|
|
|
|
Placebo Medicine |
|
Placebo Medicine |
|
Introduction by Abram Hoffer, M.D.,
Ph.D.: Since
performing the very first double-blind controlled therapeutic trials in
psychiatry, I have followed with interest the history of this type of
experimental research. I was never convinced it was the best way or the only
way. In 1952, we did the first experiments double-blind because that was the
condition to obtain a research grant for testing vitamin B-3 as a treatment
for schizophrenia. Since then, I have become disillusioned with this type of
trial. I do agree that controlled trials are needed, but not necessarily
double blind ones. The New England Journal of Medicine (344,
1594-1602, 2001) carried a report by Hrobjartsson
and Gotzsche which questioned whether the placebo
was in fact as powerful as everyone thought it was. An inert pill has little
influence and might as well not be used. But the drug companies have always
claimed that such trials, which were forced on them by the FDA, are the only
scientific way. In this article on placebo medicine, Dr. Saul shows how any
experiment can be biased in any direction if you have the will and the money.
And yet even after the billions of dollars of pharmaceutical-based research
conducted over decades, there is little to show for it. In my opinion, no
toximolecular substance will ever be a cure for anything. Natural means have
been almost totally ignored. The body is composed of innumerable molecules
developed over the past billions of years by the toughest test of all, survival.
We are finely tuned organisms, with so many different compounds and reactions
and inter-reactions. Even after over 50 years of medical practice, it still
surprises me that everything functions so well. So to think that one can
insert a strange molecule that has never been there before, and hope to
correct some malfunction, is the height of folly. The only molecules that are
therapeutic are orthomolecular, that is molecules that are normally present
and with which the body is familiar. The only compounds that have been used
successfully in chronic ailments are the nutrients, vitamins, minerals, amino
acids, essential fatty acids, and hormones. And when one tries to replace
natural substances with compounds that are slightly different in order to
have patent protection, the results are dismal. The following article makes
my point. - A.
Hoffer.) PLACEBO
MEDICINE by Andrew W. Saul Ever since I first watched comedian Steve Martin do a
stand-up routine about
being "high on a new drug called Pla-cee-bo,"
I've questioned the scientific method a lot more often. The great
majority of all illnesses are self limiting. About eighty percent
of all sick people will either get better anyway or die anyway, no matter
what the doctor does. So why have doctors? For the twenty percent
who need intervention, common sense would tell us. Just how much bias
enters into medical practice? In so-called double blind studies, where
neither experimenter nor subject know who got the active medicine and who got
the sugar pill, there can be little doubt. Yet only about twenty
percent of all medical and surgical procedures have ever been double-blind,
placebo tested. Let's see if we've got this straight: Only twenty
percent can be helped, and only twenty percent of what will be tried is known
to help. I haltingly say that twenty percent of twenty percent is...,
ah, is... is a small number. And then there is
the opportunity for bias in the interpretation of what results you do obtain.
Example: as a student at the Well, we
have. In a little-publicized (and downright embarrassing) chapter of
19th century medical history, there was a movement among some physicians who
had good reason to believe that the cures of the day were worse than the
diseases. he very term "quack" was
in fact first applied to medical doctors who gave their drug of choice,
mercury, for almost anything. They were called "quicks,"
actually, for using "quicksilver," mercury's nickname. Some
doctors rebelled against what we today would consider to be bona fide medical
barbarism, such as bleeding by the pint, uterus removals for female hysteria,
lower rib removals in woman so they could fit into corsets better, arsenic
treatments for syphilis, and so forth. So along come some
dissident doctors who choose to give no medicines at all, just
placebos. Their cure rate was very high, their death rate very low,
their popularity with patients very strong, their names today very much
unsung. Just try to find information about them at you local medical library
or museum. On the other hand,
it would take no effort at all to hear our doctor-loving press promptly
preach that today this has all changed. Surely modern medicine has
progressed so far as to become so safe, so scientific and so successful! So sorry: it
hasn't. The war on cancer has been a 50-year flop. The
medical-pharmaceutical wars on AIDS, the common cold, and even the number one
killer, cardiovascular disease, have all been defeats. They continue,
like all badly managed campaigns, wars or businesses, only because of a huge
influx of funding. To go point by
point: Cancer: over the past four decades,
five-year survival rates are virtually unchanged for the cancers that kill
the most people. AIDS: according to a recent
international AIDS conference in Colds: any physician will tell you that
there simply is no "cure" for the common cold. Heart disease: if there were a cure for
cardiovascular disease, you would have heard about it. What progress has been
made against heart disease is primarily due to advances in nutritional
knowledge of fats, fiber, vitamins and minerals. There is not one
successful example of the "one drug, one disease" dogma among these
illnesses. Modern medicine is merely the warmed-up leftovers of the bad
old days of polypharmacy, heroic (read "expensive") measures, and
monolithic thinking. The poverty of philosophy in medical schools is
appalling. Anarchy among physicians, and nurses, and patients is inevitable
if word of this gets out. There are leaks, from time to time. The
medical cartel calls these informants "quacks." Talk about the pot
calling the kettle black. Well, the best defense is a good offense, and
institutionalized medicine is about as offensive as it gets. A single example
is adequate to prove this: What is the biggest spending professional special-interest
lobby in the What's worse, the medical profession
reviles emerging nutrition-therapy doctors, eating its own like some
demented hamster. I had two colleagues, both I was
stunned. "Why you?” I asked. “I've seen patients
of yours, along with your written instructions for their meal planning and
supplementation. You are helping everybody and killing nobody!" "Helping
people is not what medical practice is about now," he told me
calmly. He sounded just like the perfect doctor you dream of reaching with a 3 AM emergency: confident, capable,
friendly, relaxed, assured. "The insurance companies run things
now. You can only prescribe a vitamin for its approved purpose, which
to them, is simple deficiency. Physicians are simply not allowed to cure
illness with supplements. I tried, somebody complained, and that was the
end." Here is an exact
transcript of what this dangerous man directed his patients to do: SUGARS: Avoid
all sugars, white or brown. Use concentrated apple juice or barley malt
extract. Honey can be introduced after one month. If tolerated
use sparingly. (Note: Molasses & honey when used in baking seem to be
well tolerated in general.) FLOURS: Avoid
all refined white flour including unbleached white flour. Permitted are whole wheat, soy, gluten, oat, rye, and Jerusalem Artichoke
flours. Recommended whole wheat breads brands include " VEGETABLES: All
vegetables permitted. except possibly corn. Corn
(with caution) after months. If tolerated, use in moderation. FRUITS: All fruits
permitted except excesses of dried fruits. MEATS: All meats
permitted except pork. Avoid bacon and commercial cold cuts. (Cold cuts
permitted if made without fillers. DAIRY PRODUCTS: All
dairy products permitted (except those containing sugars). Avoid processed or
cheese spreads, ice cream, flavored yogurt, etc. (Cream cheese is OK) BEVERAGES: Permitted
are tea, decaffeinated coffee, herb teas, unsweetened fruit and vegetable
juices. Bottled or distilled water preferable to tap water. SMOKING: Don't smoke.
All American tobacco is sugar cured.
ALCOHOL: Avoid
drinking beer, liquor, or wine. SEA FOODS: All sea
foods are permitted. CEREALS: Permitted are
oatmeal, shredded wheat, millet, buckwheat, natural grain MISCELLANEOUS:
Permitted are all soy products, nuts, seeds, whole grains, carob, and tofu.
You should not be
hungry. when first going on a diet. If you
are, increase your carbohydrate intake (i.e., up to six slices whole grain
bread and up to three medium Remember to read all
the labels!! Add vitamin supplements,
and that was his protocol. I couldn't believe
that a fully qualified MD could be called on the carpet for this, or if he
were, that it could possibly be made to stick. To me, the medicos had
always been the top bananas in health care. Doctors like him were not in
the same class as self-styled nature-cure quacks like me, working out of my
basement, ineligible for third-party insurance coverage. I sincerely regretted
his leaving the area, told him so, and wished him well. Always the
gentleman, he paid me a compliment and that was the last I ever heard from
him. And then it
happened again. Another acquaintance of mine, a board-certified with at least
20 years in his specialty, was kicked out of one of his two insurance
companies. Since he was my primary care doctor at the time, I was mostly
naked, wearing a light blue faded paper gown and in the midst of a physical
when he told me. "I've made too
many enemies," he said. "I tell patients to take a lot of
vitamins. I prescribe herbs. I've told other doctors at the local
medical society that they didn't know what they were doing. Big
surprise that they got me, eh?" Not long after
that, he voluntarily left his other insurance company. "They were
going to drop me anyway. I just beat 'em to
it." If medical doctors
will not listen to their own, or to Nobel Prize winners like Linus Pauling,
they are certainly not going to listen to an outsider like me. To try to
influence the medicos would be a lot like speaking in a large auditorium,
with nobody there, and the microphone off. And if the room were full,
they wouldn't hear anyway. And if the mike were on, they wouldn't
listen. And if they actually heard you, they'd leave. I've got another
for you. Back in the 1970s, Dr. Benjamin Feingold, an allergist, noticed
that some children seemed to be noticeably sensitive to artificial colors and
other food additives. He worked primarily with hyperactive kids, had
their parents clean up their diets and go chemical-free, and the hyperactive
behavior stopped. From this came a classic book, Why Your Child Is Hyperactive.
Feingold was an
MD. He was credentialed in every way and then some. I posses
correspondence from him and you should see just the letterhead.
Feingold's diet was so effective that Feingold Associations, grass roots
groups of parents, sprung up across the nation. Basically all they did
was keep painted foods out of their children's stomachs. The food industry's
response was predictable. Study after study has been bankrolled to show
that food additives, and sugar, for that matter, have no negative effect on
children's behavior. Yeah, right! Been to a kid's birthday party
lately? Ever taught school during the week following Halloween? Ever
tried to nap a toddler full of M&M's? Most importantly, did you ever read
Feingold's book? This man knows what he is talking about and got good
results. As long as we let
kids eat chemically dyed "foods" and "drinks," we might
just as well give them a can of Sherwin-Williams housepaint
and a spoon. The worst that can
be said about the Feingold approach is that it doesn't work for all
children. Somewhere around 45% to 50% of kids will improve on his
program. Maybe it is no more than a placebo effect. But it may
still be worth a try because there is no harm to it. Doctors give
chemotherapy with a success rate of under 30%, and
chemo has serious side effects. What is the down side of not feeding kids
food paint? How can it possibly hurt to try avoidance of unneeded
chemicals? What really rankles you is that allergists have made a
subculture out of avoiding various molds, pollens, hairs and foods... all
substances that we have had millions of years of evolutionary exposure to.
Allergists will be quick to tell you that your child is allergic... but not,
of course, to an industrial synthetic chemical dye. For it would somehow
seem to them that only substances found in nature can produce an authentic
allergy. Factory foods and artificial colors bearing molecular names a
yard long cannot cause hyperactivity. But corn can. Logic like that
does not even pass the straight-faced test. Copyright C 2004, 2003 and prior years Andrew W.
Saul. Andrew Saul is the author of the books FIRE
YOUR DOCTOR! How to be Independently Healthy (reader reviews at
http://www.doctoryourself.com/review.html
) and DOCTOR YOURSELF: Natural Healing that Works. (reviewed at http://www.doctoryourself.com/saulbooks.html
) For ordering information, Click Here .
|
|
|
AN IMPORTANT NOTE: This page is not in any way offered as prescription, diagnosis nor treatment for any disease, illness, infirmity or physical condition. Any form of self-treatment or alternative health program necessarily must involve an individual's acceptance of some risk, and no one should assume otherwise. Persons needing medical care should obtain it from a physician. Consult your doctor before making any health decision. Neither the author nor the webmaster has authorized the use of their names or the use of any material contained within in connection with the sale, promotion or advertising of any product or apparatus. Single-copy reproduction for individual, non-commercial use is permitted providing no alterations of content are made, and credit is given. |
|
|
|
|
| Home | Order my Books | About the Author | Contact Us | Webmaster | |
