction leads to poor prescribing choices and higher costs to the patients. No arguments there, and I can only hope that doctors collectively pull their heads out of pharma companies ass and do more about this.

On the other hand I don't know any alternatives that would be much better. Communism doesn't have such a great track record. Neither does socialism. And it's not that those systems aren't immune to corruption. I think communist countries (or former) are probably the most corrupt on earth.

So I don't see a point in throwing medicine out. Because it's the best thing we have for fighting disease and keeping people healthy. Alternative medicine just doesn't work. And those things that work in alt med (diet, exercise, relaxation, etc) in most cases come from research done in real medicine. I can say the same for CFL also. What's good in it and what really works, comes from published medical research - not from alt med 'knowledge'.

So as far as I can see the best thing we can do is to keep medicine and do our best to account for the known failings we humans have.

[Stacks]

Seppo, on 29 May 2011 - 03:54 PM, said:

Would it be right to say that your point is that the intent of making money is what's causing the problems you refer to?

If so, I would have to agree with you. Profit motive and the fact that humans are easily corruptible is the main issue here.

The big pharma certainly affects medical education and publications too much. And there are studies that show that drug company interaction leads to poor prescribing choices and higher costs to the patients. No arguments there, and I can only hope that doctors collectively pull their heads out of pharma companies ass and do more about this.

Yes, we agree on the main point..  But the bigger problem to me is that this is not a question of doctors "doing better", but a case of a corrupt system that is not likely to correct itself. It's not as if e.g. western medicine was always this affected by greedy industry. It has gotten systematically worse, not better, since circa the eighties. In the EU advertising drugs may very well be soon legal like in the US. I'm sure you've heard about pharmaceutical companies working on monopolizing vitamin sales... The pharmaceutical industry is the most profitable industry in the US, growth in growing markets is almost 100% - you REALLY think morally upright doctors will somehow turn this ship around?  I truly wish I could be that optimistic.

Seppo, on 29 May 2011 - 03:54 PM, said:

On the other hand I don't know any alternatives that would be much better. Communism doesn't have such a great track record. Neither does socialism. And it's not that those systems aren't immune to corruption. I think communist countries (or former) are probably the most corrupt on earth.

In reality "communism" has never existed. The idea was and is that after state socialism people wouldn't need a centralized government. And technically the socialism that has existed hasn't been too pure either. Just like there has never been a free market really. So I'll concede to the Milton Friedmans of the world that free markets might work IF existing power structures would be wiped clean. And on the other hand, poor regulation = a market crash like 2007. So history isn't on the side of freeing up the markets, either.

Concerning capitalism leading to better and more durable products, as you suggest, here's a documentary nominally about light bulbs ("planned obsolesence") that pretty much debunks that myth: . I couldn't find one with English subtitles, but you might find one with subtitles you understand. It's mostly in English anyway. And despite the "conspiracy" label, the documentary was produced by European national broadcast companies, so it's hardly Alex Jones type stuff.

Example: Edison's light bulbs lasted for 2500 hours, in a few decades a manufacturing cartel had succeeded in bringing down the average to 1000 hours. There existed patents for light bulbs lasting a thousand times that - did they ever reach the general markets? The difference between capitalists then and now? These days I don't think they're stupid enough to leave a paper trail behind like they did then.