Debate Over
POSTED BY: dreamtrove
UPDATED: Friday, September 1, 2006 00:38
VIEWED: 4120
PAGE 5 of 8
Quote:
Your stating of a simple fact, as you put, without properly quantifying it is the spin. Lie by omission and clouding of the full facts as it were.
It takes time to get things through, Clinton set the ball rolling, then the processes take over, it just so happened that Bush was president when it happened, he didn't want to I'm sure, but had very little choice.
If you'll notice the National Institutes of Health announced it would fund embryonic stem cell research in 2000, still under Clinton’s term, it took time to put together the legislation, until 2001 when Bush was president in fact. Ergo it was Clinton’s administration that enacted the funding, it was an accident of temporality that had Bush in power when it was ready to go through, very much a different situation as to how you'd paint it, yet still the same facts are in evidence, just one of us is excluding some from consideration, one of us is not.
Further proof that things take time to come through:
Congress wanted Bush to loosen restrictions way back in 2001/2, yet it took until 2006 before congress managed to put a vote together.
citizen, there is no 'lie', nor is there any 'spin' on my part what so ever. The only problem you're having w/ my post are that you can't bash Bush over this nearly as much as you'd like to. Clinton had 8 yrs to 'set the ball rollling', as you put it. An outgoing President can do what ever he/she wants, and leave it up to the next President to either get the glory, or clean up the mess. Likely Clinton had hoped that Gore would benefit from this legacy, and wanted to play politics over the issue of stem cell research. But if it was sooooo important, why not start this YEARS ago, or at the very least, pull a Executive Order out of his shirt sleeve?
Ya gotta give Bush his due here. Be at least that much of a stand up guy and admit Bush was responsible for this.
People love a happy ending. So every episode, I will explain once again that I don't like people. And then Mal will shoot someone. Someone we like. And their puppy. - Joss
" They don't like it when you shoot at 'em. I worked that out myself. "
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Hi DT,
Some disagreement, some agreement.
Yes, getting a PhD is harder than getting an MD. What I want to know is - if you get both, but get your PhD before your MD, does the MD training take you backwards? 
To reply to your post ... pharmas have mostly PhDs working for them. So the new drugs are the work of PhDs, not MDs who merely prescribe them.
MDs, PhD and MD/PhD's, and pharmas do know about mode of action - you will find that "Benzodiazepines work selectively to enhance the action of the gamma-aminobutyric acid A (GABAA) receptors" for example. The question to both groups - traditional and alternative - is: "Then what?"
No one knows all the places in the brain with that receptor, what other receptors and locations might be involved (agonistic or antagonistic), what feedback mechanisms are invoked or suppressed, what does that communicate to other parts of the brain, and what, ultimately, causes the observed effect.
And while I think that 'natural' cures can be better - for example, light therapy works as well as traditional antidepressants, except it's faster and cheaper - the problem is not that pharmas are making bogus complicated expensive molecules. It's that they're making things that work but don't solve important problems. (Unless less than astounding 'performance' is a life and death issue.)
I hope you don't think I trust in the pharmas or even the FDA all that much. I generally subscribe to the dictum as told to me many years ago (by a very capable doctor - yes they exist): never be the first to use a medicine, but never be the last.
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Quote:Bush is as responcible for it as Clinton is, yes Clinton set the ball rolling, and Bush enacted a cut down version of the legislation that came from Clinton. The spin is suggesting that this was all down to Bush, look what a great guy he is.
Originally posted by AURaptor:
Ya gotta give Bush his due here. Be at least that much of a stand up guy and admit Bush was responsible for this.
I've already told you why it wasn't done years ago and as for an executive order? Seems a little extreme to bypass standard procedure for scientific research, and even EOs as I understand it are ussually based on existing legislation, which is not the case here. He wasn't exactly an outgoing president when he did it either, the announcement that the federal government would start funding research was made in January 1999.
I don't think Bush was responcible for this, he's pro-life for crying out loud, he would never, in a million years, come up with legislation like this.
More insane ramblings by the people who brought you beeeer milkshakes!
No one can see their reflection in running water. It is only in still water that we can see.
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Rue,
Sure, I was oversimplifying. But the reality is herbalism is more of a science, as it's based on actual knowledge of how the systems interact biochemically. Allopathy has become pretty much a science of trial and error.
I assume you know somthing about this, either you're a pharmacist or something.
'Nobody knows' is a cop out, imho, and generally not true. For instance I know the chemical path p
of 5htp. I believe no one knows the chemical path of paxil. why is taking 5htp together with b6 a problem? b6 mods 5htp into serotonin, if allowed to do so in the blood, serotonin attacks fat, and fosters receptor generation. Otherwise 5htp crosses the blood barrier in about one second, and is transformed into serotonin in the hypothalmus. the excess serotonin is converted to melatonin which gives you the drowsy effect. it's a very simple mechanism.
How does Luvox work? Lexapro ie l-celexa? If try to find this stuff out and there's an awful lot of vague guesswork.
The truth is, I suspect, Allopathy is a one trick pony. Every compound is a toxin which shuts down some biochemical function. Just about all systems in the body are in balance with pro- and anti- systems, as the result of how evolution developed. Rather than just have something which does 'X' you also have some 'anti-X' fighting it. Block anti-X augments the effect of X, block X augments anti-X, or reduces X. The problem is that, since all the compounds are unnatural toxins, they have to be to be patentable, they don't have natural matches in the body. They may malfunction slightly, or they make effect multiple systems. Anti-X blocker boosts X, but it also has an agonist effect on the secretion of anti-Y. Low Y becomes a side effect, even if the systems X and Y themselves aren't interdependent.
Step one, create a new and different compound that no one else has.
Step two, patent it.
Step three, test it one a wide variety of rats with a wide variety of illnesses.
Step four, collect the data and select your treatment pitch
Step five, pitch to the fda, which is run by one of your own employees, make a convincing enough case that the regular suits are satisfied.
Step six, market it to hapless humans.
Step seven, by the time there's a problem and you have to pull it, you have a new drug on the market.
The reason eating dumbweed makes you stupid is that your ancestors ate dumbweed, and the compounds of dumbweed got integrated into our biological system (binding to GABA-B?)
Of course there are many false analogues in nature, and it's a slippery slope overall (THC is a nasty one, Valerian is a GHB+ a methyl, which is not so bad, but there's another one out there with an alcohol or something that causes an imbalance, the name slips my mind at the moment.)
But still, it's a choice between a compound running on known biochemistry, and a toxin with interactions that are anybody's guess. Better safe than sorry.
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Quote:There's the rub - you claim these compounds run on known biochemistry, while medicines don't. How do you feel about salicylates? Would you count them in the 'known' or 'unknown' column?
But still, it's a choice between a compound running on known biochemistry, and a toxin with interactions that are anybody's guess. Better safe than sorry.
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Quote:But ehre ARE serious side effects. I presume you take that into account too?
Herbals also have the plus side that people have usually been taking them for centuries, (and studying them for decades, which is why we know these details) and if there were serious side effects, we're know them already
---------------------------------
Reality sucks. Especially when it contradicts our cherished ideas.
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salicylic acid bind to adenosine, I don't know much else about it, I think that these thinks are basically understood, on a much better level than psycho pharmaceuticals.
Signym,
Side effects, not in the same way.
For instance, if you take Kava, which is an adrenal blocker, then the effects are those of blocking adrenaline, including possible liver damage.
With an understudied pharm, there may be other binding properties that no one has yet noticed.
Certainly, I'm not saying herbs are all safe la di da, I'm saying they're better understood, and so the educated consumer can make smart decisions.
There's no way to make smart decisions about pharmaceuticals, because the problems are not yet known, because people haven't been taking them for years and years. You make a trusting decision.
I have no more trust left, so I can't do that. I think we're at a point where if we made trusting decisions, we'd be the guineapigs of the Bush crowd, and not just in medicine.
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Herbal side effects are never anywhere near as bad, the ingrediants are in much more natural proportions and they aren't concentrated.
More insane ramblings by the people who brought you beeeer milkshakes!
No one can see their reflection in running water. It is only in still water that we can see.
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Hi DT,
The reason why I asked about salycilates (from salix - willow) is because their mode of action is now only just being teased out. If you think of all the hoopla about Vioxx (withdrawn from the market), COX-1 and COX-2 inhibitors, heart disease and kidney disease etc, aspirin and other salicylates are right in there. Aspirin itself causes severe stomach bleeding as a side effect.
So this to me is not as simple as it may look at first blush.
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