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

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

#51

Post by rgo »

My sister is a recently turned vegetarian. As her meat-eater engineer older brother, it's my insolent duty to explain to her that carbon chains like protein are all the same, come it from a bean or a cow. Chickens are no more than organic machines that turn molecules around so they taste rich, especially when deep fried and extra crusty.

Needless to say, that won't do anything to change her mind -- not that she has to, it's just me being a pain in the butt gaucho. She is a vegetarian for a myriad of subjective reasons that I could never even start to debase or crack. I've never heard of chemophobia (and the Chrome spell-checker hasn't either), but I think that turning a desperate quest by a mother into a bunch of molecules and atoms is an oversimplification of a complex, subjective choice made by complex, subjective minds.

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

#52

Post by largesse »

It's a good article. Human beings are wired to believe that things that are "natural" or "pure" are better than things that are "artificial." It's a quality of human nature that seems to show up in all cultures. Steven Pinker lists many of them in The Blank Slate. It pretty much explains the huge market in "organic" food.

Since people have a bias for the "natural" it is hard to have any sort of a conversation about what chemicals might be good for you that don't occur naturally. And, people are unduly scared of "artificial" chemicals while turning a blind eye toward the dangers than many "natural" chemicals have.

Inclination toward "natural" makes a lot of sense as an evolved bias. Doubtless, it kept our ancestors alive. But our bodies don't have any sort of magical scanner to detect whether something is natural or not, they simply reacts in mixed ways. To us, some of those reactions are positive or negative, even for the same chemical.

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

#53

Post by Camillo »

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…

The hope, then, is that when taking something more "natural" as opposed to man-made is that that natural product will inherently contain a wider variety of compounds that taken together create a more potent, but gentle effect on the patient.

And why would they? You are pretty much literally assuming an intelligent design behind the mate plant or Meadows's Montmorency cherry juice. But from an evolutionist perspective, what reason is there for a random plant to contain just the right mix of chemicals to produce the most beneficial effects in humans?

There is none, of course - except where the plant has been cultivated, that is, subjected to artificial selection. But while farmers can and did select for taste, yield, size, color, how could they select for an ideal balance of chemicals they don't even know about? How could they optimize for medical benefits without double-blind trials, and when most of their harvest is used for other purposes anyway? Why trust an imprecise, blind form of artificiality over a scientific, informed one?

By the way, some of the plants more painstakingly selected for human benefit - cereals - are the source of one of the (real or supposed) villains in Meadows's story: gluten. And even more exotic (and therefore appealing) South American plants like the Solanaceae (potato, tomato, eggplant...) contain significant amounts of toxic alkaloids. So much for the harmonious, "gentle" blend of compounds in natural products!

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

#54

Post by evincarofautumn »

diego wrote: post #47
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.

Yeah. It’s a hyperforeignism, I think. Kind of a shame that diaeresis and respelling aren’t used in English much anymore, else it’d properly be spelled matë or Anglicised as mattay.

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

#55

Post by MDS100 »

megablast wrote: post #36
sliverstorm wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Considering you can synthesize organic material, life can produce inorganic compounds, and plenty of organic material is toxic as shit, I'm not sure I agree with that line of thinking. I can't speak for everyone, but I am of the opinion that glucose synthesized in a lab requires no special evolution on the part of humans to process.

What you are saying is disingenuous. Clearly the pills made for pharmaceutical are incredibly dangerous, even when taken as per the instructions. That is why they are prescribed. Avoiding taking prescription drugs unless you really have to (ie are going to die), as I do, is not a bad way to live. Just because natural things will kill you, does not mean we should not avoid man made things. So I do not take pills for h…

Depends on the pills. Melatonin for sleeping is great for example: http://examine.com/supplements/Melatonin/ http://examine.com/blog/better-sleep-probably-no-caveats/

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

#56

Post by evincarofautumn »

InclinedPlane wrote: post #41
firefoxman1 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 lowe…

Don’t forget bezoars from unripe persimmons, or hydrazine poisoning from improperly cooked morels, or hydrogen cyanide poisoning from fruit pits. There are endless ways to kill yourself by eating carelessly.

Then again, a lot of the foods we so enjoy are enjoyable precisely because they contain things designed to kill or discourage pests. Capsaicin, for example, or caffeine. And much of human history is owed to alcohol; when safe drinking water is scarce, there’s always beer.

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

#57

Post by sliverstorm »

megablast wrote: post #36
sliverstorm wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Considering you can synthesize organic material, life can produce inorganic compounds, and plenty of organic material is toxic as shit, I'm not sure I agree with that line of thinking. I can't speak for everyone, but I am of the opinion that glucose synthesized in a lab requires no special evolution on the part of humans to process.

What you are saying is disingenuous. Clearly the pills made for pharmaceutical are incredibly dangerous, even when taken as per the instructions. That is why they are prescribed. Avoiding taking prescription drugs unless you really have to (ie are going to die), as I do, is not a bad way to live. Just because natural things will kill you, does not mean we should not avoid man made things. So I do not take pills for h…

Just because natural things will kill you, does not mean we should not avoid man made things.

But consider the flip side; just because some man made things can kill you, does not mean we should avoid man made things.

You thinking is because you can die by a bear, you should not look before crossing the road.

You are really reaching.

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

#58

Post by Zakharov »

ck2 wrote: post #50

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…

At the same time, consider that anyone peddling herbal remedies and the like is almost guaranteed not to be an impartial scientist.

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

#60

Post by andreasvc »

Camillo wrote: post #53
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…

The hope, then, is that when taking something more "natural" as opposed to man-made is that that natural product will inherently contain a wider variety of compounds that taken together create a more potent, but gentle effect on the patient. And why would they? You are pretty much literally assuming an intelligent design behind the mate plant or Meadows's Montmorency cherry juice. But from an evolutionist perspective…

Aside from the fact that literally is not a gradable adjective, I don't see the grandparent suggesting any kind of intelligent design. Evolution implies getting adapted to your environment, this includes an oxygen level of roughly 20%, availability of nutrients, etc. But this also goes the other way: plants to some extend need animals to spread their seeds (you could go as far as to say it's the reason for our existence...), so it's to their benefit when they evolve beneficial effects on animal through combinations of nutrients/chemicals]; cf. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Co-evolution

So while there may be a _reason_ the mate plant evolved to have pleasant effects on us, this is not necessarily because there is a design or teleology.

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