The Enemies of Reason, Channel 4, Monday 8pm

[annaj]

mockney piers Wrote:

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>

> Arnica for itchiness, yes?

Well, yes. I was going to suggest that, but I thought steam might start coming out fo your ears!

[mockney piers]

For which i guess hot beeswax is best.

[SteveT]

It wasn't many years ago that acupuncture was derided, not so now after the programme of a tennis ball sized goyta was removed (cut) from a chinamans throat and only pain relief was a needle being twiddled. Recuperation being much quicker without anaesthetic.

I have used chinese medicine for prostate problems over the last few years and it has proven much more effective than any western medicine with less side effects.

When euro trained african doctors return to their homelands they find the local offerings more effective than our more "sophisticated" western medicines.

It is often the case that NHS docs do not treat anecdotal imformation from patients seriously, as if they imagine your brain ceases to function you being only a patient.

I am convinced that a procedure to be around for many years must have some benefit, otherwise it would have died out.

I have always been a great believer in the NHS but I also believe that there is an arrogance or superiority in many of our docs, which do not take seriously anyone not medically or scientifically trained.

[SeanMacGabhann]

Steve - where's the scoop on the chinaman? I can't find reference to it after an admittedly brief trawl

PS You've been a busy poster in the last 12 hours haven't you ? ;-)

[????]

Steve - of course the cultural imperialism of 'western medecine' has done nothing to dramatically reduce infant mortality rates in the 3rd world -say measles, polio, diptheria, TB, to name just a handful these rates have just coincidentally fallen dramatically with the widespread adoption of western medecine and medical practices....me, I'm not gonna get my kids vaccinated just see a shamen and hang some ccrystals over their beds and the jobs a good'unn

[annaj]

Steve, just to clarify, I consider acupunture and chinese medicine to be completely different to homeopathy and would never dismiss them.

In China traditional chinese and western practitioners train together and both disciplines are practiced alongside each other in mainstream teaching hospitals. There is a growing evidence base both here and abroad showing benefits of acupuncture either as a treatment on it's own or an adjunct to western medicine. Only last week there was a study in a mainstream medical journal showing benefit of acupuncture during IVF. From what I have found on a quick medline search, there are reports of removal of thyroid goitre under acupuncture anaesthesia, usually in combination with low dose pethadine or other dissociative analgesia, going back 20 years (Sean, I can send you some references if you want).

Some western doctors are dismissive of chinese medicine and fail to understand it, because it is such a different system. In western medicine you identify a disease and try to cure it. The disease is the focus of treatment and is the same in every patient. In chinese medicine you look at the body as a balanced system and disease is believed to occur as a result of disrruption of that balance. So, two people with the same illness might recieve different treatment, because the chinese practitioner would attribute the disease to different imbalances. If you try to explain chinese medicine in western terms, without first understanding this fundamental difference, it doesn't make sense and is often therefore often dismissed.

In contrast homeopathy has little or no evidence base to support it. Having said that, Samuel Hahnemann's original idea that a little of a pathogen could be used to cure or prevent is absolutely true and the principle behind vaccination, so not all bad.

[david_carnell]

And so it rumbles on...

Man dies from taking "remedy"

[Brendan]

annaj Wrote:

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Having said that, Samuel

> Hahnemann's original idea that a little of a

> pathogen could be used to cure or prevent is

> absolutely true and the principle behind

> vaccination, so not all bad.

And that behind the treatment of snake bites too.

[SeanMacGabhann]

resurrecting not because of the programme itself, but just because it's a phrase that won't leave my head these last few days. Can't imagine why...