I tend to pity the people who are killed or simply made severely unwell by, say, preventable diseases not being vaccinated against, for one example. Or hospitalised because their parents believe in the power of prayer, or ridiculous diets promoted by ‘nutritionists’ and so forth.
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‘nutritionists’
Your use of quotes indicates the level of respect modern medicine gives to nutrition, the true foundation of health and longevity.
Also note that you didn’t actually touch on the core argument I made.
Frankly, any remedy that is ‘marketed’ is bound to be overly expensive, as those marketing costs must be bundled in. I don’t think I’ve ever bought anything advertised…most heavily advertised products are simply a cheap product + the cost of advertising. These vendors are out to make a buck, they aren’t out to improve people’s health, and they wouldn’t give a damn to finance studies.
Part of the problem here is economic. Private studies can only be profitably conducted if you can patent and claim exclusive domain over the cure. But herbal remedies, for instance, cannot be patented, and thus experience strong price competition; paying $5 for a bottle of 100 pills is not uncommon.
This provides a thin profit margin, but not enough to actually finance research. If one company finances research, they would have to increase their prices to compensate…and if the research showed positive results, it would be the cheaper competitors who would benefit the most.
I don’t really have a solution to this. It’s a tricky problem, and seems to be a market failure, that requires alternate means of financing research to solve. It would certainly help if Universities spent more resources on researching alternative cures…
As for Cancer, let me say that if you follow ANYONE’S advice without looking into it thoroughly, including your MD, you are doing yourself a disservice. You might be totally resistant to any course of action that would not include chemo/surgery; fair enough. But at the same time, you should be equally resistant to any path that does not also include a complete analysis of diet and whether it is meeting your needs optimally. Nobody ever died from drinking too many green smoothies…
I don’t have a problem with complimentary medicine. This video satire, however, plays to those specific sites and infomercials which hawk snake oil. It displays an absurd “cure”. And people do get taken in by it, from false anecdotes, and fake tests.
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Because folks who have a recognisable skill and the proof thereof are called ‘dieticians’. The bar’s set a lot higher before you can profess to be such.
I notice you pulled the actual post, so whatever the core was, it’s gone…
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Nice video! Thought this movie was from the 70s or early 80s, but the y2k reference means it’s more modern.
I pulled the post? No, thank the champions of free speech at BoingBoing.
Nope. It wasn’t pulled by any one here at Boing Boing
You may have done it by accident.
I’ll be jiggered, thanks for pointing that out. I wonder how I managed to do that…
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BTW, I restored the post, I somehow accidently deleted it.
Fair enough. Well, I’d argue that whilst that is in some narrow sense possibly true, there are many, many treatments and ‘cures’ (there go the quotes again) that are self-evidently dangerous bullshit (i.e. Antivaxxers, prayer -placebo effect notwithstanding, nutritionists promoting dangerous diets to avoid spurious ‘allergies’ and so forth - first-hand knowledge of that one via a friends’ youngster being ‘diagnosed’ with a load of hooey. Good job she went to a doctor for a second opinion). And, with the greatest respect, I’ve memories (woolly, I’ll admit) of you espousing views somewhat orthogonal to the scientific method back on OG BoingBoing (christ knows what it was now, one of those triple-digit post high-falutin’ flamewars we all know, love, and come here specifically to get embroiled in… 
).
Another thing about the scientific method is that things only get to that stage if someone’s already done a quite significant amount of work to make a case that such a study should be done. So there’s every chance that said treatments aren’t languishing untested, but that the scientific method (given it’s intrinsic hidebound-ness and politicking, natch) has already gone, “Nah, fuck it. Waste of time”.
Haven’t seen you much our post-disqus gated community though, so hail and well met and that.
Edit: Christ, but I love me some brackets. My bloody paragraphs look like pseudocode. I need me an editor…
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Sounds like you’re drawing a false equivalency between “Accepting some forms of alternate medicine” and “Accepting every crazy ‘alternate’ medicine thing out there up to and including being an anti-vaxxer.”
A few thoughts here. One - many people confuse “Homeopathic” with “natural.” There are a LOT of natural medicines out there that are effective - and plenty that aren’t, of course. Homeopathy is something else ENTIRELY, and doesn’t include active ingredients.
There’s one other thing.
If it works, there will be evidence.
Yes, if anyone has bothered to pay for it and perform a study. And in a lot of ‘natural’ cases, there’s no profit motive, so studies often don’t happen.
As a result, there are plenty of things out there that DO work that haven’t been adequately studied. Would I suggest you try them? No, I wouldn’t. But - “There is no study showing that it is effective” is not synonymous with “It is not effective.”
Now, when there’s a study (or a series of studies) that show a particular natural remedy ISN’T effective, that’s obviously a different matter. (If, of course, the studies were well run, and didn’t use some totally different and incorrect application of the natural medicine that barely resembles the original treatment method).
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Well, yes, but mainly for effect.
Hey, sorry, I don’t have time to continue this conversation at this point. But I read it, and found the point you make in the second paragraph to be thought provoking, and a good rebuttal to my argument. Cheers to you, and thanks for reading and considering my thoughts 
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