>the medical establishment has suffered a severe blow to their credibility because the government used their work in vain.
It doesn't help that the medical system has been gamed to concentrate wealth. Doctoring pays well, but doctors are much lower on medicine's economic dogpile than insurance and pharmaceutical companies.
I think Medicine became an important jobs project in the post-NAFTA era because it's an industry that can't be outsourced. The amount spent on medicine has gone through the roof, but the outcomes are the same as they've ever been.
I expect that the high spending on ineffective care is a wealth effect rather than something more indirect. The money is there, so people use it. Veterinary care is sort of similar (spending has skyrocketed as disposable income has increased).
There's also probably technology/knowledge effects, new things that are worth paying a lot for, people staying relatively healthy but getting fragile in the process, etc.
The author of this Ask HN is asking because conventional cancer medicine is not good enough. I think cancer dissidents say the screening programs for early treatment makes the doctors look better by increasing the number of non-fatal cases that are “diagnosed”. But most people who die after a certain age all have non-fatal tumors in their bodies…
> Q: What do you call alternative medicine that works? A: Medicine
Medicine that doesn’t work is grandfathered in to be called Medicine to. I don’t know how standard harmful treatments get retired from active use.
> I don’t know how standard harmful treatments get retired from active use.
So naturally, you've assumed they don't get retired? I assure you, they do: sometimes it takes longer than it should, but if there's evidence that a treatment is harmful, it eventually does fall out of practice. Very few leeches are used in medicine today, in case you haven't noticed.
The ProPublica story you linked was published in 2017, so I'm not hearing that this problem of treatment 8 years ago is still a problem today. It also doesn't make clear what evidence it has against stents. I found some studies from 2003/2004 that say they found insufficient evidence for stents preventing "mortality, acute myocardial infarction, or coronary artery bypass surgery". However, there was evidence for "substantial reductions in angiographic restenosis rates and the subsequent need for repeated PTCA".
Now setting aside the pause for a second. Don't look this up: do you even know what "angiographic restenosis" is? If not, why would you think you're qualified to have an opinion on this? Because you read an article in ProPublica, you think you're a cardiologist now?
And here's my big picture point: yes, you can find problems with the medical field. Doctors are humans, and they make mistakes. But the track record of doctors as compared to random quackery off the internet, is absolutely stellar. You're criticizing medicine without comparing it to anything. Some of your criticisms are valid areas we could improve on, but the alternative you're offering is much, much worse. People die from under-studied treatments all the time.
American medicine has a tendency to pay for things that are fantastically expensive, but aren’t really what the patient actually needs. I found this blog post about this phenomenon a few years ago:
Seems like this was revived via the second-chance system. I noticed it on the front page (1-30) this morning, but when I looked ~two hours later it was #447.
I've sorta followed this doctor's posts for a while. He has some good insights on the deterioration of the medical profession, and its capture by big business. I particularly appreciated his post on the deterioration of the competency of surgeons.
A lot of the comments below seem to not want to acknowledge that the dissidents against the status quo might be more correct in their philosophy for making the most of our lives.
Russia was supposed to rapidly collapse after the sanctions were applied ~2.5 years ago. I think vastly more damage has been done to Britain and the EU’s economies.
I read that Russia has gotten most of the businesses that were abandoned going again.
> This also applies to shorter sentences. Even these can completely turn an offender’s life upside down. You can lose your job, home and social network. And you rarely become a better person during a short stay in jail.
I had a few experiences helping people who were trapped or harmed by Arizona's criminal justice system. I eventually decided Arizona's jails and prisons are make-work programs to remove people from the labor supply.
The second one was about the passenger who remembered me from the night she got the 'catch and release' treatment. Her second taxi trip was almost 2 years after her first trip.
It takes about 7 days of confinement before people begin to develop PTSD...
> 1. Yes, the COVID treatments we're using today are vaccines.
There were efforts to figure out how to treat SARS-CoV-2 with existing safe medications, but these efforts were suppressed.
In the early days Dr. Zelenko treated his obviously-COVID patients with hydroxychloroquine, zinc, and azithromycin. His logic was ‘why let the patient deteriorate while we wait for the test to come back, when we can just start treating now?’ Most of his patients made a full recovery.
Eventually some scam-treatments got approved - remdesivir (“run, death is near”) and… paxlovid were two ineffective treatments.
My introduction to Hallelujah was via Malcolm Gladwell's podcast. A good portion of Season 1, Episode 7 (2016) was dedicated to the evolution of Leonard Cohen's song from 'forgotten B-side track' to the song that is commonly known and covered today.
The author of this submission mentions this podcast:
> On his podcast, Revisionist History, Malcolm Gladwell presents his theory on two types of artists: conceptual innovators and experimental innovators. Conceptual innovators create their best work early on in their careers.
I have an old CO detector in the hallway. I think fire departments have the ability to test these to make sure they still work, but I haven't done this yet.
We don't have any more ability to test a CO detector than you! Replace the batteries, press the test button and/or buy a new unit if the old one fails. Please don't call 911 unless you have an actual emergency.
> We don't have any more ability to test a CO detector than you!
I'm sure you're technically correct.
But if you want to, then it's easy to test CO detectors. Industries do it all the time. You just buy spray cans with known CO concentrations ("bump gas") and check that they go off when sprayed.
> Please don't call 911 unless you have an actual emergency.
Sure. But if the city decides to prioritize fire safety, then CO detector testing would be a good preventative measure that can be offered to the local residents.
Good CO safety is more than just the detector working. It's also about placement in the room, how many in each apartment/building, etc.
On top of that, the more the fire department interacts with the local residents, the more they can educate them about all kinds of fire safety matters (do you have a fire blanket in easy reach in the kitchen when cooking with oils?).
It also provides a relaxed way of fixing fire hazards (please don't stack unused furniture in front of the fire exit).
It doesn't help that the medical system has been gamed to concentrate wealth. Doctoring pays well, but doctors are much lower on medicine's economic dogpile than insurance and pharmaceutical companies.
I think Medicine became an important jobs project in the post-NAFTA era because it's an industry that can't be outsourced. The amount spent on medicine has gone through the roof, but the outcomes are the same as they've ever been.