Re: Science has to be exact or else : Sat Nov 03, 2012 2:43 pm  

Sal Paradise wrote: Which drugs actually cure stuff you have suggested antibiotics perhaps ... Not "perhaps", the word you are looking for is "yes". Sal Paradise wrote: ... but they don't cure any viral infection, they also do not predict lottery numbers, nor translate Serbo-Croat. Do you have any more such insider knowledge? Sal Paradise wrote: pain killers don't cure stuff they turn off the pain receptors until your body can get a grip, You are confused. Pain is not "real". Pain is a feeling generated by your brain but is not a physical entity. It is purely psychological. If I want to "cure" my headache then I take analgesics. It 100% does "cure" my pain. I had pain. Now I don't. You are suggesting that you know the cause of every headache, and that there is something physically ill which "causes" my headache, and that needs to be "cured". This is just muddled thinking. Paracetamool does not stop my head hurting by "curing" some illness or disease. The pain I feel is what is wrong with me, and the pills cure the pain. It isn't until "my body can get a grip". Grip of what, exactly? What a quaint phrase when you can offer no medical explanation that fits your wrong take on the subject! And even if you were right, I wouldn't care about the thing my body did not yet have a "grip" on. The argument is purely abstract. I acre about my real, if entirely illusory, headache. That's what i need curing and while you may refuse to "get" it, 99.9% of people will agree that when their paracetamol stops their head from hurting, that counts as a cure. Sal Paradise wrote: You obviously struggle with reading too Trust me, I really don't. Why you feel the need to throw in such stuff is the issue. Do you have some sort of inferiority complex? Sal Paradise wrote: - the reason the drug companies cannot create a drug to cure hyper-tension is because the body over time naturally deteriorates and overtime the body cannot naturally repair the damage hence the need for surgery - you don't see many teenagers with hyper-tension? Or maybe, you do. Scientific studyfuls of them. Sorry to surprise you again. And I certainly wouldn't rule out that in the future treatements to "cure" rather than "control" hypertension could not be found. There is no reason why not. Indeed, stem cell research and gene therapy research are to me very obvious candidates, in the long term, to cure all sorts of presently incurable or intractable conditions. Sal Paradise wrote: Of the 13,000 prescription drugs how many actually cure things How refreshing. You've moved from claiming to be certain they didn't, to frankly admitting you actually don't know! Bravo. Keep it up. Sal Paradise wrote: - i.e. return them to their original state? Here's the thing - almost NOTHING in your body is in its "original state". Once you get your head around that concept, maybe the reason why this is a nonsensical aim will suddenly light up in your understanding. I could go on but will try to be very brief: 1. Almost EVERY cell in your body was not there when you were born. Almost all die, and are replaced. If, in the future, we could find the way for the body to make the replacement cells for longer and better, as per the originals, then would we not be able to return any diseased organ, for example, subjectively to its "original state"? We can already grow human tissue and use it to make "as new" repairs. Do you disbelieve that in future we will gradually learn how to regrow body components? I have no doubt at all we will. 2. You are naively confusing curing a human with curing the human's components. It is a basic error, but fundamental. For example, curing you, as an entity, of an infection may make you, as a person, feel better, but it is curtains for trillions of what had pre-infection been happy Sol cells in gainful employment. They are all now dead. May be in paradiso. Who knows. Sal Paradise wrote: For a start you can remove all the statins, Seemingly, you indeed could. I read up following Mintball's links and it seems at least strongly arguable that they are seeking to address a problem which is not in fact real. Worrying stuff. Sal Paradise wrote: all the pain killers, Er, no, we've doen that one... Sal Paradise wrote: all the mental health drugs, Mental health drugs? I can't go along with that sweeping generalistaion. What are you referring to, specifically? I would say that there are many what you might call "mental health drugs" that are highly effective and do indeed work as a "cure" for purposes of any sensible discussion. Sal Paradise wrote: You views on profit - just read back over your posts and your criticism of companies that make profits, maybe that is unkind but it is there in black and white. Maybe you are just jumping on the pseudo-lefty bandwagon that is the clicky RLfans sin bin. Completely wrong, I'm afraid. I criticise many people and many companies, but it is nothing to do with whether or not they make a profit, it is what they do, and/or how they make that profit that I am interested in. Sal Paradise wrote: Your view on the drugs companies seems to be they are cynically deliberately withholding cures in the hope that the drugs they do develop will be taken for ever Is your world really so black or white? No, no no! You cannot lump in every drug company, or more to the point, every person working for every drug company, and tar the lot with some brush as satanic mosnters or as virtuous crusaders for mankind. It is impossible to debate with someone who is incapable of seeing the complexities and shades of grey. In this context, I have tried to point out that a very obvious motive for preferring to work on lifelong drug dependency at the expense of one-off curse is that, indisputably, it is good for profit. You seem to somehow jump me to a position where Company X found a cure for Y, but is deliberately withholding it. A rather more likely scenario, for a company wanting to invent a drug that will make money for years, is that the company will only be researching and developing that type of drug, or concentrating most resources on doing so. If I'm not looking for a "cure" for Y, then I'm not likely to find it. am I? I am not doing a "reverse Sol", and accusing you of believing that all international drugs companies are paragons of virtue, engaged in nothing but a selfless and profit-irrelevant search for cures for all ailments, but would suggest you at least consider that many may not be exactly that. Sal Paradise wrote: the only problem with your argument is the patent - they only get 10 years to max the profits before any man and his dog can produce it much cheaper as they has the recipe without the R&D. Ah, so that's why only Mother Theresa clones work in the pharmaceutical industry. Good to know. Oddly enough, DRACO has been discovered and is being developed in the labs at MIT, funded only by grants from national institutes of health etc. Somehow, the trillions of dollars being spent in multinational pharmaceuticals didn't come up with it. But I expect it's a coincidence, don't you?

Sal Paradise wrote: Which drugs actually cure stuff you have suggested antibiotics perhaps ... Not "perhaps", the word you are looking for is "yes". Sal Paradise wrote: ... but they don't cure any viral infection, they also do not predict lottery numbers, nor translate Serbo-Croat. Do you have any more such insider knowledge? Sal Paradise wrote: pain killers don't cure stuff they turn off the pain receptors until your body can get a grip, You are confused. Pain is not "real". Pain is a feeling generated by your brain but is not a physical entity. It is purely psychological. If I want to "cure" my headache then I take analgesics. It 100% does "cure" my pain. I had pain. Now I don't. You are suggesting that you know the cause of every headache, and that there is something physically ill which "causes" my headache, and that needs to be "cured". This is just muddled thinking. Paracetamool does not stop my head hurting by "curing" some illness or disease. The pain I feel is what is wrong with me, and the pills cure the pain. It isn't until "my body can get a grip". Grip of what, exactly? What a quaint phrase when you can offer no medical explanation that fits your wrong take on the subject! And even if you were right, I wouldn't care about the thing my body did not yet have a "grip" on. The argument is purely abstract. I acre about my real, if entirely illusory, headache. That's what i need curing and while you may refuse to "get" it, 99.9% of people will agree that when their paracetamol stops their head from hurting, that counts as a cure. Sal Paradise wrote: You obviously struggle with reading too Trust me, I really don't. Why you feel the need to throw in such stuff is the issue. Do you have some sort of inferiority complex? Sal Paradise wrote: - the reason the drug companies cannot create a drug to cure hyper-tension is because the body over time naturally deteriorates and overtime the body cannot naturally repair the damage hence the need for surgery - you don't see many teenagers with hyper-tension? Or maybe, you do. Scientific studyfuls of them. Sorry to surprise you again. And I certainly wouldn't rule out that in the future treatements to "cure" rather than "control" hypertension could not be found. There is no reason why not. Indeed, stem cell research and gene therapy research are to me very obvious candidates, in the long term, to cure all sorts of presently incurable or intractable conditions. Sal Paradise wrote: Of the 13,000 prescription drugs how many actually cure things How refreshing. You've moved from claiming to be certain they didn't, to frankly admitting you actually don't know! Bravo. Keep it up. Sal Paradise wrote: - i.e. return them to their original state? Here's the thing - almost NOTHING in your body is in its "original state". Once you get your head around that concept, maybe the reason why this is a nonsensical aim will suddenly light up in your understanding. I could go on but will try to be very brief: 1. Almost EVERY cell in your body was not there when you were born. Almost all die, and are replaced. If, in the future, we could find the way for the body to make the replacement cells for longer and better, as per the originals, then would we not be able to return any diseased organ, for example, subjectively to its "original state"? We can already grow human tissue and use it to make "as new" repairs. Do you disbelieve that in future we will gradually learn how to regrow body components? I have no doubt at all we will. 2. You are naively confusing curing a human with curing the human's components. It is a basic error, but fundamental. For example, curing you, as an entity, of an infection may make you, as a person, feel better, but it is curtains for trillions of what had pre-infection been happy Sol cells in gainful employment. They are all now dead. May be in paradiso. Who knows. Sal Paradise wrote: For a start you can remove all the statins, Seemingly, you indeed could. I read up following Mintball's links and it seems at least strongly arguable that they are seeking to address a problem which is not in fact real. Worrying stuff. Sal Paradise wrote: all the pain killers, Er, no, we've doen that one... Sal Paradise wrote: all the mental health drugs, Mental health drugs? I can't go along with that sweeping generalistaion. What are you referring to, specifically? I would say that there are many what you might call "mental health drugs" that are highly effective and do indeed work as a "cure" for purposes of any sensible discussion. Sal Paradise wrote: You views on profit - just read back over your posts and your criticism of companies that make profits, maybe that is unkind but it is there in black and white. Maybe you are just jumping on the pseudo-lefty bandwagon that is the clicky RLfans sin bin. Completely wrong, I'm afraid. I criticise many people and many companies, but it is nothing to do with whether or not they make a profit, it is what they do, and/or how they make that profit that I am interested in. Sal Paradise wrote: Your view on the drugs companies seems to be they are cynically deliberately withholding cures in the hope that the drugs they do develop will be taken for ever Is your world really so black or white? No, no no! You cannot lump in every drug company, or more to the point, every person working for every drug company, and tar the lot with some brush as satanic mosnters or as virtuous crusaders for mankind. It is impossible to debate with someone who is incapable of seeing the complexities and shades of grey. In this context, I have tried to point out that a very obvious motive for preferring to work on lifelong drug dependency at the expense of one-off curse is that, indisputably, it is good for profit. You seem to somehow jump me to a position where Company X found a cure for Y, but is deliberately withholding it. A rather more likely scenario, for a company wanting to invent a drug that will make money for years, is that the company will only be researching and developing that type of drug, or concentrating most resources on doing so. If I'm not looking for a "cure" for Y, then I'm not likely to find it. am I? I am not doing a "reverse Sol", and accusing you of believing that all international drugs companies are paragons of virtue, engaged in nothing but a selfless and profit-irrelevant search for cures for all ailments, but would suggest you at least consider that many may not be exactly that. Sal Paradise wrote: the only problem with your argument is the patent - they only get 10 years to max the profits before any man and his dog can produce it much cheaper as they has the recipe without the R&D. Ah, so that's why only Mother Theresa clones work in the pharmaceutical industry. Good to know. Oddly enough, DRACO has been discovered and is being developed in the labs at MIT, funded only by grants from national institutes of health etc. Somehow, the trillions of dollars being spent in multinational pharmaceuticals didn't come up with it. But I expect it's a coincidence, don't you?

[Kosh]

Re: Science has to be exact or else : Sat Nov 03, 2012 7:16 pm  

Mintball wrote: Indeed. And there is a growing body of evidence that statins are a waste of time – they apparently do nothing whatsoever in female patients, and there is some suggestion that they may even actually be detrimental to older patients. Cholesterol is a perfect example of an invented disease, which just happens to be massively profitable for drugs of highly dubious value and safety. The process leading to this started, funnily enough, with a massive hiding of research data: in this case, by Ancel Keys, whose 'seven countries study' supposedly proved that there was a link between a diet high in saturated fat, which caused high cholesterol, which caused heart disease. Unfortunately, he was a liar. He actually surveyed 22 countries – but then 'forgot' the results of 15 of them because the findings didn't suit what he wanted to find. (Frank Cooper is excellent on this) The fabricated conclusions of his 'research' have been at the heart of US and UK public health policy for 40-50 years, with major ramifications for diet, amongst other things. It's a perfect illustration, on its own, of what happens when research and trial data is hidden. I've done the Googling for you: there's plenty here on Dr Malcolm Kendrick's work on this. The one at the top is a particularly interesting essay on the subject. Even Keys later admitted that cholesterol in diet does not enter the bloodstream. And, the older you get, then lower cholesterol levels are increasingly dangerous. In fairness, this information on Cholesterol has been common knowledge for years. As a result there have been some significant changes in both dietary advice and prescribing behaviour. There may have been a gravy train but it went off the rails a while ago.

Mintball wrote: Indeed. And there is a growing body of evidence that statins are a waste of time – they apparently do nothing whatsoever in female patients, and there is some suggestion that they may even actually be detrimental to older patients. Cholesterol is a perfect example of an invented disease, which just happens to be massively profitable for drugs of highly dubious value and safety. The process leading to this started, funnily enough, with a massive hiding of research data: in this case, by Ancel Keys, whose 'seven countries study' supposedly proved that there was a link between a diet high in saturated fat, which caused high cholesterol, which caused heart disease. Unfortunately, he was a liar. He actually surveyed 22 countries – but then 'forgot' the results of 15 of them because the findings didn't suit what he wanted to find. (Frank Cooper is excellent on this) The fabricated conclusions of his 'research' have been at the heart of US and UK public health policy for 40-50 years, with major ramifications for diet, amongst other things. It's a perfect illustration, on its own, of what happens when research and trial data is hidden. I've done the Googling for you: there's plenty here on Dr Malcolm Kendrick's work on this. The one at the top is a particularly interesting essay on the subject. Even Keys later admitted that cholesterol in diet does not enter the bloodstream. And, the older you get, then lower cholesterol levels are increasingly dangerous. In fairness, this information on Cholesterol has been common knowledge for years. As a result there have been some significant changes in both dietary advice and prescribing behaviour. There may have been a gravy train but it went off the rails a while ago.

[Kosh]

Re: Science has to be exact or else : Sat Nov 03, 2012 7:29 pm  

Sal Paradise wrote:

Which drugs actually cure stuff you have suggested antibiotics perhaps but they don't cure any viral infection

Seriously?

You know what antibiotics are for, right?

Sal Paradise wrote:

the reason the drug companies cannot create a drug to cure hyper-tension is because the body over time naturally deteriorates and overtime the body cannot naturally repair the damage hence the need for surgery - you don't see many teenagers with hyper-tension?

There are many causes of hypertension and just being old is NOT one of them. While your blood pressure does indeed rise as you get older, that does not inevitably lead to hypertension. Diet, weight, and genetics are far more important factors.

I'd pull you up on a few more fallacies - you seem to be pretty clueless - but, in your own words, life's too short.

Re: Science has to be exact or else : Sun Nov 04, 2012 9:20 am  

Sal Paradise wrote: Which drugs actually cure stuff you have suggested, antibiotics perhaps but they don't cure any viral infection. Kosh wrote: Seriously? You know what antibiotics are for, right? As far as I am aware, antibiotics don't cure viral infections, as the CDC would appear to confirm

Sal Paradise wrote: Which drugs actually cure stuff you have suggested, antibiotics perhaps but they don't cure any viral infection. Kosh wrote: Seriously? You know what antibiotics are for, right? As far as I am aware, antibiotics don't cure viral infections, as the CDC would appear to confirm

[Kosh]

Re: Science has to be exact or else : Sun Nov 04, 2012 9:24 am  

Neil wrote: As far as I am aware, antibiotics don't cure viral infections, as the CDC would appear to confirm Of course they don't. They're designed to cure bacterial infections, not viral infections. You might as well complain about anvils making lousy parachutes. Which was my point.

Neil wrote: As far as I am aware, antibiotics don't cure viral infections, as the CDC would appear to confirm Of course they don't. They're designed to cure bacterial infections, not viral infections. You might as well complain about anvils making lousy parachutes. Which was my point.

Re: Science has to be exact or else : Sun Nov 04, 2012 6:04 pm  

Kosh wrote: In fairness, this information on Cholesterol has been common knowledge for years. As a result there have been some significant changes in both dietary advice and prescribing behaviour. There may have been a gravy train but it went off the rails a while ago. The BBC recently broadcast The Food Programme on LARD catch up on BBC iPlayer

Kosh wrote: In fairness, this information on Cholesterol has been common knowledge for years. As a result there have been some significant changes in both dietary advice and prescribing behaviour. There may have been a gravy train but it went off the rails a while ago. The BBC recently broadcast The Food Programme on LARD catch up on BBC iPlayer

Re: Science has to be exact or else : Sun Nov 04, 2012 9:56 pm  

Kosh wrote:

Seriously?

You know what antibiotics are for, right?

There are many causes of hypertension and just being old is NOT one of them. While your blood pressure does indeed rise as you get older, that does not inevitably lead to hypertension. Diet, weight, and genetics are far more important factors.

I'd pull you up on a few more fallacies - you seem to be pretty clueless - but, in your own words, life's too short.

Are you saying antibiotic do cure viral infections?

I never said age was the only cause of hyper-tension just that it occurs more frequently as patients age.

Now which fallacies are we talking about?

Re: Science has to be exact or else : Sun Nov 04, 2012 10:33 pm  

Ferocious Aardvark wrote: Not "perhaps", the word you are looking for is "yes". they also do not predict lottery numbers, nor translate Serbo-Croat. Do you have any more such insider knowledge? You are confused. Pain is not "real". Pain is a feeling generated by your brain but is not a physical entity. It is purely psychological. If I want to "cure" my headache then I take analgesics. It 100% does "cure" my pain. I had pain. Now I don't. You are suggesting that you know the cause of every headache, and that there is something physically ill which "causes" my headache, and that needs to be "cured". This is just muddled thinking. Paracetamool does not stop my head hurting by "curing" some illness or disease. The pain I feel is what is wrong with me, and the pills cure the pain. It isn't until "my body can get a grip". Grip of what, exactly? What a quaint phrase when you can offer no medical explanation that fits your wrong take on the subject! And even if you were right, I wouldn't care about the thing my body did not yet have a "grip" on. The argument is purely abstract. I acre about my real, if entirely illusory, headache. That's what i need curing and while you may refuse to "get" it, 99.9% of people will agree that when their paracetamol stops their head from hurting, that counts as a cure. Trust me, I really don't. Why you feel the need to throw in such stuff is the issue. Do you have some sort of inferiority complex? Or maybe, you do. Scientific studyfuls of them. Sorry to surprise you again. And I certainly wouldn't rule out that in the future treatements to "cure" rather than "control" hypertension could not be found. There is no reason why not. Indeed, stem cell research and gene therapy research are to me very obvious candidates, in the long term, to cure all sorts of presently incurable or intractable conditions. How refreshing. You've moved from claiming to be certain they didn't, to frankly admitting you actually don't know! Bravo. Keep it up. Here's the thing - almost NOTHING in your body is in its "original state". Once you get your head around that concept, maybe the reason why this is a nonsensical aim will suddenly light up in your understanding. I could go on but will try to be very brief: 1. Almost EVERY cell in your body was not there when you were born. Almost all die, and are replaced. If, in the future, we could find the way for the body to make the replacement cells for longer and better, as per the originals, then would we not be able to return any diseased organ, for example, subjectively to its "original state"? We can already grow human tissue and use it to make "as new" repairs. Do you disbelieve that in future we will gradually learn how to regrow body components? I have no doubt at all we will. 2. You are naively confusing curing a human with curing the human's components. It is a basic error, but fundamental. For example, curing you, as an entity, of an infection may make you, as a person, feel better, but it is curtains for trillions of what had pre-infection been happy Sol cells in gainful employment. They are all now dead. May be in paradiso. Who knows. Seemingly, you indeed could. I read up following Mintball's links and it seems at least strongly arguable that they are seeking to address a problem which is not in fact real. Worrying stuff. Er, no, we've doen that one... Mental health drugs? I can't go along with that sweeping generalistaion. What are you referring to, specifically? I would say that there are many what you might call "mental health drugs" that are highly effective and do indeed work as a "cure" for purposes of any sensible discussion. Completely wrong, I'm afraid. I criticise many people and many companies, but it is nothing to do with whether or not they make a profit, it is what they do, and/or how they make that profit that I am interested in. Is your world really so black or white? No, no no! You cannot lump in every drug company, or more to the point, every person working for every drug company, and tar the lot with some brush as satanic mosnters or as virtuous crusaders for mankind. It is impossible to debate with someone who is incapable of seeing the complexities and shades of grey. In this context, I have tried to point out that a very obvious motive for preferring to work on lifelong drug dependency at the expense of one-off curse is that, indisputably, it is good for profit. You seem to somehow jump me to a position where Company X found a cure for Y, but is deliberately withholding it. A rather more likely scenario, for a company wanting to invent a drug that will make money for years, is that the company will only be researching and developing that type of drug, or concentrating most resources on doing so. If I'm not looking for a "cure" for Y, then I'm not likely to find it. am I? I am not doing a "reverse Sol", and accusing you of believing that all international drugs companies are paragons of virtue, engaged in nothing but a selfless and profit-irrelevant search for cures for all ailments, but would suggest you at least consider that many may not be exactly that. Ah, so that's why only Mother Theresa clones work in the pharmaceutical industry. Good to know. Oddly enough, DRACO has been discovered and is being developed in the labs at MIT, funded only by grants from national institutes of health etc. Somehow, the trillions of dollars being spent in multinational pharmaceuticals didn't come up with it. But I expect it's a coincidence, don't you? To answer you points: Drug companies are no different from all other companies they will bend the rules if they need to - I personally don't have a problem with that - you either believe they deliver more positives than negatives, I personally believe they do and am realistic in thinking they are not whiter than white, that is not an issues for me. On pain killers - we both know how they work - unlike an antibiotic they don't attack whatever is causing the pain they simply turn off the receptors that makes you feel the pain. On degenerative disease/conditions we are talking about the here and now not what might happen in 50/100/1000 years time - as it is now your body will fail over time, drugs cannot always put in right - hence the need for surgery - or ultimately death. Would you not agree? On mental health, drugs such as - Zoloft, Effexor, the group used to treat depression, Zyprexa - you are not going to be cured of schizophrenia by taking this stuff etc. They may help to control your mental condition but they will not cure it, probably because our knowledge of the brain is pretty primitive. Most drug big companies develop control drugs because cure drugs are very few and far between. Antibiotics but only for certain infections, medicine has yet to find a cure for any viral infection. Just think what a money spinner it would be if somebody could find a cure for the common cold or flu - a viral infection that re-occurs even after an instance is cured. Personally I don't care how much money drug companies make, nor do I consider them especially unethical - compared to bankers they are Saints. drugs kept me alive long enough for a clever doctor to do a repair - without the drugs I would not have made it to the repair.

Ferocious Aardvark wrote: Not "perhaps", the word you are looking for is "yes". they also do not predict lottery numbers, nor translate Serbo-Croat. Do you have any more such insider knowledge? You are confused. Pain is not "real". Pain is a feeling generated by your brain but is not a physical entity. It is purely psychological. If I want to "cure" my headache then I take analgesics. It 100% does "cure" my pain. I had pain. Now I don't. You are suggesting that you know the cause of every headache, and that there is something physically ill which "causes" my headache, and that needs to be "cured". This is just muddled thinking. Paracetamool does not stop my head hurting by "curing" some illness or disease. The pain I feel is what is wrong with me, and the pills cure the pain. It isn't until "my body can get a grip". Grip of what, exactly? What a quaint phrase when you can offer no medical explanation that fits your wrong take on the subject! And even if you were right, I wouldn't care about the thing my body did not yet have a "grip" on. The argument is purely abstract. I acre about my real, if entirely illusory, headache. That's what i need curing and while you may refuse to "get" it, 99.9% of people will agree that when their paracetamol stops their head from hurting, that counts as a cure. Trust me, I really don't. Why you feel the need to throw in such stuff is the issue. Do you have some sort of inferiority complex? Or maybe, you do. Scientific studyfuls of them. Sorry to surprise you again. And I certainly wouldn't rule out that in the future treatements to "cure" rather than "control" hypertension could not be found. There is no reason why not. Indeed, stem cell research and gene therapy research are to me very obvious candidates, in the long term, to cure all sorts of presently incurable or intractable conditions. How refreshing. You've moved from claiming to be certain they didn't, to frankly admitting you actually don't know! Bravo. Keep it up. Here's the thing - almost NOTHING in your body is in its "original state". Once you get your head around that concept, maybe the reason why this is a nonsensical aim will suddenly light up in your understanding. I could go on but will try to be very brief: 1. Almost EVERY cell in your body was not there when you were born. Almost all die, and are replaced. If, in the future, we could find the way for the body to make the replacement cells for longer and better, as per the originals, then would we not be able to return any diseased organ, for example, subjectively to its "original state"? We can already grow human tissue and use it to make "as new" repairs. Do you disbelieve that in future we will gradually learn how to regrow body components? I have no doubt at all we will. 2. You are naively confusing curing a human with curing the human's components. It is a basic error, but fundamental. For example, curing you, as an entity, of an infection may make you, as a person, feel better, but it is curtains for trillions of what had pre-infection been happy Sol cells in gainful employment. They are all now dead. May be in paradiso. Who knows. Seemingly, you indeed could. I read up following Mintball's links and it seems at least strongly arguable that they are seeking to address a problem which is not in fact real. Worrying stuff. Er, no, we've doen that one... Mental health drugs? I can't go along with that sweeping generalistaion. What are you referring to, specifically? I would say that there are many what you might call "mental health drugs" that are highly effective and do indeed work as a "cure" for purposes of any sensible discussion. Completely wrong, I'm afraid. I criticise many people and many companies, but it is nothing to do with whether or not they make a profit, it is what they do, and/or how they make that profit that I am interested in. Is your world really so black or white? No, no no! You cannot lump in every drug company, or more to the point, every person working for every drug company, and tar the lot with some brush as satanic mosnters or as virtuous crusaders for mankind. It is impossible to debate with someone who is incapable of seeing the complexities and shades of grey. In this context, I have tried to point out that a very obvious motive for preferring to work on lifelong drug dependency at the expense of one-off curse is that, indisputably, it is good for profit. You seem to somehow jump me to a position where Company X found a cure for Y, but is deliberately withholding it. A rather more likely scenario, for a company wanting to invent a drug that will make money for years, is that the company will only be researching and developing that type of drug, or concentrating most resources on doing so. If I'm not looking for a "cure" for Y, then I'm not likely to find it. am I? I am not doing a "reverse Sol", and accusing you of believing that all international drugs companies are paragons of virtue, engaged in nothing but a selfless and profit-irrelevant search for cures for all ailments, but would suggest you at least consider that many may not be exactly that. Ah, so that's why only Mother Theresa clones work in the pharmaceutical industry. Good to know. Oddly enough, DRACO has been discovered and is being developed in the labs at MIT, funded only by grants from national institutes of health etc. Somehow, the trillions of dollars being spent in multinational pharmaceuticals didn't come up with it. But I expect it's a coincidence, don't you? To answer you points: Drug companies are no different from all other companies they will bend the rules if they need to - I personally don't have a problem with that - you either believe they deliver more positives than negatives, I personally believe they do and am realistic in thinking they are not whiter than white, that is not an issues for me. On pain killers - we both know how they work - unlike an antibiotic they don't attack whatever is causing the pain they simply turn off the receptors that makes you feel the pain. On degenerative disease/conditions we are talking about the here and now not what might happen in 50/100/1000 years time - as it is now your body will fail over time, drugs cannot always put in right - hence the need for surgery - or ultimately death. Would you not agree? On mental health, drugs such as - Zoloft, Effexor, the group used to treat depression, Zyprexa - you are not going to be cured of schizophrenia by taking this stuff etc. They may help to control your mental condition but they will not cure it, probably because our knowledge of the brain is pretty primitive. Most drug big companies develop control drugs because cure drugs are very few and far between. Antibiotics but only for certain infections, medicine has yet to find a cure for any viral infection. Just think what a money spinner it would be if somebody could find a cure for the common cold or flu - a viral infection that re-occurs even after an instance is cured. Personally I don't care how much money drug companies make, nor do I consider them especially unethical - compared to bankers they are Saints. drugs kept me alive long enough for a clever doctor to do a repair - without the drugs I would not have made it to the repair.

[Kosh]

Re: Science has to be exact or else : Mon Nov 05, 2012 8:56 am  

Sal Paradise wrote:

Are you saying antibiotic do cure viral infections?

I'm saying that antibiotics don't cure viral infections because they have no effect on viruses whatsoever. They are anti-bacterial drugs (the clue is in the name), not anti-viral drugs. Anyone who makes that fundamental an error should probably avoid commenting on medical matters in general and drugs in particular.

Re: Science has to be exact or else : Mon Nov 05, 2012 9:53 am  

Sal Paradise wrote:

You as a non medic think high cholesterol is a non problem - your arrogance has reached new levels -

Let's try again. On the basis of a great deal of material that I have been reading, which is written by people with medical training and knowledge, I am reaching a conclusion that, as Dr Malcolm Kendrick puts it, there is "a great cholesterol con".

Sal Paradise wrote:

You need to read some stuff take some time to understand the subject ...

Coming from someone who claims that "life is too short" to read the material that I have been and am reading, this really is hilarious. Take your own advice. And see Kosh's post on the subject.

Sal Paradise wrote:

... if high cholesterol wasn't an issue doctors would not prescribe the drugs they would save the money and spend it on something else...

This is the point. Exactly the point – about research being distorted by the drug companies – see Dr Ben Goldacre in particular but not uniquely. Dr Phil Hammond also talks of the "medicalisation" of the population, including of the creation, by the drug companies of new 'conditions' that need curing by their drugs.

Goldacre also goes into some depth about how regulation is flawed and about how even some of his fellow doctors are effectively bought off by drug companies with their huge entertainment budgets.

Sal Paradise wrote:

... As usual you have to resort to other peoples stuff to create your argument just for once could you come to the table with an original thought of your own? ...

Ahhhh. So it's hunky dory for you to believe doctors and medically-trained people on an issue – but if I do it, I'm being unoriginal? You say A because medical staff have told you – I say B because I've read medical staff saying it, and yet I'm condemned for

a) commenting on medical matters without training;

b) not saying something that is original on matters of which I have no training – and which you seem to think you can happily quote from others.