I also lost my Aunt, who did treatment there until running out of money. she was there for almost over 3.5 months. If you would like to discuss- feel free to contact me at kinezoua26 at hotmail dot com

We were there from Feb- June 2009

You talk about RCT’s with accupuncture etc, but essentially that’s still a single treatment for a set of symptoms, the cause is still there. I’m sure some of you guys would rather someone continue to be ill than have someone get better through nutritional therapy! anecdotal evidence is there, RCTs are very hard to incorporate, because i’ve said, we’re all individuals, not a mean of a population, symptoms may be the similar across a number of people but have a completely different underlying pathology. Treat the cause not the symptoms, and with many chronic diseases all it takes is a bit of investigation to what is really going on. to reproduce an individualised treatment specific to the patients medical, family, and dietary history is difficult.

I will also accept that RCTs on e.g. “Colon Hydrotherapy” will be, well, difficult since it is hard to find a placebo treatment to compare it against.

How did we even end up talking about RCTs… right, you put up that straw man (in your post from March 10) just to knock it down subsequently. Two separate responses there:

1) Your view of RCTs is too narrow-minded and that is what I criticized – they can not only be used to test drugs, but practically any intervention where one can find convincing placebo treatments. Take for example acupuncture (placebo being “stage dagger” needles, or needles put “in the wrong places” where they should not have an effect) or Brain Gym exercises (the placebo being exercises that, according to Brain Gym theory, should not improve brain function).

2) Admitting that RCTs will be difficult for some of Lodi’s more dramatic interventions, one must still not confuse wishful thinking and a priori plausibility with rigorous research. When Lodi claims “Fruit juice, sprouting beans and chelation prevent cancer” then he better darn well have some figures to back that up.

And no, I don’t mean testimonies from happy believers who followed his plans and don’t yet have cancer.

Wow, your ignorance knows no bounds, no bias in RCT’s!!!!! ha. Quantitative research on the whole is riddled with bias, but this is where we delve into philosophy, something people from a very old school science background will no doubt reject because it doesn’t have a hypothesis! People forget we ARE individuals, not a the mean of a population!

“This is then immediately hailed as ultimate proof, all further research declared unnecessary.

And this is ridiculous and dangerous.”

I agree, but tell me how you would go about rigorously testing these methods in an RCT and i’ll give you a medal.

The things is you’ve said RCTs are needed for rigour, but this system is completely inflexible. Please explain to me how test the effects of one drug on the symptoms of another is going to solve an underlying web of problems?

http://cure4migraine.net/2010/02/the-functional-medicine-model-and-health-information-from-dr-mark-hyman-m-d/

- Heres a better explanation of functional medicine by Dr. Mark Hyman, M.D.

-I’d also suggest reading part of the textbook of functional medicine. Whether you like it or not, these things will be integrated into medicine, theres alot of evidence mounting so just keep an eye on it. It’s whether you can be bothered to open you eyes or just stick with an outdated method.

The bulk of science is the refinement of previous knowledge.

And cherry-picking cases where a) science was wrong or b) good knowledge was obtained without a rigorous protocol does NOT prove that one should light-heartedly abandon strict testing.

I agree, RCTs are not everything. Anecdotes are a valuable source of inspiration, of getting ideas about how things might work. But in the end, the stuff has to be rigorously tested.

This is not “science turning into religion”, this is simply acknowledging the fact that people easily fool themselves and that we need strategies to remove our bias. RCTs are specifically designed in that way. Anecdotes are not and are therefore by far less valuable than good studies.

As for the scurvy thing, given that the condition is drastic and rather deadly and that the consumption of citrus fruit cured two out of two men within days in the original James Lind trial, that may well have had a p<0.05. Subsequent replications showed similarly successful results, and this is where "anecdote" turned into "evidence" – had the next handful of sailors died of their disease despite eating loads of oranges, Lind may well have discarded the theories.

And this is what happens with self-proclaimed cancer healers. By chance some of their customers get better. (Just like sailors also managed to survive scurvy without oranges.) This is then immediately hailed as ultimate proof, all further research declared unnecessary.

And this is ridiculous and dangerous.

Daniel

“In most cases, however, the progress of science does NOT mean the rejection, but the REFINEMENT of earlier knowledge.”

“So one day people will find out that gravity does not make things fall down and that smoking does in fact not increase your lung cancer risk?”

You should probably grasp science first fella. None of these are fact, there is no fact, only probability. So one day isn’t inconceivable that we may have got something slightly wrong (as we consistantly do), i’m not arguing against gravity, just arguing against the morons who don’t really know anything and believe anything they are told.

The thing with society at the moment is ‘science’ is turning into a bit of a religion, we like to ‘believe’ in science, makes all the wannabe bedroom scientists feel clever. There’s a fundamental problem really with regards to scientific claims: The ‘truth’ is already out there, all that really changes is our understanding of the truth, how we contsruct this truth. So for example the role of lactate in muscle fatigue, this was THE scientific answer about 10 years ago.Now it isn’t. So what changed? Did we evolve within those 10 years to irradicate the effect on lactate on muscle fatigue and develop a completely new system of muscle fatigue?!

Well was that right or wrong? we do consistently get things WRONG, not just “REFINEMENT of earlier knowledge”. Thats the problem with the ‘realist’ views within science, “this is the truth now” 10 years later “no actually that was wrong, now this is the truth”.This can be dangerous, withn medicine and nutrition.

So just for the record, I do trust science in some situations and not in others. I don’t believe you can just discredit anecdotal evidence, when scurvy suddenly stopped in sailors after eating oranges, did they need a P>0.05?

I just don’t like how we have constructed the double blind placebo controlled study as the bible, yes it is excellent for the testing of drugs, but not for EVERYTHING else. We are not flexible enough.
So yes, we have ‘constructed’ the truth that the double blind PCS is THE ONLY WAY.

For example human behaviour, drugs and mental disorders. You cannot measure human behaviour effectively through quantitative methods. Simple as. Bias in quanti methods is huge, it may say it isn’t, but it is, quali methods however accept bias as part of the research.

And with regards to the ‘cherry picked’ cochrane review you all seem to be so pleased with yourself at sniggering at, i’m referring to the fact that it is in fact a cochrane review, which has its own methods and biases. So this cochrane review basically says that anti-oxidants are dangerous, if you know science, you know the role of anti-oxidants within many many systems in the body.OK so don’t have an intake of any of those anti-oxidants then! I dont need a cochrane review to know that I need some of these vital vitamins and mineral!Sometimes you can use common sense to realise hmmmm where are the source of these anti-oxidants coming from?Fruit, veg and meat. Things we should all be eating. So NOT synthesised, isolated antioxidants, used in a ‘drug-like’ trial in high levels. What about the rest of the diet? It’s not simple the effect of one thing on another, we have a complex web of systems that all interact, its naive to isolate one system as an attempt to find the answers to disease.

Ri-f*ing-diculous. So one day people will find out that gravity does not make things fall down and that smoking does in fact not increase your lung cancer risk?

Alright, there is certainly research that is being invalidated, facts that were thought to be settled can sometimes also be overthrown. No doubt, science of whatever fashion will make mistakes and those will in time be corrected.

In most cases, however, the progress of science does NOT mean the rejection, but the REFINEMENT of earlier knowledge.

Example: “Smoking causes cancer” becomes “Smoking increases the risk by …%” and still later becomes “Smoking … cigarettes per day at age … for … year increases the lung cancer risk by …% for males/females/[add any demographic].”

Please correct your perspective on research,
sincerely,
Daniel from Oslo