jamius.com

Let’s go with 70% percent survival rate with Panacea, 20% survivability without Panacea (this is probably more believable especially with certain surgeries). The woman goes to four different doctors who all highly recommend Panacea saying it is by far the best option. Now, if the woman refuses, I think there should be a social worker and/or medical ethics board to decide if she is competent enough to decide and if the decision is ethical.

Now, if she was well educated in the science, heck, let’s even make her a Specialist in the field, and refuses saying “Yes I understand the risks, but my moral (or religious or cultural or whatever) beliefs tell me that she should not get treatment”, then I do not object to her argument. She should still be reviewed by a social worker or someone and be verified that her choice is legitimately made. They should factor in her reasoning and the survivability rates and the quality of life etc.

However, if she is ignorant of the science and refuses to hear arguments for it (believes false studies or media reports or conspiracies or whatever), then no, she should not be allowed to make that decision. If she is not willing to be properly informed of the dangers and risks, then she is not competent to make a decision.

That’s the whole point of the thread. Science opposers who willfully ignore the facts. Maybe I should make it broader to just plain “conspiracy theorists” or “people who purposefully ignore fact”. And by facts I mean the results of the majority educated research. Political example: if you don’t like Obama because of his policies, or actions or whatever, that’s fine. But if you don’t like him because he’s Muslim, that’s not fine. Because he isn’t Muslim! You are willfully ignoring the facts to make a willfully uninformed decision. With politics it’s bad enough, but with science, especially medicine, it’s deadly.

Oh, and the problem with religion in these cases is who is to say one is more legitimate than the other. If a Jew doesn't want a pig valve surgery for their son, that's a pretty legitimate reason. The Jewish faith has scene pigs as impure for thousands of years. But what if someone doesn't want the surgery for their son because their faith tells them not to pierce the skin during odd-numbered years? What if their faith tells them to abandon the sick in a field and let the gods decide? How are we to decide when religion becomes too ridiculous and faith should be ignored?

Personally.... not that anyone asked me, but.... religion is useless to me because I don't believe anything. I don't think I know anything, and everything I'm going with at the moment may be wrong.

Religion is often dangerous because people who want money and power are often in charge of religious ideas, and use religion to trick people into hating other people.... and often into killing them. nice. If someone wants to peacefully believe something, I have no problem with it. ....as long as they don't require others to think the way they do.


I was just skimming, but I saw something about medical doctors. To me, western medicine is all about money. Doctors don't make money from healthy people, so their biggest influence is to make people sick. ...and to be able to treat symptoms. The more they can worsen the root of a problem while patching up some of the symptoms, the more money they make, and the more job security they have. Its pretty disgusting. I recently came across an example of this. Many doctors will tell you that running is bad for you. It destroys your knees, feet, etc. Meanwhile, some of the healthiest people on earth run constantly. ....wearing sandals, and, oh my gosh!, not even stretching! Egads! The humanity of it all! They must be crippled by the time they're 20. Oh.... but no. The Tarahumara seem to being doing quite well with their backward ways of running, and wearing sandals with no arch supports! HA! Arch supports. Arch weakeners!
Augh! Everything in North American medicine is designed to make you feel temporarily better and to make you weaker. Throw away your arch supports, and put in the effort to strengthen your feet. Life will be better.


OK, just so everyone knows. i won't be responding to all the people who are about to yell at me for being insensitive. You live how you want, I'll live how i want. ...and I want to run until I die.

In general, I just think it dangerous when we decide that one group should decide what is best for everyone, whether it be some doctors or some religious group. You can find hypocrisy and bad things in both, but you can also see the good. It really depends upon your perspective.

And I believe I kind of agree with Jaimie here, although I think we have different religious views. Basically, you do what is best for you and I will do whats best for me. I won't try to decide what is best for you, and I am offended when people think they should decide what is best for me.

jamius wrote: ....wearing sandals, and, oh my gosh!, not even stretching! Egads! The humanity of it all! They must be crippled by the time they're 20. Oh.... but no. The Tarahumara seem to being doing quite well with their backward ways of running, and wearing sandals with no arch supports! HA! Arch supports. Arch weakeners!

I support this (not with arch supports). I wear perfectly flat, cloth-soled shoes, when I am not going barefoot. When it rains, I may put on more conventional hardsoles that don't have exaggerated arch support. (In those hard shoes, my feet feel like they are bound in blocks. I don't like them.) Or I may go barefoot, because naked toes love mud! When I walk (I seldom run), I forestrike. My heels have very little ground interaction when I am in motion. I never have arch troubles or foot pain, and my feet are strong and sensitive to the ground without being tender.

Heels are for resting on, not walking on!

The other side of this issue that should be considered are the people who have replaced religion in their life with 'common consensus science'. I find people who do not do even their own research into an issue and just regurgitate the top scare story on the nightly news to be just as bad as those who attend church/mosque/synagogue and just parrot what they hear on their holy day without reading their own scriptures. These days it can even be worse since there is a strong separation between church/state, where as with science there is none. Some of the best examples of this are how emotional people get when it comes to climate change (the mother earth/gaia people (and I'm not talking about pagans, I'm talking about (devout?) atheists saying prayers of thanks to the planet)), or even something as silly as pluto no longer being designated as a planet. Yes, we need to be good stewards of the planet we've been given, and we need to take steps to preserve it for future generations, but there is a limit to how far things can be sensationalized.

Regarding medicine, I think you get into a slippery slope when you start demanding people appear before some kind of medical board should they choose to deny some kind of medical treatment. It seems like every other month there's a new medical study that completely contradicts a previous one. All too often has that previous study has already panicked the general populous to such an extent that laws have been passed outlawing or severely limiting some kind of chemical or practice. This usually leads to things such as the food pyramid, certain fertilizers/insecticides being changed out for produce, processed food having to change to new recipes (the whole trans/saturated/yomomma/whatever fats/oils things), or as Jamius pointed out, even just running/too much exercise.

Just because some study says something, and even becomes commonly accepted or even pushed into law does not make it a "fact". Yeah, it sucks if Susie Muckenfutch's child died from what MAY have been a treatable illness/cancer, but that's just one of the prices of having freedom. The reason you hear about those stories in the national news is because of how rare they are, we don't need to change who we are as a nation because of some kind of outlying case.

...aaand I'll stop there before this turns into some kind of rant. (too late?)

I think you are partially right about doctors Jaimie but I don't think they purposefully make people sick, instead they make the definition of "sick" broader and broader. Each edition of the DSM includes more and more "disorders" so that being sad now and then is a treatable "sickness"

No need to actually make people sick, just convince them that they already are....

In terms of running, I just restarted again for the 3rd (maybe 4rth time) I love running but find it hard to keep up, I'm lazy like that, once I am running I don't want to stop but inertia is hard to overcome some days. I do wear running shoes, but love running bare foot too. I love trail and forest running too!

I agree that a lot of things are about money today, but you can't assume that all doctors are bad. I'm sure a lot of them really DO want to help people. And with the amount of... unhealthy people in today's society, they're not in danger of losing their jobs any time soon. I wanted to be a doctor at one point, and I would have wanted to HELP people. I still do.

In all honesty, the safest place for you to go when you are sick is to the doctor. If you think otherwise you're being one of the people we're talking about in this thread.

And no, running isn't bad for you, but it IS bad for people who don't regularly exercise. If you're not used to exercising you WILL hurt your knees and hips etc, as with any big activity change. Running is particularly hard on your joints, and swimming or an elliptical is much easier on them. As a runner (I've seen your pics on your site Jaimie) you should know this. Even when I ran in college we took days off to swim or do the elliptical and if you didn't, you got hurt. It's not false, I've seen it happen to everyone who over trained (including me once). The thing is, people that don't know how to run run WAY too hard and don't train right. And it gets them hurt. That's probably the vast majority of the US at least. So by the doctors telling people it's bad for them, they are just covering their bases because for most people, it probably would be. Because you know dang well that if someone got hurt doing something the doctors told them to do... they'd be sued in an instant. It's sad, but most likely true.

Some doctors do make people sick by over-prescribing medication. I saw this with my grandmother.

As for running, it can cause significant problems in some people. I have also seen cases of people lifting weights to excess causing issues. Typically doing anything to excess is bad, but coming of with generic statements of good and bad is also wrong. It gets in to all those evil isms where you classify stuff with a broad brush making assumptions.

sjvsworldtour wrote:Some doctors do make people sick by over-prescribing medication. I saw this with my grandmother.

As for running, it can cause significant problems in some people. I have also seen cases of people lifting weights to excess causing issues. Typically doing anything to excess is bad, but coming of with generic statements of good and bad is also wrong. It gets in to all those evil isms where you classify stuff with a broad brush making assumptions.

Agreed, but I feel that's what today's society has come to. Doctors make assumptions based on lifestyle, stress, family because 90% of the time, it's probably right. A lot of ailments are based on your lifestyle. Sure diseases can pop up out of nowhere, but for less serious things, it's usually caused by something you did or somewhere you were. Does that make sense?

I read an article online the other day about people making a big fuss about doctors making assumptions with significantly overweight people. Showing how 2 or 3 people were mistreated because they were "heavy". It's kinda the same idea. MANY ailments overweight people have are due to them being overweight. Many other ailments they have can't be easily treated or diagnosed BECAUSE they are overweight. Could you imagine trying to do a biopsy when you have to go through 6 inches of fat? Many overweight people can't even fit into an MRI machine or exceed the weight limit! So, doctors make assumptions that are based on experience or science. Science/medicine has shown that overweight people have certain problems that they probably wouldn't have if they weren't overweight. Just because there has been one or two or heck a 5% mistake rate doesn't mean they should change their ways. Diagnosing 95% of people correctly is pretty dang good I'd say.