jmj11 Posted August 21, 2018 Share Posted August 21, 2018 While I deal with this issue, in the trenches, on a daily basis (I live in a Portlanda-type place), I don't get in such discussion outside of the bare essentials of trying to get patients to be compliant. The main reason is when I try to dialog with these people, my head wants to cave in. For example, the flood of fake science ( "There is proof that dementia never existed on the planet until the rise of western medicine." or "There is evidence in "old" manuscripts of the 1700s that people, routinely, lived to be 150 years old, until the rise of western medicine and vaccines." Tonight I sort of got sucked into this world behind the looking glass when I followed a rabbit down a hole. The rabbit was a sister-in-law (who I knew was in this camp so I tried to never talk health or medicine with her) posted on my wife's FB page "studies" that showed that all the vaccinate-able diseases had disappeared off the face of the earth long before vaccines were even invented. So I couldn't help myself and followed these "studies" to their source. It was scary! A guy with a blog and a webpage with tens of thousands of followers who is a self-claimed expert on the diseases brought to us by practitioners of western medicine. Some of the cartoons were horrible, even violent towards us. In this age of fake news, when so many have lost the ability to find the real truth, do you think this movement is a treat to our ability to bring a better quality of life to the masses or just a flash in the pan? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hlj25950 Posted August 21, 2018 Share Posted August 21, 2018 I wish it was a flash in the pan, but it has been going on for long enough with enough steam behind it to be more than that. Andrew Wakefield published his fraudulent studies in the 1990’s, just in time for the explosion of the internet. The ability of patients/laypersons to consume whatever someone writes and take it as fact demonstrates a pervasive war on public health, in my opinion. You have blogs that tout nonsense that sounds scientific that source other blogs that have no scientific basis or don’t source at all, and around and around we go. People are not critical and good consumers of this information. They see sensationalized anecdotes and hold on to them as fact. They are fearful. They don’t understand immunology or research, and so they hear, “washing hands is all you need,” and that’s comforting to them. It’s very much a PR war with words like “natural, organic, vitamins, and supplements” being lumped into an “always good” label never stopping to understand dose, potency, efficacy, or any other concepts that might be difficult to understand. Whereas words like “pharmaceutical, chemical, and genetic modification” adopt “bad” labels. I don’t know how to change this, but it’s really a drain on providers and a public health threat. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
UGoLong Posted August 21, 2018 Share Posted August 21, 2018 I think it's an historical trend that will change after we get used to dealing with it. In the late 1800s and early 1900s, people make ludicrous claims about patent medications. After enough people were harmed -- and medicine became something other than a trade you did by apprenticeship -- people started believing authorities. My guess is that we'll go through some transient here too. Calling all news fake is making all of this worse, but this too shall pass at some point. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Moderator LT_Oneal_PAC Posted August 21, 2018 Moderator Share Posted August 21, 2018 Darwinism will sort it out. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kidpresentable Posted August 21, 2018 Share Posted August 21, 2018 9 hours ago, jmj11 said: "studies" that showed that all the vaccinate-able diseases had disappeared off the face of the earth long before vaccines were even invented. Was this graph from BUMC of tuberculosis deaths in Great Britain among their data? The trend is attributed to improvements in living conditions. Even so, the WHO says 53 million didn’t die from tuberculosis between 2000 and 2016 thanks to effective dx/treatment Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
thinkertdm Posted August 21, 2018 Share Posted August 21, 2018 2 hours ago, kidpresentable said: Was this graph from BUMC of tuberculosis deaths in Great Britain among their data? The trend is attributed to improvements in living conditions. Even so, the WHO says 53 million didn’t die from tuberculosis between 2000 and 2016 thanks to effective dx/treatment Um, the graph clearly shows the spike in TB in 1920 was stopped by WWI. And another bullet was dodged in 1945, with rising TB again stopped by WWII! You "scientists" clearly don't know anything. Pft. The earth is flat btw. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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