Comment by felixchan | Hacker News Reader

Comment by felixchan | Hacker News Reader

50% of long-term cancer survival is high. He probably should have took it.

Alternative treatments don’t guarantee higher success than modern medicine. However, if modern medicine puts the chance of survival at < 5%, it’s not a bad idea to try fringe approaches.

Modern science aims to create a standardized approach for categorized diseases. Controlled experiments aim to find a magic bullet, but are these experiments really “controlled”?

Everyone eats differently; everyone shits differently. Different air quality; stress levels; sleep; metabolism. Not to mention, the body and its disease are both is ever-changing systems over time. Until we have nano-machines, we won’t know the true cause and effect of all these variables.

Therefore, the holistic approach* is to use intuition, adaptation, and nonstandard ways to deal with this recognition. The downside of this approach is the amount of information and the ability to determine the credibility (eg. random social media), especially for a layman. However, if one was knowledgeable enough to read thousands of academic papers, from various fields (outside of oncology) -- one could develop a more tailored plan for the individual that accounts for these other factors.

*Holistic approach does not mean disregard of science. It does not mean rejecting standard protocols. It means that one should consider a wider-range of factors, in addition to standard protocols. It is an approach that places more value on breadth.

> it’s not a bad idea to try fringe approaches

Fringe approaches would not be considered "fringe" if they were proven to have an effect. Even if it improves your survival rates by merely 1%, it would be still used as part of modern medicine if there was nothing else.

The problem is that the quack makes you believe that it will work, so you're still wasting time trying the "treatment" and potentially suffering its side-effects (not to mention the financial impact). It's worse than not doing anything, since at least the latter means you've accepted your fate and can enjoy whatever time you have peacefully instead of being busy with a quack treatment.

Furthermore, modern medicine isn't inherently hostile to "alternative medicine". If you think about it, all the potential treatments being researched in labs right now (including for covid-19) are still at the "alternative" stage, and if they end up being proven to work they simply become "medicine". What modern medicine is hostile to is unproven, or proven not to work treatments.

If you think you actually have an "alternative" theory that isn't quack, you are welcome to do your research on it to at least rule out any existing reasons why it couldn't work (using existing medical literature), and if the theory still stands by then you are free to engage with the mainstream medical community or study, become a researcher and then test your theory in a safe and controlled environment so the outcome is actually valuable (and will influence further research even if this particular theory doesn't work) and not just anecdotal evidence.

Some treatments are considered "Fringe" because there are other [political, structural] hurdles at play that prevent them from going through proper scientific process. Some people don't have time to wait 10 years for government approval, so they'd rather take the chance now.

This may be true in your experience or elsewhere, but it's patently false in my experience. There's 'standard of care', very narrowly scoped clinical trials, and everything else is "fringe". Some treatment proven effective for cancer? OK, but it wasn't proven effective for this cancer. Oh, it was proven effective for this cancer? OK, but it hasn't been proven effective after partially effective cytoreductive surgery. Oh, it was proven effective there? Yes but it hasn't been proven to be effective after disease recurrence. Oh, it was proven effective after disease recurrence? Ah, but it was only proven effective in germline mutations. Oh it was proven effective on somatic as well? Sure but not after immunotherapy has been tried...

On and on and on and on. The decision tree is so deep and patient communities sliced into smaller and smaller subgroups that we don't have enough people on the planet to 'prove efficacy' for them all (as if such a task is even possible, the most we usually get is evidence of efficacy in similar cases).

Testing things is different than practicing things.

You cannot test many things. You also cannot prove many things. Look at nutrition. Determining the cause and effect of a substance on a human body is difficult.

Science is aimed at proving things. Sometimes, in life, that luxury is not available.

You can't test/prove everything, however my understanding is that at least a large part of these quack treatments (if not all of them) have already been proven not being able to work (or being actively harmful) in existing medical literature.

Perhaps you should rethink the concept of "proven not being able to work".

> it’s not a bad idea to try fringe approaches

Sounds like a great way to get scammed by charlatans, and potentially interfere with the treatment you're receiving from medical professionals.

If a medical professional puts my chances at < 5%, I'd rather find 5 charlatans, and hope that 4 of them scam me and 1 don't.

If you find 5 charlatans, you will be scammed by 5 charlatans.

All bananas are yellow.

If someone had an effective treatment for cancer, why would they be peddling it among charlatans on social media instead of selling it to mainstream medicine?

The holistic perspective is that there is no one singular effective treatment for all individuals. It is a craft.

Perhaps curcumin works for one , not another. Perhaps the same curcumin works now, but not later. Or perhaps you'll never knows if it works at all. Being able to measure it is difficult. Welcome to the game.

It is a process that combines both thinking and feeling. (Intuition). Perhaps one day you step in shit. But the next day you find a flower. There is no right or wrong answer.

I do believe there are "charlatans" -- if that's what you want to call it -- who are attuned to this type of flow, or practice.

so the methods work, but we just can't tell if they're working? I imagine that would be quite financially convenient for people selling methods that don't work. if it's a game you can't measure if you're winning, it's a casino game. and casino games always favor the house.

In holistic approaches, sometimes, the treatment works, but the cause and effect cannot be pinpointed. Oftentimes, it's not repeatable. That is because the state of the body is different from one point to another.

"Selling" these techniques or drugs complicates the matter. And this is why [alternative] therapies have a negative taste in scientific communities.

"However, if one was knowledgeable enough to read thousands of academic papers, from various fields (outside of oncology) -- one could develop a more tailored plan for the individual that accounts for these other factors."

Have you done so? Has anyone who follows "non-standard" approaches? (Yes, I'm aware that a few instances have; they generally become the "standardized approach", too.)

Yes, but I am limited by time. Especially in the field of nutrition, no true conclusions can be drawn, regardless of how many studies you read.

In the end, it comes down to intuition.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com