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Don’t Take Medical Advice From the New York Times Magazine

slate.com

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Re: Don’t Take Medical Advice From the New York Times Magazine

#41

Post by InclinedPlane »

firefoxman1 wrote: post #22
tokenadult wrote: post #8

From the article: "We are a chemophobic culture. Chemical has become a synonym for something artificial, adulterated, hazardous, or toxic. Chemicals are bad—for you, for your children, for the environment. But whatever chemophobics would like to think, there is no avoiding chemicals, no way to create chemical-free zones. Absolutely everything is made of atoms and molecules; it’s all chemistry." This was striking to m…

Never heard the term "chemophobic" before, but now that I think about it I have some chemophobic friends. Their argument is always something like this: "Humans evolved consuming only organic material from their very beginnings up until about 100 years ago. Humans just haven't evolved to tolerate synthesised chemicals in a mere 100 years." (that's obviously paraphrased but you get the point) But when it's said like th…

Humans haven't evolved fast enough to deal with the diet of ordinary civilization either (which is only 300-500 generations old). However, humans are omnivores so we're pretty flexible in what we can eat and stay healthy.

Also, there are plenty of unhealthy and downright hazardous natural products. For example, ergot of rye is a hallucinogen which is poisonous in moderate doses and has many toxic side effects at lower doses. Botulism is extremely hazardous, of course. Cassava is highly toxic when eaten raw and the right variety can easily kill a human with a dose the size of an ordinary meal if not prepared correctly. And, of course, one would not want to eat a salad of Rhubarb leaves, poison ivy, nightshade, hemlock, and mistletoe berries. Whether you're dealing with synthetic or natural products discretion is always necessary.

Re: Don’t Take Medical Advice From the New York Times Magazine

#42

Post by InclinedPlane »

Alex3917 wrote: post #6

"Another common chemical name for methotrexate is amethopterin, which comes from the roots meth, Greek for wine, which I might stretch to spirits, and pterin, Greek for feathers." Except for it's ameth, which would mean lack of intoxication, a la 'amethyst'. In fact the whole article is complete BS as it doesn't even remotely align with the views the author presents in the original article -- nowhere does the author…

Except the NYT magazine article author makes it quite clear that she is chemophobic, with repeated statements about her fear. Here's a direct quote: "It reinforced an image of Shepherd as sick, forever dependent on a drug I felt afraid of, however unreasonable a doctor might tell me that fear was." Similarly, when a doctor suggests increasing the dose of methotrexate she panics.

Re: Don’t Take Medical Advice From the New York Times Magazine

#43

Post by leoh »

masklinn wrote: post #38
leoh wrote: post #18

"We are a chemophobic culture." I take great issue with this statement. We are most decidedly not a chemophobic culture. People are more than willing to take medicines that are artificially synthesized and, as the author mentions, with good reason. I, for one, am not chemophobic. I personally know an individual who developed one of the first total-syntheses (i.e. "artificial" chemical synthesis) of a very important a…

> But there are mysterious things that we do not understand about natural products and the human body. Then again, there are mysterious things we do not understand about the human body itself, and the chems as well: there are a number of drugs which do work, but we have no idea what their mechanisms of action are, we just know they work (or seem to anyway). Take good old aspirin for instance, we do understand mechani…

Mystery is not the exclusive provenance of alternative medicine :)

Re: Don’t Take Medical Advice From the New York Times Magazine

#44

Post by InclinedPlane »

passionfruit wrote: post #9

This article makes some bad analogies. Showing the structure of two different molecules and acting aghast that someone would choose one over the other is like saying all digital information is 1's and 0's so it's all the same. Or it's like saying all words are just a bunch of the same letters therefore they have no meaning.

The point being that people react to the name and the classification ("natural" vs "chemical"), and they should be reacting to the scientifically verified effects and side-effects.

Re: Don’t Take Medical Advice From the New York Times Magazine

#46

Post by VSerge »

leoh wrote: post #18

"We are a chemophobic culture." I take great issue with this statement. We are most decidedly not a chemophobic culture. People are more than willing to take medicines that are artificially synthesized and, as the author mentions, with good reason. I, for one, am not chemophobic. I personally know an individual who developed one of the first total-syntheses (i.e. "artificial" chemical synthesis) of a very important a…

I think one should know what they take. Of course some traditional grandmother's remedies are efficient, but not all, and they might have unforeseen side effects. Just like any regular drug chemical. So I take issue with the tradition-sanctioned approach. Empirical evidence is of course valid, but there are different way to obtain this evidence, some more riskier to people than others, and there comes the rub. I don't think tradition / duration of use are alone good enough. I'm ready to bet you'd trust way more a traditional remedy that's been analyzed and the effect of which are understood, that one that is mysterious. However, what you're saying implies:

A) the empirical no-risk evidence comes from centuries of field-testing on people. Logical consequence is run for dear life from "new" herbal / traditional medicine stuff. It fails to take into account historical evidence of useless treatments that were still accepted for centuries (take bleeding patients for example).

B) the result from keeping naturally occurring chemicals together in a medicine can make for a more efficient / less aggressive concoction. It's true. But emphasis on CAN here. It also can make you ingest toxic compounds that are totally unnecessary and may be dangerous. The point is you don't know, and since there's nothing miraculous about this kind of stuff, it can be tested ahead, which is the whole point of the FDA, however flawed some of its processes might be. This empirical testing is also how drugs are improved with minimal adverse effect on people (and max adverse effect on mice), and how treating HIV-patients with a cocktail of chems was found to be most effective. The list goes on.

I think we absolutely need to be able to explain something before declaring it relatively safe, and remain conscious that there are always outlying risks, be it only allergy. Everything is indeed a chemical, it's a simple enough fact, and people should realize that this holds true for all traditional / herbal remedies as well. This selective chemophobia the author talks about stems imo in large part from a distaste for the pharmaceutical industry (and its shadier practices), but it doesn't make the rational approach of trying to understand how chemicals would affect our organisms, before ingesting them, any less valid.

Re: Don’t Take Medical Advice From the New York Times Magazine

#47

Post by diego »

leoh wrote: post #18

"We are a chemophobic culture." I take great issue with this statement. We are most decidedly not a chemophobic culture. People are more than willing to take medicines that are artificially synthesized and, as the author mentions, with good reason. I, for one, am not chemophobic. I personally know an individual who developed one of the first total-syntheses (i.e. "artificial" chemical synthesis) of a very important a…

Small nitpick: it irks me to see "yerba mate" spelled as "yerba maté." I wonder where the hell that came from. I suspect it's about not confusing it with mate as in pal or buddy.

Re: Don’t Take Medical Advice From the New York Times Magazine

#48

Post by InclinedPlane »

praptak wrote: post #45

Fear of chemicals in general? Silly, but that is a bit of a strawman. Fear of ingesting synthesized chemicals in quantities to which our species has not been exposed during its evolution? Count me in, with the obvious rational disclaimers.

Does this not apply equally to ingesting any chemicals that humans have not been exposed to during our evolution?

What about tea and coffee? Or beer and wine? Or tomatoes? Or capsaicin?

Re: Don’t Take Medical Advice From the New York Times Magazine

#49

Post by InclinedPlane »

electic wrote: post #3

How about, "Don't take any medical advice from any magazine?" Now why is that? Well because it is a run of the mill magazine. I am not sure why people read and follow this stuff.

The slate article isn't providing any medical advice, it's merely telling people that they shouldn't fear synthetically manufactured medicines while being completely trusting of naturopathic ones. If anything it's telling people to be more informed, skeptical, and to use reason rather than emotion when making informed choices about medicine.

Re: Don’t Take Medical Advice From the New York Times Magazine

#50

Post by ck2 »

In the same breath you should also not assume any doctor is an impartial scientist.

Doctors are humans and are therefore also subject to being lazy, greedy, ignorant, etc.

Just because they seem to have more knowledge and use something of a scientific method doesn't mean they aren't locked into their ways, always giving the same kind of diagnosis for certain symptoms without questioning their limited knowledge.

They also face pressure from insurance and government agencies to behave in certain manners.

As many of us are coders, let me put it this way - have you ever looked up to another coder because they seemed to know so much more than you? Then after some years you surpassed them in your knowledge and looked back on their code and realized it was a "bit cr*p" in parts?

Yeah well your doctor is like that too. If they aren't constantly learning and researching, they are set in their ways and being moved by forces that may not make the best decisions for your health.

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