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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

#61

Post by smackay »

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…

The crux of this is that nothing exists in isolation. Humans evolved eating plants and plants evolved trying not to be eaten so a large part of human physiology is probably designed to deal with plant toxins. Any natural product that is potent but gentle is probably just short of being dangerous, it's certainly nothing to do with being not being manufactured. A quick search for dangerous herbs gives a decent list of plant which can have catastrophic effects if eaten. The scientific approach is attempting to unravel all this but we are only at the beginning and it's going to take a long time to figure it all out.

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

#62

Post by troels »

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 evolved consuming only organic material from their very ..."

I'm fairly sure that we still haven't adapted to consume anything but organic material.

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

#63

Post by masklinn »

leoh wrote: post #43
masklinn wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 :)

province?

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

#64

Post by praptak »

InclinedPlane wrote: post #48
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?

It's the "with the obvious rational disclaimers" part. The above chemicals have been extensively field tested. Huge numbers of people have eaten them for a long long time, it's safe to assume any ill effects of these are known (although obviously the natural selection had little time to adapt us humans to these substances.)

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

#65

Post by drostie »

sliverstorm wrote: post #33
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…

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.

Your opinion is in fact wrong. Or, at least, it's phrased in a way that is just-barely not true.

Glucose is a catch-all term referring to both chains and cycle structures based on a certain "base" of atoms, and that base is chiral -- it is different from its mirror image. Glucose thus refers to both L-glucose and dextrose. You can process both in some ways -- they both taste sweet to you. But you can't metabolize L-glucose, because the first step uses a similarly chiral enzyme called hexokinase, which only fits properly with dextrose.

Most lab synthesis of glucose (which is to say, pretty much all lab synthesis which is not bio-synthesis) is symmetric under mirror reversal and thus produces 50% dextrose, 50% L-glucose. So about half of the glucose synthesized in a lab requires special evolution on the part of humans to process.

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

#66

Post by jacques_chester »

leoh wrote: post #32
jacques_chester wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But there are miraculous, mysterious things that we do not understand about natural products and the human body. Mysterious, sure. Miraculous? http://i.imgur.com/SeOnW.jpg

Fair point, I don't mean to imply divine agency. A much better word would be "incredible" or something similar.

Then Pedantic Man's work here is done.

Awwwaaayyyyyyyyy!

Winners Often Use Drugs

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

#67

Post by Nursie »

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…

I like to think of it this way - It's strange how the last hundred years in the west have seen the greatest expansion in both length and quality of life isn't it, while at the same time we all have to deal with these 'chemical toxins' that people decry.

Maybe they aren't poison, and just maybe we've all benefited from the rise of synthetic medicine (amongst other things).

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

#68

Post by drostie »

troels wrote: post #62
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 evolved consuming only organic material from their very ..." I'm fairly sure that we still haven't adapted to consume anything but organic material.

Salts?

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

#69

Post by yareally »

evincarofautumn wrote: post #54
diego wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 .

It's hard to for many at least in the United States to use é or other words with explicit accent symbols due to the way our keyboards are set up. I have mine modded to use shortcut keys to make them, but that's more than what most would ever want to deal with.

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

#70

Post by Nursie »

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…

"there are miraculous, mysterious things that we do not understand about natural products and the human body"

"It lies in the fact that we are applying something very strong in a way that is not balanced or integrated."

Magical thinking detected.

There is no evidence that taking combinations is inherently a good thing. Some things work well on their own, some work well in combination, some combinations antagonise horribly and can kill.

"yet as the more sensitive among us have realized, each different concoction effects us differently -- even though the principal ingredient is the same"

Meh. Alcohol gets you drunk. The main difference in effects you'll see between different types of alcohol is how concentrated it is, how fast you drink it and how much you take down. Drunk is drunk one way or another.

"Moreover, we need to embrace treatments that work, even if we can't explain them"

We do, what we don't need to embrace is stuff that hasn't been shown to work, contains all sorts of stuff in all sorts of unknown quantities.

No, an established LD50 does not mean a drug is safe. This absolutely does not mean that bizarre concoctions of unstandardised plant material are safe in any way at all.

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