Where is Henry Sullivan? I have very interesting news regarding NUCCA for him

But that is EXACTLY what most--not all, but most--of my own and my family's experience with medical doctors has been--ventured guesses from the doctors, and most of those guesses were wrong.

The leading NY pediatric orthopedist ventured a guess that I had a severe, debilitating bone disease and would never walk, when in fact, he read the Xrays in reverse order.

A well-regarded pediatric opthalmologist told my mother that I (at 4 years old) was too slow to know what an E was, and that he therefore could not determine whether or not I needed glasses--in spite of the fact that I was reading chapter books and told him straight out that I couldn't SEE the eye chart. I was shortly thereafter measured as needing -4.0 diopters of correction.

Our first pediatrician ventured a guess that our son's skin was yellow due to his Asian heritage--when in fact his liver was enlarged due to the fact that he was in congestive heart failure.

The same pediatrician ventured a guess that my son's frequent stomach aches and diarrhea were normal--when in fact, he had celiac disease.

Another pediatrician ventured a guess that my 4-month-old was fussy because I "obviously didn't have enough milk" (this, in spite of the fact that I had 20 bottles of it in the freezer), when in fact, he had just sprouted 2 teeth--she never bothered to check. She told me that I would be starving him if I didn't feed him formula.

The same pediatrician ventured a guess (at the same visit!) that I should never pick him up when he was crying at night, but that I should let him scream, even though crying made him vomit, and that I should just "come in like a robot, clean up the vomit, and leave" (her exact words).

The first orthopedist that I saw following being hit by an SUV while riding a bicycle (never good odds) ventured a guess that he didn't need any tests other than the original ER X-ray, that I would be fine if I stayed in a sling for a month (he then patted me on the head). In fact, I had torn cartilage and two torn tendons, one torn off the bone. The month in a sling caused adhesive capsulitis, which was VERY painful to fix, and also totally screwed up my neck (partially contributing, I am sure, to my being a member here).

And, dare I say it, the current vaccine schedule is entirely an experiment--there are NO long-term studies on the safety of most of the vaccines currently in use, nor are there long-term studies on the cumulative effects of 36 vaccines by the age of 2 (the current schedule, last time I checked). So far, the only studies that purport to prove safety are limited to the MMR vaccine and to one chemical (thimerosal)--and those studies are planned, interpreted, and marketed by the companies who profit from the vaccines in question.

My own doctor, knowing (because I TOLD him and listed it on the form I had to fill out before being seen) that I had a documented allergic reaction to thimerosal in eyedrops, ventured to guess that 3 thimerosal-containing vaccines at once would be safe for me. He didn't bother to inform me that all 3 vaccines contained thimerosal.

Scientific certainty exists only in theory.

Now, I'm not saying that alternative medicine practitioners are necessarily any better than traditional ones. But as a consumer, it is far easier to find patients who have the kind of results that I want for myself--treating the cause of the symptoms to get rid of them-- if I look for those who have been to alternative medicine practitioners.

When I ask around, most of those who go to traditional doctors end up permanently on medicine. Often, those medications cause side effects, that are then masked with other medications, which cause other side effects.

My father is a prime example--he is on 12 meds,and only 2 are appropriate. The others are either to mask symptoms that can be controlled with diet/exercise, or for side effects of the unnecessary medications.

Yep. Scientific certainty, at work.

 

That's because in all likelihood, if you botch any of those, the patient DIES, or at the very least, is permanently maimed. And with hair removal, breast enhancement, botox, liposuction, etc. etc. etc., the patient is not EXPECTED to die.

If someone dies within hours of acupuncture, you can bet your bottom dollar, they WILL be sued (at least, in the US). The same goes for a chiropractic neck adjustment.

My chiropractor told me of one of his colleagues, who was sued when a woman died within a few days of a neck adjustment. She'd had a stroke, and they tried to pin it on the neck adjustment, in spite of the fact that she was on birth control pills and was a heavy smoker.

However, if someone dies within hours or even minutes of a vaccine, their family is not legally allowed to sue, as the vaccine manufacturers and the doctors administering the vaccines have blanket liability protection, in spite of mounting evidence of harm from vaccines.

 

Actually, chiropractic was at the end of a long line of alternate treatments for my wife. Each one we would try. If it were ineffective, which they were, we would go back to the drawing board. If Chiropractic had been unsuccessful, in either her case or mine, I am not married to any ineffectual treatment. I would have kept looking. I am not married to chiropractic. I am married to results. Whatever one can achieve results with, is the treatment they should follow. But if one is not willing to try these treatments, one will never know. That means trial and error. That means various practitioners trying different ideas. No one guarantees results. So when someone is wrong, that is the treatment did not help, I do not see that it is the practioners fault unless the risks were not revealed, with accurate depiction. And with invasive surgery, those risks can easily be shaded to favor the treatment. A 50% success rate does not qualify the extent of the success rate. It also does not tell what happened to the other 50%. Bitter? No. Absolutely not. Realistic? Yes, with eyes wide open.

 

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And if the doctor doesn't know what is actually causing the symptoms, then the efficacy stats on any particular surgical procedure go out the window. The surgeon doesn't even know what he is there to treat, only that he will be removing or shunting something. What if the symptoms are caused by something completely unrelated to the surgery, which happens all the time? Who is wrong then? No, this discussion about being wrong, when we are talking about conditions that medical science can't even define, is non-sensical. Everybody is wrong because nobody knows what they are even trying to treat. Even if the procedure goes well, with good results, the practioner is still wrong. It just happened to work. So really, this discussion about right and wrong and being responsoble for outcomes would be fine and great, but only if they understood with at least some degree of certainty what was causing the problem to begin with. At that point, one has something to measure. Until then, it is a crapshoot either way and any treatment you try.

 

Pardonme and I both used the term crapshoot independent of one another. Funny how great minds...

 

Hank, I don't know any other way to address this without sounding argumentative, but this is simply rhetorical nonsense. You can't construct an imaginary "they" as a straw man, and then ascribe a bunch of characteristics to this imaginary "they" and go on to lump every single medical practitioner on eart under this umbrella of "they."

"They" don't do, or not do, anything. And that is the problem that happens whenever medical treatment vs. alternative treatment is discussed. It's ludicrous to say, "Chirporactors are all cheats. Every single one of them. Therefore if you went to a chiro, you got cheated because all they want to do is tell you to come back for 48 continuous visits knowing full well that they're not really curing you." But yet, you basically say the same thing repeatedly about medical doctors.

Or, if I was the anti-chiro version of Taximom, I would say, "I'm not saying all chiros are cheats. I'm just saying that on this extensive list of 357 different individual contacts that every single member of my family have ever had with a chiro, they got absolutely cheated and purposely poisoned, then charged 450% of the going rate. But I'm not anti-chiro at all. They're great people." And, by the way, let's not get into the whole vaccination thing yet again, because there is no "mounting" evidence of any such thing.

And to go back to you, Hank. Non-medical science has NOT defined MM either. Do you not understand that? You rip medical doctors for treating an illness they can't define. Yet you accept whatever definition is given to you by a chiro, regardless of whether or not the definition is even true. And you don't think THAT's non-sensical? Do you not even consider the possibility that the chiros treatment "worked," despite the fact that it worked for reasons that the chiro actually has no knowledge of? Of course not. Because he gave you an asnwer, and you assume that since the treatment worked his answer must be right. Yet, you just said above that a medical doctor might still be wrong even if the treatment worked, and therefore he shouldn't necessarily be believed? You can't have it both ways.

 

Wow! I am almost afraid to get into the heat of this discussion.

I have looked at conventional treatments and also alternative medicine. I personally have had better responses from the alternative.What works for one person may not work for another. Our bodies (mind, body & spirit) are all different due to social pressures, traumas, and just life in general.

However I do wholeheartedly believe that WHATEVER you choose to do you have to believe in it 100% or it will not benefit you.

Happy healing,

 

This is nonsense. Botching any of the procedures I outlined doesn't mean anyone dies or is permanently maimed. Botched hair removal can burn. Breast enhancements can look bad, without "maiming." Plenty of women walk around with a face full of botox thinking they look great when they look like plastic-faced freakshows.

If someone died from an acupuncture session, I'd have to wonder what the hell the acupuncturist could have possibly done to cause that outcome. It should be investigated because that would be one heck of an unusual incident.

Being on the pill and being a heavy smoker are risk factors for stroke. Your story by itself says nothing. Was it an embolic stroke, or a hemorrhagic stroke? Did the person have an underlying aneurysm? What was the pre-adjustment work-up? Were there neurologic signs of problems that were missed? This story means nothing at all in the absence of context. And in my experience it is very rare that one chiro's colleague is going to present the story objectively.

Finally, this idea about vaccine manufacturers being absolutely protected is false. I've already posted the link to that once before. Vaccine court is a condition precedent to bringing a suit. But if your claim is denied, you have the option of preoceeding in court.

 

Using the term practioner do you mean doctor, chiropractor, nutritionist, accupunturist, herbalist etc. or just medical doctors?

 

You say, "let's not get into the whole vaccination thing yet again," and then you get into it yet again by posting misinformation.

Please see http://www.nvic.org/injury-compensation/vaccineinjury.aspx and www.nvic.org.

According to Dr. Bernadine Healy, former director of NIH (the National Institute of Health) and Health Editor for US News & World Report:
"I think the government, or certain health officials in the government, are - have been too quick to dismiss the concerns of these families without studying the population that got sick. I haven't seen major studies that focus on - three hundred kids, who got autistic symptoms within a period of a few weeks of a vaccine. I think that the public health officials have been too quick to dismiss the hypothesis as irrational, without sufficient studies of causation. I think that they often have been too quick to dismiss studies in the animal laboratory, either in mice, in primates, that do show some concerns with regard to certain vaccines and also to the mercury preservative in vaccines. The government has said, in a report by the Insitute of Medicine—and by the way, I'm a member of the Institute of Medicine. I love the Institute of Medicine—but a report in 2004 - it basically said, 'Do not pursue susceptibility groups. Don't look for those patients, those children, who may be vulnerable4. I really take issue with that conclusion. The reason why they didn't want to look for those susceptibility groups was because they're afraid if they found them—however big or small they were—that that would scare the public away."

and
"...as a trigger, vaccines carry a ring of both historical and biological plausibility.
Go back 40 or 50 years. The medical literature is replete with reports of neurological reactions to vaccines, such as mood changes, seizures, brain inflammation, and swelling. Several hundred cases of the paralytic illness Guillain-Barré after the swine flu vaccine were blamed on the government and gave Gerald Ford heartburn—but eventually led to the vaccine court. Pediatricians were concerned enough about mercury, which is known to cause neurological damage in developing infant and fetal brains, that they mobilized to have thimerosal removed from childhood vaccines by 2002. Their concern was not autism but the lunacy of injecting mercury into little kids through mandated vaccines that together exceeded mercury safety guidelines10 designed for adults."


As for your ridiculous statement that there is not mounting evidence of harm from vaccines, I call everyone's attention to the thousands of severe adverse effects reported by doctors to the Vaccine Adverse Effect Database: http://www.medalerts.org/

I would remind everyone that the CDC estimates that only 1-10% of severe adverse effects actually get reported.

You do the math.

 

Because you injected the issue in the first place. You keep coming back to this issue.

Incidentally, nothing that you posted in response to my comment about the lack of mounting evidence disproved my statement. The only thing Dr. Healey said in that statement is that she thinks further studies need to be done, and that link is "plausible." Lots of things are "plausible," it doesn't make them evidence. The fact that vaccines cause reactions in specific people means that vaccines are no different than any other medical treatment in the history of medicine (or even alternative medicine for that matter, as there are people who adversely react to that, too). Some people are deathly allergic to peanuts, it doesn't mean peanuts are deadly and need to be eradicated.

 

No, but it means that peanut oil and its derivatives should not be in vaccines that are given to the general population.

However, starting in the 1960's, many vaccines have contained adjuvant 65-4 and/or 2-phenethyl-propianate, both of which are derived from peanut oil.

 

I'm trying to identify any relevance of what you wrote to what I wrote and you carried forward. I brought it forward again below. No, I agree, this should not sound argumentative. But what I wrote had to do with the efficacy of any particular surgical treatment on any particular person's symptoms, and using those stats to bolster a case for invasive surgery, IF the medical practitioner does not know what is causing the symptoms. If that is the case, those stats go out the window. They are useless. That is for good reasons. The stats were compiled among a group of folks who had certain similar symptoms. It was successful in, say, 50% of the group. well, who's to know, may the 50% for whom it worked had a particular cause of symptoms that this treatment would would for 100% of the time? Maybe the other 50% had conditions for which the treatment would work 0% of the time. So unless the practitioner knows what he or she is there to treat, then he or she cannot use medical evidence of efficacy as a reason to urge soemone to have surgery. If he does, as you say, he is wrong, even before he makes a cut. What is the price for being wrong? Now the same thing might be said about alternate treatments, as long as any statistical evidence used to decide to go ahead with the treatments is based upon unknown conditions. In the case of NUCCA or any other upper cervical chiropractic treatment, the condition he or she is there to treat is known. It is a spinal misalignment. The results of the treatment can be measured objectively. Chiropractic does not treat symptoms, only the spine. So my chiropractor gives me no definitions beyond the spine. And if the spine is the cause of the symptoms, either correcting the spine will ease the symptoms, or it will not, depending upon whether the damage to the tissues caused by the misalignment, and causing the symptoms, can be repaired. And I readily accept that in the cases that chiropractic works, there may never be a discernable reason 100% understood. That goes to the complexity of the human nervous system. Yet I say, who cares why? Who cares why it worked, if it works. I guess you do. But this post of your was about the consequences of the practitioner being wrong. That is what I responded to. The medical practitioner being wrong, urging a surgery, using faulty statistics to bolster his case is much more egregious than any alternative treatment provider, performing a non-invasive, benign treatment. This is about the consequences of being wrong.