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Comment by tokenadult | Hacker News Reader

http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/index.php/bleaching-away...

Kind of amazing that he found something worse than homeopathy.

To be fair, is it really hard for "alternative medicines" to be worse than homeopathy? By definition homeopathic "remedies" do absolutely nothing, so being worse should be easy. ;)

Indeed. Cue suitable mocking and derision: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HMGIbOGu8q0

"Worse" could mean that the theory behind the mechanism of action for homeopathy is worse. However, in this case the worse is about it causing harm, and the extent of harm from homeopathy is pretty much limited to patients not seeking needed medical treatment.

Scientifically speaking homeopathic remedies are placebos, and many studies have shown that placebos are remarkably effective treatments with minimal side effects.

Placebo side effects can also occur.

Typical FUD. Where is the research? Start with animals like you do with everything, and RESEARCH it. Don't just dismiss it with labels like bleach when you have no idea what kind of action it has. The action of ClO2 is different than that of Chlorine bleach; it oxidizes instead of chlorinates!!

People need to understand some basic chemistry instead of regurgitating buzz words (like bleach); and we need real research, not just empty words.

Surprisingly enough that's mostly true. http://www.lenntech.com/library/clo2/chlorine-dioxide.htm ClO2 is a bleach, but it's not what most people think of when they say "bleach". It's effective as a disinfectant even against spore-forming bacteria like anthrax. http://www.lenntech.com/library/clo2/chlorine-dioxide.htm I appreciate that you're not advocating high doses, or cures for random things like autism.

Thanks for the links. It is interesting to read about the chemistry behind the various oxidizing agents and the selectivity of each.

The links you kindly shared are commercial links posted by a water treatment chemical company that has a commercial interest in promoting using ClO2 rather than other chemicals for water treatment. It may be that everything they say about ClO2 as a water treatment chemical checks out with what independent researchers say, but there is no support here for the idea that ClO2 is an effective internal medicine for malaria infection.

AFTER EDIT: To reply to your kind reply below, I am aware of what reply layer we are in here. But the submitted article, after all, was about treatment of human patients who have already been infected by the malaria parasite. For a top-level comment then to come in under that article that has nothing to do with internal medicine use of the advocated chemical is, at least, a sign of careless reading, and possibly a sign of greater tendentiousness. (Other participants here have pointed out the several words and phrases in several of the comments to which I am replying that suggest that that subthread is not based on familiarity with medical research and the methods of medical research.)

This is the comment I was replying to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4454819 It makes no claims that ClO2 is an effective in vivo treatment for malaria.

Are you seriously advocating INTERNAL use of ClO2 in living human patients who have been infected by the malaria parasites, which is the topic of the submitted article that opened this thread? Remember that for in-vivo experimentation, even for in-vivo experimentation on animals before experimenting on human patients, it is only ethical to perform the experiment if there is prior probability of therapeutic effect without undue harm to the patient. Where is there any evidence whatsoever that ClO2 is effective without undue harm when used as an internal medicine?

And as for understanding basic chemistry, my late father the chemistry major (who performed experiments at home with me as a child, and who was my mentor in the philosophy of science) would be APPALLED at not noticing the distinction between using chemicals outside the human body as disinfectants and using them as internal medicines in living human beings.

Are you seriously advocating INTERNAL use of ClO2 in living human patients

No. Did you even read the GP? He said (even in caps) he's looking for "RESEARCH". Also, you don't need a whole animal to do the first tests, you just need a tissue or blood sample from an infected animal to test effectiveness vs. toxicity, and go from there.

What he is really looking for is a conspiracy. These alternative medicine quacks all claim they just want their product (and it always is already a product...) researched. When asked why they don't have it researched, like any other prospective treatment is, they drop hints at "big pharmacy" silencing them (as you can see he has done in his original post).

The entire point is to turn the lack of evidence into evidence of its effectiveness.

I clearly stated beginning research in animals. Your metric for determining if in-vivo experiments should be done on animals is interesting. Based on your notion, you should only perform these experiments if you think they will actually work. The problem here is that the metabolic processes of mammals for instance is so complex that we often times have no idea what will be effective and what will not. Oxidizers is a classic case. It is commonly understood that anti-oxidants are good for the body. But you can find research that states that too many anti-oxidants can be bad b/c it inhibits some amount of oxidation which can be good (b/c it kills pathogens).

I am simply advocating investigation based on research, realizing that we actually know very little about oxidation vs anti-oxidation within complex organisms. If we only ever think "inside the box" with what we "think is probable" we will almost certainly never discover many of the mysteries in our biological world.

Shouldn't the people advocating its use be the ones researching it? Why is the onus on critics to prove it?

I really can't tell if you are serious, because you are displaying most of the usual tells for sarcasm.

In case you are serious though, NaClO (aka Chlorox) is an oxidant too. Anyone who forgot to dilute it or wear gloves while cleaning their kitchen or bathroom should be familiar with exactly why "oxidize" does not convey, in any sense, "safe".

Did you happen to read the HN story from a couple days ago?

http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/semmelweis

It'd be interesting if in 100 years we were reading the same story about ClO2. Everyone thought the doctor suggesting that everyone wash their hands before delivering a baby was a "quack" when the evidence suggested otherwise. I am only saying I'd like to see objective research here. If the result is that ClO2 is not effective in any way or that it does more harm than good then that is fine; BUT, if the result was that it was effective in very low doses, we should accept that as well. Let hard science prevail... not the quacks or the quack police.

The difference is that all you have to do to avoid the "quack" label today is produce evidence that your treatment works. If this crazy-ass bleach treatment actually works like they say it does, it shouldn't be hard to produce evidence to back it up. Until and unless they can produce such evidence, it's only right to criticize those promoting the treatment.

To be fair, that's exactly what he's asking for.

And yet, the proponents for it's effectiveness have yet to provide any evidence that it's worth studying. People who have no reason to believe it will work don't have a lot of incentive to test whether it works. Then again, the people who benefit from it's popularity and don't care if it works don't have much of an incentive to test it either.

The key was in my last sentence: "Until and unless they can produce such evidence, it's only right to criticize those promoting the treatment."

Semmelweis was an asshole who nobody liked. Doctors of the time _did_ wash their hands, the just didn't do it with lime as Semmelweis wanted.

Semmelweis made-up some crackpot theory about "cadaveric" particles causing disease. That's what made doctor's ridicule him. If he had stuck to experimental evidence, he probably would have been listened to.

Interesting. Do you have sources for that?

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