Skeptical to the End

October 2, 2008 at 12:46 pm | In BioMedicine, Chinese Medicine, Social Medicine | Leave a Comment
Tags: , ,

I found an interesting post and comment thread at scienceblog.com (http://tinyurl.com/3zgatd). It seems that a study involving drugs and acupuncture for hot flashes due to cancer therapy found that acupuncture was as effective at relieving hot flashes as the commonly-used drugs, had other beneficial effects such as increased libido and energy, had no side-effects, and produced a longer-lasting effect than the drugs, and is more cost-effective.

The data from this study are clear. What is interesting are the varied “skeptical” responses, which ranged from denouncing acupuncture as religious and superstitious, to saying it was all a placebo effect. Without needing to dispute any of these charges, I feel a need to ask a question: How can it be that a placebo is so superior to a tested drug? (1)

Skepticism is not the automatic gain-saying of certain classes of claims. It is the ability to retain critical thought, in particular of one’s own self. Simply calling one’s attitude “skeptical” does not make it so. Many other behaviours masquerade as skepticism: cynicism, egoism, narcissism – it’s tricky. For this reason the power of skepticism must be turned in on itself a good portion of the time. The word comes from the Greek skeptomai, which means to look about, or to consider; to not be rigid or fixed in one’s point of view.

Paraphrased from Wikipedia:
A Philosophical Skeptic makes certain propositions about (a) an inquiry, (b) a method of obtaining knowledge through systematic doubt and continual testing, (c) the arbitrariness, relativity, or subjectivity of moral values, (d) the limitations of knowledge, (e) a method of intellectual caution and suspended judgment.

Also from Wikipedia:

The “Skeptikoi” were a school of philosophers of whom it was said that they “asserted nothing but only opined.” In this sense, philosophical skepticism, or Pyrrhonism, is the philosophical position that one should avoid the postulation of final truths. Turned on itself, skepticism would question that skepticism is a valid perspective at all.

1. Alleviation of Hot Flashes With Increase in Venlafaxine Dose
Prasad R. Padala, Srinivas B. Rapuri, and Kalpana P. Padala
Prim Care Companion J Clin Psychiatry. 2007; 9(1): 70–71.
PMCID: PMC1894834

Hospital Food

September 25, 2008 at 1:35 am | In Modern Health-Care, Social Medicine | Leave a Comment
Tags: , ,

“A good doctor first makes a diagnosis, and having found out the cause of the disease, tries to cure it first by food. If food fails, only then will drugs be prescribed.”
- Sun Si-Miao (581-682 C.E.)

It has always amazed me how such an important part of convalescence – the food that we eat – is so … well … slummed through … in modern hospitals.
The excuse of funding can be brought up; that hospitals are bare-bones emergency services and not some 5-star hotel…but the fact of the matter is that properly-fed patients heal much faster and recover their status as outpatients quicker.
Knowing that the mean cost of one day in the hospital is about $1,200, it seems that the addition of what amounts to a mid-range restaurant that will serve a meal for 15 to 20 dollars is trivial, if it could help take off days of hospital care.
The obvious question is, of course, how do we know that food would create this effect? Well we have two negative pieces of evidence that we can use to illuminate the positive:
1. It was an understanding of medical science about 40-50 years ago that food has “no effect on the creation or remission of disease”. We are in a greatly different position now, where any food one could care to mention is being researched for its health effects.
2. Many foods have been clearly incriminated in the creation of certain diseases: fatty food and obesity and heart disease; excess sugar and diabetes; fried food and certain cancers; the list continues. We can only assume that not all foods have such strong negative effects – that many foods have equally strong positive effects.

Can you imagine that, one day, the answer to the question, “why were you in the hospital?!??” would be, “Oh, I go there for the food!”

Blog at WordPress.com. | Theme: Pool by Borja Fernandez.
Entries and comments feeds.