As we take medicine, it helps on curing our sickness or any illness and in faster way
But ever wonder it extend our suffering through?
For considering this, im not saying that we should not eat medicine when we ill or sick
But the concept is, medicine cure our sickness, but it create by chemical, it affect our body from light to heavy

Think in terms of a terminal patient, who have to depend on medicine to extend his/her life,
but at the same time continue to suffer from that illness and the effect that bring to the body.

And another case of a person having small illness like flu or coughing,
taking medicine do cure his illness but the drug effect will somehow remain in the body,
slowly accumulate although it seems it does not give any bad effect at all

So this theory is to choose between:
taking medicine (drugs) to extend ur life and live with drugs, Or
Live life without medicine and suffer from natural disease

Just to hear what u all think about this theory and wish everyone can think critically regarding this issue

this is really a grey area

since the perception of keep on living is different between each and everyone

lets say a dude suffers from later stage cancer
most doctor would recommends aggressive chemo instead of palliative
since the chance to go on living is higher

on cases of and old person that have release his grips on the mortal world
well, extending the live would seems cruel if this means the continuation of the suffering (if any)

A normal human being would gladly find ways to extend their supposedly fixed life
and not let it all down to fate

humans has been known to not relent on the unknown
and just let it go easily

even if Mr. Death comes and tell to you that your time is up
you would still find ways to try delay, at least, the inevitable.


so why shun the helpfulness of medical marvel and hold on to the unknowns

most medicine are safe as in they are excreted by the body quite fast normally in a day or so. Unless the patient dont follow recommended dosage or has problem with kidney and liver.

it is the duty of doctor to adjust the dosage of medicine according to age, sex, weight, and other condition of the patient.

as for patient with terminal illness its really up to the patient to receive treatment or not.

for normal sickness its better to take medicine as that will hasten recovery, prevent complications and less infect other people.

if patient has any doubt, just ask the doctor. patient has the right to know what they are taking.

issues i can think about medicine is that medicine (in general) might interfere with the process of evolution by saving both weak and thus saving the "bad" genes. these genes thus continue in the gene pool and slow or prevent further evolution.

also the rich takes more benefit from medicine than the poor, thus results in social imbalance between the rich and poor.

generally, I view medicine do two things...

1) help human remain as the way they are.. eg. from mutation, from virus infection/invasion

2) delay dying time.... which mean when a person is dying, you don save but but prolong the time that he will die inevitably

The are two kind of medicine: First to treat symptom and Second to target the root problem.

Example taking Panadol for headache without knowing the exact reason why your body is unwell. Taking anti-viral flu medicine without understand your body is actually sensitive to dust etc...

Unfortunately, even modern Medical sciences had "superstitous" practice on it which is an open secret. Doctors do not know the reason for some of the disease or infection but knows that such-and-such treatment can cure the symptom.

A very hard topic to debate on,

Would you keep your grandmother on medication and in pain and suffering, or let her pass away in peace? That's the dilemma one would expect to come across.

medicine is rescue..for me with the correct dose we can become very sucsess
example:
bodybuilder take pill to build muscle
marathon take pill to last longer
soldier in Iraq take pill to enhance their stamina
US military pilot take pilot to concentrate

So, kudos to chinese medicine! Don't really like to take modern medicine........

Allopathy aka modern medicine has a tendency to label any treatment out of their practice as quackery.

The Pharmaceutical industry has a stranglehold grip here and shape mainstream views.

There're always attempts to discredit alternative and natural herbs yet ironically allopathy does use ingredients from the nature but when other people use it through ancient knowledge passed down to generations, it is dismissed as quackery and junk science.

Allopathy is as much a religion as radical extremists of organized religion.


There is a lot of attempt to discredit the competition in every way possible, and they sponsor people like Stephen Barrett from quackwatch.com


That being said, there're doctors who're not indoctrinated by the propaganda and many have resorted to herbal alternatives to complement their mainstream knowledge.


I have a distrust for pharmaceutical companies and I try to avoid vitamins made by pharmaceutical giants.

Previously I used to take

Seven seas fish oil.
Redoxon vitamin C.


Then I did a study and realized these companies have ethics issues.


Merck has distributed contaminated vaccines with SV40 virus inside, that is known to cause tumors and cancers, admitted by maurice hilleman himself in an interview. (You can find on youtube)

Seven Seas fish oil was involved in a scandal where dioxin levels exceed safe doses and could prove to be carcinogenic so I stopped taking them especially when so many of them are going on the cheap in Asia, which prompt me to suspect 'product dumping' , as you shall see in the next paragraph about Bayer.

I would not trust Merck products, and if you're a woman you better be careful of their Gardasil vaccines.




Bayer sold contaminated hemophiliac blood products, that has HIV virus in them. They were banned from selling them in USA but they disposed of the products by selling it to Asians, causing many hemophiliacs to be infected with HIV.

http://www.aegis.com/NEWS/AFP/2003/AF030568.html
http://www.nytimes.com/1987/03/18/business...-aids-suit.html



Redoxon (roche sold to bayer) was the most widely bought vitamin C in Malaysia but many do not know that.


1. It is not the natural ascorbic acid, but patented synthetic form.

2. It does not list out all ingredients used on the box/container. This company is dishonest and I can prove it to you very easily.


Have you tasted real ascorbic acid powder? It is NOT sweet tasting at all. My experience is with the Solaray vitamin C in pure ascorbic acid form, no sugar. It tastes bad.


Redoxon C is a sweet tasting effervescent. How can you have a vitamin C that is sweet and the ingredient box lists out only Vitamin C without mentioning the actual scientific /chemical name of it's form ? If you don't stir the solution, after drinking you would notice white powder residue at the bottom of the glass after you've finished. That's the artificial sweetener.

This company is highly dishonest. The sweet taste is obviously aspartame and aspartame has controversy around it from being a neurotoxin to being carcinogenic.

Redoxon changed the formula after acquiring the product from Roche and added aspartame.

While we can question aspartame's status and argue in circles, what you cannot argue is they do not list out the sweetener used in their vitamin C products, in addition to the chemical/science name of the vitamin C used.

Anyone of you with a Redoxon Vitamin C obviously need to look at the ingredients list and see if they listed the sweetener used and in what quantities. Well you WON'T find the list, but you can't explain why your drink tastes sweet either.

What I would like to ask is how does our Health Ministry allow Bayer to sell Redoxon C in our market without requiring them to be fully honest about the ingredients?

Simple. Asia is dumping ground for failed and dangerous products from the wests. Our health ministry is either incompetent or on the take to allow these companies to dump their unsafe products in our market.

Don't say I never warn you about Merck and Bayer.

Are vitamin C and cod liver oil/ seven sea oil a type of med? O.o I see them more of supplements. I see it as a way to promote their product, the part on the real-ascorbic acid-being-very-eecky-yucky. Aspartame's dmg to the body has not been proven, but IMHO if it were carcinogenic or neurotoxic, ppl will be dying around the world at a rapid RAPID rate. I reckon the LD50 is really really high for aspartame. like caffeine =D

back to the main topic. it depends from case to case. If the med if curing the patient but depleting his/her QOL(quality of Life), then whats the point? For me, drugs will always have their side effects, whether minor ones to major ones. I'll say, if well used, it can rescue heaps, if used improperly, then it's deadly.

However i see this topic as in the grey area. it's hard to say that it's entirely good/bad. For example, you can give doxorubicin (anti-cancer drug) to a patient and cure him, but then he dies of heart failure (s/e of the drug). So, yeah, grey zone.

I will not disagree on your argument that pharmaceutical companies are not as reliable as most think. Grunenthal's thalidomide tragedy and Merck's Vioxx tragedy are two of the largest scandals in medicine's history. Like any other company, bottom line is profit. They would do anything for the money, even if that means killing you.

However, I have to strongly disagree with your take on allopathy. Allopathic medicine do not baselessly discredit alternative medicine. Systematic studies are carried out before they decide if a treatment is bogus or, ineffective. If they were subsequently found to be therapeutic, modern medicine would then adopt it as part of their treatment. After all, why deny a treatment that works to a patient? If there are no conclusive evidence to suggest it works, then of course, they will discredit it. Many traditional chinese medicine are known to be effective. They have been adopted for use in modern medicine. Many more are in the pipeline, being tested for possible use. Investigations are carried out before they adopt or reject it.

Equating medicine to organised religion is as ridiculous as it gets. Religions base their understanding on nothing, something that cannot be proven to exist. Medicine exist on the pillars of scientific evidence, the direct opposite. Of course, there are unethical researchers who manipulate and fabricate research data, but that is not the norm of science. And regulations have been constantly modified to reduce the likelihood of this happening. Even so, penicillin has saved more lives than thalidomide has killed (not that I condone Grunenthal's actions).

This is not the right thread to discuss this, so I will stop here. If you are interested in discussing this issue further, start a thread and copy paste the relevant posts over, I'm more than willing to continue the discussion.

--------------------

As for the topic at hand, being a libertarian, I believe every individual should have the right to make their own decision. However, that decision should be an informed decision, that is, after they fully understand the pros and cons of both prolonging their lives, but likely suffering, and ending their suffering and therefore lives.

In other words, it varies depending on the case at hand. There should be no universal rule/law on the matter. The level of suffering differs from one condition to another, the tolerance to suffering also differ from one human to another. Likewise, some medical treatment may prolong life for years, some only days. Hence, there can be no definite answer to a question like this.

medicine is a man-made intervention for our inevitable evolution. apply the theory of natural selection, and it all seems perfectly fitting.

medicine halts our ability to progress, growth to our immunity system is tempered and ultimately rendering our self-heal capability.

then again it is fair enough that most ailments were human's creation and medicine is then introduced to even out the error.

i believe everyone should be given a fighting chance.

people with terminal diseases, well that crosses into the controversy of euthanasia.

Drugs from the past are synthesized to mimic some of our body hormones to encourage speedy recovery...but that was the past...

Nowadays some of the pharma-company are looking into natural products because they contain lots of compounds that are beneficial to human..
Example ginger: contain this compound called "zerumbone"...it is anti-cancer and probably anti-HIV...

I think they know that public nowadays are straying away from synthetic drugs but prefer a natural-derivative drugs...

spoken to a doctor once. to paraphrase

most western medicine dont really cure you. it just ease the symptoms and discomfort/suffering. at the end of the day, its still your body's natural defence and regeneration capability.

which is think is true for all form of medicine. those that say xxx cure yyy is probably misusing the word "cure" whether intentionally or unintentionally

what is this phobia with chemical, every thing around us is a chemical compound, like water, oxygen, sugar. the natural product are only effect when it is proven certain chemical compound it contain is having the healing effect. so the pure form of the chemical compound in a pill will be much more effective in its healing power dont you agree?

This post has been edited by robertngo: Jan 24 2010, 11:41 PM

And then there is homeopathy

Check out my articles about medical rights here

http://endocrinesquasher.blogspot.com/2010...nd-of-dead.html

^can't you just post the entire article here instead of blogwhoring?