2y ago

What are some notable scams in history that went unnoticed for so long?

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Homeopathy, acupuncture, ozone therapy... all "alternative medicines" basically.
- Like the old joke, "What do you call alternative medicine that works?" "Medicine!"
  If some herb, plant or extract has a proven effect it will be adopted by real medicine, and all that is left in alternative medicine is the scams that do not work.
  
  You’re almost right. Modern medicine needs to synthesize natural compounds to profit fully from them. They can’t just use natural remedies and present them to patients because they can’t patent them.
  
  I'm sure that's a major part of it, but I also wouldn't want to live in a world where we could only get aspirin from willow bark. We either wouldn't have enough aspirin or we wouldn't have any more willow trees. Medicines derived from the actual source aren't possible on a global scale in most cases.
  Capitalism is a blight on society and has lead to countless deaths. But in a utopia where money doesn't exist and people create medicine for the world only to help people with no profit they still need to synthesize it.
  
  major part of it, but I also wouldn’t want to live in a world where we could only get aspirin from willow bark. We either wouldn’t have enough aspirin or we wouldn’t have any more willow trees. Medicines derived from the actual source aren’t possible on a global scale in most cases.
  Capitalism is a blight on society and has lead to countless deaths. But in a utopia where money doesn’t exist and people create medicine for the world only to help people wit
  I agree with you but in that case, the need to synthesize it could be made entirely based on practicality rather than profit.
  
  Not all countries have for profit medicine though. I'm sure it's a factor, but it's not a universal thing.
  There are other reasons why "natural" remedies get more scrutiny in the medical community, and the other comments have touched on a few of them
  
  There's a slight gotcha here:
  I'm in Asia and a lot of traditional chinese medicine you can buy is just regular medicine with a marketing disguise hiding the fact. Why yes, this is a box of whatever the fuck extract, very interesting, old northern recipe to cure the shit, let me just check what's written on this paper, and, yep, there it is, it's just Loperamide but with an additive to make it taste like Ginseng. Got it.
  
  Tim Minchin
  
  I worked for a medical clinic years ago.
  One doctor was pushing natural hormone therapy.
  I asked one of the other doctors. He wouldn’t touch it.
  He told me he sees thousands of patients each year. Some number will get cancer, and some number of them will sue him.
  If he prescribes a medication, he can defend himself by pointing to the medical studies showing the safety of the medication.
  If he prescribes anything natural, there are no studies showing safety, because nobody can patent natural substances. Therefore there isn’t much money to be made, so nobody spends the money to do good studies.
  Even if it was a miracle drug, he wouldn’t prescribe it.
  
  He is wrong tho, natural substances can and are regularly patented when a use is found for them or a production method that's better is discovered.
  
  That was my initial reaction at first as well. However as far as I can tell, natural products are not patentable, unless the product in question has been modified, manipulated etc, to produce something that is deemed to have been significantly changed.
  So, in the US, for example, the Supreme Court ruled that human DNA, being a naturally occurring product, cannot be patented. However, it also ruled that complementary DNA, essentially DNA that has been extracted and then modified in a lab, can be patented.
  
  Monsanto has entered the chat.
  DNA shouldn't be patentable. I guarantee you that the scenario that Micheal Crichton laid out in Next will end up happening at some point unless we reign this shit in.
  
  Medicine is any substance that has a demonstrable healthcare effect (demonstrated through double blind tests and not some rando's anecdote). That includes natural substances.
  To put it another way, medicine and natural substances are not two mutually exclusive (i.e. disjoint) sets, as you and/or your doctor friend appear to be implying.
  
  That’s not what I’m saying.
  I agree a natural substance can be medicine.
  His statement - not mine - is that it couldn’t be patented.
  Therefore the profit is limited.
  Therefore there are fewer studies than a comparable pharmaceutical.
  Therefore when (not if) he is sued, he will be less able to defend himself.
  Therefore he won’t prescribe it.
  
  Thanks for clarifying. Although I don't agree with your doctor friend from an ethical standpoint, the point about natural products not being patentable is an interesting one and hadn't occurred to me before.
- Once I made a joke online about paying for homeopathy by dipping a dollar in a jar of water and giving them the jar, and like five people I know unfollowed me lol
  
  Did you hear the one about the homeopathic who tried to commit suicide?
  He took a 10X dilution of cyanide.
  
  Lol yeh a surprising amount of people believe in it.
  I once trained to work in pharmacies, we had companies present on their products and one of them was selling homeopathic products. One of the other students asked if it actually worked and the rep's response was 'if it didn't do you think people would buy it?' I didn't say anything but I thought to myself yes, there absolutely are people who hand over money for dumb shit that doesn't work lol.
- I have a pinched nerve. I went to many doctors, done many tests, went to months of PT and was still in pain. I went to my acupuncturist and she is able to release the muscles around the pinch enough that my right arm doesn’t feel constantly numb. I a man of science. I don’t believe in he Chi traveling my body etc but the physical result of the acuponcture cannot be denied.
  
  And there are physical therapists who do acupuncture strictly for muscle release without all of the chi stuff.
  
  Yes absolutely. They call it needling though
  
  Acupuncture has actually been shown to help in some cases beyond a placebo effect.
  
  There isn't much evidence there. There's dry needling, which is the evidence-based alternative with different techniques - but much of that is built on the same evidence behind massage therapy.
  
  Not really.
  
  I feel the same about chiropractic - many people call bullshit, but I’ll be damned if they don’t help me. Like you, I don’t believe “your spine is where all your problems originate” like some chiropractics try to peddle, but the dude pushes on my back and it pops and it feels better.
  
  My brother was in total kidney failure and his chiro said the pain was likely "toxins" released from his session. Utter quack. They arent all hacks, but they can do real damage. They can paralyze you for life or even worse. I hope you will not have firsthand experience