Disturbing article about how anti-vaxxers specifically target & exploit grieving parents whose babies died of nonvaccine causes

[Shoeless]

13 hours ago, BeachGal said:

CBD oil is showing a lot of promise for a variety of problems, including pancreatic cancer. My dad was a pharmacologist (from the 1950s until he died) and thought marijuana was an amazing plant that would eventually be used medicinally. There's a lot to learn, though, but doctors are already giving patients the okay to try it in some cases.

pancreatic cancer: https://www.survivornet.com/articles/new-harvard-research-finds-a-chemical-in-cannabis-can-help-fight-pancreatic-cancer/

pancreatic cancer: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6352507/

other diseases: https://blog.dana-farber.org/insight/2018/12/cannabidiol-cbd-related-marijuana/

 

It has the potential for a lot of uses, but no one on my Facebook feed is talking about it's ability to help with pancreatic cancer or Parkinson's. It's all "It will help you sleep! Cures autoimmune diseases! It fixes your allergies! Cures anxiety in dogs! Great for weight loss! It's a 'drug free' treatment for ADHD!  Don't suffer from the heartbreak of psoriasis! Use CBD oil!" 

None of these people are using a product that has any kind of quality control or studies to back up their claims.  It's yet another MLM company preying on the bored and desperate.  

[Shoeless]

On 10/6/2019 at 10:54 AM, DesertBlossom said:

When natural cures don't cure cancer, you're stupid and idiotic for not trusting mainstream medicine. 

When chemo kills you faster faster than the cancer would have, well, we don't acknowledge that.

 

And we should acknowledge it.  Some diseases can't be cured or even treated to a degree to improve the patient's quality of life.  It sucks, and it's unfair, but it's true. Sometimes things are broken and they can't be fixed. 

My stepmother died of pancreatic cancer and declined all treatment beyond palliative care.  She asked her doctor "If someone you loved had this type of cancer, would you recommend chemo?" and he said no. He told her that the treatment would get her more time on earth, but it would likely be time spent sick from chemo, in hospitals, and generally suffering.  So she declined the treatment and died 6 weeks later. Those were 6 *good enough* weeks on earth. If she'd done chemo, she would have gotten maybe 6 months of misery. 

I am all for informed choice in medical care.  Coffee enemas have ZERO proof of curing anything or improving anything.  They do NOT work.  If they worked, doctors would USE THEM. 

[Guest]

5 hours ago, MissLemon said:

 

It has the potential for a lot of uses, but no one on my Facebook feed is talking about it's ability to help with pancreatic cancer or Parkinson's. It's all "It will help you sleep! Cures autoimmune diseases! It fixes your allergies! Cures anxiety in dogs! Great for weight loss! It's a 'drug free' treatment for ADHD!  Don't suffer from the heartbreak of psoriasis! Use CBD oil!" 

None of these people are using a product that has any kind of quality control or studies to back up their claims.  It's yet another MLM company preying on the bored and desperate.  

Exactly my experience. Dh’s MLM guru friend gave us a sample with exactly those promises. It did nothing whatsoever, for me or dh. Dh has been questing for better sleep - My Pillow, new mattress, CBD - for a long while, but he does not do the basic things every sleep specialist recommends, like turn off devices before bed, don’t catnap on the couch until midnight, etc. 🙄

[Farrar]

The cancer hucksters make me angrier than the anti-vaxxers. My father did die directly of the treatment. The chemo, combined with a pre-existing heart condition, is absolutely what precipitated his decline and death. If he had done the natural stuff, he probably would have lived longer and then died of the cancer. But see, that's the thing. It's a monster chasing you to the edge of a cliff. You can bide your time on the edge until the monster chars you to a crisp or you can take the stitched together parachute of chemo, radiation, and surgery and take your chances. If you know your monster is slow moving or that your parachute is extra holey, then sure, holding might be the right call. But it's not a cure. It won't save you from being trapped there. It just lets you live there. Only the parachute can take you off where you're trapped on the cliff.

What's by far the saddest is that so many people are facing small monsters with excellent parachutes these days. And yet cancer hucksters convince them not to jump.

 

[BeachGal]

I'm not on social media but, yeah, MLM companies. Nooo thanks. A mom I knew used to sell some kind of MLM multivitamin that made crazy claims. If someone made the mistake of telling her a family member had cancer, she would call them and ask them to listen to a recording of someone who claimed to be cured by the vitamins. Such BS. She used to try to sell them to other parents and get teachers to sell as well.

Vitamins and supplements really should be more stringently regulated by the FDA. The FDA does to an extent but not nearly enough. A lot of them are made with crappy and even dangerous ingredients and/or either don't have what they claim or don't have as much. Some of them claim to be gluten-free and are found to contain gluten. CVS has started a program called Tested to be Trusted where the supplements are getting tested to see what's actually in them. Only a small sample is tested and it's possible other batches could be different but it's a start, I guess. It's smart because a lot of consumers are becoming savvier and want better quality supplements--not that these are the best quality. I'm getting my flu shot there this Friday and will have to check out the shelves.

https://www.webmd.com/vitamins-and-supplements/news/20190515/cvs-begins-testing-of-all-vitamins-supplements

I'm curious about CBD oil but have no idea what is a reliable brand. I also have no reason to use it for myself so won't be buying it anytime soon!

Regarding vaccines, my kids all got the Bexsero and Gardasil 9 as well as the usuals. My husband is going in for the Shingrix vaccine because he did not have outward signs of chicken pox as a child, although he probably did have it. He doesn't want shingles. I will personally be first in line for the universal flu vaccine. I hate the flu and Tamiflu caused crazy anxiety in one of my kids. I will give Xofluza a try if any of us get the flu this year. 

Some people do have serious reactions from vaccines and I can completely understand their concerns, too.

Edited October 8, 2019 by BeachGal
grammar error

[Jaybee]

11 hours ago, MissLemon said:

 

And we should acknowledge it.  Some diseases can't be cured or even treated to a degree to improve the patient's quality of life.  It sucks, and it's unfair, but it's true. Sometimes things are broken and they can't be fixed. 

My stepmother died of pancreatic cancer and declined all treatment beyond palliative care.  She asked her doctor "If someone you loved had this type of cancer, would you recommend chemo?" and he said no. He told her that the treatment would get her more time on earth, but it would likely be time spent sick from chemo, in hospitals, and generally suffering.  So she declined the treatment and died 6 weeks later. Those were 6 *good enough* weeks on earth. If she'd done chemo, she would have gotten maybe 6 months of misery. 

I am all for informed choice in medical care.  Coffee enemas have ZERO proof of curing anything or improving anything.  They do NOT work.  If they worked, doctors would USE THEM. 

From the people I know of who have had pancreatic cancer (at least of the type they had), it was already advanced when found, and prognosis was grim. Even with chemo, their options were only for a couple of months from diagnosis. In that case, I would probably not do anything either. One I know started the process, but quit because it wasn't doing anything and he felt horrible. This is one cancer, in particular, that I hope they find more promising treatments for.

[ktgrok]

People right will say that the studies of outcomes on various drugs are not perfect. That is true. But they give a whole lot more information than the totally non existent statistics on coffee enemas combined with crystals and arsenic or whatever is fashionable these days. 

 

[BeachGal]

If you're really interested, you can probably find coffee enema studies that were carried out somewhere in the world. Not sure of crystals or arsenic. There would have to be enough observed evidence that showed they worked before they designed a study or trial. I don't think any of those examples show that much evidence to go further.

Other odd treatments, such as sauna as an example, were observed to have some kind of a beneficial effect on people and then studies were designed and carried out because someone was curious why so many sauna-goers were healthy. It turns out that sauna use generates a lot of heat shock proteins which help other proteins to fold properly. Properly folded proteins are key to a cell's function. Sauna use is something that cardiologists might be prescribing for certain heart problems. They're already studying it at conferences. That's an example of something weird that had an observed benefit in enough people to eventually warrant studies and statistical data. So, I guess the difference is that some things, like crystals, just don't have enough evidence to carry out a study whereas others do.

However, when drug companies and regulatory agencies are making claims based on data, it's important that the stats be as correct as possible and properly interpreted. They usually want that, too, because of legal and ethical issues.