Jill Stein Promotes Homeopathy, Panders on Vaccines
Before I go any further let me state very clearly, the headline is not true. However, it was the headline I was greeted with as I visited one of my favorite websites patheos.com. Being an atheist I usually enjoy reading articles on their Atheist Channel.
The article is here.
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/progressivesecularhumanist/2016/07/jill-ste...
and examines Dr. Stein's response to a Reddit AMA question: "What is your campaign's official stance on vaccines and homeopathic medicine?" Dr. Stein's response can be found here...
https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/4ixbr5/i_am_jill_stein_green_part...
I don't know if we have an "official" stance, but I can tell you my personal stance at this point. According to the most recent review of vaccination policies across the globe, mandatory vaccination that doesn't allow for medical exemptions is practically unheard of. In most countries, people trust their regulatory agencies and have very high rates of vaccination through voluntary programs. In the US, however, regulatory agencies are routinely packed with corporate lobbyists and CEOs. So the foxes are guarding the chicken coop as usual in the US. So who wouldn't be skeptical? I think dropping vaccinations rates that can and must be fixed in order to get at the vaccination issue: the widespread distrust of the medical-indsutrial complex.
Vaccines in general have made a huge contribution to public health. Reducing or eliminating devastating diseases like small pox and polio. In Canada, where I happen to have some numbers, hundreds of annual death from measles and whooping cough were eliminated after vaccines were introduced. Still, vaccines should be treated like any medical procedure--each one needs to be tested and regulated by parties that do not have a financial interest in them. In an age when industry lobbyists and CEOs are routinely appointed to key regulatory positions through the notorious revolving door, its no wonder many Americans don't trust the FDA to be an unbiased source of sound advice. A Monsanto lobbyists and CEO like Michael Taylor, former high-ranking DEA official, should not decide what food is safe for you to eat. Same goes for vaccines and pharmaceuticals. We need to take the corporate influence out of government so people will trust our health authorities, and the rest of the government for that matter. End the revolving door. Appoint qualified professionals without a financial interest in the product being regulated. Create public funding of elections to stop the buying of elections by corporations and the super-rich.
For homeopathy, just because something is untested doesn't mean it's safe. By the same token, being "tested" and "reviewed" by agencies tied to big pharma and the chemical industry is also problematic. There's a lot of snake-oil in this system. We need research and licensing boards that are protected from conflicts of interest. They should not be limited by arbitrary definitions of what is "natural" or not.
The article written by Michael Stone and published on patheos has this to say about Jill Stein's response.
Given Stein’s background as a physician it is surprising to find that the candidate is soft on vaccines and willing to promote the thoroughly discredited practice of homeopathy.
I'm not sure how the author got that interpretation from her well thought out and nuanced response.
As a physician, and a scientist, her answer should have been clear and unequivocal: Vaccines work; homeopathy is bullshit.
That is such a simplistic response and is the type of black and white oversimplified responses that most people are getting used to from the likes of Hillary and Trump.
So it's only been a few days since Bernie used the word "endorse" once in a lengthy speech and the hit piece writers have moved their target from Bernie to Jill. The writer gives himself away as a Hillbot with his final fear laden words.
...a vote for Stein is in effect a vote for Donald Trump. For rational, pragmatic progressives, Trump is unacceptable, and Hillary Clinton is the only reasonable choice in 2016.
The silver lining? Jill Stein is now being perceived as someone who needs to be taken down. The Hillary fans are getting twitchy.
Comments
Oh yeah, pretty soon she's gonna be Jenny McCarthy with a PhD
and how ignorant is she? What the fuck ever. There is NOTHING wrong with -opathy, whether Homeo or Osteo. Anybody that wants to try to convince me otherwise can go bark somewhere else. As far as vaccines, well, you know what? If you want your kids in a public school, then they do need to be vaccinated against simple common everyday germs. But if you're home-schooling them? Do whatever you want. This is America, goddammit, don't tell people they shouldn't have a choice when it comes to their own children.
I'm truly shocked that the smear machine geared up so quickly, though. Their internal polling--and their email influxes from constituents--must be blisteringly ugly right now. GOOD.
i disagree with you.
homeopathy is PURE SNAKE OIL, and the people selling it should all be in jail for fraud.
END OF STORY.
In case I was unclear about that: END OF STORY.
As to childhood vaccination, I disagree that parents have the right to condemn their children to suffering from -- and possibly dying from -- horrific diseases like measles, polio, and TB in order to satisfy their foolish superstitions: Not even if they're going to lock them in the basement away from all of society, which of course is NOT what they'll do -- instead they'll bring them to Disneyland where they can kill the immune-compromised children of other people.
The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.
I know you feel strongly against homeopathy
We've talked about this before.
I tend to see it as harmless sugar pills, that if they trigger the placebo effect, can maybe make some people feel better, but at worst will not harm them. (Of course, I would agree that no one should be allowed to say something like "homeopathy cures cancer, or homeopathy will lower your blood pressure" but I'm not aware that anyone besides outright fraudsters WOULD say that.)
I certainly don't think it should be outlawed, and what would you outlaw - sugar? I don't believe there's a lot of homeopathy producers selling it as an alternative to say, chemo or life-saving surgery. It's mostly: allergy relief, or to help you sleep, or to help ease muscle pain. So, in other words, things that you could do without medication for.
I'd honestly rather people take a harmless substance for minor aches and pains than many over-the-counter meds that wreak havoc on your liver. I'd rather see some kind of labeling requirement specifying it contains no active ingredients than putting well-intentioned people who believe differently in jail.
But I don't expect you to agree with me, Untimely! Just talkin'
I mostly DO agree with you, actually.
I'd prefer that the people who profit from homeopathy all be in jail, because they are in fact frauds.
However, I'm not particularly excited about the measures that would be required in order to put them in jail.
The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.
I'm going to pull a Comey, Untimely...
Can you actually BE a fraud if you are not INTENDING to be fraudulent?
I get what you're saying, but I think most homeopathic producers and providers believe in it (I could be wrong - I don't know much about the producers, although I have known a few natural healers who sometimes used it as an option in their practice. They were believers, or at least agnostics).
So I guess I don't see the ill-intent that you do. Just belief in an anachronistic or perhaps illogical idea. And since I have a few illogical ideas/beliefs of my own, I try not to judge others for theirs!
I know what you're saying, but when there are billions
to be made from a product the manufacture of which requires absolutely no technical expertise of any kind, and the authenticity of which cannot, by the very definition of the product, be measured by any means, I'm going to assume that the vast majority of the billions of dollars will be sucked up by confidence artists. It's actually a little bit baffling that every confidence artist in the country isn't in on this particular con. There are 0 barriers to entry and the competing products are 100% indistinguishable from one another, which means the primary determinant of market share is going to be salesmanship -- and con artists are amongst the most-skilled salesfolk in our society. It's slightly mystifying that homeopathic remedies don't sell for 49 cents a bottle, which is about what it costs to put a small attractively-labeled bottle of water on a store shelf and sell it to a customer.
The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.
The homeopathic pharmacopoeia
What the F, you say?
I refer to The Homœopathic Pharmacopœia of the United States (HPUS). The information in that document is used quite far afield of traditional homeopathy; for just one example, it is one of the bedrock information sources for naturopathic medicine, which is no unilateral fraud. Application of the substances in HPUS according to traditional homeopathic practice won't get anyone anywhere. Application of those same substances using more reason-based approaches (which is what naturopathic physicians, pharmacists and herbalists do) results in far better and more repeatable affirmative results.
Moreover, Dr. Jill Stein is very much correct on one central front here: we do not have a core of science-based medicine in this country. We have a core of profit based medicine, with just enough of a veneer of science to keep the lawyers at bay on the "good" days. In Dr. Stein's own words, this is because the profiteering foxes are, in virtually all cases, the guards at the medical hen-house. Under no other situation would we be getting a situation where we see commercials for patented prescription medications smack-dab next to commercials for personal injury lawyers suing the manufacturers of those same medications!
And we definitely need to break the chains chaining American medicine to profit business. We need a separation of Medicine and Wall Street as badly as we need separation of Church and State -- and for much the same reasons.
"US govt/military = bad. Russian govt/military = bad. Any politician wanting power = bad. Anyone wielding power = bad." --Shahryar
"All power corrupts absolutely!" -- thanatokephaloides
naturopathic medicine may wander its
way into therapies that are effective, but the philosophy that underpins the practice is an ideology, not a reasoned body of theory derived from analysis and deduction from empirical observation. naturopathy is never going to cure a significant fraction of cancers, for example, because the naturopathic "understanding" of the genesis and biology of cancer is, to be blunt, wrong. expecting naturopathic therapy to cure one's cancer is only slightly less naive than expecting naturopathic therapy to set one's broken tibia; expecting naturopathic therapy to stop a MRSA infection is only slightly less naive than expecting naturopathic therapy to stop a polar bear attack.
The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.
You missed my point, Untimely. (My apologies.)
My point was that even when old-time herbal remedies work, you still can't use them the way homeopathy tells you to use them. It's a serious irony that the homeopaths have compiled one of the best bodies of knowledge regarding these remedies, yet they themselves still insist on using them incorrectly. The HPUS becomes ever less homeopathic year by year, as more modern (and more scientific) monographs (what HPUS calls essays on substances) replace older ones.
In short, I'm agreeing with you, once you consider the above-described piece of irony! Naturopaths are becoming ever more compatible with regular, science-based medicine because the foundational document of homeopathic pharmacy upon which they rely is, well, becoming ever less homeopathic in nature.
Science will do that, you know. It's the way it works!
One time I was quite happy that homeopathy is pure crap. Some homeopathic asswipe I read once suggested administering an infusion of aconite to cats as a remedy for some sort of ailment.
The only "ailment" taking aconite internally will ever cure anyone of is life. The shit's more toxic than cyanide per unit weight! Fortunately, Our Intrepid Homeopath was suggesting a dilution of 20X, which means (IIRC) one part in 1.0E+21 of original infusion. At this dilution the likelihood of any volume equal to the original infusion's volume containing even one molecule of aconitine is quite negligible, and so all our poor cat would have gotten was a sip of (hopefully) pure water.
But I daresay we've transited rather far off-topic here......
"US govt/military = bad. Russian govt/military = bad. Any politician wanting power = bad. Anyone wielding power = bad." --Shahryar
"All power corrupts absolutely!" -- thanatokephaloides
i understood you, but i decided to ignore your point
in order to focus on my own rant. sorry about that.
The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.
I certainly don't think it
False claims of medical efficacy.
They can sell all the sugar they want. They just can't call it medicine.
"for relief of hypoglycemia"
The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.
They may be outright fraudsters, but they are out there in
droves. https://www.google.com/search?q=afford+a+vet&cad=b&biw=1093&bih=495&dpr=... How would people know they're fraudsters without a science background? This is very dangerous.
You would outlaw, I suppose, outlandish claims, rather than the substances.
Nevertheless, I think what Dr. Stein is driving at is, if we have medicine and other scientific research without a profit motive, such research would quickly eliminate drugs that do more harm than good, as well as drugs that are ineffective, and people would trust the findings of the FDA because they would be working in the interests of the people. So crappy vaccines, worthless homeopathy, and Breo and such would ALL be off the market in no time. And if we have a "homeopathic" remedy that actually has an effective herb in it, we'd soon know that too even if it isn't patentable.
Please check out Pet Vet Help, consider joining us to help pets, and follow me @ElenaCarlena on Twitter! Thank you.
Of course, you can disagree all you want
and you can end your part of the story here if you so choose. There's no need to be overly defensive about that much: if you disagree, you disagree and I do not begrudge you that. But let me be clear--just because you disagree with me or anyone else on this particular subject, that does not authorize you alone to end the entire conversation. Particularly when the fear-based part of it is being used to smear-by-association on Dr. Stein and it is completely unjustified.
(edited to note: I am not saying YOU are using any of this to smear Stein by associaion-I'm just sayin', it's real easy to see where the whole thing is headed. See my first comment upthread)
And I agree, as far as any of this applies to Stein's remarks,
as I noted in my comment downthread.
Beyond that, there is exactly as much evidence that homeopathy is "real" (outside of a placebo effect) as there is that the universe was created by the Flying Spaghetti Monster, ie., none. Homepathic "theory" is not theory at all -- it isn't even reasonable hypothesis -- because it is completed unsupported by any evidence of any kind. It's just something someone made up. If I spent fifteen minutes tonight inventing a new system of alternative medicine whose principles were based on the harnessing of splurgons -- "energy" rays emitted by a remarkable species of xenobacteria living on Phobos -- it would have exactly the same essential genesis as did homeopathic theory, namely, the idle fantasy of an overexcited imagination. I will respond to anyone who ever suggests that homeopathy is anything other than bunk in exactly the same way I would respond to anyone who ever suggested that the earth is flat, or the sky is a crystal dome: With firm, adamant, confident dismissal. No matter how sincerely that person may believe that the earth is flat, the earth is not flat, and that is the END OF THE STORY, not because I said so, but because there are some actual indisputable facts in the universe, and among those indisputable facts are that the earth is approximately spherical and that homoepathic theory is nonsense -- literally, nonsense, as the language with which it is expressed is not, strictly speaking, meaningful.
The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.
Yes, you've made it abundantly clear you disagree n/t
I've decided that I further despise homeopathy because the
evidence of my previous comment is that I cannot reliably type the word correctly.
The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.
Ha! It IS impossible to type correctly the first time....
Every time I responded to you I had to backspace and correct it. Let's stop talking about, shall we?
sure. i need to concentrate on my splurgon theory anyway.
The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.
You think typing "homeopathy" is hard?
Try typing "pharmacopoeia" a time or two!
"US govt/military = bad. Russian govt/military = bad. Any politician wanting power = bad. Anyone wielding power = bad." --Shahryar
"All power corrupts absolutely!" -- thanatokephaloides
i loathe all of those british spellings of old
greek/latinate words, with their pointless silent 'o's and 'a's before various 'e's. "oestrogen"? "daemon"? "oenophile"? screw that. i wish webster had taken all of those out to the trash along with the superfluous 'u's he chucked out of "honour" and "splendour" etc.
The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.
o's, e's, and a's
NO lie! (Although, it's my understanding that "oenophile" is actually pronounced as if it were spelled "wenofile", so at least there, there's some rationality behind it!)
"US govt/military = bad. Russian govt/military = bad. Any politician wanting power = bad. Anyone wielding power = bad." --Shahryar
"All power corrupts absolutely!" -- thanatokephaloides
you have been led astray ...
http://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/pronunciation/english/oenophile
also, the OED seems to believe that in "US english" it is spelled without the silent "o" ... i've never seen that, though.
The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.
and now, i'm tempted to refer to the OED as the "ed". heh.
The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.
You are entitled to your own
You are entitled to your own opinion, not your own facts.
Homeopathy is quackery. Calling it medicine is fraud.
And people who don't want to vaccinate their kids should be sent to Plague Island. (We'll have to designate an island for this, obviously, and rename it.)
jeez, you're even meaner than i am!
The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.
Nope. Saying it all mean and stern-like
doesn't lend more gravitas or authority.
Sorry. Just sayin'...
I love your end of story comment.
What better way is there to shut down discussion?
Not worth discussing anything with anybody of that attitude.
End of discussion.
Regardless of the path in life I chose, I realize it's always forward, never straight.
It is no more worth "discussing" homeopathy with
someone who does not dismiss it out of hand, than it is worth "discussing" the theory of physiological "humors" with an adherent thereof, other than to state, categorically, that the other person is mistaken.
The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.
Then don't discuss it
at all. Nobody's twisting your arm, you know
i'm not discussing it.
i'm discussing discussing it.
and now, i'm discussing discussing discussing it!
and now, i'm ... oh dear ...
The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.
I beg to differ. There are people who haven't been exposed to
either homeopathy, the "science" behind it, or real science. You never know who might be reading online and still convince-able. But I don't think anybody is pushing the humours (ha!) any more.
Please check out Pet Vet Help, consider joining us to help pets, and follow me @ElenaCarlena on Twitter! Thank you.
There is plenty of evidence of Homeopathy being effective
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1513149/
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1697745/
Those links, one article in 2 parts, compare findings in many studies for a range of conditions. Some show more effectiveness than others, some the effectiveness is marginal at best, but many show it to be effective. The part about Stomatitis really stood out to me.
In a study on Acute Otitis Media and Upper Respiratory Infections in Children the authors go into detail as to why homeopathy is very often the pragmatic choice. As for it's effectiveness: "Homeopathy appears equivalent to and safer than conventional standard care in comparative effectiveness trials".
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3833578/
Here's a study showing Homeopathy being equal to conventional treatments for acute respiratory and ear complaints except that conventional treatments had more adverse drug reactions in adults than homeopathy.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17335565/
Here's a summary of a study comparing conventional treatments of sinusitis with a homeopathic treatment. It found them equally effective. Interesting in is the difference in perception about effectiveness between the doctors and the patients.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12006727
There are a wide range of conditions where homeopathy has shown to be effective in numerous studies, and a wide range where it hasn't also in numerous studies. But, where it has been shown to be effective, that's it: it's effective.
I think her vaccination answer is perfect
Of course vaccines work - it's been proven. But some people are also skeptical (i'm one of them) that we all need a vaccine for every illness - like the flu - every single year. Should elderly and at-risk persons get a flu vaccine? Sure. But since the flu is constantly mutating, a vaccine is only good for a season, and those not at risk should be able to decide whether or not they need that vaccine, instead of being jumped on by some pharmacist every time you go to the grocery store.
And her point about the regulatory bodies is so accurate. People need independent scientists they trust to be regulating the industry, and vaccination rates would go back up.
As someone who works with immune compromised kids...
...not getting vaccinated if you are able is akin to deciding to drive on the sidewalk because it is more convenient. You can easily kill someone, most likely a kid, and you wouldn't even know you did it. Also it is freeloading in the worst sense, you are getting the benefit of herd immunity while actively undermining it.
Proven safe vaccines should be mandatory for all adults and children - with only medical exceptions allowed - its the only way to prevent senseless deaths.
The key phrase in your comment is
I absolutely agree with the "mandatory" part, but the "safe" part of the vaccine must be clearly, demonstrably documented and tested. I think where things go south is over the "testing" or lack thereof, because profit.
That said, I really think the bigger point of this post is that Jill Stein is no anti-vaxxer, and that article tries to paint her as one. And that's bullshit and propaganda, there should have been no spin by this "source" to associate her with the anti-science crowd. Her answer to the question clearly demonstrates that, and that source chose to be dishonest about it.
Indeed, testing is an issue
Indeed, testing is an issue and making an actually independent agency to verify ALL drugs as safe should be a top health priority. So often drug companies will hide studies that don't show the results they want. Less money in vaccines so less reason to mess with the trials...but it's kinda like HRC - once you KNOW they lie you can't trust a damn thing.
Probably why the anti-vax movement does so well here is because the FDA allows so many of the drug trials to be run independently by the companies instead of just taxing the drug company profits and doing the tests themselves (would still need to seal the revolving door, but it'd be a step)
There wil be little testing of any vaccine with a pandemic.
Think Ebola, pipeline vax not ready for prime time, but no hope for susceptibles. And you will want it.
Hey! my dear friends or soon-to-be's, JtC could use the donations to keep this site functioning for those of us who can still see the life preserver or flotsam in the water.
My particular comment did not reference pandemic
This is a general concept--expecting mandatory vaccine to be SAFE and EFFECTIVE and that it is thoroughly DOCUMENTED. And that the testing doesn't rest on the sole motive of PROFITEERING.
That is not an unreasonable need or desire, any way you slice it. That we don't quite have this anymore is the basis for all the goddamn fear. I'm not into scaring the shit out of everyone over this stuff. That is part of the problem, too, IMO.
Yes, it was a typical Clinton hit piece.
GODS! She is so slimy. I wouldn't vote for HRC if she were running against Kim Jong-un.
I've seen lots of changes. What doesn't change is people. Same old hairless apes.
I think her comments are good
But if she is ever going to make headway in politics she should find a way to say that much more simply and concisely. Most people aren't going to parse all those words to get what she is saying. Nuance and subtlety don't seem to work well in politics.
If everything in this country wasn't for sale,
maybe people would believe their institutions instead of wanting to blow them up.
"Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich."--Napoleon
Stone's complaint is bizarre.
A. Stein addresses the problem of anti-vax sentiment at its root: People are susceptible to propaganda when they know that the target of the propaganda is fundamentally untrustworthy -- and tragically, our medical regulatory institutions are indeed fundamentally untrustworthy, for the same reason that HRC is fundamentally untrustworthy: They are effectively the property of the for-profit medical-industrial complex. (Are those same people similarly aware that the modern anti-vax movement has its corrupt origins, not in any kind of science, but in the PR war to defend the profits of the fraudulent chiropractic industry from collapsing in the wake of the polio vaccine?) The long-term solution to our cultural "anti-vax problem" is not to scream louder and louder at the anti-vax crowd, it is to restructure the regulatory apparatus so that even marginally informed and thoughtful people can trust the recommendations of that regulatory apparatus. I don't hate anti-vaxxers, I pity them, and regret living in a society that lends itself to creating such minds.
B. Stein says nothing supportive of homeopathy. Sure, I'd love to hear her say, "Homeopathy is fraud," but we all have much bigger fish to fry.
The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.
Sorry, this was supposed to be in response to HK's comment
immediately preceding dkmich's ...
The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.
I would believe my institutions if they actually worked
They no longer work because their politics have been corrupted to the point where the regulatory part of all this doesn't take all human safety into consideration. One Size Does Not Fit All with some of this stuff. People have the right to question that, based on actual results that they see.
I believe vaccine laws can be made more sensible
There is a growing body of work that some people are genetically inclined so that they are more likely to have reactions to vaccines - for the humanity of those children, we really need to do more research for how to protect the outliers in a way which is consistent with protecting the herd.
I did not have trouble with vaccines, myself, thankfully, but I am an outlier in other ways. For instance, I have a genetic issue with absorbtion of a medication I take which keeps me alive, and over the years, that issue has complicated other medical interventions meaning that I have come extremely close to dying a handful of times because of complications related to the drug and this genetic issue.
The medical establishment as it exists is extremely rigid about accommodating those of us who deviate from the norm. I certainly am not an odd duck intentionally, my body is just rigged a bit differently than most others. I nearly died, however, when my medical providers refused to provide observation in a situation similar to ones where I had had life-threatening complications previously. I had Cadillac insurance at the time, and these guys refused me flat out without asking my insurance to consider the relative worth of what I requested.
'What we are left with is an agency mandated to ensure transparency and disclosure that is actually working to keep the public in the dark' - Ann M. Ravel, former FEC member
Even physicans are becoming aware
that one size-medicine practice is not working maybe 60% of the time. The costs of testing for efficacy (other than titer-tests for vaccines) is high and of course the HICs deny. Rock and hard place. I do not envision a solution.
Hey! my dear friends or soon-to-be's, JtC could use the donations to keep this site functioning for those of us who can still see the life preserver or flotsam in the water.
we will see whether the promise of "personalized medicine"
pans out. in the not-too-distant future, we may be able to sequence an individual's genome for as little as $100 -- and certainly for under $1000. at least one company has a technology that might eventually be able to produce the sequence data in as little as 15 minutes (though it's unclear, in that circumstance, how much additional time will be required for the computational analysis of the sequence data).
a whole lot of the mystery of why various therapies do or do not work for various individuals is going to be solved over the next 20 years. there have already been real successes.
The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.
Latest test drive plan is genomic sequencing PLUS
gut microbiome sampling. Currently for NIH (in-house, research subjects), still $7000/person. Forget about $100 tests soon. Cytochrome P450 enzyme tests will happen first. Nearly there. How much of a barcode for you would you trust?
Hey! my dear friends or soon-to-be's, JtC could use the donations to keep this site functioning for those of us who can still see the life preserver or flotsam in the water.
there are already are CYP tests out there.
but they're relatively expensive and targeted to very specific mutations.
$1000 genome is REALLY close, close enough that soon there'll be no point in doing things like CYP tests, because you might as well spend the extra money and get the full dataset -- though in clinical context, a $1000 genome is probably going to translate to a $1500 genome.
And in clinical practice, it will be hard to get a full genome for under $200, ever, because there's going to be $100 in overhead for pretty much anything. That said, for $200, it would RIGHT NOW be practical to sequence your mitochondrial genome, which might be as valuable as sequencing all of your CYP genes.
An interesting question is whether it would be cheaper to deep sequence the transcriptome, which is the primary matter of interest. That could certainly be done for $100 (actual lab cost, i mean). The expensive part would be getting the samples -- I can only get CYP transcripts from a liver sample, for example. And of course, getting neural tissue would be dubious under ANY circumstances. On the other hand, as a DIY project, you could take skin samples from yourself, induce them to a pluripotent state, and differentiate them forward into a half-dozen or so tissue types of interest in order to get a relatively broad swipe at the transcriptome. Then you could send the cells to be sequenced as a single sample. No idea how much it would cost to pull off the tissue culture -- probably more than you want to think about -- but you could get the sequencing done for about $500, depending on what is actually needed. Liver differentiation is a tough nut to crack, though (don't believe all that hype about people ink-jet printing mini-livers. liver cells in culture start to lose their liver-ness within a few hours.).
As a not-DIY project, everything I've described above could possibly be done in a commodity-service setting for less than $1000, if someone set up a business to do it. What would make it expensive would be the regulatory environment. You can bet the FDA would be all over your butt, for sure. It's a perilous way to try to make money, but if I had 10 million dollars, I'd probably be willing to blow 2 or 3 million of them on a startup, because if I made it work, I'd be a billionaire.
The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.
But who cares about mtgenome, there are few "alleles"
and much of mitochondrial goodness is encoded in the nucleus. The only reason to sequence mtDNA is that there is so much of it, relative to nuclear. Major mutations (maternal, duh) would be lethal in utero.
Co$t will come down. I had footprinting done for under $100, (cheek swab). But to get the transcriptome? As you pointed out, problematic. Since part of the transcriptome is off, down, wide-open in different differentiated tissues, that don't shed cells that aren't scarfed by immune cells, I don't see that happening. Too much epigenetics, on top of imprinting on top of X-inactivation.
I'll talk science, out only 8 years after 30+ in.
Hey! my dear friends or soon-to-be's, JtC could use the donations to keep this site functioning for those of us who can still see the life preserver or flotsam in the water.
What I've recently been learning about mitochondria
is that they aren't very well understood. You may be correct in supposing that most of what is interesting in individual variation has to do with so-called "mitochondrial proteins" that are coded in the nuclear genome.
The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.
Oh, and WRT to transcriptomics ...
it isn't out of the question that in the very near future a robotic system will be able to cheaply produce a set of tissue cultures that cover most of the transcriptome. Epigenetics might or might not be a long-term obstacle, we really don't know yet. We do know how to blow away most of your chromosomal methylation, but we don't really know the significance of doing so, and of course, if we do that in order to take your induced-pluripotency cells forward through a differentiation protocol, we'll be losing possibly important information about your epigenetics -- but we'll still be able to sequence your transcriptome, which was the original goal.
On the more practical hand, there's the technique called "exome sequencing", which is much less exotic than the clever scheme I laid out, but has the advantage that it already works. In fact, I note that it is cited in a 2013 paper as having a cost of $7000 in a clinical research study ...
The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.
Tissue cultures, unless primary excisions
get altered by in vitro culturing. Henrietta Lacks' tissue cultures have very little to do with the primary (papillomavirus) tumor. We are still not good at replicating in vivo conditions, imagine growing on a piece of plastic.
Hey! my dear friends or soon-to-be's, JtC could use the donations to keep this site functioning for those of us who can still see the life preserver or flotsam in the water.
You and/or UR ought to just do a separate post on this subject
cuz I'll guarantee you, all this insider stuff you two got going on here in this thread is pure TL:DR eyeglazing material, in the middle of a general discussion. You'd go further with putting the thoughts out there as a real stand-alone for consideration.
Just a suggestion...
Wow, and just think
if it wasn't all about profit, maybe people could actually be healthier? Maybe those regulatory agencies wouldn't need to be such assholes in response...
There you go again -
...acting like we could make a better world for all of us. You Berniecrats are sure single-minded on that topic. What happened to your good ol' 'Merican I got my Fvck You attitude?! /s
'What we are left with is an agency mandated to ensure transparency and disclosure that is actually working to keep the public in the dark' - Ann M. Ravel, former FEC member
I know, I know
I can't help myself, sometimes
BTW, not quite sure what you mean about trusting a barcode.
My largest concern about widespread genomic testing is that in a society as unforgiving and selfish as ours, it will be used to marginalize most of the population, denying them health care, life insurance, and possibly even things like education, credit, driver's licenses, etc.
For my own therapy, I'll trust my barcode about as much as I trust any other elements of my personal healthcare. Given my professional expertise, I'd probably take a closer look than would the average joe at whatever my physician told me "we know based on your genomics".
The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.
See above. I submitted a cheek swab to the Mormons.
It went back in what looked to me like DNAlater solution, barcoded tube. And have you been hospitalized recently?
Hey! my dear friends or soon-to-be's, JtC could use the donations to keep this site functioning for those of us who can still see the life preserver or flotsam in the water.
barcodes are SO 2015.
We'll all be chipped, man.
Of course, worst case is a T gets turned into a B and you end up with something like this happening:
The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.
I envision a solution
I envision one.
Do what every other developed nation on Earth has done to one degree or another: divorce medicine from corporate profit. There really are some things which should only be done in a Socialist manner. Medicine, especially non-optional medicine, is one of them.
"US govt/military = bad. Russian govt/military = bad. Any politician wanting power = bad. Anyone wielding power = bad." --Shahryar
"All power corrupts absolutely!" -- thanatokephaloides
So very, very simple and uncomplicated
Hillary is looking for a wedge issue
to divide and conquer the left with. During the primaries she used the "misogyny" label but that obviously won't work against Jill.
"Please clap." -- Jeb Bush
Misogyny
Why not? It worked great against lots of women who supported Bernie.
They're running scared.
Hillary's numbers are falling. Trump's are creeping up. And Stein's are likely to take a big jump as Bernie supporters switch away from him after his endorsement of Hillary. Sadly (for Hillary), the coronation is in doubt and it may not be "her turn" after all.
May your prognostication on who's turn it is become reality! n/t
“What the herd hates most is the one who thinks differently; it is not so much the opinion itself, but the audacity of wanting to think for themselves, something that they do not know how to do.”
-Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860)
The dreaded anti vax'ers
and anti-science, anti-GMO smears that are being leveled at Jill Stein shows she's getting traction in the political arena.. One of the reasons I left dkos was that I was constantly being accused of being a dangerously anti-science and must therefore be a Fundamentalist RW religious crackpot. One poster suggested anti vax'ers should have by law a tattoo on their forehead. Talk about fanatical believers.
I like Jill am not anti-vax or anti-science but I do have problems with out of control corporate for profit multinational entities like Big Pharma or Monstanto declaring that their products or technologies are infallible, unquestionable and the only way forward for humans. Like the only truths in life are those that corporate for profit scienceman has authorized. I expect that the more the Green's become an attractive option as far as politics goes they will come under this type of attack. They are after all environmental extremists and eco terrorists who believe in humanistic heresy.
Cannabis is a perfect example of your point.
Look at how many things this natural herb can treat and all you need to procure it is some dirt, water and sunlight.
And that is why they are fighting it so hard.
So, if they are so willing to lie about Cannabis why the hell would I ever trust anything that comes out of their mouths?
That's the problem with going on the record as a liar. Nobody can ever fully trust you again.
"I used to vote Republican & Democrat, I also used to shit my pants. Eventually I got smart enough to stop doing both things." -Me
The two concepts are not mutually-exclusive of
one another. At all. You can be okay with actual, time-tested, effective vaccinations for your family, while still questioning egregious cases of profiteering at the expense of human health with some of the vaccinations mandated. Drugs are changed and as time has gone on, regulations have been relaxed. When they are new chemical cocktails in a syringe that don't have a lot of long-term testing done or had the potential to produce adverse effects, there should not be a problem with questioning that, without being branded a fucking loony.
The Hillary apologists must be getting scared
of Dr. Stein, and the Green Party, if they are already unleashing their lackeys and misinformation minions about her.
Camp Hilbot: "Look, over there, that Green Party candidate is a scary anti-vaxer!"
I bet there are several diaries about it already on Orange State. First they ignore you, then they laugh at you...
When HRC announces her plan for universal FREE
vaccination, which is what the wealthiest nation in the history of nations could and should easily afford to provide to its citizenry, I'll begin to be vaguely interested in anything she or her lackeys have to say on the matter.
The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.
That'll never happen
because profit! Can't have those big pharma donors cutting into their take-home compensation, don'tcha know...
A 25% cut......
....... in our annual non-personnel military spending would easily pay for universal free vaccinations -- and that's under our price-bloated profit medicine system. And we'd still spend more on military than all other nations combined!
We really need to stop trying to run all the other countries in the world and start worrying about or own for once!
"US govt/military = bad. Russian govt/military = bad. Any politician wanting power = bad. Anyone wielding power = bad." --Shahryar
"All power corrupts absolutely!" -- thanatokephaloides
Had we decided, in the aftermath of WWII and its
new era of antibiotics, to declare a hot war on some of humanity's real enemies instead of a cold war against ourselves, we probably could have -- for considerably less money than we spent on munitions, i believe -- annihilated Neisseria meningitidis, Neisseria gonorrhea, and Chlamydia trachomatis. Instead, we squandered the opportunity by using the new antibiotics to fight a holding action against those three very real enemies of humanity, which impose a global economic burden in the many billions of annual dollars.
We probably could still take out C. trachomatis, because it scarcely exists outside of human cells -- it's kind of like a parasite -- so there isn't a "wild" reservoir of it lying around anywhere -- it could be hunted down and exterminated rather like smallpox was.
The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.
So simple
so basic. Once again, you nail it:
Seriously. Maybe then we'd have the money to actually take care of our own citizens with basic, time-tested, long-effective medicine that eliminates treatable disease.
Yes there was on the other site
By a front pager. And the attack piece has stayed on the front page. Yah I think other posters are right. Stein has been noticed by the Democratic party establishment, and they view her in the same way Nader was viewed. I have no doubt that Hillary's campaign has assigned people full time to destroying Stein, and have obviously enlisted other groups and people.
So desperate
she is....
Not that I desire to be a contrarian, but I'm not gonna lie.
I'm sorry, her answer to that question was a little disconcerting. Basically, it almost came off as, "I'm not an anti-vaxxer, but…"
First off, just to get this one little issue out of the way, homeopathy is bullshit. Period.
Jill gave a long and overly complex answer to a simple question about vaccines. She sounded like the usual Washington fielding questions by throwing out a bunch of bullshit while skirting around the issue.
With regard to the question of vaccines within her statement, this is all she should've said:
At that point she could've pivoted towards the pharmaceutical industry and how the FDA seems to regularly approve drugs w/ those weird-ass side effects and advertised on TV in a cheesy manner.
Also, the question itself is interesting to me. It would seem to me to be a case of "New Age-baiting," as it were.