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The PPACA Thread Part III - Let's have a healthy debate!

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Re: The PPACA Thread Part III - Let's have a healthy debate!

WisconsinWildcard said:
Sorry for the engagement guys. I read and avoid commenting on >99% of things on this site. I have heard most things with regards to alternative medicine etc but using the term "addiction" for cancer "treatment" is somewhat novel. Those actually familiar with medicine know many medications are derived from "natural" sources anyway, especially chemo. Turns out nature is the best killer we have found.

If anything...feeding a troll can sometimes aid the rational in developing more solid arguments.

A sucker born every minute...
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I personally like Tim Menchin's line. "Do you know what they call 'alternative medicine' that's been proved to work?.........Medicine."
 
Re: The PPACA Thread Part III - Let's have a healthy debate!

But on a more serious note, I find the conspiracy talk around cancer, "natural" cures, chemotherapy being "poison" (insert mandatory Paracelsus quote here) to be very offensive and downright disrespectful. It is unfair to the hundreds of thousands of doctors, health care workers, researchers, volunteers, etc who work day in and day out working on humanity's struggle with cancer. More so it is disrespectful to the patients, families, and friends who have been affected by cancer. These are incredibly vulnerable people who deserve the utmost respect and care, and the charlatans out there who take advantage of them have a special place in hell.
 
Re: The PPACA Thread Part III - Let's have a healthy debate!

WisconsinWildcard said:
But on a more serious note, I find the conspiracy talk around cancer, "natural" cures, chemotherapy being "poison" (insert mandatory Paracelsus quote here) to be very offensive and downright disrespectful. It is unfair to the hundreds of thousands of doctors, health care workers, researchers, volunteers, etc who work day in and day out working on humanity's struggle with cancer. More so it is disrespectful to the patients, families, and friends who have been affected by cancer. These are incredibly vulnerable people who deserve the utmost respect and care, and the charlatans out there who take advantage of them have a special place in hell.
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People have come to expect their medical professionals to deliver favorable outcomes like a UPS driver delivers a new laptop, and that has to add a significant level of stress in the profession. But boy, I can say without qualification that the people at UW Carbone, from desk staff to oncologists, were always both professional and kind.

Of course, I never really tested them by wearing Sioux gear.
 
Re: The PPACA Thread Part III - Let's have a healthy debate!

burd said:
Of course, I never really tested them by wearing Sioux gear.
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Luckily we all get special sensitivity training to help us interact with Sioux fans. We learn a bit of the grunts and hand gestures that make up the majority of their language but know when we need to call in an interpreter.

Unfortunately we have to turn a lot of gopher fans away to their native hospitals...
 
Re: The PPACA Thread Part III - Let's have a healthy debate!

WisconsinWildcard said:
Luckily we all get special sensitivity training to help us interact with Sioux fans. We learn a bit of the grunts and hand gestures that make up the majority of their language but know when we need to call in an interpreter.

Unfortunately we have to turn a lot of gopher fans away to their native hospitals...
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Our grunts and hand gestures are like Picasso's women with two noses.
 
Re: The PPACA Thread Part III - Let's have a healthy debate!

The problem with alternative medicine is that it's shifted from looking for a cure or treatment to separating a patient from as much of their money as possible.

Alternative medicine today is a joke. Steve Jobs may still be alive if it wasn't for modern alternative medicine. To name one example.
 
Re: The PPACA Thread Part III - Let's have a healthy debate!

dxmnkd316 said:
Steve Jobs may still be alive if it wasn't for modern alternative medicine. To name one example.
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I am as big of a critic of CAM as anyone but that is a stretch. Statistics show he had a better chance of a longer survival if he got a Whipple sooner but he still had pancreatic cancer. A 5 year post-Whipple survival is quite rare, even with the best medicine.
 
Re: The PPACA Thread Part III - Let's have a healthy debate!

And for the rep comment I received. Best wishes to you and your family. I hope the chemo is effective, free from complications, and that you can put cancer survivor on the list of family accomplishments.
 
Re: The PPACA Thread Part III - Let's have a healthy debate!

WisconsinWildcard said:
I am as big of a critic of CAM as anyone but that is a stretch. Statistics show he had a better chance of a longer survival if he got a Whipple sooner but he still had pancreatic cancer. A 5 year post-Whipple survival is quite rare, even with the best medicine.
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Yes, but if you looked at the type of pancreatic cancer he had, it's the one that's very treatable. So no, it's not a stretch.

http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2011/oct/21/steve-jobs-cancer-surgery-regret
 
Re: The PPACA Thread Part III - Let's have a healthy debate!

dxmnkd316 said:
Yes, but if you looked at the type of pancreatic cancer he had, it's the one that's very treatable. So no, it's not a stretch.

http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2011/oct/21/steve-jobs-cancer-surgery-regret
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Neuroendocrine tumors like his can be indolent and the fact that he received a modified Whipple means that it was still resectable (and it probably had not spread at the time surgery). The mortality is generally way to high on a Whipple to do it for palliative reasons, so when it is done it is usually with the intent to "cure." However, going by his post-surgery course and survival, he probably an unusually aggressive insulinoma. Additionally, a Whipple is a notoriously complicated procedure with some serious rearranging of anatomy. You may "cure" the cancer but you also bought yourself a whole host of other complications.

Another thing is that this case suffered from lead time bias. From what we know, it was detected when he was asymptomatic on a scan for something else. His survival time is biased because most people who are diagnosed with this are diagnosed much later in the course.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead_time_bias

We just do not have enough information to even say if his 9 month delay on surgery allowed the tumor to grow or not. Don't get me wrong, if he were referred to me (and I was a surgeon) I would have likely tried to talk him out of his original plan of attack. Unfortunately, pancreatic cancer is intertwined with the woo. Probably the most famous failure of CAM (and our tax dollars going to bogus treatments) was the gonzolaz protocol. Nothing like taking a 14 month survival with chemo and dropping it down to 4...

http://jco.ascopubs.org/content/28/12/2058.abstract
 
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