Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Dennis O'Bell who wrote (142363)	8/3/2004 8:36:56 AM
From: spiral3	Respond to of 281500

No but seriously, I'd like a show of hands who thinks Lance Armstrong could have been cured by some placebo effect Chinese acupuncture and gone on to win 6 brilliant Tours de France in a row. I don't know what placebo effect Acupuncture you are talking about, as it is written "there is a time and place for everything". I know too many successful high end people, MD's, proper western ones, who practice this art successfully to take your denigration even remotely seriously. Sometimes I take an aspirin, but it doesn't take the headache away. Wonder drug is crap too I suppose. For the vast majority of people it is problems with lower order non specific aches and pains that their doctors don't know what it is or where it comes from even after thousands and thousands of dollars on tests and treatments, it is in these sorts of situations at the least that complementary, or whats known as alternative treatments can be significantly helpful. There are other far more serious cases where the stuff is useful too, just depends on what it is. I've seen it with my own eyes and experienced it as well. It's so typical to think that when someone promotes something that they are denigrating other things, no doubt I'm guilty of this myself. I have a friend recovering from colon cancer surgery, do you know that he saw teams of western doctors, but he sat down with my brother in law who is a specialist physician, who became a licensed acupuncturist years ago before it was even so popular, when he realized how many more people he could actually help, people with non specific but irksome complaints, and in this particular very serious case of my friend, he went over things with Gary and together they decided what should be done. Not having surgery was not even an option. Like I said it doesn't have to be either or, you should find what is appropriate to the particular circumstances. Unfortunately theres a lot of charlatans around too, and that is true for MD's as well, so many of whom don't have a clue. Energetic medicine is a whole other ball of wax and for eg when the oil light on your cars dashboard goes on do you think that sticking a band aid over it cures the problem because the symptom is no longer in evidence, or do you think that maybe you need an oil change or a tune up or something. How do you deal with the problem, a headache is not an aspirin deficiency, and if you ever need cutting edge high end high tech medicine in a supreme emergency say, you will thank god descartes and those doctors, I'm sure of it.

To: Dennis O'Bell who wrote (142363)	8/3/2004 11:24:23 AM
From: Ilaine	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Immediately after Nixon went to China, Harvard Medical School sent a team of physicians and a documentary film crew to film surgical operations using acupuncture as anesthesia. I watched the film they produced. One of the most astonishing segments was of a woman having open heart surgery with nothing but acupuncture. She was conscious, sipping liquids through a straw and talking to the various people in the operating theater while her chest was cracked open, ribs held back with retractors and her heart exposed to the camera. The film was made by Harvard Medical School, not the Chinese government. If that's placebo, that's some heavy duty placebo. WE don't have any placebo that good.