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Politics : A US National Health Care System? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: J_F_Shepard who wrote (19034)	8/30/2010 9:13:56 AM
From: Lane3	1 Recommendation Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 42652

If your interest is an LDL level of 70 and whether I can produce a scientific link concluding that's the tipping point for blockage reversal, you've come to the wrong place. I was and continue to be quite certain that there is no established level of LDL at which plaque reversed. My interest in engaging the topic was not in the relationship between LDL levels and plaque reversal but in how you could possibly reconcile your twin positions that 1) an LDL level of 70 is the tipping point for reversal and 2) all your statements are backed by scientific data. Obviously you can't reconcile them but it has been interesting to watch you deal with that. I have always had a great interest in how people come to hold and support the beliefs they hold, how they handle cognitive dissonance, how they maintain their self images and justify what they believe and what they assert. That has long been an interest of mine. Watching the process where someone purports to demonstrate both a scientific basis and the relationship between LDL and plaque reversal with a study about the ability of patients to maintain a severe no-fat/vegan diet and other lifestyle changes, apparently with a straight face, is fascinating. When you can produce some data of your own or from your own scientific links, I'll listen... My own scientific links to show what? What would you want me to demonstrate with my own scientific links? Unlike you, I have made no substantive assertions that could even theoretically be proven by a link to a study. My initial position and all subsequent ones have been that this or that has not been demonstrated scientifically. I have never argued whether any of the medical claims at issue were true or false but only whether there are sufficient scientific data to demonstrate them. If my premise is that there are no studies that show this or that, then it would be ridiculous for me to offer you as evidence a link to a study. Given the tack I took, when you chose to dispute my assertion, the onus fell on you to produce the studies to contradict it. As anticipated, you haven't been able to do that. Most likely because there are no such studies. I suggest you read the literature as it was intended to be read...objectively and without bias.... Back atcha. We all need to read primary sources and read them with great care to determine which medical claims are actually evidenced. Be particularly wary of headlines in articles interpreting medical studies. They're almost always spun and/or exaggerated. You and Brumar have been having a discussion about fact and faith so I know that you know the difference. We all have beliefs. One can accept on faith that lowering LDL to some level will reduce plaque just as one can accept on faith that Jesus is the path to heaven but, in reality, neither is known, only believed. It is natural to have a bias towards one's beliefs, to interpret what one reads in that context, and to see evidence where none exists. But belief is not science.