I think someone should know...

[sarasvatia]

...that billions of people have died so that the pharmaceutical companies can make more money.

Vitamin C cures cancer.

Jalapenos cure cancer.

Dichloroacetate (DCA) cures cancer.

High-frequency light cures cancer.

Electricity in your blood cures cancer (and AIDS).

Oxygen (possibly) cures everything.

Green Tea/Cocoa/Red Wine (epicatechin in all cases) cures

Comments

[exclamationmark]

Hanlon's razor, I think, can start to explain my opinion on this. "Never attribute to malice what can be attributed to stupidity." Well, I don't like the word stupidity, I'd prefer ignorance there. I don't think there's some government conspiracy against curing cancer, as some of those articles seem to suggest. That doesn't seem evident at all

This kind of issue chaps my ass, so don't get me started.

[ethernaut7]

I would, on the other hand, caution laymen from interpreting the motives of pharmaceutical companies in terms other than those usually reserved for vampires. What these studies indicate to researchers is not that there is or is not a cure for cancer, but instead that regardless of the potential efficacy of a drug as demonstrated in preliminary trials, its application hinges on its marketability. There is a clear difference between finding a cure for cancer and finding one that pharmaceutical companies would not consider a catastrophic economic loss. If anything is naive, it's the belief that malice is not in many ways synonymous with 'good business'.

By way of tangential example: Nestle kills hundreds of children a day by selling baby formula to women in third world countries who don't need it and don't have the resources to use it safely. "Insufficient Milk Syndrome" does not exist. It's not a conspiracy. It's just evil.

Is it naive to think otherwise, or just ignorant?

Re: This kind of issue chaps my ass, so don't get me started.

[exclamationmark]

I don't know that it's naive or ignorant. There's a reason why, when you go to the doctor, the doctor doesn't say, "Go get some oxygen/eat some jalepenos/drink some tea!" (According to the information above, it's a good idea

some things to keep in mind.

[ensurientchaos_]

My experience with doctor's is that they can be as irrational as a laymen, though their irrationality is a development of the assumptions they have determined as consequences of what they know

Re: some things to keep in mind.

[exclamationmark]

It's true that doctors are fallible, I'm not saying that. And it's true that some people have information others don't. For instance, a general MD doesn't have all the information a chiropractor or thorassic surgeon has. That's why general practitioners refer their patients to specialists for opinions on treatment rather than handling all things themselves. So I'm not saying that all doctors are correct and should be thought of as the end all be all of what should be done, but they have perspectives worth examining and treating as important. And they have the perspective of experience and criticism to add to how they see things that is invaluable

[exclamationmark]

I should also mention that the "studies" above are designed to ellicit emotional reactions. Without a lot of clear cut data with analysis, they only use vague language that says "X is good." Well, who can disagree with that?

The Rife one explaining that the cure for cancer has been known for 80-90 years seems the worst in this regard. Because it obviously has no real point except to say that it has a story of how the cure for cancer was created. That's not really hard science and hard data which will keep one objective. Instead, it seems to say that the man is bad and is out to get you. That's not a logical, scientific process.

Would you read a scientific paper about this stuff? Probably not, because it would be a pain in the ass to understand. That's how it always is. Studies are not easy reading, no matter your experience level (it gets easier, but never easy). There's a reason why all that stuff is just flowing text on how the cure for cancer exists.

Scientific papers, yay!

[ensurientchaos_]

I love reading research papers. That lack of understanding is nothing that some research and wikipedia can't fix. Of course, it could take years to get there.

Re: Scientific papers, yay!

[exclamationmark]

What I mean is that there's a difference between being a layman and being an...initiate for lack of a better term. We can read research papers as laymen and understand some things and be able to criticize and so forth so some extent. But there's a difference between that and being trained to do so through schooling and experience with teachers/those in the field. Having experience backing up your perspective is really important.

Re: Scientific papers, yay!

[ensurientchaos_]

Indeed. I wish more people understood that with well, just about everything.
But, sometimes the untrained mind can grasp things that someone with much greater training precisely because they lack the dense, stratified, organized conceptions of the expert.
Knowing your shit can be a lonely life as well, particularly at cocktail parties.

[exclamationmark]