Missing from your analysis is risk/benefit. To lump red light therapy with invasive procedures and surgery makes for poor decision making. The risks are entirely different and so, proportionally, should be the amount of evidence required to try it. If the risks are near zero then a even minimal evidence of efficacy should be sufficient to try it.
So many doctors freak out at a patient risking a few hundred bucks on a detox cleanse but think nothing of them risking permanent disability with an ill-advised spinal surgery costing hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Just a shout-out to the father of "quack-busting," Stephen Barrett, MD, now 92, with whom I worked as a medical editor in the 1980s. Barrett famously got his cat certified as a "nutritionist," and tried in a long and distinguished career to convince the public of all the points in this article. As long as there are ailments that medicine can't fix, the struggle will go on.
Dr. Barrett's website Quackwatch Barrett published an article in 2023 titled "COVID-19 Misinformation Has Led to Many Deaths," pointing out that vaccine misinformation contributed to thousands of preventable deaths. He stated this without any verifiable evidence.
to doctors includes flecainide for PVCs after myocardial infarction. I remember going to the ACC meeting and they had a huge open house on the top of some tower in some big city alcohol flowing food, etc. then we found out that it made the EKG look better but the person died. Vioxx, although I'd still take it for a headache or hydrocodone. Monoplax ... the list goes on.
In addition, no matter how we tell people they keep forgetting the stories of the vitamins that had to be pulled after medical catastrophe.
There are no free rides in Medicine. A patient was sent home from the ER with anxiety related chest pain only to come back as a "train wreck". They were hit by a train on the way home. Even the ER visit had risk .
At the end of the day, the best you can do is be at ideal body weight , be active . Make sure your blood pressure and labs are within reason. Get a decent amount of sleep, stay married and wear a seatbelt. Laugh a bit
I am still unclear as to whether there were any controlled trials that proved (after it became clear that the vaccines were not perfect protection) the Covid vaccines saved people from dying of Covid, which is what was claimed. It would not have been that difficult to approximate a trial by simply comparing similar cohorts who took the vaccine and those who did not. To my knowledge, nothing like this was ever done. Rather the authorities merely made the claim.
Nothing bothers me more than “longevity docs.” ALL docs are essentially committed to helping people live long. There is so much of this going on along with clinically unvalidated “aging tests”. Some tests claim your organs age at different rates but this is nearly impossible to validate clinically and by what means. They are built by association among reference samples with no consideration for “healthy” current clinical metrics for age groups. There is also a conflation of aging with age-related disease and they somehow have merged. This helped improve funding but drives a lot of confusion between wealthy investors and what is scientifically sound. Being healthy now means you will live long to old age…this likely contributes, but this is not the whole story! It’s ironic that for some disease we depend on measuring somatic mutation and then now ignore it and exchange these concepts for environment and epigenetics when it comes to “aging.” Hallmarks of aging and how to “treat them/slow them” is a great goal to have but very little data supports “reversal” of aging. Like the article says, there is some very compelling research, but the treatments are usually a stretch and become a trend among influencers/biohackers.
What I personally see rather often is also the combination of non-evidence - for example some mechanism in a mouse model which is not only assumed to be active but also relevant quantitatively + some weak assoziation in humans (probably highly influenced by the statistical models/methods used) = truth. Sadly it is not rare that even policy-makers fall for this.
I would extend this a bit to include commonly accepted treatments that have been shown to be beneficial in properly conducted clinical trials, but the benefit is very small.
-Disproving the null hypothesis doesn’t logically prove a treatment works
-Side effects reduce the quality of life
-Studies done by industry are biased
-Publication bias
-Treatments are less effective in the real world than in a study
-Long-term harms are extremely difficult to find
-Treatments make people complacent with respect to lifestyle adjustments
My wife has had 6 vertebra cemented with kypho in the last 5 months. The doctors never explained anything about the expected results and the risks of later fractures. She is pain free and moving around....for now. This is why I hate the medical system. It is 90% lies. And that certainly applies to what most of modern medicine is based on...germ theory. Total BS.
Nice clarification of simple principles. “ If it seems too good to be true, it probably isn’t true “ promotes a skeptical view, but not a cynical view. Real science is about reproducible evidence that supports a theory or hypothesis. No good data, no real science. Expert opinion is not data. Therefore any evidence based recommendation supported only by expert opinion or a single set of data is not real science.
Also, I’ve seen many of the vaccine injured invest large sums of money in the pursuit of a diagnoses and or cure. There was a plethora of these people offering hope at a steep price.
I’m angry with myself for not critically thinking through the hype surrounding the mRNA covid shots. The over the top threats leading to extreme anxiety and fear over the covid virus erased any clear thinking I may have had. In hindsight, I wonder how I could have been so gullible when much of what was said was questionable. For instance, “we’ve worked on the mRNA shots for decades,” uttered with the intention of instilling trust. Clear thinking begs the question, in that case why wasn’t it brought to market in 2018 for example? Fear overwhelms clear thinking, unfortunately.
Vaccines? Cool Mechanism + Compelling anecdotes (not sure how compelling!?) +Credentialed endorsements ≠ Reliable Evidence. When will CDC/FDA/NIH produce any reliable evidence? How many billions of dollars are directed towards this unproven theory? For starters, read Aaron Siri’s new release “Vaccines, Amen” please. Many more excellent, well researched publications available as well to counter the faulty arguments used by so many to mandate unproven, NOT Safe, Not Effective vaccines and now “gene therapy” (eg mRNA Covid Injections and more to come).
Missing from your analysis is risk/benefit. To lump red light therapy with invasive procedures and surgery makes for poor decision making. The risks are entirely different and so, proportionally, should be the amount of evidence required to try it. If the risks are near zero then a even minimal evidence of efficacy should be sufficient to try it.
So many doctors freak out at a patient risking a few hundred bucks on a detox cleanse but think nothing of them risking permanent disability with an ill-advised spinal surgery costing hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Just a shout-out to the father of "quack-busting," Stephen Barrett, MD, now 92, with whom I worked as a medical editor in the 1980s. Barrett famously got his cat certified as a "nutritionist," and tried in a long and distinguished career to convince the public of all the points in this article. As long as there are ailments that medicine can't fix, the struggle will go on.
Dr. Barrett's website Quackwatch Barrett published an article in 2023 titled "COVID-19 Misinformation Has Led to Many Deaths," pointing out that vaccine misinformation contributed to thousands of preventable deaths. He stated this without any verifiable evidence.
The list of good ideas hyped
to doctors includes flecainide for PVCs after myocardial infarction. I remember going to the ACC meeting and they had a huge open house on the top of some tower in some big city alcohol flowing food, etc. then we found out that it made the EKG look better but the person died. Vioxx, although I'd still take it for a headache or hydrocodone. Monoplax ... the list goes on.
In addition, no matter how we tell people they keep forgetting the stories of the vitamins that had to be pulled after medical catastrophe.
There are no free rides in Medicine. A patient was sent home from the ER with anxiety related chest pain only to come back as a "train wreck". They were hit by a train on the way home. Even the ER visit had risk .
At the end of the day, the best you can do is be at ideal body weight , be active . Make sure your blood pressure and labs are within reason. Get a decent amount of sleep, stay married and wear a seatbelt. Laugh a bit
The rest is nonsense while God laughs at you.
You mean like the Covid Vaccine??
"But the real question isn’t whether something sounds scientific. It’s whether it actually works."
I am still unclear as to whether there were any controlled trials that proved (after it became clear that the vaccines were not perfect protection) the Covid vaccines saved people from dying of Covid, which is what was claimed. It would not have been that difficult to approximate a trial by simply comparing similar cohorts who took the vaccine and those who did not. To my knowledge, nothing like this was ever done. Rather the authorities merely made the claim.
Nothing bothers me more than “longevity docs.” ALL docs are essentially committed to helping people live long. There is so much of this going on along with clinically unvalidated “aging tests”. Some tests claim your organs age at different rates but this is nearly impossible to validate clinically and by what means. They are built by association among reference samples with no consideration for “healthy” current clinical metrics for age groups. There is also a conflation of aging with age-related disease and they somehow have merged. This helped improve funding but drives a lot of confusion between wealthy investors and what is scientifically sound. Being healthy now means you will live long to old age…this likely contributes, but this is not the whole story! It’s ironic that for some disease we depend on measuring somatic mutation and then now ignore it and exchange these concepts for environment and epigenetics when it comes to “aging.” Hallmarks of aging and how to “treat them/slow them” is a great goal to have but very little data supports “reversal” of aging. Like the article says, there is some very compelling research, but the treatments are usually a stretch and become a trend among influencers/biohackers.
Nope, these days.. present company excluded maybe, never met him, they have all become symptom chasers and drug pushers under the guise of long life!!
One other buzzword” is actually a statement: “Doctors dont want you to know.” Really? Why not? Why would a doctor withhold information?
We dont make money withholding information. We could make a LOT more money selling <unproven> mech than following proven standard medicine.
What I personally see rather often is also the combination of non-evidence - for example some mechanism in a mouse model which is not only assumed to be active but also relevant quantitatively + some weak assoziation in humans (probably highly influenced by the statistical models/methods used) = truth. Sadly it is not rare that even policy-makers fall for this.
I would extend this a bit to include commonly accepted treatments that have been shown to be beneficial in properly conducted clinical trials, but the benefit is very small.
-Disproving the null hypothesis doesn’t logically prove a treatment works
-Side effects reduce the quality of life
-Studies done by industry are biased
-Publication bias
-Treatments are less effective in the real world than in a study
-Long-term harms are extremely difficult to find
-Treatments make people complacent with respect to lifestyle adjustments
-Treatments are inconvenient and expensive
My wife has had 6 vertebra cemented with kypho in the last 5 months. The doctors never explained anything about the expected results and the risks of later fractures. She is pain free and moving around....for now. This is why I hate the medical system. It is 90% lies. And that certainly applies to what most of modern medicine is based on...germ theory. Total BS.
That sounds like malpractice.. not explaning the the expected results?
Nice clarification of simple principles. “ If it seems too good to be true, it probably isn’t true “ promotes a skeptical view, but not a cynical view. Real science is about reproducible evidence that supports a theory or hypothesis. No good data, no real science. Expert opinion is not data. Therefore any evidence based recommendation supported only by expert opinion or a single set of data is not real science.
Thanks so much for the comment and your insights.
Also, I’ve seen many of the vaccine injured invest large sums of money in the pursuit of a diagnoses and or cure. There was a plethora of these people offering hope at a steep price.
I’m angry with myself for not critically thinking through the hype surrounding the mRNA covid shots. The over the top threats leading to extreme anxiety and fear over the covid virus erased any clear thinking I may have had. In hindsight, I wonder how I could have been so gullible when much of what was said was questionable. For instance, “we’ve worked on the mRNA shots for decades,” uttered with the intention of instilling trust. Clear thinking begs the question, in that case why wasn’t it brought to market in 2018 for example? Fear overwhelms clear thinking, unfortunately.
Much of our anxiety was driven by the initial belief that the fatality rate of Covid 19 was similar to SARS, ie 5-10%.
...and that the vaccines made you safe.
Yes. Many smart people did not understand the difference between Case Fatality Rates and Infection Fatality Rates.
Wow,
Is our main problem harmless non-pharmaceutical solutions for people acting with informed consent?
I think not. Rather, I suggest the problem is the reverse.
Very nice piece. Very Sensible
Vaccines? Cool Mechanism + Compelling anecdotes (not sure how compelling!?) +Credentialed endorsements ≠ Reliable Evidence. When will CDC/FDA/NIH produce any reliable evidence? How many billions of dollars are directed towards this unproven theory? For starters, read Aaron Siri’s new release “Vaccines, Amen” please. Many more excellent, well researched publications available as well to counter the faulty arguments used by so many to mandate unproven, NOT Safe, Not Effective vaccines and now “gene therapy” (eg mRNA Covid Injections and more to come).
Get rich quick schemes and get healthy quick schemes share a common thread…