If Steve hadn't opted for 9 months of naturopathic therapy after diagnosis, and progressed straight to surgery, he would probably be still alive. But he believed in the power of woo.

Still, R.I.P, Mix & Burn as they say.

I do think there was a great deal of hagiography in the mainstream press. I very much doubt if, had Jobs not existed, anything would be particularly different. We might still have floppy drives, but I don't think so.

I liked my SE30, my Quadra and my iMac, but they are just boxes that go beep for goodness sake. I've never understood the devotion and even adulation that Jobs and Apple seem to have engendered - and to a certain extent, it's this which is being reacted against when we hear so many paeans to Apple.




No let's definitely remember Bob Wallace.

"If Steve hadn't opted for 9 months of naturopathic therapy after diagnosis, and progressed straight to surgery, he would probably be still alive. But he believed in the power of woo."

uhhh what the hell is "woo"? I find it funny how people that dont like alternative medicine resort to slang terms in reference to it to prove a point. It is like racial slurs. Makes you sound ignorant concidering you most likely have zero idea what you are talking about anyway

Often people will use a confirmation bias falacy to show how alternative medicines work because of one or another specific case worked (without considering statistical significance and how they will most likely never hear of the cases that didnt work).

Now here's an example of someone who really believed in alternative medicine, had no money problems to do them all, and yet died after having denied traditional treatment. So how do those that go for alternative medicine explain? He didnt believe it enough? It was his destiny to die? He went to the wrong shaman/acupuncturist/chinese doctor/whatever his choice ? I think its interesting to use this case to raise questions, and its logical that those who are more skeptic will certainly see this as a good example why alternative medicine can be dangerous

(though of course, we neither know if he would have survived otherwise, and one cannot make the inverse affirmation that alternative medicine will never work because that would be also going to confirmation bias falacy if we use this one case to confirm the hypothesis)

nonlocality choice of word when saying 'woo' seemed to have a derrogatory connotation, and I think your constructive criticism in the first sentence after your question is valid. But then I think when you say he sounds ignorant and you say that "most likely he has zero idea" is unnecessary and seems more like an (agressive, imo) emotional venting from discussions you might have had with other people, than actually a point related to this very discussion and to nonlocality.

Plenty of rich people who trust western meds implicitly die of pancreatic cancer. It has a notoriously short life expectancy whatever you do. I read that people who get a transplant due to complications from it rarely live more than 2 years.

Besmirching Chinese Medicine is simply wrong headed, regardless. If you don't believe in the power of accupuncture simply google "open heart surgery acupuncture" and watch any one of the videos of people undergoing the most invasive of all surgical techniques with acupuncture as the only anaesthetic. THEN tell me about Chinese Medicine being woo.

The open heart surgery with acupuncture is a fanciful scam.

"But then I think when you say he sounds ignorant and you say that "most likely he has zero idea" is unnecessary and seems more like an (agressive, imo) emotional venting from discussions you might have had with other people, than actually a point related to this very discussion and to nonlocality"

I dont know what nonlocality has to do with anything here, but you are right I probabily should have worded that last part differently. I still think that when I hear people generalize like that it seems like they dont have a rational grasp in reguards to what they are adressing. It would be the same as if someone held all germans to the standrards of the nazi party, just becasue some germans were nazi..or like how some people assume all americans are stupid and support the iraq war etc just because there are some that do. Just because some alternative or naturalpathic medicine is bunk does not mean it is all "woo" etc..some people generalize in the same way towards allopathic medicine just becasue some bunk meds are prescribed and big pharma is there to make a buck..but that does not mean all mainstream medicine is any more "woo" than alternative medicine. It just means that there is more too it, and that yes most likely people who generalize in such ways do not fully grasp what they are talking about.

So you say. I suppose that is why it is still regularly being done in China?

I have experienced the power of acupuncture to turn off my sense of pain. I had a pain in my back that disappeared instantly after the insertion of 2 needles.

Should I take your word... (an authoritative 'one sentence pronouncement' from on high) over my own experience and the hundreds of videos and testimonials that exist?

There have been some studies where untrained or poorly trained lab technicians set out to disprove acupuncture, and suceeded (according to the criteria they laid out)... of course, following the funding for these tests tends to lead one to institutions that have a serious conflict of interest. There is a lot of moneyed interest in seeing alternative medicines discredited.

I ask you this, though... Why has Chinese Medicine survived for 10,000 years if there is nothing to it? Remember in the old Chinese system, you only payed your doctor when you were healthy. As long as you felt ill, you stopped paying him, so the interest of Chinese Medicine was to keep you healthy... rather than keep you manageably ill, as in Western Medicine.

The main pioneers of the Chinese system of health were physicians to Chinese Emperors... most of whom were faced with death should the Emperor die under their watch. Not saying this is a good way to deal with it, but it does tend to motivate people.

Why, I ask, do people continue to go back to their acupuncturists year after year, and swear by them if they got no benefit? Why do the wealthiest people in Beverly Hills jealously guard their acupuncturists? I could see a small number of gullible weak minded people who might be brainwashed or have simply convinced themselves... but hundreds of millions of people worldwide? Seriously?

Find a good acupuncturist (it is a fine art, and someone with a lot of experience is preferred), tell him all of your ailments (not just ones you consider medical conditions, but energy levels, emotional state, stiff back, bad breath, whatever), let him treat you for a couple months... and then report back to see if your issues are not improved or cured. Forget what you read in AMA sponsored junk science.

Acupuncture is not a wonder cure. There are things they can not fix. They will be the first to admit this. But for things they do know, they work like gangbusters. The Chinese Herbs continue to be vindicated year after year, in test after test. Ginseng, Ma Huang (Ephedra), Reishi Mushrooms etc. etc. All have compounds that Big Pharma knows work, and have stolen for their commercial use for decades. Is this a fanciful scam? If so, who is perpetrating it and why?

"Stay hungry and stay foolish" sounds like a wonderful mantra for all his consumerist users to chant.

Given that I type this from a Macbook, it was given to me; what can I do but use it till it's gives up.

I don't even buy technology anymore, it's all garbage and death made into something that connects us; personally maybe I'd just rather be alone when all my technology finally dies.

I like the connection, but I agree with you, it is mostly vapidity. Hell though that's life.

Sadly so, but we just have to fell more upful some more; try and do the best we can.

Woo is the noise you make when you wiggle your fingers and widen your eyes to indicate mystical forces at work.

I'm a reductionist when it comes to medicine. If it works, it can be shown to work. If it can be shown to work, then I can accept it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bBUc_kATGgg

I guess Tim Minchin owes me his piano, his leg and his wife.

Obviously you'll need to speak to his agent.

I contracted cancer in 1994. I had anasthaesia, surgery, and ablative radiotherapy. If I had been offered treatment by homeopathy, naturopathy, acupuncture, crystal healing, Vitamin C therapy, spiritual healing as an alternative I would have refused. If I was diagnosed again today, I would still refuse. Simply because I don't believe in it, and I have never been given cause to do so.

Steve Jobs obviously did have cause to believe in Naturopathy, until it failed to do him the slightest bit of good, then his belief in "Western Medicine" returned.

His last words were "OH WOW. OH WOW. OH WOW." I wonder what he was seeing/feeling.

Again..you are grossly overgeneralizing. "Naturalpathic medicine" covers a bread variety of practices..lumping it together with things like homeopathy and crystal healing to make a point seems sort of pointless and makes your claim here somewhat biased. Do you not believe in herbal medicine or remedies either?

I was very sick at one point with a prostate glad infection, colitus, IBD and stomache ulcers..I went to many allopathic doctors who dod not do a thing to help me. I went along with what they suggested and to be honest, it was all a load of crap IMO..After I was sent to a sergeon to get my prostate looked at, I asked him about naturalpathic and alternative medicine, and he sort of told me off the record that some patients have had more success that route it seemed. So I went. Instead of taking weird digestive pills and just eating more fiber and all this other shit I was told to do by other doctors..I changed my diet big time..I got off meat..I got off dairy..I did yoga..I drank ALOT of ayahuasca(that was not suggested to me though)..I stoped eating breads after a while as well and soon cut out all grains. Now I am eating a diet of fresh fruits and vegetables, nuts and seeds. All raw. That is all I eat and I drink pure spring water..no tap water...and you know what?? It worked. It worked after a few years of suffering going from allopathic doctor to allopathic doctor and just getting worse.

I have also watched a handful of family members die miserable deaths due to cancer over the past few years, all of them undergoing mainstream treatments, radioactive burning and all..all of them dying miserable deaths. I have spoken with other cancer survivors who went on 100% raw juice diets and survived..people who were diagnosed terminally ill with only months left to live..

When you say something like "naturalpathic" medicine, and then lump it into the sentences you did summing it all up as "woo" it makes you sound less than informed on the topic.

I only know what I believe. I do not claim to be knowledgeable enough to pronounce ultimately on the subject. In Steve Jobs' case, I'm given to understand that his condition which was discovered early, is very responsive to early treatment. However, because he believed in the efficacy of his dieting therapy, which was described in the press as "Naturopathic", whatever it was, he delayed surgery for nine months. It didn't work. He took himself from the high to the low survival rate.

People should be free to choose their own medical treatment, or refuse it entirely, of course. But here, where it is provided by a national organisation, funded out of taxes and delivered free at the point of delivery, evidence based medicine is extremely important.

If there was useable evidence that clearly demonstrated the efficacy of an 'alternative therapy' then the NHS would adopt the treatment (although it would need to be ratified by the National Institute for Clinical Excellence), because it would save them money. It's not a perfect system, by a long way, but it does go some way to ensuring that we are not treated with ineffective medicines and procedures.

In the case of traditional chinese medicine, life expectancy in mainland china is a lot lower than other countries that rely more on 'western medicine'. Bizarrely, because of its excellent and extensive healthcare infrastructure, Hong Kong residents can expect to live 10 years longer than someone just over the border.

I'm not saying what I think is correct and solid fact. I don't believe facts like that exist on a topic so staggeringly broad. But I am saying that ,on the face of it, alternative medicine is actually bunk in terms of the explanation of the effects if there are any.

I cannot deny that alternative therapies can sometimes have a pronounced effect, but I believe those effects are attained by what effectively amounts to placebo. [I don't include extreme, patently damaging therapies like a Breatharian diet, as that is obviously (to me!) garbage]

I declared my hand as a reductionist. If there's actual, incontrovertible evidence it works, then fine.

Belief is not knowledge.

Otherwise religious cultists would all have phd's.



Then don't.



False. A huge percentage of people with Job's pancreatic cancer die, whatever treatments they follow.



Steve Job's was an American. In the US, the only free medicine you get is a swift kick to the butt as they toss your broke ass out on the street to die in an alleyway.



There is. You simply have not bothered to avail yourself of it.

The idea that adopting alternative practices would save the western medical establishment money is ludicrous. They make more money by getting you to avail yourself of their patented pills, expensive machinery, and even by your dying. Saving is trumped by profiting.

Study the economics of medicine and then tell me that having you take a tea from a plant that might grow wild in your local area makes the AMA (or anyone in 10 related businesses) money. They would rather prescribe you something that is wholly owned by big pharma. A large portion of those drugs are proven to be more toxic and less effective than the plants they were extracted from originally.

In fact, to get FDA approval, such compounds need only be less than 1% more effective than placebos. Many actually exacerbate the things they are purported to treat. Anti-depressives for instance are a leading cause of suicide. Also, big pharma is known to cherry pick data and fudge testing to get something they want to sell approved. They are businessmen... not altruists.

Meanwhile the LD50, hazard ratio, and the therapeutic index on such chems is often egregious or worse. The TI, for instance, is a comparison of the amount of a therapeutic agent that causes the therapeutic effect to the amount that causes death (in animal studies) or toxicity (in human studies). With many commonly prescribed medications, this ratio is 2 or 3. With marijuana, for example, the ratio is not calculable. Yet, most people who could benefit from cannabis do not even have the opportunity to try out a substance they could grow easily, in any climate... for free.




This is a red herring straw man. Leading cause of disease is water related.

Water related illness kills more people than all forms of violence put together including war.

Hong Kong is an urban city with modern water treatment. Mainland China is agrarian villages where many people don't have an improved water source at all. In fact, it's estimated that reduction of certain bacteriological diseases by 80% could be achieved through water source protection from raw sewage.


Because it isn't.


That is why we use aspirin (derived from willow bark based on a native remedy). Or any of another 10,000 compounds that big pharma rushes in to patent from native remedies.

I suppose that is why Monsanto has spent a fortune trying to patent every ayurvedic herb in India to the point that the Indian government has now decided to sue them. http://www.naturalnews.c...biopiracy_Monsanto.html



There is. Do some research.

You can be as pugilistic in style as you like, don't worry, I'm used to it.

I have another worrying melanoma on my back due for removal; absolutely true.

Should I go to the surgeon as planned, like I did for the last one?

Or should I opt for one of the following:

Homeopathy
Crystal Healing.
Reiki.
Rolfing.
Spiritual Healing.
A special diet.
Traditional Chinese Medicine.

In all seriousness, what do you think I should do?

You've obviously studied the subject in depth, and have a great deal more knowledge than I do about the whole field. What therapy will be best?