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Originally Posted by Didace
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In general, I believe people should do everything possible to avoid taking any medication at all until there are no other choices.
Seems like a good way to die.
Most drugs are worthless when not net harmful.
For example, the mentally ill have
far better outcomes in the third world than they do in the West, with all of our psychoactive drugs, training, and money we throw at the problem.
Cancer treatments are worthless outside of a few specific cancers which can be treated well; 52% of cancers spontaneously remit while 54% do so with chemotherapy. When you include selection bias and exclude the handful of specific cancers where chemo does work well, they're worthless and probably net harmful.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15630849
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The overall contribution of curative and adjuvant cytotoxic chemotherapy to 5-year survival in adults was estimated to be 2.3% in Australia and 2.1% in the USA.
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As the 5-year relative survival rate for cancer in Australia is now over 60%, it is clear that cytotoxic chemotherapy only makes a minor contribution to cancer survival. To justify the continued funding and availability of drugs used in cytotoxic chemotherapy, a rigorous evaluation of the cost-effectiveness and impact on quality of life is urgently required.
Prostate cancer testing is worthless, and the treatments used as a result of it are incredibly harmful and permanently life changing for
no meaningful gain.
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The medical community is slowly turning against P.S.A. screening. Last year, The New England Journal of Medicine published results from the two largest studies of the screening procedure, one in Europe and one in the United States. The results from the American study show that over a period of 7 to 10 years, screening did not reduce the death rate in men 55 and over.
The European study showed a small decline in death rates, but also found that 48 men would need to be treated to save one life. That’s 47 men who, in all likelihood, can no longer function sexually or stay out of the bathroom for long.
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So why is it still used? Because drug companies continue peddling the tests and advocacy groups push “prostate cancer awareness” by encouraging men to get screened. Shamefully, the American Urological Association still recommends screening, while the National Can
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Testing should absolutely not be deployed to screen the entire population of men over the age of 50, the outcome pushed by those who stand to profit.
I never dreamed that my discovery four decades ago would lead to such a profit-driven public health disaster. The medical community must confront reality and stop the inappropriate use of P.S.A. screening. Doing so would save billions of dollars and rescue millions of men from unnecessary, debilitating treatments.
I could list 20+ examples of widespread mainstream medical practice that is unjustifiable and net harmful.
Medicine is absolutely wonderful for acute conditions, but most chronic conditions are rarely worth treating with drugs. It's not terribly different to cult beliefs or quack alternative therapies -there's a narrative that drugs mostly work and a drug for everything, while spontaneous remissions, which are very common, provide confirmation bias that the drug works, when the data doesn't support it.
When you consider side effects, you're simply better off staying away, usually.
Not that this applies to Accutane - it's highly effective in getting rid of acne.
Last edited by ToothSayer; 07-17-2017 at 10:33 PM.