Dr. Nancy Malik wrote:

Moridin wrote:
Modern medicine actually treats both symptoms (various painkillers) and causes (antibiotics), as well as act preventative manner (such as vaccines). Your assertion is based on no real knowledge of the field of modern medicine.

Bacteria or for the matter of fact any germ is not the cause of disease. It's the environment which plays the decisive role

Louis Pasteur on his death bed recanted the germ theory of disease and said, "If I could live my life over again, I would devote it to proving that germs seek their natural habitat---unhealthy tissue---rather than being the cause of unhealthy tissue."

I would love to see some evidence of this ever occurring. Any evidence to suggest that this claim is any less specious than the similar assertion relating to Darwin, that is.

I have a question for you: If I was to drink a litre of diluted homeopathic medicine would I suffer any ill effect from taking a massive overdose?

Dr. Nancy Malik wrote:

Moridin wrote:
Modern medicine actually treats both symptoms (various painkillers) and causes (antibiotics), as well as act preventative manner (such as vaccines). Your assertion is based on no real knowledge of the field of modern medicine.

Bacteria or for the matter of fact any germ is not the cause of disease. It's the environment which plays the decisive role

Louis Pasteur on his death bed recanted the germ theory of disease and said, "If I could live my life over again, I would devote it to proving that germs seek their natural habitat---unhealthy tissue---rather than being the cause of unhealthy tissue."

I haven't even got to the end of this thread yet, but this post has just stunned me. I never thought I would see anyone make a claim so jaw-droppingly ignorant as this, and yet here it is. And coming from someone who is even authorized to sell herself as a health care professional. It boggles the mind.

Hey, Dr. Malik, what's your opinion of this "gravity" thing? Is that just a conspiracy, too?

Of course, if she is willing, we can ask her to try putting a pathogen into her blood just to check out her frankly ridiculous hypothesis, I nominate Ebola.

GenesForLife wrote:Of course, if she is willing, we can ask her to try putting a pathogen into her blood just to check out her frankly ridiculous hypothesis, I nominate Ebola.

Yeah, we'll even make sure we have a bottle of homeopathically diluted Ebola extract on hand, just in case. How about it, doctor? Are you game?

GenesForLife wrote:Of course, if she is willing, we can ask her to try putting a pathogen into her blood just to check out her frankly ridiculous hypothesis, I nominate Ebola.

And she must be treated only with homeopathic crap, no hospitals, real doctors or real medicine.

PS. Isn't there a very small percentage something like 1 in a million people that have an immunity to the Ebola virus? I think I read that somewhere, but not certain if the source was correct.

Shrunk wrote:

GenesForLife wrote:Of course, if she is willing, we can ask her to try putting a pathogen into her blood just to check out her frankly ridiculous hypothesis, I nominate Ebola.

Yeah, we'll even make sure we have a bottle of homeopathically diluted Ebola extract on hand, just in case. How about it, doctor? Are you game?

See, this is so many skeptics are against alternative medicines, you are just so ill-informed. According to the link below, you don't use Ebola extract to treat Ebola. That's crazy! Instead you should use Rattlesnake venom, Yellow Viper venom, Bushmaster Snake Venom, Phosphorus, and Merc. (Mercury?).

http://www.lightparty.com/Health/EbolaCure.html

Dr. Nancy Malik wrote:I am sorry to say but I think you are not aware of lies & corrupt practices of conventional pharma industry. Have a look

Smear campaign...

Usually a sign of a very weak position.

Dr. Nancy Malik wrote:Homeopathy is an integrative medicine. It is based on the science that the body, mind and emotions are not really separate and distinct, but are actually fully integrated.

I fully agree, trick the mind and emotions into believing it works and sometimes your body buys into it too.

i.e. PLACEBO

Dr. Nancy Malik wrote:Bacteria or for the matter of fact any germ is not the cause of disease. It's the environment which plays the decisive role

Please tell me you are not responsible for people's health.

I heard cyanide can also work very well in tiny concentrations, it even cures all illnesses.

GenesForLife wrote:I heard cyanide can also work very well in tiny concentrations, it even cures all illnesses.

Well, dosis facit venenum, right? Apparently cyanides were used (or perhaps still are used) in a medical context.

It was a humourous attempt to point out that cyanide induced death can cure all extant illnesses in the individual who died.

GenesForLife wrote:It was a humourous attempt to point out that cyanide induced death can cure all extant illnesses in the individual who died.

Oh.

Never mind, my sense of humour is renowned for being noticeable only at a microscopic scale.

GenesForLife wrote:It was a humourous attempt to point out that cyanide induced death can cure all extant illnesses in the individual who died.

It could clear the symptoms right up.

Thanks for the lesson in double blind studies. Even so, statistics can be manipulated quite easily by unscrupulous drug company officials. I don't have much to say about homeopathy and I don't really care if people want to use it fine with me. I went to a chiropractor and didn't like that but others swear by it. To each his own I say. My biggest concern is the emphasis on sickness instead of health by our so-called "health-care" system. There should be taxes on unhealthy food to discourage people from buying them just like on cigarettes.

Do you have evidence for regular large scale manipulations in statistics by unscrupulous officials, ones which were overlooked when they came to light?

The reason the pharma industry is profit driven is simple, the investments needed and the the money that has to be spent on trials is enormous, and the development of novel chemotherapeutic agents has a very high failure rate, 90% to be precise if I'm citing from Basic Biotechnology, Ratledge & Kristiansen, Cambridge University Press.

Without profits, R & D will simply not have the funding to continue, of course, there are plenty of agencies such as the Wellcome Trust funding research and development, and hopefully that will resolve the situation to some extent.

Coming to Homeopathy, all evidence points to it being totally bunk, and if it is bunk, then to still allow practitioners to claim that it works , thus deceiving people and depriving them of medicine that is a lot more efficacious is an ethical and a scientific no-go.

The scientific community itself has been trying to work towards solving the affordability and access problems associated with the pharma industry, with ventures like this one http://p2pfoundation.net/Open_Source_Drug_Discovery

generalsemanticist wrote:Thanks for the lesson in double blind studies. Even so, statistics can be manipulated quite easily by unscrupulous drug company officials. I don't have much to say about homeopathy and I don't really care if people want to use it fine with me. I went to a chiropractor and didn't like that but others swear by it. To each his own I say. My biggest concern is the emphasis on sickness instead of health by our so-called "health-care" system. There should be taxes on unhealthy food to discourage people from buying them just like on cigarettes.

You can manipulate statistics all you want, but if you do, you will either not get published or competitors will not be able to repeat your experiment, in which case, you are outed and destroyed. If it ever became known that a pharmaceutical company faked their own research (which can be easily discovered by independently repeating the study; independent studies are almost always done before putting a new drug on the market), it would be all over for them, both financially and legally. It is much easier to just create drugs that work if you want to make a large profit.

You are free to believe whatever you want to believe, but you cannot have your own facts. Once you reject science and reason, you start to walk down a very dangerous path to a place you do not want to get. You might get to Thabo Mbeki. He was a former President in South Africa, a country that has been plagued the most with HIV/AIDS. As it happens Mbeki is an AIDS denialist who do not accept the scientifically established notion that HIV cause AIDS and belives that antiretroviral drugs (that we know works) is really a western plot to damage the African people. Because of this, he refused to give his suffering population antiretroviral drugs against HIV/AIDS, but believed, without any evidence or reason, that garlic and lemon cured HIV. Scientists at Harvard School of Public Health estimates that this stunt caused the premature deaths of almost 350000 of his own people.

So don't tell me that there are no consequences to irrational beliefs; there are, and they can be profound.

Moridin wrote:

You are free to believe whatever you want to believe, but you cannot have your own facts.

Yes and you are free to believe what you want also. Just remember what is "a fact" one day may not be the next. History is full of such "facts". I believe very much in science, but not in research done by pharmaceutical companies. I do not consider this science - it is some sort of mixture of science, business, and government meddling.

HughMcB wrote:

Dr. Nancy Malik wrote:Bacteria or for the matter of fact any germ is not the cause of disease. It's the environment which plays the decisive role

Please tell me you are not responsible for people's health.

Indeed.

Elena wrote:

HughMcB wrote:

Dr. Nancy Malik wrote:Bacteria or for the matter of fact any germ is not the cause of disease. It's the environment which plays the decisive role

Please tell me you are not responsible for people's health.

Indeed.

Please tell me your doctor is not responsible for your health. We are all responsible for our own health. Dr. Malik makes a valid point. Disease is a result of a number of factors, not merely the presence of a pathogen. We are exposed to them continuously so why are we not sick all the time?

generalsemanticist wrote:

Elena wrote:

HughMcB wrote:

Dr. Nancy Malik wrote:Bacteria or for the matter of fact any germ is not the cause of disease. It's the environment which plays the decisive role

Please tell me you are not responsible for people's health.

Indeed.

Please tell me your doctor is not responsible for your health. We are all responsible for our own health. Dr. Malik makes a valid point. Disease is a result of a number of factors, not merely the presence of a pathogen. We are exposed to them continuously so why are we not sick all the time?

Let's not conflate arguments. The assertion above, i.e. Bacteria or for the matter of fact any germ is not the cause of disease. It's the environment which plays the decisive role is wrong.

Yes, there are many bacteria, viruses and parasites that are non-pathogenic to us humans. Many microorganisms live with us symbiotically (for ex. those in our digestive tract). Some of those non-pathogenic microorganisms may become harmful and produce disease if the host is immunosuppressed (a status that may or may not depend on taking care of one's health). Or, these microorganisms may be harmful to certain humans born with genetic conditions.

But there are a myriad microorganisms that will infect, sicken and kill the host if no treatment is given to control the infection -- no matter how healthy the host may have been until then.