Funny how the people who’ve been screaming about the 1960s for the last 40 years are suddenly trying to become the SDS, and even threatening that they’ll soon become Weathermen.

Well, not ha-ha funny.

The Democrats promise that a government health care system will reduce the cost of health care, but as the economist Thomas Sowell has pointed out, government health care will not reduce the cost; it will simply refuse to pay the cost.

Call me crazy, but my first reaction to this sentence was, oh, good.  If it’s single-payer health insurance and the insurance decides that the hospital is charging too much for a service and they refuse payment, then the hospital will either have to suck it up or lower prices.

Of course, I’m not nuts, so my mind didn’t immediately leap to the thought of a “Death Panel.”

And all this Conservative yelling about shit just reminds me of Brick Tamland

These grainy videos show nothing other than a bunch of hotheads blowing off steam, proving that the people who yell have generally lost their ability to reason, and that partisan bickering goes up a notch every time someone new links to the latest proof that the opponents are thugs and assholes.  And nothing is learned, nothing is proven, and the healthcare debate--which should be the most important topic on everyone’s lips and minds and should be discussed using facts based on reality--becomes some sort of football game where we really could use the John Madden magic screen replay stuff to see who made the best block.

I’m gratified that the Democratic leaders aren’t actively encouraging this crap, unlike their Republican counterparts.  However, I readily acknowledge that if someone gets in your face and starts yelling, some people find it very hard to turn away.  These videos are evidence that baiting often works, nothing more.  Obnoxious people drunk with self-importance need better management, but all I hear from the Republicans is cheerleading for more of this nonsense.  This is more evidence that leadership is absent from the GOP.  And more evidence that they don’t deserve another chance at governance until they get their shit together.

Palin pisses me off so much.

Heaven forbid we have a government run “death panel” that decides not to pay for experimental procedures with low success rates or for experimental procedures that have not passed thorough testing.

It’s much better to have private insurance company panels deciding to deny routine life-saving procedures, or, indeed, deny testing for the disease in the first place, because they’re expensive and private companies are concerned with the bottom line and making obscene profits and paying themselves millions upon millions of “profit” gained by denying these procedures and rescission.

Take the premiums, deny payment = $PROFIT$

Want to see a real Death Panel?  Watch Sicko and the poor woman who went to the hospital board and begged them to save her husband’s life.  They simply didn’t give a shit that they could save his life, b/c it would cost money.

A government run healthcare system would be nonprofit and would have guidelines on providing quality healthcare for all.  Sure, there would be some corruption, but people’s salaries and bonuses would no longer be based on denying healthcare.

As for the violence?  Tiller’s already been shot.  The Holocaust museum’s been shot up.  The gym was shot up last week.  There have been a rash of shootings where the victims are liberals or those generally helped by liberalism.

Each one is treated as a lone crazy.  Our media will continue to treat them all as such--how much have you heard about the report about right-wing whackaloons being violent being prescient and correct?  Outside the liberal blogosphere, that is?

Driftglass has an extraordinarily insightful take on the situation, IMO.  You might find it interesting here:

http://driftglass.blogspot.com/2009/08/dear-democrats.html

If I may share.

You forgot “Illegal” immigrants in that whole mess. Because fear of treating mexicans is a big part of that resentment too.

I had a similar take on the subject in a piece I wrote for The Rumpus yesterday, though my real concern isn’t that someone is going to get shot--it’s that someone is going to leave a truckload of fertilizer and diesel fuel in a government building somewhere and a whole lot of people are going to die as a result. And if that happens, watch the liberal-blaming hit a pitch like you’ve never heard before.

3letter, this is a page straight out of the anti-choice handbook.  They’re not just blowing off steam, and leadership isn’t just foolishly encouraging it.  It’s an attempt to intimidate and shut down the discussion because of the fear of violence.  With abortion, it’s been successful, and they’re just expanding the scope.

And to be clear, this goes back a lot further than the anti-choice movement.  It goes back to the civil rights movement, the anti-labor movement, the anti-abolition movement, even the anti-revolutionary movement.  It’s a common tactic whenever progress threatens an established order - associate the movement with an incipient and permanent state of violence and danger to anyone who might consider joining it.

Well, I suppose we might as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb; as they used to say.

“...proving that the people who yell have generally lost their ability to reason, and that partisan bickering goes up a notch every time someone new links to the latest proof that the opponents are thugs and assholes.  And nothing is learned, nothing is proven...”

Nothing is learned because they already Know The Answers.

Nothing is proven because you don’t need anything more as proof than a reference to a WorldNut Daily article, a reference to something Rush farted on the radio, or what Glenn Beck unleashed last night on Faux.

And “reason” is just something those “scientists”, Evilutionists, ProAborters, ProGovernment, Tree-Huggers, Animal “Rights” Activists, Vegetarians, Pacifists, “Gay” People, Mexicans, Welfare Queens, and Godless Liberal CommunoFascists use to cloud the minds of Americans so they can push their Illegal Kenyan Negro “President” on America and tax us until we’re bled white just before the cattle cars carry the last remaining Real Americans off to their Satan-prescribed fate.

But there ain’t nuthin’ wrong with America that can’t be cured by bringing back Prayer in Schools, making Abortion illegal, making Southern Baptists the Official Religion of America, repealing “voting rights” acts, ending welfare, ending Social Security and Medicare, ending all government programs except the DOD, ending all income tax and closing the IRS, bringing back anti-miscegenation laws, outlawing civil marriage, making adultery punishable by death, stopping all immigration, starting a few Good Wars somewhere, and a sumptuary law…

Amanda,

I see some similarities, but I don’t see a full comparison to anti-abortion activists.  Although the tactics of intimidation are similar, it’s not as easy to stop people from talking politics as it is to make women have a hard time getting an abortion.  And someone can have a discussion with people well away from people who will yell at them for their views, but it’s not as easy to procure a safe abortion in a friend’s living room or back porch*.

Most morons who don’t understand the First Amendment when they’re actually confronted with it do understand it in theory.  But those staunch opponents of abortion rights don’t even accept any theory under which abortion could be legal, and that is what drives them to act in ways that make these protests seem like hilarious outtakes filmed in the Neighborhood of Make-Believe.

*The advocates of “menstrual extraction” may insist otherwise.  Look it up.

I don’t think it’s even political, other than to the extent that “my unquestioned right to be dominant despite my total lack of qualifications other than a big belly and a big mouth is finally no longer really even having lip service paid to it” is political. I think it’s just love of violence and the desire to finally prove that the phallus is really theirs. A chance to finally use that gun they’ve been stroking ever since that girl turned them down in 8th grade. It’s fundamentally psychological and the politics is nothing more than window dressing.

This of course makes them even more dangerous, in the cornered rat sense of the word.

Felagund,

There is certainly some element of that aspect, but the desire to fight doesn’t explain the desire to fight Democrats.  If only the desire to crack heads was influencing them, they’d be on the side of the unions, who are known (in the incorrectly ahistorical way of these numbskulls) for that behavior.  It is political.

And to be clear, this goes back a lot further than the anti-choice movement.

Indeed it does, and then as now, we all have the individual choice of whether to live in fear or not. I don’t think what we’re going through now comes anywhere close as of yet to what the Freedom Riders had to endure forty-five years ago.

If only the desire to crack heads was influencing them, they’d be on the side of the unions, who are known (in the incorrectly ahistorical way of these numbskulls) for that behavior.

Why pay union dues to crack heads when you can do it for free?

I see some similarities, but I don’t see a full comparison to anti-abortion activists.

She didn’t mean it as an exact and full comparison, just something similar.  In reality, nothing is fully comparable to anything else, because there are always differences.  People bring up such comparisons to try to show what might be going on and what might work in this situation.  Harping over the real differences without acknowledging the real similarities just loses you an ally.

Jesse,
A couple of points for you to ponder. I understand you may choose to use the term “ allegedly “ either out of caution ,or because you wish to hide distort the incident.  so, I will couch it in concrete terms. Do you think the person on the ground was struck by one or all of those arrested?
And, as more evidence appears will you be able to answer further queries. (I hate to be insistent , but you will remember , as Crystal Mangums story floundered on the cell phone records, the semen in her vaginal vault that wasn’t a La Cross player , the cab driver’s testimony , some of your peers reverted to ‘Someting Happened’ , a category inclusive of the Earth contining to revolve the Sun or it standing still over Gilead.

Shorter corwin:

Let’s zero in on one thing that Jesse said so we can ignore the rest and make it seem like Jesse is being unreasonable and using scare tactics.  After all, some of you thought something bad happened once, but it didn’t, so how can we trust anything you say Mr. Taylor (and Ms. Marcotte)?…

I forgot to add:

“Anyone who calls someone else a Nazi is the REAL Nazi!  So there, nah, nah, nah...”

I’d say that the tactics and intentions are the same as the anti-choicers’, as well as in all the other movements Jesse cited.  They’re simply more successful when used against the already vulnerable, like pregnant women who are burdened with societal disapproval at the very least, or racial minorities whose economic & personal security are always more tenuous than that of those who would prefer to squash them.  The Revolutionary-era Tories didn’t have many advantages over the already-rich white men leading the movement, who were at least their social equals.  Much easier to bully those a bit weaker than oneself, after all.

The most ridiculous thing about Palin’s little fantasy up there?  (OK, the second-most-ridiculous, because I don’t have anything that can compete with “death panel.")

Rationing is already done by the rates at which people get sick, or get injured.  You want cancer treatment?  You need to have cancer.  You want Down’s Syndrome treatment for your baby?  Your baby needs to have Down’s Syndrome.  Want treatment for a broken arm?  You need a broken arm.

And since noncontagious diseases and conditions are not available on demand, and since contagious diseases and injuries tend to simply by their nature dissuade people from obtaining them deliberately, and since medical treatment has no intrinsic value beyond restoration of a person to what they were like before the health problem (when they can, that is), we’re in absolutely no danger of people seeking treatment for stuff they don’t have.

Therefore, the demands on the healthcare system can be held to be fairly stable and genuine, and the obvious ethical mandate is to provide for all of them.  There’s the shopping list, so to speak.

Now note that while that includes a whole damn lot of victims of rescission, and people who can’t afford private insurance, the government is already on the hook for a lot of those anyway, through Medicare and the like, and hospitals are on the hook for others, when they go to emergency rooms (with conditions more expensive to treat than when a doctor visit they couldn’t afford would’ve taken care of it) and don’t pay---the hospital eats that cost and guess what they do to cover it?  Yep, add to what they bill the insurance companies in order to compensate for it.  So that’s mostly not an increase in cost at all---and in some ways it’s a decrease because those people in the emergency room?  Coulda been treated cheaper, earlier, if such treatment had been available to them.

Now consider that the public option does not include a) the salaries of all the people who fight to deny claims, and b) the salaries of all the executives who make six-and-seven-figure incomes, of which there’s generally more than just a CEO.  Also stockholders, for that matter.

(Incidentally, if we had universal singlepayer, they would need significantly fewer employees of the sort that keep track of who’s covered and who isn’t, and who’s covered under what policy, and who’s starting a new policy and who’s switching policies and who’s cancelling policies.  Just track births, deaths, and immigration records.)

So, effectively, the price of universal health care, per person, in premiums or taxes, should be: [(cost of treating everybody who needs treatment) + (necessary administrative costs)] / [number of taxpayers of livable income], and if anybody gets pissy about the “livable income” requirement there, they can start supporting policies that pay people a living wage so they can afford, among other things, to pay taxes on that level, and that problem will go away.

And this is why countries with singlepayer spend less per capita on health care than we do, and this is how we can spend less per capita too.

The black man “beaten up” in that video is now being rolled around in a wheelchair.

Look, of course it’s going to get violent. It’s only logical for them to get violent. They are being told and they believe that they and their families are going to be put to death in order to give illegal immigrants health coverage. And that this is being masterminded by a Kenyan Muslim Fundamentalist. That is what republicans are telling their followers to believe. The result is what they want-- to shut down all the town hall meetings.

The combination of the silly season and the fact that sabotaging the health care plan is basically screwing over the middle class and upper middle class people within the media will pretty much ensure the failure of these Brooks Brothers Riots. But, taking a cue from the example of the anti-abortion movement, we have to wonder what the future holds. Are we going to see protests outside any “public option” administrative offices? Are doctors that accept the public option going to face harassment? We don’t know. What we do know is that many of these people swept into the movement believe that those planning and implementing the universal coverage plans really believe that the plan is to euthanize them.

Was there this much turmoil in FDR’s day, or were we too distracting fighting, um, Nazis? I wonder what will happen once health reform passes to all these people. Will they go away, or get madder?

Sure the government “refuses to pay”.  So does Blue Cross, and so does every other large insurer.  I see this on my Blue Cross statements as “negotiated reduction”.  That’s the amount of the bill that my insurer refuses to pay, or extorts from my provider, whichever you like.

For comparison, I have a most excellent chiropractor.  She is a gifted healer, specializing in allergies and environmental sensitivities.  She decided that she simply can’t be bothered to deal with insurance companies, so she let her office staff go, and she charges—$40.  Forty dollars for an office visit.  Her colleagues in the field locally are charging as much as four times that.

That’s the kind of savings we can expect when we no longer have to feed the ravenous insurance companies, and our medical people no longer need to retain whole offices full of people whose sole purpose is to wrestle with the insurance companies for the payment they have already earned.

Was there this much turmoil in FDR’s day

In comparison to today, conservatives really took the tea party events to the next with FDR by reportedly plotting a military coup to overthrow him.

No, 3letterjon, it is psychological. It’s about a kind of infantile power: me, me, me, I’m going to wave my flaccid penis around until I am acknowledged as the master of the universe. Because when I was a baby I was the master of the universe, and I want that back. Most people grow out of it, but a certain type of angry, delusional overweight white male does not, because earlier political decisions made it possible for such douches to continue to think that they’re the master. They’re not on the side of the unions, because unions are people who are working together against the master, and are therefore by definition not the master.

These people have no sense of history. Did they forget that back in the 1960s it was liberals who were stockpiling guns? And do they really think that unions are composed of gentle, Berkeley-esque tree-huggers who would never fight back? Methinks a few bullies are going to learn the hard way that not everybody they dislike is a victim.

If only the desire to crack heads was influencing them, they’d be on the side of the unions, who are known (in the incorrectly ahistorical way of these numbskulls) for that behavior.  It is political.

It is incorrect and they’d be disabused, quickly, of the notion they could indiscriminately “bust heads” as member of a union.

Two words: Fairness Doctrine. Put an end to the demagogues. They were the ruin of the Roman Republic and they will be the ruin of ours.

On the bright side, most of these nimrods are really old, and by the time I expect to need extensive medical treatments, they’ll be long gone.  Like I always say, nature is the best Death Panel that ever existed.

Older:And what about that office staff?

I’m not arguing against single-payer..in fact I think it’s necessary. I don’t think markets for health care (or electricity, or telecommunications for that matter) can work, because of the impossibility of saying no.

But all the same, any effective reform is going to put a lot of people out of work. The reality is that the American economy is held together by spit and bubble-gum...not even duct tape. I think a lot of people know this but nobody wants to talk about it because once someone does the party is over.

Rationing is already done by the rates at which people get sick, or get injured.  You want cancer treatment?  You need to have cancer.  You want Down’s Syndrome treatment for your baby?  Your baby needs to have Down’s Syndrome.  Want treatment for a broken arm?  You need a broken arm.

Therefore, the demands on the healthcare system can be held to be fairly stable and genuine, and the obvious ethical mandate is to provide for all of them.  There’s the shopping list, so to speak.

Er, no.

For a given population, healthcare can suck up as much money as thrown at it.  There’s always a reason to go to the doctor, always more and more expensive tests that can be run when you do, and always more ane more expensive medicines you can use. You can always find a reason - a good reason - to spend more money.

So therefore there has to be “rationing” - some way of saying “enough”.  In my system, we have funding devolved to the various regions, who then allocate a certain amount of specific surgeries and programmes for their target populations every year and prioiritise. 

What this means, in my actual experience, is that I can go to the emergency room when stung on the neck by something I’m allergic to and get treated immediately at no cost, or get three operations on my foot to stop it from being amputated without my family going bankrupt - but I’d have to wait six months for my ingrown toenails to be operated on on the public dime.  So I paid for those myself instead (or I could have got insurance).  The rationing is done on a logical public health basis.

It’s not perfect or immune from political pressure, as the herceptin debacle shows.  But generally it works.

In the US, of course, the rationing is done by the ability to pay and insurance company fiat.

But basic rule of health economics, Kyra - it can always cost more.

I’m just amazed that a guy who was strong enough to get up and walk around for several minutes after an alleged beating, shouting and accusing, is now “too weak” to speak on his own behalf. 

Gateway Pundit is, however, a great clearinghouse for conservatives who take cameras places hoping that something illegal will happen to them.  The best one was the Christian apologetics who wandered around an Arab festival trying to get into arguments about Islam, then alleged (I believe) thirteen different counts of assault because security tried to remove them.

Back in FDR’s day, didn’t wingers believe that Social Security numbers were the Mark of the Beast?

But there ain’t nuthin’ wrong with America that can’t be cured by bringing back Prayer in Schools, making Abortion illegal, making Southern Baptists the Official Religion of America, repealing “voting rights” acts, ending welfare, ending Social Security and Medicare, ending all government programs except the DOD, ending all income tax and closing the IRS, bringing back anti-miscegenation laws, outlawing civil marriage, making adultery punishable by death, stopping all immigration, starting a few Good Wars somewhere, and a sumptuary law…

Welcome to the Republic of Gilead.

I didn’t witness the incident alledgedly involving Mr. Gladney personally, but I was at that town hall.  Russ Carnahan is my Congressman, and the whole thing was a frightening mess.

There were SEIU members present, and there was definitely quite a bit of tension between the pro-reform crowd and the BirthBaggers.  I didn’t see anything violent, but I did witness a lot of screaming, coming almost entireley from the brownshirts on the other side.  The St. Louis County Police Department was also on hand, I suppose to act as a buffer between the two different camps, but when the pushing and shoving started, the pepper spray came out, and it was pointed exclusively at pro-reform people.  6 people arrested, and as far as I know, at least 5 of them were pro-reform people - the 6th being an uninvolved reporter for St. Louis’ major newspaper.

One of those arrested was a 50-something pro-reform woman who was doing nothing more than taking pictures of the events transpiring around the mob - the police arrested her for “peace interference”.  But before arresting her, they made sure to give her a good pepperspray to the eyes for refusing to stop taking pictures of the scuffle involving Gladney.

Another person arrested was St. Louis Post-Dispatch reporter Jake Wagman, who was shooting video for the newspaper’s website, stltoday.com.

Two people arrested for daring to try to get an accurate depiction of what happened here - for what the police described as “interference”.

Here’s something Gateway Pundit doesn’t tell you…

Kenneth Gladney is employed by the St. Louis Police Department, and has been since at least 2006.

Alleged St. Louis “attack victim” has no health insurance

Yow! The stupid, it burns.

It turns out that Kenneth Gladney is a man without health insurance. And he’s asking for help with his “medical bills.”

Of course! BECAUSE THE IDIOT HAS NO HEALTH INSURANCE, AND A CRY FOR FUNDS WILL RALLY THE DEATHERS!

SO THE DEATHERS (NEW NICKNAME FOR THOSE PREDICTING DEATH FOR GRANNY, OR DEATH PANELS, FROM HEALTHCARE REFORM) NOW HAVE A POSTER CHILD.

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2009/8/9/764181/-Alleged-St.-Louis-attack-victim-has-no-health-insurance-(updated)

The problem is, the deathers now have a martyr, and a black, deluded matryr at that (but hey, what happened to the Reverend who had his shoulder dislocated the other day by teabaggers.  A man of God, but you’ll never see FOX, inviting him on.)

Provoking violence, or claiming it had provoked, was very much a tactic of the early Nazi party in gaining power in Germany (up to and including, the Reichstag fire—which was blamed on the Communist party.)

The aggressor as victim (sound familiar?)

Provoking violence, or claiming it had been provoked, was also the Nazi tactic for biting into territory of surrounding countries where former “German” citizens had settled.

As well as, I believe, for invading some countries. (Although I’m a little fuzzy on that.)

I’m just sayin’.

“For comparison, I have a most excellent chiropractor.  She is a gifted healer, specializing in allergies and environmental sensitivities.  She decided that she simply can’t be bothered to deal with insurance companies, so she let her office staff go, and she charges—$40.  Forty dollars for an office visit.”

That’s more likely because most insurance companies won’t cover chiropractor’s; and for this one, they actually are in the right, because it doesn’t work.  Except for those who only deal with actual back pain, chiropractors are pure quacks, who rip off the credulous; like other forms of alternative medicine.  Manipulating the spine does nothing for allergies or environmental sensitivities - you need actual medicine for that.  Save your $40, and just take a placebo instead.

If this passes and we turn to socialized health care, there will be a tax revolt.

We already have socialized medicine, so why wait? I suggest starting this chant for your next geriatric tea party: end Medicare NOW!!

Gorgon, what I appreciate is the fact that you distrust democracy so much you would rather turn to violent treason against your fellow countrymen rather than just elect a new fucking President and Congress to undo it.

If this passes and we turn to socialized health care, there will be a tax revolt.

Oh, boo fucking hoo.  Like you guys haven’t already revolted against taxes to the point that bridges are collapsing and killing people because you were too cheap to pay your share and decided than an extra $100 a year was too much to pay to keep your fellow citizens from dying.

I realize that your mommy and daddy forgot to teach you the important lesson that you get what you pay for, so if you stop paying taxes, little things like roads and police and fire departments and schools will go away, but we’re learning the hard way here in California that if no one wants to pay for those things but everyone wants to use them, those things will go away.  And then you’ll be paying $400 a month for private fire protection, but you’ll still think that’s better than $100 a year because you won’t have to worry that any unworthy poor people will be able to save their houses from burning down.

Seriously, move to your libertarian paradise where you can pay for everything out of your own pocket and stop leeching off the tax money of those of us who want to live in a functional society.

The Founding Fathers lived in an era in which most illness was treated by administering leeches.  We’d have to spend quite a bit of time explaining antibiotics to them before they could even come up with an opinion about health care reform.

might be worth applying a few sections of the USAPATRIOT Act that they were all so gung-ho about, like: Section 802 of the USA PATRIOT Act (Pub. L. No. 107-52) expanded the definition of terrorism to cover “"domestic,"” as opposed to international, terrorism.  A person engages in domestic terrorism if they do an act “"dangerous to human life"” that is a violation of the criminal laws of a state or the United States, if the act appears to be intended to:  (i) intimidate or coerce a civilian population; (ii) influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion; or (iii) to affect the conduct of a government by mass destruction, assassination or kidnapping.  Additionally, the acts have to occur primarily within the territorial jurisdiction of the United States and if they do not, may be regarded as international terrorism.
Seizure of assets - Sec. 806:  Section 806 of the Act could result in the civil seizure of their assets without a prior hearing, and without them ever being convicted of a crime.

If this passes and we turn to socialized health care, there will be a tax revolt.

You seemed pretty okay about blowing all that money on invading Iraq.

Tens, maybe even a hundred or more million people will finally feel that they’ve lost their country.

They felt they “lost their country” the instant a Democrat was elected president.

My acupuncturist—the one who literally saved my life, after 3 years of Western medicine unable to diagnose, but instead increasing my pain and illness with slapdash guesses at treatment—refuses to accept health insurance, too. But charges a reasonable $60 a treatment.

For a practical reason: even those health insurance plans that offered him a crumb ($15) would then withold payment for six months, a year or never bother to pay at all.

(Ask your local GP, they get some of the same run around from the insurance companies.)

As for the Western Medicine trolls about to bash a Chinese medical treatment refined over 2,000 years—please go fuck yourself.

My acupuncturist was a Professor of Research Biochemistry (trained in the west) before getting degrees in Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine in Beiijing.

Like my sister, a physician in San Francisco who recently sent my father to an acupuncturist—they both know there are some medical conditions Western medicine treats well, and others that are better covered by alternative medicine.

My acupuncturist has also helped me with a sight problem my opthamalogist had no cure for, and when I had an attack of Sciatica.

A friend who had sciatica at the same time got relief from her chiropractor. I only had one visit with a chiropractor, but I was impressed—without any prompting from me, he told me that I’d recently fallen onto my left knee, and corrected that.

But bring on the trolls...I won’t bother to answer you.

Tens, maybe even a hundred or more million people will finally feel that they’ve lost their country.

WE SURROUND THEM!!!!1111!!!

Bring it on, clown.

If this passes and we turn to socialized health care, there will be a tax revolt. Mark my word. Tens, maybe even a hundred or more million people will finally feel that they’ve lost their country. The FF’s are already rolling in their graves, and we will have no recourse but to revolt. And unfortunately for liberals, your social experiments can’t survive without all of us “mouthbreathers” and our money.

So yes, I fear things will be very ugly if our racist, marxist president rams this through. But thankfully, my side has most the money and damn near all the guns.

So you’re saying you’ll resort to terrorism unless you get what you want?

please go fuck yourself.

Please go educate yourself.

My acupuncturist was a Professor of Research Biochemistry (trained in the west) before getting degrees in Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine in Beiijing.

Well, it’s too bad they wasted all that time, because it turns out having someone poke you in the back with toothpicks is just as effective.

So yes, I fear things will be very ugly if our racist, marxist president rams this through. But thankfully, my side has most the money

Oh yeah, most of the money? Here’s a list of the top 10 states in per capita income:

1) Connecticut – $28,766
2) New Jersey – $27,006
3) Massachusetts – $25,952
4) Maryland – $25,614
5) Colorado – $24,049
6) Virginia – $23,975
7) New Hampshire – $23,844
8) New York – $23,389
9) Delaware – $23,305
10) Minnesota – $23,198

Now, what do all these states have in common? They all voted for Barack Obama. Now let’s look at the next ten:

11) Illinois – $23,104
12) Washington – $22,973
13) California – $22,711
14) Alaska – $22,660
15) Michigan – $22,168
16) Nevada – $21,989
17) Rhode Island – $21,688
18) Florida – $21,557
19) Hawaii – $21,525
20) Wisconsin – $21,271

Only one (the Petro-State of Alaska) voted for McCain. The other nine were solid blue.

So out of the top twenty wealthiest states in America, its 19 for Obama, 1 for McCain. Yeah, you sure have ALL the money!

More fun with reality-based facts, the ten poorest states:

40) Kentucky – $18,093
41) Idaho – $17,841
42) North Dakota – $17,769
43) Oklahoma – $17,646
44) South Dakota – $17,562
45) New Mexico – $17,261
46) Montana – $17,151
47) Louisiana – $16,912
48) Arkansas – $16,904
49) West Virginia – $16,477
50) Mississippi – $15,853

Nine for McCain, one for Obama. You guys sure control the economic powerhouses of the USA, alright! When I think “money”, I know I think “Oklahoma and Arkansas”. /snark

Older:And what about that office staff? (karmakin at 2:05)

That’s more likely because most insurance companies won’t cover chiropractor’s (JMPEsq at 3:55)

Karmakin, I realize that rearranging things will cost some people their jobs, but I have faith that if they are competent office staff, the boost to the economy (caused by getting rid of the dead weight of the insurance establishment) will eventually provide them more jobs, by making it easier for small businesses to flourish.

JMP, you need to do more research.  Chiropractors and other alternative providers (such as acupuncturists) have been covered by many plans (including mine) for years now.  My chiro never “manipulates my spine”.  Instead, she determines whether my problem is within her area of expertise and if not, she recommends an MD or other specialist.  Not that I usually need a recommendation, since I now maintain a full stable of specialists and generalists.

Incidentally, there used to be an MD in our town who did the same thing wrt insurance, and for the same reason.  I didn’t refer to him, because he has since left the area, and I don’t know what his attitude is now.  Although I suspect it remains the same.  It’s not like the insurance companies have gotten easier or more generous to deal with.

And now, since I am Older, I’ll tell you a story of long long ago (actually, about 40 years ago).  When I first started working, I had three kids already.  Through my employer, I had a form of insurance called “major medical” (which was different from the “major medical” policies of today).  It worked like this: I paid my medical bills myself.  I could do that, because the charges were reasonable.  Then when the amount I paid exceeded my deductible, I continued to pay the bills, but I sent copies to the insurance company, and they reimbursed me for the major fraction of my medical expenses.

Eventually, the insurance companies convinced employers that people just couldn’t be trusted to pay their own bills and know when to go to the doctor, and everyone was thenceforth forced to sign on to one of the paternalistic plans which are now the only kind available.

If Mr Gladney is employed by the St Louis Police Department, he is not a man who has no health insurance.

Well, it’s too bad they wasted all that time, because it turns out having someone poke you in the back with toothpicks is just as effective.  Chet, at 6:32

Y’know why that is, Chet?  It’s because those “points” actually exist, and they actually can effect pain relief and many other health improvement when stimulated.  But they don’t have to be stimulated by needles.  Of course toothpicks would work.  So does manual pressure.  Have you ever heard of acupressure?  Look it up.

I think that this is crucial:

The third is that they want to provoke the very confrontation they’re afraid of.  These protesters have a view of the world that’s part eschatology, part Red Dawn.  They’re powerless to stop the coming catastrophe, but there’s no reason they shouldn’t be prepared to fight it every step of the way.  And maybe, just maybe, if they fight smart enough and rig enough grenade launchers out of old cans and rusted-out V12 engines, they can turn it away.

A while back Amanda (?) wrote a great post about how wingnuts just love apocalyptic fiction because it lets them imagine themselves as heinleinian renaissance men, rescuing a small chunk of the world from barbarism and getting all the hot women while leaving all the nasty people who laughed at them in junior high (and all the brown people and liberals) to starve in the flesh-eating desert.

This one is even better because if they win they get all the surviving hot women (ha) and if they lose the liberals have to pay their medical bills. It’s an absolutely safe martyrdom in which they end up with all the moral standing and none of the bad consequences.

Lay off on judibrowni.  She is entirely entitled to seek whatever that works for her.  Note that placebo effect does not mean ineffective, and $40 is dirt cheap for good outcomes.  It’s also dirt cheap for doing something to make yourself feel better (in taking action) when you can’t afford real help from doctors.

Especially with chiropracters and accupuncture people, it’s entirely a hit or miss affair.  There *are* practicioners who are reasonably successful at getting decent outcomes.  They are rare though, and there is often no easy way to tell how good they are relative to a standard level doctor.

At the end of the day, treat people and circumstances with respect and listen well.  The world can surprise you, and it doesn’t have to be fairy dust and a magic carriage kind of surprise.

wow, I was late to the rescue!

Y’know why that is, Chet?

I do, but you don’t.

It’s because those “points” actually exist, and they actually can effect pain relief and many other health improvement when stimulated.

You didn’t read the article. The “fake acupuncture” did not stimulate any acupuncture points, but merely random locations on the back. It was equally as effective as “real” acupuncture.

The points actually don’t exist, the body does not contain meridians, there’s no flow of an energy called “qi” in the body; acupuncture is 100% nonsense. It doesn’t work because it can’t work; the things it relies on to work simply don’t exist. It may be the most accepted of pseudoscientific “alternative” medicine, but it is pseudoscience and quackery nonetheless.

Note that placebo effect does not mean ineffective

That’s exactly what it means, because you don’t understand the placebo effect.

Think it through. Most symptoms are subjective - you hurt, but no one but you knows how bad you hurt, and you judge your own pain on a subjective and relative scale.

So when someone gives you a pill, which you believed means you’re being treated, you feel the expectation that you’re supposed to be getting better, which means your own subjective interpretation of your symptoms and pain changes. You actually do perceive that you’re getting better, because you think you’re supposed to.

Look, if judi wants to spend her money on acupuncture, it’s none of my business. At least the acupuncture guys follow prudent sterility guidelines. But she shouldn’t come in here all gangbusters and say that anybody who doesn’t subscribe to her nonsense is a troll and should “fuck off”, and not expect to be called on her bullshit. Alternative medicine is dangerous quackery that costs people their lives. Don’t roll in here and tell me that I’m the troll for saying so.

acupuncture is 100% nonsense. It doesn’t work because it can’t work; the things it relies on to work simply don’t exist. It may be the most accepted of pseudoscientific “alternative” medicine, but it is pseudoscience and quackery nonetheless.

It actually doesn’t matter if the beliefs about the way accupuncture works is actually true. What matters is if it actually works in practice. I know you love to pick fights, Chet, but this link actually works against your claim rather than for it. From an author of the study:

“Acupuncture represents a highly promising and effective treatment option for chronic back pain,” study co-author Dr. Heinz Endres of Ruhr University Bochum in Bochum, Germany, said in an e-mail.

Kind of off topic, but you’ve really got to learn to stop flipping out about these things that you’re just convinced of.

Chet, I invite you to read the wiki page on placebo.  I am correct.

It actually doesn’t matter if the beliefs about the way accupuncture works is actually true.

I’m not saying that there’s no therapeutic aspect to being poked in the back with toothpicks. But you don’t need years of training at a Chinese school to do that; you don’t need to memorize the location of dozens of meridians that don’t exist; you don’t need to pierce the skin with needles to do that. And you don’t need to make claims that acupuncture can cure everything from acne to depression to do that.

Chet, I invite you to read the wiki page on placebo.  I am correct.

No, you’re not. Did you even read the page? From the first fucking paragraph:

Such an intervention may cause the patient to believe the treatment will change his/her condition; and this belief does indeed sometimes have a therapeutic effect, causing the patient’s condition to improve. This phenomenon is known as the placebo effect.

The placebo effect is nothing more than the subjective component of recovery - which you can be convinced is occurring even if you’re not actually recovering.

Again - go back and read Judi’s rude, preemptively combative post and tell me that I’ve over-reacted, or that I’m attacking her unfairly. Must every discussion o health care be given over to altie-med nonsense?

Well, then, I must say, that paragraph does not say what you think it said.  Not to mention the contradictions in your general 8:29 post.

I conclude there is no reasoning with you.  Good bye.

@ Gorgon: So you advocate terrorism.

You worshiped at the king’s belly, and now you’re his food. Idiot. Maybe you and your fellow conservitards’Randroids (or whatever the fuck you claim to be) shouldn’t have supported expanding government powers when your man was in office - as if there’d never be a president thereafter with whom you disagreed. And because you’re a bunch of whiny simpletons, health care - a policy that would do you more good than lying to start an illegal war ever could - is the hill you want to die on.

If you’re so intent on martyrdom, just drop dead now and stop looking for ways to take innocent people with you.

Well, then, I must say, that paragraph does not say what you think it said.  Not to mention the contradictions in your general 8:29 post.

I guess I don’t understand. Perhaps English is not your first language?

you don’t need years of training at a Chinese school to do that; you don’t need to memorize the location of dozens of meridians that don’t exist; you don’t need to pierce the skin with needles to do that. And you don’t need to make claims that acupuncture can cure everything from acne to depression to do that.

I suppose you don’t, but that’s the practitioner’s problem who spent the money on acupuncture school, not the patient’s. The patients sound like they’re getting their $60 worth to me.

Chet, it’s kind of funny how your indignant righteous anger is completely out of proportion to the matter at hand… not to mention the fact that it’s not even a particularly clueful amount of righteous anger, given that the authors of the study seemed to agree that the therapy worked better than providing an actual placebo. It’s you who are suffering from a bit of anti-scientific, anti-empirical thinking, not everyone else.

Chet, it’s kind of funny how your indignant righteous anger is completely out of proportion to the matter at hand…

I honestly have no idea what you’re talking about. I’m not in the least bit angry. Why on Earth would I be angry about what somebody said on the internet, who wasn’t even talking to me? I can’t imagine anything more inconsequental.

given that the authors of the study seemed to agree that the therapy worked better than providing an actual placebo.

I don’t see any indication that’s true, certainly none on the article, and why would they think that when their own study says the complete opposite?

It’s you who are suffering from a bit of anti-scientific, anti-empirical thinking, not everyone else.

A study showed that traditional Chinese acupuncture techniques are no more effective than random jabs in the back with a toothpick. How dishonest do you have to be to spin that into a finding of effecitveness for acupuncture?

Look, she’s free to flush her money down the drain. I could really care less.

She was trying to troll, and she got a whole lot of people to bite.

She was trying to troll, and she got a whole lot of people to bite.

It’s sort of cute to see Chet get riled up like that, especially when he doesn’t read the articles he righteously links to in an effort to prove his point. I should poke at him more often.

How dishonest do you have to be to spin that into a finding of effecitveness for acupuncture?

Now you’re accusing me of dishonesty. Yes, Chet, you’re the most honest person righteously striking a blow for truth, even though the author of the study thinks your a mindlessly angry ignoramus. And you’re doing this in an effort to prove how righteous you are and the rest of us are laughing at you for building yourself into a froth over something you’re wrong about. You think a placebo in the form of a sugar pill would have had the same success rate as “placebo acupuncture”?

In this case Chet, you’re not acting as the opponent of “woo.” You’re acting as the anti-empirical promoter of “woo.”

Yes, Chet, you’re the most honest person righteously striking a blow for truth, even though the author of the study thinks your a mindlessly angry ignoramus.

Un-huh. You phoned him up, I suppose.

You think a placebo in the form of a sugar pill would have had the same success rate as “placebo acupuncture”?

No, I think a relaxing massage of the back is probably a little more therapeutic than a single M&M;and a glass of water. None of that supports either the miraculous power of acupuncture or Shah’s belief in a supernatural placebo effect.

You’re acting as the anti-empirical promoter of “woo.”

Which woo, specifically? Toothpick-ism? Don’t be absurd.

The Devil’s Advocate, of course your smackdown of Gorram is spot-on.

I’m worried, though, that the Obama administration is not going to willingly give up the Bush powers, and will eventually hand those powers off to someone like Huckabee.

I’m worried, though, that the Obama administration is not going to willingly give up the Bush powers, and will eventually hand those powers off to someone like Huckabee.

The only president who voluntarily gave up those powers was Jimmy Carter. Basically, to give up those abuses of power, the country needs a president willing to act as a sacrificial lamb. There’s always a constituency for a selfproclaimed policy of being “tough on crime/terrorism/sedition.” There’s rarely a constituency for “a kinder, more respectful program of law enforcement.” You might get it passed, but then you’ll lose soon afterwards.

I watched the video 3 or 4 times today and I still can’t figure out what is going on.

Conservatives are sure going crazy over it, though.

mythago said: “And do they really think that unions are composed of gentle, Berkeley-esque tree-huggers who would never fight back?”

Today they might be.  But back in the bad old days, union members were being killed by union-busting private police similar to Blackwater (Pinkertons, for example), as well as by our Army and by various National Guards.  (Unions were somewhat unpopular with the wealthy elite those days, and they still are.)

Those union members had to be tough and fight back just to survive.  Things are not quite so bad today, although Republicans are still union-busting whenever they can.

Tyro said: “They felt they “lost their country” the instant a Democrat was elected president.”

I suspect it was really when a black Democrat was elected president.

Wingnuts are to the USA what the Arab Sunnis are to Iraq.

Despite being a small minority, Sunnis were told for about 29 years by Baath Party propaganda that they were the TRUE Iraqis, the REAL, patriotic Iraqis, and were REALLY the majority and would always be in control. When the Sunnis finally lost control and found out they were not the “real” Iraqis nor in the majority, and no longer in control, they just couldn’t believe it and went apeshit.

Substitute “conservative” for “Sunni” and “America” for Iraq. Same thing.

my side has most the money and damn near all the guns

I live in one of the bluest places in the country. Like many blue counties, we have buckets of money. And guns? Fifty percent of the households here admit to owning at least one gun. And I do mean ‘admit’. Actual ownership is a lot higher.

Gorgon and his Fighting Keyboardist buddies can jizz themselves all they like about their fantasy of re-enacting the Boston Tea Party only with that cool new Glock they saw in Guns and Ammo, but they’re better off sticking to the fantasy, where nobody shoots back. Just a thought.

Chet, you are quite wrong about the placebo effect. Look at you own quote:
“ this belief does indeed sometimes have a therapeutic effect, causing the patient’s condition to improve”.

Not ‘the patient’s perception of his/her condition’. The actual condition itself. This works for colds, too. People who believe the pill that they’re taking wards off colds get fewer colds. This works whether the pill is Vitamin C or sugar.

your, not you. sigh…

AlanD - things aren’t as bad as when Henry Ford sent his private police force to beat up organizers, but they’re still pretty bad (just ask the UMW). I’ve seen documents from ‘security’ companies that, for a fee, will show up at picket lines and try to goad union members into attacking them (so management can wring their hands about Union Thuggery). Violence is hardly a routine and day-to-day part of most unions’ work, but I’ve known way too many die-hard union folks to think they’d be scared of a blogger who blustered that man, you better not mess with him cuz, like, he has this GUN. When they were through laughing their asses off, they’d put out their cigarettes and go load up the truck with their deer rifles.

mythago: DTG in STL posted the following comment in a different thread:

“I didn’t witness the incident alledgedly involving Mr. Gladney personally, but I was at that town hall.  Russ Carnahan is my Congressman, and the whole thing was a frightening mess.

Kenneth Gladney is employed by the St. Louis Police Department, and has been since at least 2006.”

If this is the same Kenneth Gladney who says he was attacked, this could well be another example of union-busting by police.  At the very least, the police may well have incited the violence.

Gorgon’s just mad because he got his ass handed to him in the last thread he tried to troll.  He came in swaggering and name calling and then left whining like a punk because everyone responded in kind.  He’s not only stupid, he’s a coward. 

Go away, coward; we can feel your fear from here.

The Founding Fathers lived in an era in which most illness was treated by administering leeches.  We’d have to spend quite a bit of time explaining antibiotics to them before they could even come up with an opinion about health care reform.

Well, Benjamin Franklin founded Pennsylvania Hospital specifically “to care for the sick-poor and insane who were wandering the streets of Philadelphia.” So I think that’d be at least one vote for making sure that people who couldn’t afford it could get some kind of medical treatment.  Maybe conservatives back then would criticize them for letting big-city bureaucrats come between patients and the evil spirits that possessed them.

Not ‘the patient’s perception of his/her condition’. The actual condition itself.

And what’s the mechanism for this? Magic? Sorry, no. A cold is just the kind of thing where subjective experience of symptoms is the determining factor. How do you know when you have a cold? Because you feel sick. Well, if you are convinced that you shouldn’t “feel sick”, you won’t. Illnesses, pains, and the like are precisely the kinds of situations where the patient’s perception of their condition is their condition. The fever, sneezing, and runny nose you get are your body’s active defenses. If you become convinced that you’re all better, those defenses return to normal, because they’re controlled by the brain. Positive thinking won’t eliminate the cold virus from your body.

The placebo effect is a trick of perception. That’s why it’s so effective on aches and pains and mild illnesses, not very effective at all on major ones, and completely ineffective on, say, amputations and burns. I’m very aware that it’s popular, especially among the credulous, to believe that the placebo effect indicates some kind of “mind over matter” magical healing effect beyond the understanding of Western science, but that’s simply not the case at all.

Of course, no amount of actual evidence will convince a wingnut troll of anything beyond their “belief” system and one or two sources of “info”, but for those who may not have found relief from Western Medicine, the NIH and the World Health Organization have weighed in positively on acupuncture for some treatment:

“Over the years, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) has funded a variety of research projects on acupuncture, including studies on the mechanisms by which acupuncture may produce its effects, as well as clinical trials and other studies. There is also a considerable body of international literature on the risks and benefits of acupuncture, and the World Health Organization lists a variety of medical conditions that may benefit from the use of acupuncture or moxibustion. Such applications include prevention and treatment of nausea and vomiting; treatment of pain and addictions to alcohol, tobacco, and other drugs; treatment of pulmonary problems such as asthma and bronchitis; and rehabilitation from neurological damage such as that caused by stroke.”

http://consensus.nih.gov/1997/1997Acupuncture107html.htm

You might want to read the full report for yourself, because just about now the wingnut trolls will be excerpting the out-of-context paragraph or two that they will claim bolsters their “toothpick” theory.

For the followup, a decade later on Acupuncture research:
Society for Acupuncture Research: 2007 Conference Report: “The Status and Future of Acupuncture Research: 10 Years Post–NIH Consensus Conference”

http://www.liebertonline.com/doi/abs/10.1089/acm.2008.SAR-2

Other pertinent studies:

“Background. In 1983, the Southern Medical Journal advised its readers that a scientific basis might underlie the popular practice of ancient Chinese acupuncture. Recent studies have proven this to be correct…
Methods. Pertinent articles in the literature were reviewed, including our own research. Significantly, we had access to recent important studies from ChinaUse and Effectiveness of Acupuncture - NIH Statement

“Results and Conclusions. ...Evidence-based neuroelectric acupuncture ...is a simple, useful clinical tool for pain modulation and other conditions and can be easily taught to physicians.”

(C) 1998 Southern Medical Association
http://journals.lww.com/smajournalonline/pages/articleviewer.aspx?year=1998&issue=12000&article=00004&type=abstract

http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=81006680

http://www.annals.org/cgi/content/abstract/141/12/901

Use and Effectiveness of Acupuncture - NIH Statement Nov 13, 2008

“Conclusions. Acupuncture as a therapeutic intervention is widely practiced in the United States. While there have been many studies of its potential usefulness, many of these studies provide equivocal results because of design, sample size, and other factors. The issue is further complicated by inherent difficulties in the use of appropriate controls, such as placebos and sham acupuncture groups. However, promising results have emerged, for example, showing efficacy of acupuncture in adult postoperative and chemotherapy nausea and vomiting and in postoperative dental pain. There are other situations such as addiction, stroke rehabilitation, headache, menstrual cramps, tennis elbow, fibromyalgia, myofascial pain, osteoarthritis, low back pain, carpal tunnel syndrome, and asthma, in which acupuncture may be useful as an adjunct treatment or an acceptable alternative or be included in a comprehensive management program. Further research is likely to uncover additional areas where acupuncture interventions will be useful.”

http://www.healthyplace.com/alternative-mental-health/treatments/use-and-effectiveness-of-acupuncture/menu-id-55/

Cost effectiveness analysis of a randomised trial of acupuncture for chronic headache in primary care
Conclusions Acupuncture for chronic headache improves health related quality of life at a small additional cost; it is relatively cost effective compared with a number of other interventions provided by the NHS.

http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/abstract/328/7442/747?maxtoshow=&HITS=80&hits=80&RESULTFORMAT=3&fulltext=acupuncture&andorexactfulltext=and&searchid=1&FIRSTINDEX=0&sortspec=relevance&resourcetype=HWCIT

Sorry, but I may have attached some of the links to the wrong write-ups, and I don’t have the time to unmismatch—but all links go to one or the other of the excerpts above, or other studies.

There are also individual “toothpick” studies that may claim the reverse—however, the consensus of both WHO and the NIH (in two separate decades) is that acupuncture can provide therapeudic results. (And I believe, the NHS, the United Kingdom health services must have come to the same conclusion, because the NHS now covers acupuncture.)

Or do your own Google search, and you’ll find more sources—good luck to you if you’re in the midst of any kind of healthcare trouble.

I hope you find relief.

Top signs of medical quackery:

1) Claims of ancient knowledge:

As for the Western Medicine trolls about to bash a Chinese medical treatment refined over 2,000 years—please go fuck yourself.

2)Claims of no side effects.

Like my sister, a physician in San Francisco who recently sent my father to an acupuncturist—they both know there are some medical conditions Western medicine treats well, and others that are better covered by alternative medicine.

3)Claims of holistic cures or panaceas:

However, promising results have emerged, for example, showing efficacy of acupuncture in adult postoperative and chemotherapy nausea and vomiting and in postoperative dental pain. There are other situations such as addiction, stroke rehabilitation, headache, menstrual cramps, tennis elbow, fibromyalgia, myofascial pain, osteoarthritis, low back pain, carpal tunnel syndrome, and asthma, in which acupuncture may be useful as an adjunct treatment or an acceptable alternative or be included in a comprehensive management program.

4)Conspiratorial claims of oppression:

Of course, no amount of actual evidence will convince a wingnut troll of anything beyond their “belief” system and one or two sources of “info”, but for those who may not have found relief from Western Medicine, the NIH and the World Health Organization have weighed in positively on acupuncture for some treatment:

You’re like the Greatest Hits of quackery, Judy. Tell me - are there 14 meridians, or 10? Or 6?

According to the wingnut troll, the National Health Institute and the World Health Organization and the Southren Medical Association and the United Kingdom"s National Health Service are all involved in a “quackery conspiracy” by coming to a consensus from a multiplicity of studies that acupuncture has therapeudic value.

But rather than empirical evidence, you should definitely go with the troll, who probably has the birthers, the deathers and the UFO conspiracy buffs on his “side.”

When people disparage “Western medicine” what they’re really saying is that they don’t believe that the scientific method works. When you get right down to it, they’re the same as creationists.

Ya mean like the scientific method the National Health Institute, the World Health Organization, the Southren Medical Association, and the United Kingdom’s National Health Service used to come to a consensus based on a multiplicity of studies that acupuncture has therapeudic value?

That scientific method? Those hundreds (or thousands) of doctors and researchers used over decades in a multipicity of studies, to come to the conclusion that acupuncture has therapeudic value?

Hah! But what would THEY know compared to a wingnut troll?

Good night, wingnut trolls.

I can only hope you never require healthcare that slips over the edge of your belief system.

I am not a medical doctor, and I am unfamiliar with medical literature. Therefore, allow me to direct you to an actual doctor, who is familiar with the literature, and who blogs about medical woo extensively. These blog posts contain links to the actual journal articles and also provide full citations, which is handy.

Another acupuncture study misinterpreted.

Sham acupuncture is better than true acupuncture.

In order for a medical treatment to be deemed effective, it must be better than a placebo.

wOW, YOU FOUND ONE WHOLE DOCTOR TO SUPPORT YOUR THEORY!

I’ll bet the (at least) hundreds of doctors and researchers from the WHO, NIH, NHS, Southren Medical Association and elsewhere around the globe who contributed or assessed a multiplicity of studies over decades and came to a consensus that acupuncture has therapeudic value, I’ll bet they’d be impressed by your ONE whole doctor.

Like I wrote earlier, there may be individual studies showing the reverse, but the consensus of doctors and medical societies around the world, based on a multiplicity of studies, is that acupuncture has therapeudic value.

But again, there’s no evidence that can shake a wingnut troll from their “belief” system, no matter how wackadoodle, as also evidenced in birthers, deathers, teabaggers.

PiaToR:
thanks for that link. it has helped me think about this…

so i’m at this place, where i am asking - how the *FUCK* is it ethical to charge people for healthcare?
yesyesyes, it’s stupid and immature and delusional and fairy-tale ideaology - but seriously? this is *LIFE* we are talking about - whywhywhywhyWHY does the best “cure” for cancer cost fucking as much as some houses? why do all the treatments for HIV cost more than most houses? why does a weekend in a penthouse suite at a Hilton or Sherrida cost *less* than a single day in a hospital room even when you are using nothing more than the bed and space (and i mean, not even an IV or a monitor)

i posted on an earlier thread how a friend of mine died because she didn’t have the money to pay for *INSULIN*.
THE FUCK IS THAT???

i just… these people run around screaming about “saving lives” and then not just advocate, but violently advocate for policies that will cost more lives! for policies that will end up with more dead children, dead *after* birth, from something that *could* be prevented or treated, but the parents don’t have the money to pay for it so the kids just… die.

stupid little shit that we think we have totally cured, gotten rid of - the cost of vaccines go up, and if these fucktards have their way, there will be *no* way to get a vaccine for your kids without paying cash. and that’s just *ONE* area. juvenile-onset diabetes is just something kids are going to get - there is absolutely *NOTHING* that can be done to prevent it. doesn’t Palin’s youngest child PROVE that any child could get anything?. kids are going to get chicken pox if their parents can’t get them vaccinated - and chicken pox isn’t (normally) dangerous - but mumps and measles are, and the ONLY reason we don’t have yearly epidemics of both is because vaccination is free for anyone who can’t afford it.

and that’s just the children.

i will never be able to get private insurance that will cover what i need it to cover.

my youngest sister, too - she was born with a hole in her heart, and had open heart surgery before she was 2 years old. she is supposed to see a cardiologist every year to make sure the “patch” they put in is still working correctly,so that it doesn’t mess up and kill her, and she is supposed to be on antibiotics any time anyone she has contact with has strep throat, because *STREP* can kill her…
she hasn’t been able to see a cardiologist for 5 years, and has HAD strep throat TWICE in that time-frame - both times forcing a hospitalization and IV antibiotic, because of the patch - if she could just *GET* propholactic anti-biotics, it wouldn’t have happened.
but she can’t. she can’t get insurance that will cover anything that is even *remotely* connected to her heart (and she can’t afford insurance at all, anyway.)

she didn’t do a goddamned thing to cause this to happen to her. neither did i. neither did my friend Christina. we were all *born* with these chronic diseases. but it looks and feels as if these people want to make sure that none of us can ever get health care. they are so afraid that their tax dollars will go to treat “undeserving” people - and what the hell makes a person “undeserving”?  why the fuck does it matter where someone was born, to what race, in what gender, with what economic class? they are PEOPLE.

PEOPLE. for fucks sake, right-wing-evangelical-fundy-aspiring rich-CHRISTIANs, THESE ARE PEOPLE. as GOD said - these are YOUR BRETHREN.

i just don’t *GET* it. i mean, intellectually i hear the arguments. but - even then. they. don’t. make. sense. right-wingers don’t want “their” tax dollars to “pay” for an “undeserving” person’s healthcare, so they will fight and scream and threaten and fight some more to make sure NO ONE gets any healthcare? it’s ok with them to destroy any chance they might have of getting real, good, honest and not-extortive health care, because if they don’t destroy it some person they dislike might get some?

so i’m at this place, where i am asking - how the *FUCK* is it ethical to charge people for healthcare?

Why is it ethical to charge people for rent and for food?

Because the goods and services provided are valuable, both in terms of people’s demand for them and in terms of people’s investment in providing them.  ECONOMIC DEMAND IS LIMITLESS.  I say this after just spending 30 minutes looking through high-end real estate and dreaming about the lotto.

There *has* to be a measure of value used in exchanging and regulating consumption and supply.  This is money.  By and large, the market is the best mechanism for arranging such exchanges.  By no means is it perfect, and it is *not* a good-in-itself - it’s an instrumental good.

I’m a social democrat.  I believe that the market is deeply flawed, but still the best fundamental means of exchange. I temper this with socialism as an alternative where justified, and with regulation designed to counter the market’s flaws and align its values with those of the common good.

The market works well - it’s insurance agencies that are an abomination in America.  The system I am familiar with uses regional health boards to fund a certain level of basic care for their catchment community, trading off funding vs demand on a utilitarian basis, and letting people go private above that level.  I like it, despite the fact that I paid for my last operation out of my own pocket.

Your complaint is not with the market.  It is with the actors that serve to distort that market, rendering health care more expensive than necessary.  It is also with your lack of power in that market - the fact that you don’t have a national system treating you as a person instead of a source of money.

Those people run around screaming because they are fuckheads.  They are marinated in the politics of fear and resentment, and see society as a zero sum game.  It is more important that they are richer than you than that you both be rich.  They identify fully with their money and their possessions to cover up the gaping void in their souls.  They do not know who they are, except that they are better than the [blacks/women/queers/mexicans].  They are deeply, deeply ignorant, and afraid of anything different than them.  And being afraid they strike out against it.

They are wingnuts.  Fuck them.  They’re not worth pissing on.

Ben D., the Sunnis and American conservatives are so comparable. Just look at the number of fucking bombs that have gone off in the past month! Wow! Nice play outta Rove’s book, you fucking hypocrite.

Cool gun, BTW.

it’s not even that i am against a free market, or that i don’t understand how a free market *works*

its that there is this place between “free market” and “ free people” that the Marketers never want to see. if that makes any sense…

i mean, i am radical in lots of (sometimes conflicting) ways, and i *know* that i am radical and don’t expect the general public to agree with me. but on this particular topic, MOST PEOPLE want healthcare that they can AFFORD, they all KNOW that one single thing can destroy them (and bankruptcy? no longer actually useful in the US. sigh)

not even that, really - its that the “free market” is supposed to be an institution that treats with everyone and treats with them all equally - but it doesn’t ever seem to work that way, for anything - the people with something to sell sell what they have, and then they hoarde what they make, and then they sell more, and (as you say) distory the entire function, over and over and over and over…

there are times (when i am idlely considering my Benevolent World Dictator Policies [after i have an argument about what my title should be, that is - Benevolent World Dictator is ahead by 3 points at the moment, but that’ll probably change soon]) when i really do think things like “every single person should be given X amount of X” - as in, every person should be entitled to have a place to live and 3 squares a day and etc, and then if they want *MORE* than that basic allotment, they work for that *MORE*.
like, say, i myself, an unmarried non-mother adult woman am entitled to 300sq ft of private living space, and 3 meals and a snack a day, and an “allowance” per year for clothing, a certain amount of other necessities (toothpaste and brush, shampoo, conditioner, soap, cleaning supplies for the space, toilet paper), local transportation free via public mass transportation, and most healthcare for free. the only not-free are those things that are 100% cosmetic (and even then, if you have a good case that your over-large breasts, or the large mole on your face, or whatever, were detrimental, it would be a “mental health necessity")

but if i wanted more or “junk” food, more square footage, more clothes, better shampoo, and actual luxeries (perfume, books, movies, stereos, etc, etc, etc) i would get a job to earn more money for those things.
but since A) no one *has* to have a job, specifically and B) everyone who works is working ONLY because they want to be able to buy non-necessities, the market will actually be much free-er in most senses. for example, jobs will pay what they are *actually* worth to their employees, because that will be the *ONLY* way to retain them - items will be priced at cost+minor profit; no more 1000% markup just because they can! some big company wouldn’t find it easy to show up and muscle the smaller companies out, a la Walmart, because the small companies wouldn’t have to charge more to stay open, because they won’t have to pay for things like healthcare, and anything that isn’t a necessity is going to be considered a “luxery”, so cheap crap won’t be so all-enduring (if people didn’t HAVE to pay for basics, then they would have the money for *quality* if they wanted to earn the money - they wouldn’t lose most of their paycheck to rent and food and such...)
and snobs could just work harder to get better jobs (because all schools will be free, this will be kind of easy, yet still competitive, but not life-and-death competitive, ya know?) so that they can look down at those who are happy with the basics…

i know, i know, no utopia could ever really happen. i can think of 40-billion things wrong with this “plan”, and i’m the one who wants it! but i can dream, right? sigh.

I usually just lurk and I apologize for contributing to the off-topic side conversation, but Chet is completely right, at least on this issue. Acupuncture is not effective, and there have been significant problems in studies purporting to show effectiveness. The fact that sham (toothpick) acupuncture is as effective as “real” acupuncture supports this. Also, you still haven’t proposed a quantifiable, detectable mechanism through which this is supposed to work. The existence of ‘new age’ energy, ‘qi’ or what have you cannot be supported by evidence.  How is this supposed to work? What are the physiological/neurological processes by which acupuncture addresses ailments? I’m sorry Chet has had to bear the brunt of so much anger just for stating the truth in response to a hostile and defensive reaction from Judi.

Furthermore I take issue with the idea that there’s no harm in it, even if it doesn’t work. There is harm. For every person who is perfectly happy to pay 60$ a week for their placebo treatment, there’s another person with an actual disease who believes the claims these people make and dies because they wasted their time on sham medicine instead of actual treatment.  I recommend looking around this website
> http://whatstheharm.net/acupuncture.html

I believe people have a moral duty to speak out against pervasive bad ideas like this that cost lives.

I’d like to respond to the articles you posted, but I lacking access, I was unable to read the actual study and you can’t base anything off of reading only the abstract.  However, The QuackCast Podcast addressed some of those very studies in Episode 21, if you are interested.  http://www.quackcast.com/spodcasts/files/podcast_20.mp3
If you don’t care to listen, the “acupuncture” used in the first study you listed was actually a TENS treatment,
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transcutaneous_electrical_nerve_stimulation),
a mainstream medical technique which has proven efficacy and an actual physiological mechanism by which it is supposed to work (electrical stimulation).  Slipping TENS into acupuncture trials is a reasonably common method of inflating the effectiveness of the “acupuncture” treatments.

Point in fact, Judi, the consensus of the medical community does not support the efficacy of acupuncture.

By my count, that makes the score

judytrolli: 2
Pandagon: 0

She’s not here to have an honest discussion, folks. She begins by declaring that anyone who disagrees with her must in fact be the real trolls. If you take the bait, she then sets the hook by calling you a far-right extremist and insane. It’s already repetitive and boring, but admittedly effective.

I’m not telling you whether to reply or not. Just know who you’re dealing with.

Sorry to not care about acupuncture today, but DTG in STL notes something far more important and something that reformers must keep an eagle eye on and loud voice about:
The cops are almost always going to be on the side of the conservatives.  There could be twenty anto-reformers throwing punches but the second that one reformer throws one he, not they, will be the subject of attack and arrest.

The St.L incident is illustrative of this and DTG is right to draw our attention to it: there’s a town hall; conservative thugs twitter like mad about bringing guns, etc; they arrive, and start screaming and intimidating; when the violence started the cops attacked the victims and arrested NO conservatives, and DID arrest somebody who dared to record what they were doing.  (American cops have started to hate cameras more than drug dealers.) Let’s not forget the mass civil rights violations in NY at the 2004 GOP convention where NYPD pretty much acted as the paid security goons for that party and have been laying out massive civil rights suit payouts ever sicne.

Face it: for the most part the cops have taken sides with the authoritarian arm GOP, and inevitably so: they get to do what they want, when they want, to the people that they want, and get buckets of cash and guns and other toys to do so, and with NO consequences.  There’s a reason that military thugs gravitated to the brownshirts rather than the communists, and you are seeing it again.

Ben D., the Sunnis and American conservatives are so comparable. Just look at the number of fucking bombs that have gone off in the past month! Wow! Nice play outta Rove’s book, you fucking hypocrite.

Did I say anything about comparable levels of violence? No? Then please shut up.

Ben D., the Sunnis and American conservatives are so comparable. Just look at the number of fucking bombs that have gone off in the past month!

Americans don’t use bombs.  We use guns. But, please, continue to pretend that we haven’t seen any right-wing violence in the past six months.

Ha ha, trolls have one study, one wingnut website, and refuse to read the consensus opinion, written in standard English, of the World Health Organization and the National Institute of Health—based on the contributions, multiplicity of studies, and assessment, of hundreds of scientists, researchers and doctors worldwide over a period of decades—and they believe they “win!”

Another problem with wingnut trolls: they can only hold one tiny opinion in their minds , comprehend something small, providing it’s written in a sarcastic tone and are always, always ready to swallow the opinion of one crank that fits their undereducated “belief.”

And on another note (and comment above) I have to disagree: right wingnuts DO use bombs as well as guns: as a for instance, in their terrorism against reproductive rights, not to mention the Oklahoma and Atlanta Olympic bombings.

Ha ha, trolls have one study, one wingnut website, and refuse to read the consensus opinion, written in standard English, of the World Health Organization and the National Institute of Health—based on the contributions, multiplicity of studies, and assessment, of hundreds of scientists, researchers and doctors worldwide over a period of decades—and they believe they “win!”

That “consensus opinion” is “well, it’s better than nothing and doesn’t cost all that much.” Most of these studies were fatally flawed in design by not having a proper placebo.

Not a sterling recommendation. And, again, “real” acupuncture is not any more effective than toothpick poking, which you don’t need years of training to do (and is therefore even cheaper.) So it makes no sense for you to defend acupuncture and not toothpicks.

We’re not “right-wing trolls.” We’re simply people whose minds are closed to that which can’t be supported by good evidence. You know, reasonable people.

“Reasonable people” ha!

“Minds closed,” I’ll grant you.

You can understand “toothpicks” because it’s been dumbed down enough for you, but that’s about it.

But that’s the point with wingnut trolls, they can trade insults back and forth, but that’s about it.

And perhaps you should be concerned that you come across as a right wing trolls: your intellectual incuriousity, your stubborn disavowal of all but one crank source, and so on and so forth.

I understand conservatives have used violence (McVeigh, Roeder, etc.) but to compare them with the tiny minority of Sunnis in Iraq, who allow the placement of IEDs and suicide bombers, is just idiotic.

Not everyone who disagrees with you is a wingnut troll.

I understand conservatives have used violence (McVeigh, Roeder, etc.) but to compare them with the tiny minority of Sunnis in Iraq, who allow the placement of IEDs and suicide bombers, is just idiotic.

Since we’re comparing a country that was invaded by outside forces that broke down civil society and a country that is mostly functioning despite occasional outbreaks of right-wing violence, I think we’re talking about a difference in degree, not in kind.  If we did see a major societal breakdown along the lines of having our entire infrastructure bombed to pieces by an invading army, I don’t think the moral superiority you’re claiming for Americans would last very long.

Has judybrowni hit Doggerel Bingo yet?  I only ask because I like my sanity too much to read her jibbering moronity.

your intellectual incuriousity, your stubborn disavowal of all but one crank source

What “crank” source?

Why is it, Judy, that you’re completely unwilling to apply even the smallest portion of skepticism to your beliefs? Why is it that you’re completely unwilling to brook anyone else being skeptical about your beliefs? Why is it so important to you that none question acupuncture?

Isn’t it because you suspect it’s bullshit? That repeated studies showing no more effectiveness than random jabs with toothpicks have really shaken your faith in Chinese medicine? That, in fact, you recognize that it’s pretty unlikely that anyone could have developed an accurate, comprehensive model of human physiology 1600 years before the invention of the microscope?

Just a reminder, I wasn’t the one who compared American conservatives with the Sunnis in Iraq.

Just a reminder, I wasn’t the one who compared American conservatives with the Sunnis in Iraq.

You seemed to think it was a ridiculous comparison and that there are no points of parallel between Sunnis in Iraq and American conservatives here at home.  While I don’t entirely agree with Ben D., I think he made a defensible point, so I defended it.

Judy, your articles say only that study should be done.  Not that it has therapeutical benefit.

Either way, $40 is like what I spend taking my spouse to the movie.  So at that price, I won’t argue about its therapeutic value.

I understand conservatives have used violence (McVeigh, Roeder, etc.) but to compare them with the tiny minority of Sunnis in Iraq, who allow the placement of IEDs and suicide bombers, is just idiotic.

Sure, our society is way more stable. The degree of violence is not similar, but the disconnect between them thinking they are the majority and the reality that they aren’t, their attitude of entitlement, and the anger when they don’t get it is similar.

And BTW I never said “Sunni insurgents”, just “Sunnis”. There are many, many, Sunnis in Iraq who feel that way but aren’t violent, most likely the majority.

Should say “vast majority”.

WTF Ben, how do you expect us to have a blog comment thread without deliberate misunderstandings?

Dude, I never said the word “insurgent.” They are enablers, though. I would say the majority of Sunnis feel that way, just from experience though.

just becausse all of this is bugging the hell out of me…

to quote: “If it’s stupid, and it works, it’s not stupid”.

Chet, have you made any survey or study of the history of “Western” medicine? do you get how full of bullshit “mystical” methods medical history is full of? how many are STILL IN PRACTICE TODAY?

Most medicine is bullshit. And is based on bullshit ideas. for example, one you cited - meridians.

but just because MOST of it is bullshit doesn’t mean ALL of it is bullshit. YOU DON’T KNOW. one the most important features of SCIENCE! is the “not jumping to conclusions” - without facts, you have no way of knowing whether something works - you have no way of knowing *why* something works

and what i am seeing here is that You, specifically, have been told by some people that You trust that acupuncture is “fake”. And the idea of it being “fake” fits into how you think the world works – things that have been studied and tested (and, usually, based on western ideas) are “Good” and “Real”, and anything that doesn’t fit into that is “fake”. Even when, as seems to be the case here, lots of different doctors and scientists are seeing a phenomenon (acupuncture make something better) that cannot be explained. According to SCIENCE!, what needs to be done now is testing, to find out *what* is going on and *why*

Eastern Medicine starts from a different place than Western medicine, and because it works off of different presumptions, it works *differently*. and please note i said *different*, not *wrong* - many of the fucking presumptions of WESTERN medicine are wrong - like the one that the baseline for health is MALE, and how most studies are then conducted on exclusively, or almost exclusively, male subjects (the few exceptions being things like breast cancer - where then the assumption is that only women get the disease, which is ALSO fucking wrong). most of the presumptions of Eastern medicine are also wrong.

but that doesn’t invalidate everything in these schools of medicine. there are a *LOT* of things that have been developed from Eastern practices. examples include epidurals, TENS unit, NSAIDS *not* based on aspirin/willow bark, anti-depressants, pain management techniques that don’t involve opiates (or less opiates), stim therapy to maintain muscle function in the wake of nerve damage and/or nerve death…
there are lots and lots of things that are used by “Western” medicine that have roots in “Eastern” medicine. and lots of “Western” practiced that are just WRONG.

my favorite (after “epidural") is “nerve block” - temporarily blocking certain nerves (generally a juncture of nerves) from sending signals to your brain, it’s a highly popular method among anesthesiologists for surgeries that are shorter, because there isn’t a need for intubation, and there is a *MUCH* lower risk of surgical complications.

and it was developed from acupuncture.

it is entirely possible that “acupuncture” as used in China 100 years ago was total bullshit - but that DOES NOT MEAN that what is currently called “acupuncture” is full of shit. sure, “meridians” and “chi” - which is different from the bullshit European medicine used for fucking CENTURIES how?
hell, there’s still lots of ONGOING bullshit. i have noted one really big piece of bullshit. there are others - this strange “fear” of alcohol, for one, when study after study shows that a small amount of certain types of alcohol is good for you; the way Western doctors ignore (or even sometimes PUNISH) chronic pain, because society thinks being “addicted” is worse than constant chronic pain. how fat has been pathologized - and how any fucking thing wrong with you, if you weigh more than the doctor likes, is wrong with you BECAUSE YOU ARE FAT, even if the thing wrong with you has ZERO causal link to weight

i have had several doctors recommend acupuncture, because acupuncture can change the impulses sent by nerves (which is apparently how it works at all). there are lots of acupuncture-type things used for lots of things - the above mentioned epidural, or there’s one where the acupuncturist depressed a nerve that leads to the stomach and pushing on it decreases, even totally gets rid of, nausea… even just the pressure points have palpable, measurable affect. like rubbing a certain spot of a person’s hand will lower their blood pressure, thus reliving a headache (i was in that study last year at OSU. and saw my blood pressure drop from 115/78 to 103/67. and again, started at 119/80, dropped to 106/72… others tested had similar results. most of the others tested, i should say)

but just because MOST of it is bullshit doesn’t mean ALL of it is bullshit. YOU DON’T KNOW. one the most important features of SCIENCE!

And the science shows that acupuncture is bullshit. But you only care about the science when you can distort it to your purposes, obviously.

sure, “meridians” and “chi” - which is different from the bullshit European medicine used for fucking CENTURIES how?

Different in that it is still how acupuncture proponents explain their techniques, while Western medicine - in the light of evidence - revised or abandoned old, inaccurate models. That’s the difference between science-based medicine and mumbo-jumbo altie medicine.

I have had several doctors recommend acupuncture

I’m aware of several doctors who are creationists. Takes all kinds, I guess.

hi, Chet, thanks for mistaking me as a person who is advocating for something.

did you miss the point?

i have seen science back up that *something* happens with accupuncture - there are physical side affects. blood pressure, heart rate, nerve conduction, pupil dialation, vassilary function - things that HAPPEN as a RESULT of accupuncture. this is not a “distortion” - this is acknowledgement of a simple, verifiable fact that i have seen happen in person.
in the meantime, i have seen you quote (what appears, but i don’t want to read so can’t be sure, cherry-picked quote) from ONE study and cite ONE doctor outside of that study. how is this doing any science? a SINGLE study doesn’t do *ANYTHING* but provide baslines for further studies - it isn’t until a survey of *lots* of studies are done that anything resembling “results” start to appear - and any study that coudn’t be replicated is thrown out. bearing that in mind - why are they still testing accupuncture, and testing it in new ways, new situations, new ailments, on different types of people, if the original study of “SOMETHING GREATER THAN THE PLACEBO AFFECT COULD EXPLAIN HAPPENED” wasn’t able to be replicated?
it *HAS* been replicated, it at LEAST 18 different studies that my Pain Management doctor has been involved in. some of the stuff that led to accupuncture, and lots of the myths surrounding accupuncture, are indeed mystical bullshit. take all that bullshit away, and something still happens

and, um, it’s NOT just eastern medicine that still holds on to tons of bullshit reasons for things. let me give you a BEAUTIFUL example of what i mean:
the drug marketed as “Neurotin”

neurotin was developed to control various seizure disorders (not just epilepsy, but mainly epilepsy). then, one day, a market researcher said “there is no way we can justify the amount we spent developing this drug if it is ONLY used for epilepsy and the like. what else can we try it on?”
and someone said “pain!”. “oh, of course! no one knows what the actual cause of “pain” is, we can just pretend that Neurotin affects the “pain signal” sent to the brain!”
it’s true, the actual physical happenings of pain are not fully understood. so this ignorance was used.
and testing was done.
and testing showed that neurotin was NO MORE EFFECTIVE than a placebo.

but it was AS effective as a placebo. and so the FDA approved this anti-seizure medication for use as a pain relief.
and doctors the country ‘round SWEAR by this fucking drug. they can’t tell you a FUCKING thing about how it works on seizures, let alone how it would work to manage pain. or alleviate pain. but it’s been tested and the FDA approved it for use as a pain med, so it *MUST* work! right?

(cont)

(cont)

ohohoh! here’s ANOTHER bullshit theory: women go to see doctors more often over all (when you compare the entire population of the US, and break it down by gender, women go more than men). MD students are still being taught in practials that this disparity in numbers is because all women are either hypochondriacs or hysterical. to be fair, some of the younger instructors acknowledge that *SOME* women just want attention.
THIS. IS. STILL. TAUGHT. AT STANFORD AND HARVARD AND JPHN HOPKINS AND UCSF AND OSU - and these are *JUST* the hospitals where i have seen this being taught!
and when a (female) student asked a meandering question (not verbatim, but the gist of what she asked) “wouldn’t a lot of that be self-selecting? not that women make stuff up, but that they notice sooner and don’t have as much ego invested in being “perfectly fit”, while men tend to ignore things until they are not ignorable? wouldn’t the stats then show that women are more likely to go see a doctor when something first starts (this being cheaper in the long run, and less dangerous, too), whereas a man is going to refuse to go to a doctor until something forces him to?”
know what the instructor replied?
“That may be true, Miz doctor-to-be, but that doesn’t change the fact that all women are hypochondriacts who are hysterical”
“hysteria”, by the way, being a 3,000 year old “disease” (the “wandering womb” - greeks thought a non-pregnant woman’s uterus would wander around her body, cause various illness, and that the cure for all those illnesses was pregnancy. guess what is currently being touted as *THE* best cure for “non-chronic or mild-chronic depression”?. semen. yep, people - you want to stop being depressed, go have sex without a condom with a guy and let his seman somehow travel to your brain and make you less depressed!)
hell, we live in an society where doctors and other scientists have said over and over and over and over that being not-fat is MORE than just consuming less calories than you burn, and yet every fucking person who goes to a doctor has any other condition totally ignored in facor of “weight control” - because it doesn’t matter what the ailment *IS*, right now most people (even medical people) REALLY BELIEVE that if you or you or me or him were less fat we would be perfectly healthy. i had a goddamned neurologist who tested me 20 ways from sunday and found SIGNIFICANT nerve damage (and areas where the nerves are DEAD) seriously sit down and tell me that MY WHOLE ENTIRE FUCKING PROBLEM WAS THAT I WAS *FAT*. couldn’t, DIDN’T have anything to do with major displagia of my right hip, or the dominate genetic disease i was born with called porphyria that, among other things, KILLS NERVES - my whole entire fucking problem was that i was fat, and if i would go and lose the 20 pounds i was overweight, all of my pain would *poof* dissapear.
hell, as a good sport (or a good accidental bullemic - i was on meds for six months that had me vomiting all *over* the place...) i lost over 30 pounds. pissed my surgeon off, bcause in the midst of the weight loss, i re-tore the lining of the inside of my head, meaning i don’t *just* need another surgery, i need a BIGGER surgery where MORE is done to me.

thamk all the gods EVER that as part of te anasthesology, i will be getting an epidireal -a technique based on accupuncture technique…

did you read the studies JudiBrown linked? i am not saying that “chi” and “meridians” are real - i am saying that SOMETHING has been consistently found to happen when accupuncture is used, and so what *should* be happening is research to figure out *WHAT* is happening (not bullshit “opening of chakras” or whatever, what is ACTUALLY happening, beyond the things that they already KNOW are happening like the blood pressure dropping, and etc) and HOW to reproduce it MORE effectively and WHEN and WHERE the best uses are. instead of people screaming over and over, contrary to the evidence, that its all “fake”

further, you utterly ignored everything i listed that derived from accupuncture - why is that?

i have seen science back up that *something* happens with accupuncture - there are physical side affects. blood pressure, heart rate, nerve conduction, pupil dialation, vassilary function - things that HAPPEN as a RESULT of accupuncture

Also with random jabs from toothpicks. Needles are being put into the body, it would be pretty unusual if nothing were the result of that, after all.

why are they still testing accupuncture

Because it’s a very popular woo with a completely fictitious mode of action. It is, therefore, interesting. I hope the studies continue, because each one proves the inherent inefficacy of traditional acupuncture.

MD students are still being taught in practials that this disparity in numbers is because all women are either hypochondriacs or hysterical. to be fair, some of the younger instructors acknowledge that *SOME* women just want attention.

This seems to be you not being able to distinguish between science and the people who do it. My wife has heard from her professors that women make terrible grad students because when they graduate they just get married and have kids, and all that instruction is wasted.

Would it be fair to say, therefore, that “modern genetics” teaches that “women make terrible grad students because when they graduate they just get married and have kids”? No, of course not. Sexist doctors don’t impugn evidence-based medicine - sexism, after all, is not evidence-based.

i will be getting an epidireal -a technique based on accupuncture technique…

That isn’t even close to true.

further, you utterly ignored everything i listed that derived from accupuncture - why is that?

Because none of it actually was “derived” from acupuncture. I ignored it because I trusted that the claim was so ludicrous that even you would see through it after you posted. The West didn’t need hucksters come from China to come up with the idea of injecting things with syringes.