this post was submitted on 16 Aug 2023
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The need for a free internet that is community-regulated cannot be more urgent. This move will indiscriminately ban any kind of speech, important traditional therapies, etc. Implemented, this will be a huge loss to our collective knowledge and ability to organise as communities.
What are these “important traditional therapies” that you are want to protect?
I’m guessing stuff like Gerson Therapy where you fast only consuming fresh vegan juice and nutritional supplements while you give yourself organic coffee enemas to cure your cancer.
Overview link for the curious.
Is this what cured Steve Jobs?
I don’t know if he was doing the Coffee enemas, but basically, yes.
at this point "important traditional therapies" don't exist. if they were working, these things are tested, standardized or sometimes used as a starting point of something else, at which point they become therapies without adjectives. this is how we got artemether and digioxin. everyone in pharma is looking for new stuff, this is why they're looking for alkaloids in obscure sea sponges and random vines, sometimes it's the entire thing, but more often not. this is also how we got taxol
what are you saying could have been true in 70s, but by now almost all attested traditional therapies were tested already and developed into something new that works and passes all regulatory tests
you can't just throw random bullshit at desperate people and expect everything to work. you can expect them to pay, that's how scams work. also i don't see, in most charitable terms, how restricting scammers is a barrier to organizing
This always struck me as a lazy approach. Traditional methodologies for medicine may not be as rigorous as Western scientific ones, but they weren't just universally so stupid that they couldn't figure out something didn't even work. At least not across the board. You want to vet them to the highest standard possible, but you can't just assume they don't work by default, a lot of that stuff hasn't been studied at all.
if it's working, it's working when you test it rigorously. one such big screening of traditional medicines happened in china somewhere in 70s: they collected 2k+ traditional malaria medicines, of which 350+ were tested on mice and found ONE new compound that had any activity and could be used safely in humans, so yes, there's plenty that didn't work
getting new active compounds is hard. most of the time it's easier to look up to nature, because some fungi or sponge had millions of years to get that one poison that wards off predators just right, and because of that it might be active in humans as well. whether is it useful clinically is another question. using things from traditional medicine is another filter on top of that, but far from perfect based on limited diagnosis available to ancients, limited to nonexistent disease mechanism understanding, limited plant availability, magical thinking, and more
and yes, there's plenty of things in traditional medicine market that are known not to work. realgar, shark fin, powdered rhino horn, nigella seeds, cow piss and many more do absolutely nothing at best. intricate magical systems behind their inclusion in medicine don't add any value or validity
or turmeric, i have very strong opinions on curcumin, read this to understand why: https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/curcumin-will-waste-your-time
Well, that does get into the question of how the other methodologies work. TCM does have that fairly dumb system where they thing of everything in terms of dualities and approach medicine accordingly, like, this plant is "hot" so it will help you if you have a "cool" disease. You can't make the same generalization about the efficacy of that as you could about another methodology altogether.
Also anti-malarials are a really specific thing. Practically nothing is going to be a specific antidote so you're looking at really haphazard things like bolstering immune response. If you take a broader category like say, anti-inflammatories, you'll find a lot more effective traditional remedies.
IMO there is nothing wrong with alternative/traditional techniques so long as they don't actively harm the person and they are not expensive and they don't discourage seeking actual medical treatment. Sadly a lot of these treatments break one or all of those caveats - and those should be cracked down on. Yeah they might not do much more than a placebo effect on the person - but the placebo effect is very powerful and can help them manage or lessen their symptoms.
If someone wants to take some herbal tea to manage pain or chicken soup to help with a cold there is nothing wrong with that. So long as it is not actively hurting them or stopping them from actual treatments or causing them to pay far more than need to for it. IMO we should be making more use of the placebo effect as it is a powerful effect, and there are ways to do it ethically with out trying to scam people or lead them away from modern medicine.
Even a some clinical medicines, treatments and even surgery has been shown to have no or little more than a placebo effect. Though once difference here is that when these are found they tend to stop being used. But does go to show how powerful the placebo effect is.
Hell, you could make a whole market off of sugar pills with completely honest marketing as the placebo effect still works even when you know it is only a placebo. So long as it is reasonably priced and honest about what it is (though this could very easily be abused for profit as well - so would need to be regulated quite well).
That said, I do think harmful or predatory treatments should be cracked down on. And sadly a lot of alternatives at the moment do fall into this category. Additionally I also think the pharmaceutical industry should be cracked down on as well as they do some very predatory practices as well, even if their treatments are more effective it does not mean they need to charge an arm and a leg for it.
Are you saying that traditional therapies are harmful or ineffectual?