That said, taking iodine-laden supplements for "thyroid support" isn't a good idea for anyone, ESPECIALLY someone who suspects (or already has) a thyroid problem.

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And I am very impressed by your iodine knowledge. That is not sarcasm; that is a sincere compliment.

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I'd also like to second @stacyinbean: that people DO trust Oprah, she's made a living off gaining people's trust, and the pharmaceutical companies seem much less trustworthy to a layperson. Having participated in clinical trials, and learned how such things are tested and how much money it costs to bring a drug to market, to synthesize and test and develop and rule out the other billion drugs that don't work? I trust the pharmaceutical companies as well.

I will always trust regulation and education over intuition.

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I'm also getting sick of how many people don't seem to understand the difference between say, academic research and corporate agendas. I mean, it would be one thing if people were commenting specifically on a specific study for conflict of interest. That would MAYBE be defensible in some cases. But to just dismiss all of science in favor of magic or unresearched alternative medicine because you think that science and the FDA are corrupt in general? Total nonsense, and betrays a serious lack of understanding of how science and peer review work.

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It's not a perfect system--something might get pushed to market that ends up having nasty side effects, like the whole Vioxx rigmarole. As with anything, you take a chance when you pop a pill. Pharmacologically-active substances are essentially very carefully dosed, carefully-researched poisons. They are. It's why they work.

There's a vast complimentary and alternative medicine HASN'T had this kind of rigorous testing. No one knows if this stuff works, if at all. Of course, there are some compounds--like ginger, peppermint, etc--that have been shown to have beneficial effects. Hell, I chew on ginger if my tummy is upset, but I go to a doctor if I have severe gastrointestinal distress. I'll take cranberry pills if I'm worried about getting a UTI, but I go straight to the doctor if I actually GET one.

Now, like you, I do think that pharm companies CAN act like total scum in the name of profits. But, like you, I'd rather pop that Advil and use that birth control than face the alternative.

It is a shame that science and evidence-based medicine have become associated with cold, uncaring, rampant profits. Science saves lives, but people have become wary of it and it's unfortunate.

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Also, experience from hundreds/ thousands of years of "homeopathy" should not be discounted. That's very ethnocentric. If certain cultures have always drank a particular tea to ease digestion, why should I ignore that? As my mother says, "Some things, you just know."

I'm not saying I believe any old hippie with rose petal oil can save my life, but I also respect alternatives enough to explore them, especially since many come from different cultures of which we know nothing.

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And the idea that Western Medicine does not have a placebo effect in itself, is pretty naive.

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Also, explain what you mean by "homeopathy." I'm not sure you know what that actually is.

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Exactly. Western meds think a pill can cure everything and it can't. It shouldn't. Some lifestyle changes are necessary and can prevent the use of said medicine for the rest of ones life. I grew up in a house where pills were the LAST resort. So we used them then, if we had to. Problems happen when people look to meds as the first resort, especially since it is an industry.

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Real medicine can fuck your shit up, and that scares people. Alt medicine is safe in that the best case scenario means it's not detrimental.

Alt medicine and treatments rely on the most innate human errors of thinking: Post hoc ergo proctor hoc and confirmation bias. If you have positive results, it's the treatment, if you don't have results you haven't waited long enough or you did it wrong.

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Western medicine:

A system in which medical doctors and other healthcare professionals (such as nurses, pharmacists, and therapists) treat symptoms and diseases using drugs, radiation, or surgery. Also called allopathic medicine, biomedicine, conventional medicine, mainstream medicine, and orthodox medicine.

Homeopathy: Possibly I've taken too broad a definition here, but there are areas where homeopathy and what we think of as a general holistic approach to medicine overlap (I should have been clearer). By holistic, I mean health practices that include Acupuncture, Ayurveda, Chiropody, Food Medicine, Herbalism, Homeopathy, Naturopathy Osteopathy, Traditional Chinese medicine. I think that for many people, most of the works on that list register as one kind of thing.

I don't mean to suggest taking massive doses of herbs to cure MS, but, say, when I know that my auto immune disorder is aggrivated by a sub-clinical wheat allergy, I take a look at my diet before I leap at the chance to get radiation (something my certified acupuncturist/herbalist and endocronologist both supported).

And look, I know a lot of doctors, I've dated some, my brother-in-law runs a clinic, and they'll all say (in private) that doctors make mistakes with medicines, and rarely do they get the time to sit with a patient and really work out what course of treatment is the very, very best. Usually it's the best based on an incomplete diagnosis. Sometimes they do damage to the patients because its hard to know for sure about a lot of things. Doctors are just a fallible as anyone else. I saw a doctor for a few years who lost her license because she was BONKERS about prescribing drugs and quite a few of her patients ended up with long-term damage. Like any kind of tool, medicine can do damage when not wielded correctly. It can also save lives and improve the conditions and mortality of entire nations, but it's not magical. If I was unclear: I totally support medicine for a lot of things, but I also think that there are a lot of cases where it's overused or used badly (i.e. people being given antibiotics for viral illnesses, thus decreasing the effectiveness for everyone), various behavior drugs for difficult kids, etc.

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Your bias against scientific medicine is outrageously wrong. Don't conflate corporate practices with medical science or with individual doctors. They are not the same thing, and you don't know what you're talking about if you think they are.

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Is "I know a lot of doctors" the science equivalent of "I know lots of gay/black people!"?

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But since I have to go through doctors, who go through hospitals, who go through insurance companies, who enact corporate policies, then the two cannot be looked at in isolation.

There are good doctors and good meds, just like there are bad ones. Pills can heal, pills can kill. Bias goes both ways and its important to look at both.

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Your mistake is not in criticizing corporate garbage and lies. I agree with you on that in many cases. Your problem is that you're making the leap from that to thinking that there is a huge conspiracy of scientists, corporations, and doctors to suppress good medicine that is not corporate. That's simply false.

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I think most of the individual doctors out there want good medicine, and most of the scientists want good science. But individuals at the MD-Patient level aren't in control. The people at the top are trying to make a profit, often at the expense of the aforementioned MD-Patient.

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However, western medicine is not, literally, a cure all. It has its own biases... Nor can it be viewed in isolation of its role as a business industry. We should not blindly accept the meds put out on the market just as we should not blindly accept Oprah's new cure.

Further, open-mindedness to alternative medicine is something I hold to be valuable because I'm an open-minded person who does not discount things simply because I am unaware of them. I will not pretend that I know what works and what doesn't, but I refuse to label all alternative medicine as "snake oil" simply because a Caucasian male, aged 30-45 y/o didn't invent it and test it out on that same population.

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"Open mindedness" isn't always a good thing. It's only good when there is actual merit to the things you are being open-minded towards. For example, it doesn't make sense to be "open minded" towards the ideas of racists, Holocaust-deniers, or people who believe in The Secret. They are simply objectively wrong. That's also the case for a lot of alt-med: it's just not worthwhile, and has been shown to be little more than a placebo. Open-mindedness makes sense when the evidence isn't in, but it doesn't mean continuing to cling to ideas that have been discredited. And we also sometimes need to defer to the knowledge of experts, such as doctors and scientists. No one can be an expert on everything, and being open-minded about everything you aren't an expert on just means that you'll get it wrong a lot of the time. Expert opinions are more valid than non-expert opinions; it's just that you have to know who the credible experts are. And that, admittedly, is extremely tough in today's world, especially if you don't have a lot of knowledge in science and medicine.

I don't mean to criticize you personally, but I disagree with what I perceive as a lot of the underlying thinking in your posts.

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Plus, an analogy between Holocaust-deniers or racists, and someone who drinks chamomile tea to help them sleep is not an apt analogy. That's like saying, "I don't mean to criticize you, but you are just wrong and since this mind-meld has been unsuccessful, I'll keep telling you that you're wrong to show that I'm right."

I originally responded to Miss Sterling because I agreed with what she said. My thinking is no more "wrong" than hers, and in fact, we were talking about lifestyle changes being the first order of defense before science. If I can, I take a nap to get rid of a headache before I take Advil. That's how I was raised. Women in my family live into their 90s.

I decided not to pursue grad work in Psych (my undergrad degree) because I felt that certain aspects of the human body cannot be quantified. Pets, for example, help sick people. Yes, there are all types of causation issues around that which make interesting research papers, but to me, its simply a matter of whether or not Grandma feels better. Antidepressants are a matter of whether or not I feel worse (which they made me feel). Both of those experiences are equally valid to me.

Feel free to disagree. But don't tell me how to think. Luckily, I don't believe everything that I hear.

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I think I'm not getting across to you, because I am in no way telling you you don't have a right to an opinion. I'm telling you that some opinions are worth more than others, something that I hope is relatively inarguable. Scientists' opinions in their area of research are more worth listening to than non-expert opinions like yours or mine. Science is about establishing unbiased, credible, bases of reliable information. It's not about pushing another agenda, even if individual scientists do have a viewpoint or agenda.

And subjective experience isn't really evidence. That's why scientists use carefully controlled clinical trials. Some things are very difficult to study scientifically, I agree, and that does influence what science gets done. But that doesn't mean that it won't EVER be possible to study those things. It just means that no one has figured out a way to do that yet.

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I reiterate, for the last time, that I have not discounted modern medicine. That's not even what this is about anymore. I have never, in any of these posts, indicated that medication is useless. I'm saying that it's not the end-all, be-all. It's not the only way to cure ones body. Doctors are not gods, nor are scientists. Straight up, straight out.

Now, my work day is over and I'm going home.

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Also, I wasn't comparing alt-med to racism or Holocaust denial in order to attack the credibility of alt-med. I was only using those as examples of areas where evidence and views are overwhelmingly against the people who hold those views. Similarly, the evidence is overwhelmingly against some types of alt-med working (such as homeopathy). But you do have to trust the right experts to get that right (or have some understanding of the scientific reasoning yourself). I was only bringing that up to explain that you need to evaluate the credibility of evidence properly and that open-mindedness isn't necessarily the correct stance if you personally don't know what the evidence for or against something is.

Incidentally, product liability work is still anecdotal evidence if it's not controlled. But that's not really my point.

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my brain is exploding all over this thread.

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Sorry. I'm a scientist, as I think I say like every other sentence on here, and I am so effing sick of this mother's intuition pseudo scientific public health endangering claptrap.

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and I say Science Damnit Logic Oprah!! Either offer both sides of every argument or just don't bother!

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@Scout: Damn straight. Offer both sides and don't make science seem like this cold, scary other. It's normal, fun, and oftentimes helpful.

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SCIENCE RULES!

I HEART SCIENCE!

YAY FOR SCIENCE!

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The alt-med industry has noticed this trend and very successfully seized on it in order to market itself. Alt-med naturally lends itself to this sort of thinking because its practitioners emphasize things like talking to patients, showing empathy for them, etc. They provide the emotional feedback that a lot of people who feel lost in a sea of information want/need, and so they earn people's confidence and trust. Real doctors aren't trained to do that as well, because their training is more focused on the substantive treatments and diagnostics. Moreover, due to the tough economic environment created by our failing healthcare and insurance system, many doctors just don't have the time to spend hours with each patient getting to know them anymore. They have to see a lot of patients just to cover their costs and stay profitable, thanks to the massive overhead costs they have to pay (large staff for insurance filing, malpractice insurance, etc).

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