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A boy, his brain, and a decades-long medical controversy

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Re: A boy, his brain, and a decades-long medical controversy

#81
post #11

> Conventional psychiatric drugs and talk therapy are backed up by decades of robust scientific evidence. This is not true, he notes, of the typical PANDAS therapies. I think my issue with conventional psychiatric drugs and talk therapy is that they are what Tylenol is to a headache, they don't actually cure the condition, they simply mitigate the symptoms. So it's clear that conventional psychiatry has no clue of th…

I think my issue with conventional psychiatric drugs and talk therapy is that they are what Tylenol is to a headache, they don't actually cure the condition, they simply mitigate the symptoms.

The same is true of insulin, though, and many, many other drugs. Somethings just slow down a disease (drugs for autoimmune disorders often do this).

I find it completely unfair to expect everything to be a cure: Treating symptoms doesn't make the drugs bad. Treating symptoms is better than not treating them - this helps people not suffer. Actual cures are much, much harder to come by, especially when we don't know what causes them or what to fix to cure them.

Medicine doesn't have to be perfect or ideal to be helpful.

Re: A boy, his brain, and a decades-long medical controversy

#82

You don't know the extent of human bias. All humans are ruled more by bias than by logic, doctors included AND you included as well. What's especially worse is that Doctors are trained to mistrust a patient. They view patients as lower ranking simpletons so they trust established knowledge more than they trust a patients description of an anomaly. The key here that you have to realize is that what the doctors are doi…

I am not offended, but I am not convinced that your logic holds. Humans are not solitary animals. We live in groups and are subject to evolutionary pressures that favor traits advantageous to survival of groups . Perhaps having a certain percentage of gay or asexual people helps the entire group survive better. Maybe it is an archaic form of division of labor? Some individuals will specialize on breeding, others on g…

This wasn't the point. The example was a device to throw people off guard and pull them back for the purpose of promoting self awareness. Personally, I have no stance on the causative origins of homosexuality; But judging from the replies I'm afraid it might have been too successful and pulled people too deep into that cancel culture frame.

Think about it this way. Yes, Social groups can evolve with a percentage of homosexual genes passed on as recessive. This is a valid hypothesis.

But the OTHER hypothesis that states, if homosexuality was genetic it would have been filtered out by natural selection and is therefore a disorder, is an equally valid hypothesis. There is nothing that makes this less valid then the conjecture you presented to me.

Both are logical possibilities, but there is little evidence supporting one over the other as in there is roughly equal amounts of evidence supporting and against both conclusions. So in a sense the two hypothesizes are in equal standing.

The other thing to consider is that the social group hypothesis is the non-obvious hypothesis. People initially think of natural selection on the individual scale. It takes more abstract thinking to place it on a tribal scale, an ecological scale, an anthropological/cultural scale, or as a local phenomenon of entropy in a physical system.

This is the key: To be impartial is to consider both hypothesis's and acknowledge the lack of evidence to place one over the other. However, what is it that makes you (and every other person replying to me) pick, out of two hypothesis's of equal standing, the non-obvious hypothesis while utterly and completely dismissing the obvious hypothesis?

Anyway, the answer is clear, there is strong cultural bias that pulls people in the direction of a reality where equality among people who have different sexual preferences is real. People will unconsciously spend extra effort searching for the hypothesis that best fits there cultural bias and even deny the obvious one.

Hence the reason why the harder non-obvious hypothesis is picked. It better fits.

Literally in the replies there's a dude that's calling me misinformed and there's another dude that's hard lining a No. I am telling you none of these people have definitive evidence for anything (because NONE exists). They are simply observing two logical conjectures and picking the one that best fits their own cultural narrative/bias and they are hard lining a conclusion as a definitive answer when in academia this topic is not conclusive AT ALL.

This is the latest research on the topic: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/massive-study-fin...

Tell me what conclusion can you derive off of that? That homosexuality is for sure non-genetic and therefore a recent disorder? No. You can't derive that, you can't derive anything off this study. The study is just saying that nothing was found, it doesn't mean nothing exists. That's the state of academia on this topic today. Nothing.

Until we find a causative origin of homosexuality current opinion of academia on the two hypothesis's right now is inconclusive. However, outside of academia the current opinion is definitive and we all know, given the replies to my post, what that conclusion is.

Another thing to consider is, why did you address my example instead of addressing my main point? Again the urge to align reality with cultural bias is far stronger then the discussion at hand. If the urge is strong with you (and the other people who replied, as practically everyone chose to address the example rather then the main point) then it is equally strong with doctors who put much faith in what they're taught by the medical establishment. This further illustrates my point; and the point is:

Cultural biases by society and the medical establishment rule practically everyone's behavior (including you and everyone who replied to me) to a huge extent. Think of this thread as a social experiment meant to illustrate this point. The example was just an example, but cultural biases are so damn strong that it pulled everyone out of the frame of talking about doctors into talking about the example.

Re: A boy, his brain, and a decades-long medical controversy

#83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

mRNA vaccines are not gene therapies. https://www.genomicseducation.hee.nhs.uk/blog/why-mrna-vacci...

Depending on the definition, they are or aren't. There seems to be a disagreement. https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.swfinstitute.org/news/83947...

The NHS article states "The mRNA from the vaccines does not enter the cell nucleus or interact with the DNA at all, so it does not constitute gene therapy."

The article you have posted explains what gene therapy is confidently, but it doesn't explain, or reference particularly well, why an mRNA would be considered gene therapy or why it would alter genes.

Re: A boy, his brain, and a decades-long medical controversy

#84

You don't know the extent of human bias. All humans are ruled more by bias than by logic, doctors included AND you included as well. What's especially worse is that Doctors are trained to mistrust a patient. They view patients as lower ranking simpletons so they trust established knowledge more than they trust a patients description of an anomaly. The key here that you have to realize is that what the doctors are doi…

This kind of misinformed thinking is why doctors often don’t take their patients seriously.

I'm actually a researcher in academia in this area. I'm more well informed then medical professionals on this topic. I am sorry to say that you, like everyone else jumped to a conclusion here.

Why don't you look at my other reply, there's more nuance there, and it might break you out of your own bias.

Re: A boy, his brain, and a decades-long medical controversy

#85

This rings true. I have something wrong with me. I’ve spent many years of my life trying to figure out what it is. But never fully have - it’s sick, but it seems like most doctors operate under “you have symptoms, I order a few tests, they were negative, guess we’ll never know, fuck off lol”. It sucks. I hope these families make progress.

It seems like there is a bit of an overestimation of what medicine can do. I don't know if that overestimation is by physicians, patients, society-at-large, everyone? It feels like we are barely out of the dark ages when it comes to medicine. My brother died at a fairly young age (30s) because nobody could figure out what was wrong with him over the course of a couple of years. Specialists investigated a lot of diagn…

We're really not. We can barely cure toe fungus consistently.

Pharmaceutical drugs are a very poor way of treating the body. Expecting consistent results from it is a losing proposition.

Sorry about your brother..

Re: A boy, his brain, and a decades-long medical controversy

#86
post #80
post #24

> Conventional psychiatric drugs and talk therapy are backed up by decades of robust scientific evidence. While it's true that there's plenty of evidence for 'conventional' psychiatric treatment working, the problem is with how it works in practice. There are few real objective tests involved and patients are prescribed various drugs to try to see if some of them would help. I'm surprised psychiatrists don't have dar…

> I'm surprised psychiatrists don't have dartboards in their office to decide on what to use. Who's ever had to deal with your run-of-the-mill psychiatrist knows this is true. They guess dosages, a dash of lexapro, a smidgeon of zyprexa, a pinch of xanax and let's see if the desired effects are there. Oh and remember that there's been no conclusive evidence about any permanent side effects like sexual dysfunction and…

Most psychiatric drugs should be banned.

They're far too dangerous and have destroyed many lives.

Re: A boy, his brain, and a decades-long medical controversy

#87
post #41

Looks like they lack a good clear diagnostic procedure for this (and most other autoimmune syndromes it seems), most likely because of the relation to the brain, can't just take biopsies... How would you even try to approach this?

From my experience, the standard procedure is to shrug your shoulders and chalk it up as anxiety.

Most doctors are going off a script.

Re: A boy, his brain, and a decades-long medical controversy

#88

You don't know the extent of human bias. All humans are ruled more by bias than by logic, doctors included AND you included as well. What's especially worse is that Doctors are trained to mistrust a patient. They view patients as lower ranking simpletons so they trust established knowledge more than they trust a patients description of an anomaly. The key here that you have to realize is that what the doctors are doi…

> The point is to see that there is certain logic behind my statement that is worth discussion Not really, no, given that it's based on a premise ("traits that harm a specific individual's chances of reproduction can't be selected for by evolution") that's obviously false as soon as you take half a second to look at eusocial animals.

The point was to consider the validity of such a statement as something worth considering. What you say is technically true but you made it kind of pedantic here and steered away from the heart of my point.

Let me reform it to fit with your logic: "Homosexuality as a trait is not selected for by evolution for humans."

There this statement is not definitively false. There is a realistic possibility that it's true.

Also please see my other reply in this thread for a more nuanced take on my point, which has nothing to do homosexuality (that was just an example).

Re: A boy, his brain, and a decades-long medical controversy

#89

You don't know the extent of human bias. All humans are ruled more by bias than by logic, doctors included AND you included as well. What's especially worse is that Doctors are trained to mistrust a patient. They view patients as lower ranking simpletons so they trust established knowledge more than they trust a patients description of an anomaly. The key here that you have to realize is that what the doctors are doi…

> Thus homosexuality must be an recent anomaly as an evolutionary trait as it would have naturally selected itself out eons ago if it was a natural trait. All this wall of text proved is that your verbal skills are tedious and you’re bad at math.

Careful. There are real world consequences for anyone who attacks me on HN. Either state your disagreement and address me in a civil way or be prepared for the consequences.

Re: A boy, his brain, and a decades-long medical controversy

#90
post #39

There seems to be an assumption underlying medicine that things must be true at the population level for them to also be true at the individual level. I think medicine is picking its populations wrong. Example: the skeptical doctor in the article notes that "strep infection is extremely common in children, accounting for as many as a third of all sore throats—but you don’t see droves of kids with abnormal behavior cr…

This is a well understood concept in medicine, and a central part of the drug approval process.

It can be witnessed as a central part of the drug approval process, certainly. However, sometimes the lack of this perspective can also be noticed during the interpretation of scientific results. The perspective is not consistently part of the discourse.
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