I’m so sorry for your loss.
Snake oil sales persons that target cancer patients should be jailed imo.
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I think there should be an empathy button, cause I can’t ‘like’ this. Holy FSM that is depressing.
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Thus continuing the cycle of ignorance
I’m well beyond it, but all the “where’s the harm!” in well-to-less well meaning alt-med peddlers definitely gets my goat.
I tried to warn the family against wasting money on such garbage, but the scam artists all promised false cures, and my poor mother was helpless to burn through tens of thousand dollars on stuff like http://www.quackwatch.com/01QuackeryRelatedTopics/electro.html
Of course, the “proof” of any of the treatments working was anecdotes from people who were likely fabricated, coincidental, or for persons who were never gravely ill to begin with.
I wish I could say that it’s getting better, but… The 21st Century Cures Act: The (Somewhat) Good, The (Mostly) Bad, and The (Very) Ugly | Science-Based Medicine
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@jlw: SF Chronicle link is subscriber-only.
Even more than protecting just the children of idiots (because whether by nature or nurture, there’s a possibility that they may grow up “science challenged” as well), there’s the whole “herd immunity” thing…
The state has an interest in protecting not only the children of idiots, but the other children, those with compromised immune systems, the un-vaccinatable etc…
The thing that pisses me off is that, even if you’re stupid enough to be willing to risk the health of your family, their bad decisions put mine at risk as well.
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Oh man, I can always depend on you to bring a bit of a tear to my eye with the beautiful wordplay.
…“hundred dollar bills”… Now I won’t be able to get that image out of my mind anytime anything vaguely woo comes up (which is a lot unfortunately).
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Yep. But what’s also infuriating is that the herd immunity angle almost never works. A lot of dumbfucks just respond to that type of argument: “Well, since all you sheeple are getting vaccinated, that means not vaccinating precious little Jimmy for stupid fucking non-reasons won’t put him at risk, since everyone else is ‘protected’, why are you even talking about this?”
Because really, just such stupid people don’t realize that’s how the trash and pollution problem in the 1970s happened. “Oh, what’s the harm of me tossing my McDonald’s bag out the window onto the freeway? It’s just one bag” and then everyone thinks that way, and then we’re up to our ears in putrid garbage. Because they’re stupid and selfish.
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My ancient yellow lab had a bad fall a few months back. He didn’t break anything, but he’s getting so old, and his hind-leg proprioception is essentially 0. So we took him to the emergency vet hospital to get him checked out since he wasn’t getting up and was in some pretty bad pain.
You know what they wanted to go with? Acupuncture and low-level laser therapy.
He’s the family dog but I raised him from a pup, so the folks were there too. I lost it when the vet stated those as our options. I flipped out and just shouted right in her face: “IF THERE’S NOTHING YOU CAN DO, FUCKING TELL ME THERE’S NOTHING YOU CAN DO! DON’T TRY TO SELL ME BULLSHIT!”
My parents were pretty taken aback. They view my interest in science based medicine as kooky, and that my refusal to allow homeopathy into the house makes me some kind of extremist. I laid down the ultimatum that I’d rather euthanize the dog than wave a magic wand over his head in a vain attempt to ease his suffering with bullshit.
Just remembering the episode has got my adrenaline going, and I’m all jacked up and angry now.
Time for a cooldown.
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There are actually some interesting studies in vet med about acupuncture. Studies that show efficacy. Everyone’s still confused as all hell as to why it seems to help, and the Honest certified acupuncturists I’ve met are pretty dismissive about the whole standard explanation “chi-flow” and “meridians” BS. I’ve personally seen some interesting cases where it has seemed to help when the standard anti-inflammatory meds were minimally effective (but of course that’s all anecdotal evidence). That being said, I’ve only ever seen it assist in improving discomfort, not be an effective replacement for anti-inflammatory and anti-nociceptive therapies.
As for the lasers… It’s probably a technology that has some limited applications, much like hyperbaric oxygen, but because it’s a relatively new and not terribly well understood treatment modality, there’s a LOT of misuse/overuse.
But yeah, when you’ve lost proprioception, there’s not always a lot you can do unless it’s something relatively acute and surgically reparable (like a acute disc protrusion or something similar). It sucks. That’s what happened to my last lab as well (when she was 14.5).
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Yeah, my guy is 13.5. He’s had the proprioception deficit for some time now, maybe a couple of years. It’s degenerative. I already inject him once a week with synovial fluid stuff (Adequan) which seems to help a little. He stumbles a lot, and doesn’t like stairs, but is too old and set in his ways to figure out the ramp. I know the day is coming when I’ll have to take him into the vet office and let him go, but I don’t want to think about that at the moment. We’ve got him on good pain management, and have been walking him a little more often, so he’s feeling better, but still…
When you discover a rich seam of stupid that runs so deep, you mine the fuck out of it!
Sadly this form of aggressive ignorance seems entirely renewable
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Have you heard about this?
http://www.assisianimalhealth.com/technology/
It sounds like a lot of woowoo to me, but I don’t know… we are susceptible to electronic fields… and PEMF is used in humans (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19371845)
Dunno, maybe ask your vet about it?
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It doesn’t matter what kind of school it is. Put a critical mass of kids together for 6 hours and you have a biotic incubator in operation.
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No, it literally does nothing. It’s more woo than you think, it’s effectively a laser pointer.
Mostly.
My next kid’s coming next month, and I had to quietly disengage from the handful of antivax/nonvax parents in my circle (why are they still in my circle? So I can at least try to get them to vax their spawn.) Their charming little germ bags are PNG until mine is up on all his shots.
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Yeah, you’ll want to keep them away for at least three months then. And definitely make everyone wash their hands.
Congrats, by the way!
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Dude, I feel you. There’s not always tons that you can do when it gets to that point (at least with current medical technology). Now you see exactly why the woo is so popular. It gives people something to hope with when the GAG injections, the NSAIDS, and pain meds aren’t helping as much as they need to.
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Yeah. But like I said, we took him back to his regular vet, and they prescribed Prednisone and we took him off the NSAIDS. The GAG+Pred+Tramadol regimen is working pretty well, as long as we keep up with the GAG injections. I’ve missed a week once or twice and he started tumbling downhill, but after giving him his GAG injection he perked back up after a few days and was back to where he was after a couple more weeks with injections on time.
I don’t know if it’s just reversion to the mean WRT the GAG, it probably is, but it seems to work.
And since getting him off NSAIDS his kidney function has improved dramatically. He’s always had kidney problems, but putting him on Pred seems to have actually helped. Maybe because he’s drinking tons of water now.
Very possibly both as far as the renal function. Dogs aren’t little people (as far as most species go, we’re actually the mutants in how well we handle NSAIDS, and that’s still not fantastic [think celebrex etc…]), and NSAIDS affect renal function a lot more in dogs than humans. Pred and other steroids of course have other side effects, hepatic stress being the primary one. All depending on dose of course.
That being said, when you’re looking at a deteriorating state, the emphasis has to be quality of life.
We (my wife is also a veterinarian) were dosing my in-laws’ old husky with absolutely ludicrous doses of dexamethasone in his last days (daily injections) to keep him comfortable enough to get up and be able to go out to the bathroom on his own. We warned them that if it worked for long enough, we’d definitely be causing other potentially life threatening problems, but that really wasn’t their concern. It was buying him as much comfortable time as possible, even if it caused problems. There wasn’t any long term picture, just what could be done in the short run. Not a happy place to be 
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