Re: Blindly following/double blind studies

June 11, 2011

Ten years ago, I put my son through a course of neurodevelopmental movement therapy that GREATLY helped with his autistic issues. I was all excited about getting other people to try it with their ASD kids, but it sounded too weird to people. I was talking to his therapist, & she told me that pediatricians refuse to recommend neurodevelopmental movement therapy because there are no double-blind studies to "prove" its efficacy. My obvious thought was that they should do the double-blind studies. Because that is the "gold standard," right?Her response affected me profoundly. She pointed out that in order to do a double-blind study, you had to purposely do nothing for half the participants. It is axiomatic in autism that the earlier the intervention, the better the result (Not to mention the reduction in misery for the whole family.) She said that they could not, in good conscience, withhold care from half the children to prove that it had helped the other half. The course of autism without intervention is that virtually none of the children make significant gains. This has been observed many, MANY times, & is indisputable. She pointed out that even making half of the children wait for the length of the study would make it harder for them to benefit from therapy, & prolong their misery, & the misery of their families -- all to prove something that they already know. Their program can greatly improve the level of function of kids on the autistic spectrum.Interestingly, in mainstream medicine, they often shorten trials & start treating the control group on compassionate grounds, when they claim that the treatment being tested makes an obvious difference. (Of course, that sells them more drugs, so that's OK...) The guys who make the rules get to break them whenever they want to.So, could the iodine docs identify a group of people with horrible fatigue, brain fog, weight issues, constipation, etc., etc. & watch them deteriorate for lack of iodine to prove a point? I suppose they could. But I'd sure be pissed to spend a couple years in the control group before anybody tried to help me! Most of us have inadvertently spent years in the control group already! And as many of us are finding, even getting the right treatment doesn't guarantee that you will instantly become well. It is a long process -- the sooner started, the better.AnneOn Jun 11, 2011, at 11:34 AM, S. Altan wrote:

Dear I appreciate very much your thoughtful comments and I want to congratulate you on your success in finding successful therapies through your own efforts in the face of the prejudices and limitations of conventional medicine. I did want to comment on something you said : …The Iodine Project doctors put forward their ideas and have not done trials for the reasons outlined above. If somebody does not put forward in print their ideas for scrutiny, there is something wrong. You do not have to have all the answers. You do not necessarily have to have trials either. But refusing to discuss the issue AT ALL is for me highly suspect and an abuse of trust on the part of doctors. So in the spirit of your last sentence in the above quoted paragraph and also admitting that perhaps I do not fully understand everything you wrote, I did not find a compelling justification for why the iodine project doctors don’t do trials. If there is a good reason for it, I suspect it’s probably related to money but whether we accept it or not, randomized double blind trials are the standard for establishing the worth of a therapy for people in the medical research community. I would love to see one done, where someone compares Iodine vs synthroid or NDT, even if it’s a short term study where important baseline characteristics can be controlled to show its efficacy. Certainly no one doubts the experiences of Drs A and B, but until you have a controlled randomized study, it will continue to be relegated to the ‘anecdotal’ stage and it cannot be elevated to the status of what the scientific and research community would regard as a ‘proven’ therapy. This is unfortunate, but like so many other things, this is life. So for example, the fact that numerous individuals find positive results , each one conducting their own clinical trial on themselves carries little weight because randomization was absent and no control or positive treatment group was present to compare the experience against. That can only be done with a sufficient number of subjects, and designed according to rules that seek to find a particular effect if it’s there. I earnestly hope, mightily, that Drs A and B would find the courage and wherewithal to rectify this large gap in the research and conduct such a study so that objective evidence could be presented. I hasten to add that I am not very familiar with the literature, just recently trying to figure out if Iodine is an option for me, so it may be that some such evidence is around and I am just not aware. I apologize in advance if that is the case. Stan From: iodine [mailto:iodine ] On Behalf Of MacGilchristSent: Saturday, June 11, 2011 1:49 PMiodine Subject: Re: Re: Blindly following Was: Sad but true With alternative medicine, I think drug companies have no interest in any statistics or trials being run. Information about Iodine or LDN could make a big hole in the profits of drug companies. Any laboratory that ran trials would be blackballed by Big Pharma. If I had a load of money, I would start an independent laboratory to run trials on treatments like iodine. It would probably have a huge security budget! I think that people have to go back to basics here and re-think their whole way of approaching their health care. You go and see a doctor with the expectation that he/she will be able to cure you. In my case after 4 years I was not getting better. My doctor told me that I was OK because my labs were OK. I didn't feel OK. So my doctor was not doing his job as far as I was concerned, although he felt quite pleased with himself. After 4 years of T4 only I had to face the fact that I felt like rubbish, I wasn't getting better and it was no use lying to myself anymore. He was wrong, so was my specialist. So what next? I surfed the Internet and read everything I could. I tried all sorts of stuff. I reckoned if I had a solution that wasn't going to hurt me, why not try it? I would waste a little money and time, but it was low risk. Eventually, I tried the Iodine Protocol. I was worried about this for various reasons but considered that the potential advantages were worth a small risk and that if things did go wrong the situation was not irreversible. So I tried it and in 6 weeks, no more sore breasts! On the basis of this, I decided that I was probably iodine deficient as doctors A and B describe in their papers on the subject. By trying things out in small controlled steps, I realised that the Iodine Protocol was doing me a lot of good and probably everything it was cracked up to be. It didn't sort out all my problems straight away. I wanted to get my Hashi ABs down. This has taken me about two years. But in the mean time I was not doing myself any harm so why not wait and see? In the end, it worked OK. Don't know why some people get low ABs after a few months and not me, but I got what I wanted in the end. Basically, Drs A and B delivered the goods for me, it just didn't happen overnight! Along the way, I had to weigh up the pros and cons on several occasions. It just comes down to doing your own clinical trial on yourself! As for blindly following the Drs A and/or B or blindly following the rest of the medical establishment, well, I find Drs A and B quite clear and forthcoming about how they propose to treat people. There are books and publications on the Internet by them which are very explicit about what they think. None of the doctors or specialists who have treated me have deigned to explain the reasoning behind their treatment. Within reasonable limits, Drs A and B have published a great deal of information. They cannot spend all their time trying to prove their points because they have patients to see and a living to earn. They have put up a very good defence of their case against Dr Alan Gaby's attack in the "Townsend Letter to Patients and Doctors". Much of the information about conventional treatment for thyroid and fibrocystic breast disease that is available on the Internet is just information and instructions without any bibliography. So how can you make a judgement about something so unsubstantiated? How can anybody even trust it? The only reason that everyone follows conventional treatment is because everyone else is doing it. They do it blindly. The iodine protocol doctors are honest about what they are doing and expose their ideas to public scrutiny. My specialist had not even heard of the iodine protocol. I don't think it has to be blindly following one doctor or another. The Iodine Project doctors put forward their ideas and have not done trials for the reasons outlined above. If somebody does not put forward in print their ideas for scrutiny, there is something wrong. You do not have to have all the answers. You do not necessarily have to have trials either. But refusing to discuss the issue AT ALL is for me highly suspect and an abuse of trust on the part of doctors. People have to learn to apply some very simple rules and reasoning to the way they approach their health care, particularly with chronic problems like thyroid illness and cancer, and have confidence in their own judgement. Many people accept situations in their health care that they would not accept when buying, for example, a used car. I am sure such a statement will provoke a cry of "you can't compare buy a used car with your health!" Well, no the situations are not totally comparable. But if a used car sales man refuses to answer a question about a car or his answer seems unclear or dishonest, it is probably universally agreed that it is ill advised to buy the car. I would say that as far as health care is concerned you should apply AT LEAST the same care that you would with buying a car. I know it is easy to say this and not so easy to do when you are frightened, have everyone against you and have mind fog. On the other hand, when you are in a tight corner sometimes it can make you very decisive. I must admit, it was the idea that I might die after a long illness that really forced me to think about my health care. I realised that not to make a decision was in fact making a decision of going along with my doctor and that I had to stop it. So I started to look at every possible treatment from scratch. Things started to get better after that. MacG. From: ladybugsandbees <ladybugsandbees@...>iodine Sent: Sat, 11 June, 2011 14:54:48Subject: Re: Re: Blindly following Was: Sad but true But Laurel it isn't just Dr. Abraham. He has been digging into historical research. They aren't his ideas that iodine is effective for cancer. Many other doctors are saying the same thing: Here are some of the doctors: Dr. Guy AbrahamDr. BrownsteinDr. Dr. DerryDr. Albert Szent GyorgyiDr. Orlee (book - Minerals for the Genetic Code) Then if you read the research to follow the basic biochemistry: Iodine is needed for the P53 gene to function. P53 is responsible for apoptosis of abnormal cells. Without iodine it doesn't work and bad cells / DNA is allowed to replicate. P53 is called the guardian of the genetic code.Radioactive iodine is used to kill thyroid cancer cells by entering the cell and damaging the DNA. So non-radioactive iodine will enter the cells as well but because we know that it effects the P53, we know that it will help to kill the bad cells through P53. Barriers to entry in the cell by both RAI and non-radioactive forms are: 1. Bromide blocking receptors (which is why large doses of iodine are needed to displace bromide and allow iodine to enter the cells)2. Non-functioning symporters (which is addressed by Dr Abraham's papers on Vit C & Symporters on www.optimox.com)3. Iodine Resistance in cells - which can be increased through retinoic acid (It is used to increase uptake of RAI but I have done it to increase uptake of Iodine) Then you need to make your body an environment that will heal and improve your immune system by detoxing, removing heavy metal toxicity, increasing nutrient levels and balancing hormones. Here is what I found. You liken this to following blindly. Don't! I am serious here. You need to read research and understand why it is the right thing for you. I was blessed to have Dr. Brownstein as my doctor on my journey. He did set up my protocol which is what I share here but I did not just let him tell me what to do. I read and read and read to figure out why it was the right thing and how I could enhance the protocol with other nutrients based on what I knew about the way RAI worked in the body. I will be writing a book on thyroid cancer - hopefully to start in the fall - so for now all the data remains jumbled in my brain and in folders on my computer waiting to organize for others to use. You need to believe in what you are doing otherwise you will drive yourself crazy wondering. It is not anything that this group can give you. We can share what we have done and what has worked for us and point you to places like www.iodine4health.com so you can read the research that has been gathered. Unfortunately there are no stats of iodine and cancer effectiveness. Those types of stats are generally collected on drugs and not natural remedies. The natural supplement companies are under more and more fire from the FDA and FTC. I recently received a practitioner flyer from one of the supplement companies I work with. They stated that due to an increased scrutiny from the government on what was being said about what supplements would do for your health they were going to eliminate one of the informational sections of the flyer. It is sad but true. We are living in an age where the sharing of information that you are seeking is being taken underground. Best of luck on your journey. Buist, ND Re: Blindly following Was: Sad but true Anne - Yes, it's all subjective. Someone may be very ill, and yet happy enough with their own situation to describe themselves as well, and vice versa. It all depends on your goals & expectations. At my age, and with my history, I don't expect to be hiking the Appalachian Trail, and so I'm satisfied with being able to mow the weeds, er... grass.But when it comes to the iodine protocol I hoped that there would be some statistics showing conventional thyca treatment vs. iodine. That's what I meant by blindly following. I can blindly follow the medical establishment or I can blindly follow Dr. Abraham.And with all medical matters - unless you are the researcher yourself all you can do is take someone's else's word for what consistutes the truth. My apologies for going all philosophical...Laurel> > Sadly the majority of folks will not question their docs or do any research on their own, many people blindly follow right to their graves. > > > >>

June 12, 2011

Dear Anne You make many good points. Let me just add though, since my earlier email was not clear on this, that a randomized trial does not necessarily mean you withhold treatment from one group. In the case you mention, you would randomize to a positive control, not a negative control. But even more of a concern, the movement therapy you refer to would be difficult to make blind to the investigator or clinician, because it would be obvious to her what was being done, so my guess is, that’s another reason why such a design was not proposed. In cases such as this, there are other ways to present the medical evidence to support the claim, so all is not lost. But it does take time, energy and effort, as we saw in the Burzynski film, to keep pushing forward. Such objections do not in any way detract from the essential worth of the method but it does say something about the circumstances and the individuals who seek to either apply or ignore the method. Stan From: iodine [mailto:iodine ] On Behalf Of Anne SealsSent: Sunday, June 12, 2011 1:08 AMiodine Subject: Re: Re: Blindly following/double blind studies Ten years ago, I put my son through a course of neurodevelopmental movement therapy that GREATLY helped with his autistic issues. I was all excited about getting other people to try it with their ASD kids, but it sounded too weird to people. I was talking to his therapist, & she told me that pediatricians refuse to recommend neurodevelopmental movement therapy because there are no double-blind studies to " prove " its efficacy. My obvious thought was that they should do the double-blind studies. Because that is the " gold standard, " right? Her response affected me profoundly. She pointed out that in order to do a double-blind study, you had to purposely do nothing for half the participants. It is axiomatic in autism that the earlier the intervention, the better the result (Not to mention the reduction in misery for the whole family.) She said that they could not, in good conscience, withhold care from half the children to prove that it had helped the other half. The course of autism without intervention is that virtually none of the children make significant gains. This has been observed many, MANY times, & is indisputable. She pointed out that even making half of the children wait for the length of the study would make it harder for them to benefit from therapy, & prolong their misery, & the misery of their families -- all to prove something that they already know. Their program can greatly improve the level of function of kids on the autistic spectrum. Interestingly, in mainstream medicine, they often shorten trials & start treating the control group on compassionate grounds, when they claim that the treatment being tested makes an obvious difference. (Of course, that sells them more drugs, so that's OK...) The guys who make the rules get to break them whenever they want to. So, could the iodine docs identify a group of people with horrible fatigue, brain fog, weight issues, constipation, etc., etc. & watch them deteriorate for lack of iodine to prove a point? I suppose they could. But I'd sure be pissed to spend a couple years in the control group before anybody tried to help me! Most of us have inadvertently spent years in the control group already! And as many of us are finding, even getting the right treatment doesn't guarantee that you will instantly become well. It is a long process -- the sooner started, the better. Anne On Jun 11, 2011, at 11:34 AM, S. Altan wrote: Dear I appreciate very much your thoughtful comments and I want to congratulate you on your success in finding successful therapies through your own efforts in the face of the prejudices and limitations of conventional medicine. I did want to comment on something you said : …The Iodine Project doctors put forward their ideas and have not done trials for the reasons outlined above. If somebody does not put forward in print their ideas for scrutiny, there is something wrong. You do not have to have all the answers. You do not necessarily have to have trials either. But refusing to discuss the issue AT ALL is for me highly suspect and an abuse of trust on the part of doctors. So in the spirit of your last sentence in the above quoted paragraph and also admitting that perhaps I do not fully understand everything you wrote, I did not find a compelling justification for why the iodine project doctors don’t do trials. If there is a good reason for it, I suspect it’s probably related to money but whether we accept it or not, randomized double blind trials are the standard for establishing the worth of a therapy for people in the medical research community. I would love to see one done, where someone compares Iodine vs synthroid or NDT, even if it’s a short term study where important baseline characteristics can be controlled to show its efficacy. Certainly no one doubts the experiences of Drs A and B, but until you have a controlled randomized study, it will continue to be relegated to the ‘anecdotal’ stage and it cannot be elevated to the status of what the scientific and research community would regard as a ‘proven’ therapy. This is unfortunate, but like so many other things, this is life. So for example, the fact that numerous individuals find positive results , each one conducting their own clinical trial on themselves carries little weight because randomization was absent and no control or positive treatment group was present to compare the experience against. That can only be done with a sufficient number of subjects, and designed according to rules that seek to find a particular effect if it’s there. I earnestly hope, mightily, that Drs A and B would find the courage and wherewithal to rectify this large gap in the research and conduct such a study so that objective evidence could be presented. I hasten to add that I am not very familiar with the literature, just recently trying to figure out if Iodine is an option for me, so it may be that some such evidence is around and I am just not aware. I apologize in advance if that is the case. Stan From: iodine [mailto:iodine ] On Behalf Of MacGilchristSent: Saturday, June 11, 2011 1:49 PMiodine Subject: Re: Re: Blindly following Was: Sad but true With alternative medicine, I think drug companies have no interest in any statistics or trials being run. Information about Iodine or LDN could make a big hole in the profits of drug companies. Any laboratory that ran trials would be blackballed by Big Pharma. If I had a load of money, I would start an independent laboratory to run trials on treatments like iodine. It would probably have a huge security budget! I think that people have to go back to basics here and re-think their whole way of approaching their health care. You go and see a doctor with the expectation that he/she will be able to cure you. In my case after 4 years I was not getting better. My doctor told me that I was OK because my labs were OK. I didn't feel OK. So my doctor was not doing his job as far as I was concerned, although he felt quite pleased with himself. After 4 years of T4 only I had to face the fact that I felt like rubbish, I wasn't getting better and it was no use lying to myself anymore. He was wrong, so was my specialist. So what next? I surfed the Internet and read everything I could. I tried all sorts of stuff. I reckoned if I had a solution that wasn't going to hurt me, why not try it? I would waste a little money and time, but it was low risk. Eventually, I tried the Iodine Protocol. I was worried about this for various reasons but considered that the potential advantages were worth a small risk and that if things did go wrong the situation was not irreversible. So I tried it and in 6 weeks, no more sore breasts! On the basis of this, I decided that I was probably iodine deficient as doctors A and B describe in their papers on the subject. By trying things out in small controlled steps, I realised that the Iodine Protocol was doing me a lot of good and probably everything it was cracked up to be. It didn't sort out all my problems straight away. I wanted to get my Hashi ABs down. This has taken me about two years. But in the mean time I was not doing myself any harm so why not wait and see? In the end, it worked OK. Don't know why some people get low ABs after a few months and not me, but I got what I wanted in the end. Basically, Drs A and B delivered the goods for me, it just didn't happen overnight! Along the way, I had to weigh up the pros and cons on several occasions. It just comes down to doing your own clinical trial on yourself! As for blindly following the Drs A and/or B or blindly following the rest of the medical establishment, well, I find Drs A and B quite clear and forthcoming about how they propose to treat people. There are books and publications on the Internet by them which are very explicit about what they think. None of the doctors or specialists who have treated me have deigned to explain the reasoning behind their treatment. Within reasonable limits, Drs A and B have published a great deal of information. They cannot spend all their time trying to prove their points because they have patients to see and a living to earn. They have put up a very good defence of their case against Dr Alan Gaby's attack in the " Townsend Letter to Patients and Doctors " . Much of the information about conventional treatment for thyroid and fibrocystic breast disease that is available on the Internet is just information and instructions without any bibliography. So how can you make a judgement about something so unsubstantiated? How can anybody even trust it? The only reason that everyone follows conventional treatment is because everyone else is doing it. They do it blindly. The iodine protocol doctors are honest about what they are doing and expose their ideas to public scrutiny. My specialist had not even heard of the iodine protocol. I don't think it has to be blindly following one doctor or another. The Iodine Project doctors put forward their ideas and have not done trials for the reasons outlined above. If somebody does not put forward in print their ideas for scrutiny, there is something wrong. You do not have to have all the answers. You do not necessarily have to have trials either. But refusing to discuss the issue AT ALL is for me highly suspect and an abuse of trust on the part of doctors. People have to learn to apply some very simple rules and reasoning to the way they approach their health care, particularly with chronic problems like thyroid illness and cancer, and have confidence in their own judgement. Many people accept situations in their health care that they would not accept when buying, for example, a used car. I am sure such a statement will provoke a cry of " you can't compare buy a used car with your health! " Well, no the situations are not totally comparable. But if a used car sales man refuses to answer a question about a car or his answer seems unclear or dishonest, it is probably universally agreed that it is ill advised to buy the car. I would say that as far as health care is concerned you should apply AT LEAST the same care that you would with buying a car. I know it is easy to say this and not so easy to do when you are frightened, have everyone against you and have mind fog. On the other hand, when you are in a tight corner sometimes it can make you very decisive. I must admit, it was the idea that I might die after a long illness that really forced me to think about my health care. I realised that not to make a decision was in fact making a decision of going along with my doctor and that I had to stop it. So I started to look at every possible treatment from scratch. Things started to get better after that. MacG. From: ladybugsandbees <ladybugsandbees@...>iodine Sent: Sat, 11 June, 2011 14:54:48Subject: Re: Re: Blindly following Was: Sad but true But Laurel it isn't just Dr. Abraham. He has been digging into historical research. They aren't his ideas that iodine is effective for cancer. Many other doctors are saying the same thing: Here are some of the doctors: Dr. Guy AbrahamDr. BrownsteinDr. Dr. DerryDr. Albert Szent GyorgyiDr. Orlee (book - Minerals for the Genetic Code) Then if you read the research to follow the basic biochemistry: Iodine is needed for the P53 gene to function. P53 is responsible for apoptosis of abnormal cells. Without iodine it doesn't work and bad cells / DNA is allowed to replicate. P53 is called the guardian of the genetic code.Radioactive iodine is used to kill thyroid cancer cells by entering the cell and damaging the DNA. So non-radioactive iodine will enter the cells as well but because we know that it effects the P53, we know that it will help to kill the bad cells through P53. Barriers to entry in the cell by both RAI and non-radioactive forms are: 1. Bromide blocking receptors (which is why large doses of iodine are needed to displace bromide and allow iodine to enter the cells)2. Non-functioning symporters (which is addressed by Dr Abraham's papers on Vit C & Symporters on www.optimox.com)3. Iodine Resistance in cells - which can be increased through retinoic acid (It is used to increase uptake of RAI but I have done it to increase uptake of Iodine) Then you need to make your body an environment that will heal and improve your immune system by detoxing, removing heavy metal toxicity, increasing nutrient levels and balancing hormones. Here is what I found. You liken this to following blindly. Don't! I am serious here. You need to read research and understand why it is the right thing for you. I was blessed to have Dr. Brownstein as my doctor on my journey. He did set up my protocol which is what I share here but I did not just let him tell me what to do. I read and read and read to figure out why it was the right thing and how I could enhance the protocol with other nutrients based on what I knew about the way RAI worked in the body. I will be writing a book on thyroid cancer - hopefully to start in the fall - so for now all the data remains jumbled in my brain and in folders on my computer waiting to organize for others to use. You need to believe in what you are doing otherwise you will drive yourself crazy wondering. It is not anything that this group can give you. We can share what we have done and what has worked for us and point you to places like www.iodine4health.com so you can read the research that has been gathered. Unfortunately there are no stats of iodine and cancer effectiveness. Those types of stats are generally collected on drugs and not natural remedies. The natural supplement companies are under more and more fire from the FDA and FTC. I recently received a practitioner flyer from one of the supplement companies I work with. They stated that due to an increased scrutiny from the government on what was being said about what supplements would do for your health they were going to eliminate one of the informational sections of the flyer. It is sad but true. We are living in an age where the sharing of information that you are seeking is being taken underground. Best of luck on your journey. Buist, ND Re: Blindly following Was: Sad but true Anne - Yes, it's all subjective. Someone may be very ill, and yet happy enough with their own situation to describe themselves as well, and vice versa. It all depends on your goals & expectations. At my age, and with my history, I don't expect to be hiking the Appalachian Trail, and so I'm satisfied with being able to mow the weeds, er... grass.But when it comes to the iodine protocol I hoped that there would be some statistics showing conventional thyca treatment vs. iodine. That's what I meant by blindly following. I can blindly follow the medical establishment or I can blindly follow Dr. Abraham.And with all medical matters - unless you are the researcher yourself all you can do is take someone's else's word for what consistutes the truth. My apologies for going all philosophical...Laurel> > Sadly the majority of folks will not question their docs or do any research on their own, many people blindly follow right to their graves. > > > >>

June 12, 2011

Anyone interested in this must see " Lorenzo's Oil " , with Nick Nolte.Jim

> > > Sadly the majority of folks will not question their docs or do any

> research on their own, many people blindly follow right to their graves.

> > >

> >

>

June 12, 2011

Stan-- imo you're making this way more complex than is required. Studies

aren't done by the big companies that have the money because there is no

money to be made with iodine. In fact, the very lack of iodine in our

diets is the cause of a great many illnesses from which those very same

companies make big bucks stirring up drugs to " treat " . So there is simply

no motivation by those who have the money. Asking why individual doctors

don't do these studies is disingenuous-- no single doctor has the money,

witness the Burzynski film you yourself reference.

--

At 07:53 AM 6/12/2011, you wrote:

>Dear Anne

>

>You make many good points. Let me just add though, since my earlier email

>was not clear on this, that a randomized trial does not necessarily mean

>you withhold treatment from one group. In the case you mention, you would

>randomize to a positive control, not a negative control. But even more of

>a concern, the movement therapy you refer to would be difficult to make

>blind to the investigator or clinician, because it would be obvious to her

>what was being done, so my guess is, that's another reason why such a

>design was not proposed. In cases such as this, there are other ways to

>present the medical evidence to support the claim, so all is not lost. But

>it does take time, energy and effort, as we saw in the Burzynski film, to

>keep pushing forward. Such objections do not in any way detract from the

>essential worth of the method but it does say something about the

>circumstances and the individuals who seek to either apply or ignore the

>method.

>

>Stan

>

>From: iodine [mailto:iodine ] On Behalf Of

>Anne Seals

>Sent: Sunday, June 12, 2011 1:08 AM

>iodine

>Subject: Re: Re: Blindly following/double blind studies

>

>Ten years ago, I put my son through a course of neurodevelopmental

>movement therapy that GREATLY helped with his autistic issues. I was all

>excited about getting other people to try it with their ASD kids, but it

>sounded too weird to people. I was talking to his therapist, & she told me

>that pediatricians refuse to recommend neurodevelopmental movement therapy

>because there are no double-blind studies to " prove " its efficacy. My

>obvious thought was that they should do the double-blind studies. Because

>that is the " gold standard, " right?

>

~~~ There is no way to peace; peace is the way ~~~~

--A.J. Muste

June 12, 2011

You cannot patent iodine either. So there is reduced incentive.

I just finished watching the Burzynski film. It angers me. The most compelling comment was when a witness testifying at one of his hearings stated that he had come from a communist country and even the dictator of that country would not stop the doctors from using treatments on their patients. Here we are in the US where are freedom is gone. CODEX is knocking at the door and most are unaware of the huge impact all these small erosions are having on us.

Buist, ND

Re: Re: Blindly following/double blind studies>>>Ten years ago, I put my son through a course of neurodevelopmental >movement therapy that GREATLY helped with his autistic issues. I was all >excited about getting other people to try it with their ASD kids, but it >sounded too weird to people. I was talking to his therapist, & she told me >that pediatricians refuse to recommend neurodevelopmental movement therapy >because there are no double-blind studies to "prove" its efficacy. My >obvious thought was that they should do the double-blind studies. Because >that is the "gold standard," right?>>>~~~ There is no way to peace; peace is the way ~~~~--A.J. Muste

June 12, 2011

That moment in that film really struck me too, Steph.

--

At 12:57 PM 6/12/2011, you wrote:

>You cannot patent iodine either. So there is reduced incentive.

>

>I just finished watching the Burzynski film. It angers me. The most

>compelling comment was when a witness testifying at one of his hearings

>stated that he had come from a communist country and even the dictator of

>that country would not stop the doctors from using treatments on their

>patients. Here we are in the US where are freedom is gone. CODEX is

>knocking at the door and most are unaware of the huge impact all these

>small erosions are having on us.

>

> Buist, ND

>

> RE: Re: Blindly following/double blind studies

>

>Stan-- imo you're making this way more complex than is required. Studies

>aren't done by the big companies that have the money because there is no

>money to be made with iodine. In fact, the very lack of iodine in our

>diets is the cause of a great many illnesses from which those very same

>companies make big bucks stirring up drugs to " treat " . So there is simply

>no motivation by those who have the money. Asking why individual doctors

>don't do these studies is disingenuous-- no single doctor has the money,

>witness the Burzynski film you yourself reference.

>

>--

>

>At 07:53 AM 6/12/2011, you wrote:

>

> >Dear Anne

> >

> >You make many good points. Let me just add though, since my earlier email

> >was not clear on this, that a randomized trial does not necessarily mean

> >you withhold treatment from one group. In the case you mention, you would

> >randomize to a positive control, not a negative control. But even more of

> >a concern, the movement therapy you refer to would be difficult to make

> >blind to the investigator or clinician, because it would be obvious to her

> >what was being done, so my guess is, that's another reason why such a

> >design was not proposed. In cases such as this, there are other ways to

> >present the medical evidence to support the claim, so all is not lost. But

> >it does take time, energy and effort, as we saw in the Burzynski film, to

> >keep pushing forward. Such objections do not in any way detract from the

> >essential worth of the method but it does say something about the

> >circumstances and the individuals who seek to either apply or ignore the

> >method.

> >

> >Stan

> >

~~~ There is no way to peace; peace is the way ~~~~

--A.J. Muste

June 12, 2011

I use the similarity of communism when explaining alternative medicine to

friends. They always tell me if the things I was telling them were true, they

would be common knowledge. I can remember my Civics teacher explaining

communism when I was in the 7th grade. We just couldn't grasp how people would

blindly follow and not question things. But when all you know is the info that

is fed to you, all of us fall into that trap. That's exactly where the majority

of us are with mainstream medicine. We don't look outside the box, some of us

are quite adept at searching within the box, medical studies, etc. but remain

clueless about the real truth.

Dr. Burzynski's location is here where I live, he has been on the news many

times since 1980 when I first moved here. Several of those included cases where

parents had found him and were trying to save the lives of their children.

Houston is also one of the largest medical centers in the U.S. and doctors here

are not about to let parents just take any pediatric patient diagnosed with

cancer to an alternative source. The authorities will and do step in. I can't

even describe my anger at this. Cancer is the #2 cause of death in children and

it is a horrific disease, the procedures that children have to undergo is

literally barbaric. Families and patients are easily manipulated because they

are usually in shock over a diagnosis and looking to those in the know to cure

their child. It is quite unnerving to figure out that those in control know

very little about the disease. It's difficult to keep your wits about you and

if you are facing something that the mainstream believes is treatable, they will

fight you to proceed, including taking folks to court. We spent 3 months on the

oncology floor, at one of the finest pediatric hospitals in the world, with my

daughter back in the late 90's, what we saw there was eye-opening to say the

least, several times we saw police officers on the floor. Even here where

Burzynski is located, people know very little about him.

One of my docs is trained by Dr. Hotze, also nearby. My gyn doctor was not

happy that I was seeing this doctor and told me that Dr. Hotze was considered a

maverick amongst his peers. I was kinda pleased with that adjective, although I

didn't take it the way he meant it. Maverick definition-individualist,

nonconformist, dissident. ;-)

Linn