In my experience, these are older doctors who haven't bothered keeping up with science.

The young ones fresh out of college are glorified drug pushers.

That's a generalization of course.

I have a great doctor who can manipulate my neck and back. He is not a chiropractor but something else. He is an older guy and he is a medical doctor.

She was given two weeks to live by a medical doctor! She was weak, on heavy drugs, bald from Kemo etc. ...
If her survival was due to anything beside Laetrile and or vitamins, it was due to a complete diet and lifestyle change.

Spider and JB,

I'm pretty sure that eating the wrong kinds of carbs and/or fats will trump the regulation of the ratios of the two categories.

Eating a low carb, high easy-cheese diet doesn't sound so good to me, nor low fat high Froot Loop diet.

A diet reasonably low in carbs and high in nuts/avocados doesn't seem so bad, while a low in fat and high a diversity of fresh fruits sounds pretty damn good.

Statistically speaking, chemotherapy is a good idea. This doesn't mean that its guaranteed to be a good idea for each person who undergoes the treatment. Its possible that ceasing the doctors treatment contributed to her getting better.

He sounds like an osteopath.

Placebo effect? You are out of your mind. She was given two weeks to live by a medical doctor! She was weak, on heavy drugs, bald from Kemo etc. No placebo is going to give her six more years and cause her hair to grow back. Ridiculous. I can't believe you even said that.

If her survival was due to anything beside Laetrile and or vitamins, it was due to a complete diet and lifestyle change.

Spider and JB,

I'm pretty sure that eating the wrong kinds of carbs and/or fats will trump the regulation of the ratios of the two categories.

Eating a low carb, high easy-cheese diet doesn't sound so good to me, nor low fat high Froot Loop diet.

A diet reasonably low in carbs and high in nuts/avocados doesn't seem so bad, while a low in fat and high a diversity of fresh fruits sounds pretty damn good.

Placebo effect? You are out of your mind. She was given two weeks to live by a medical doctor! She was weak, on heavy drugs, bald from Kemo etc. No placebo is going to give her six more years and cause her hair to grow back. Ridiculous. I can't believe you even said that.

If her survival was due to anything beside Laetrile and or vitamins, it was due to a complete diet and lifestyle change.

Lets summarize the arguments against skepticism.

--We cant know other people exist. (laughable, silly, really should make us all laugh to hear this used as an argument against skeptical inquiry)To pursue knowledge at all one must make this assumption, it is the foundation of all philosophy.

--We should treat all claims equally. Yea that makes sense lets treat the invisible dragon in my garage the same as the keys in my pocket claim. We would have to treat the claim that your husband cheated on you with the neighbor, vs your husband cheated on you with the ghost of Elvis equally.

--Science/Scientists have been wrong before. This is true, however that the people who work toward understanding are wrong at times, even spectacularly so is not an argument against skepticism, but for it.

As much as it stokes the various ego's to try to catch me in a gotcha moment, or attempt to cherry pick and straw man the basic premise of skepticism, the reality is that there is no reasonable argument against it.

That the default position for each person even those so riled against me and my stance are themselves skeptical AND is clearly true from there own behaviors.

No one rationally assumes they have won the lottery just becuase they bought a ticket, we check, no one rationally assumes the random performer dressed like Elvis is actually Elvis. No one rationally assumes that the email saying the Nigerian prince wants to give you a % of his fortune for cashing his checks is legit? No one rationally jumps out of his window becuase he doesn't know he cant fly. (examples vary by education, and general gullibility, the tenor remains unchanged)

Why becuase dependent on the scenario and the persons life experience/and or knowledge they know to be skeptical of most if not all things which can be unknowable without checking into it. Checking is the default in almost every thing we cant know without checking.

This same reason is why when I was faced with assuming I saw the future, or assuming my memory was playing tricks on me I either withhold judgment and collect facts(check), or go with the simpler solution . . . my memory/perception was playing tricks on me.

It is only when bias creeps in that we start to make wild assumptions, and stop checking things which are extraordinary and which can be more easily explained with less fantastic conclusions.

Perhaps it is not as much fun to think a little swamp gas is ionized that caused that light in the sky vs aliens, or perhaps it isn't as exciting to imagine you are being invisibly restrained by aliens when you are in the grips of a sleep paralysis. Perhaps you wont get as much sympathy, or as much attention. However, once you dedicate yourself to truth and knowledge you want to find the ACTUAL truth, not just what is fun exciting, or that which you want to believe, or that which comforts you, or makes you feel special.

You learn to remain neutral to things that can be tested, up until they have been tested and the results replicated without being falsified. You learn methods for removing bias. You learn logic, and fallacy to spot it when you see it. You learn how to investigate premise, and link to conclusion. You understand that many people in the room have not spent so much time in these endeavors and will likely see you as strange for caring at all about the Holocaust denier, or the AIDS denier, or the Cancer research Denier, or the homeopath, or the Anti-Vaccine loon.

Well, I get worked up becuase I have spent that time, I have worked with professionals in the field who are studying some of these things, I have spoke with some of the true heroes of our generation who honestly work to unravel these mysteries, and it physically pains me to imagine the kinds of mental roadblocks that are setup to allow such denial-ism, or that allow so much pseudo scientific ideas to permeate our society and for reasons so banal.

I see this as one of the greatest causes, the cause of truth over rhetoric, the cause of knowledge over lies and make believe.

The mother of a friend of mine was in the same position. Then doctors sent her home to die, SHE THOUGHT SHE WAS CURED. She got better and is still alive over 10 years later. Without snake oil. Good old placebo effect, which has been shown to actually cure some people.

Like I said, a healthy balanced diet.

Its a no brainer.

Yes I would agree.

I have heard that using chemotherapy is like dropping a bomb on a city to kill a few terrorists.

Chemotherapy kills good cells as well as bad cells.

The chemotherapy she had been getting was doing nothing to reduce her tumor size. HOWEVER when she went to Old Mexico (a third world country by the way) and got treatment, her tumor reduced in size enormously. They did not treat her with chemotherapy, even though they do use it sometimes down there.

So what does this backwards third world country know that we don't know? Probably nothing. That means that our country has no intentions of being successful in treating cancer... or else they just don't know enough to be successful. All that money people donate to the American Cancer Society... billions of dollars... what the hell are they using that for?

People need to wake the hell up.

Not entering the debate.. just curious about this article.

It sounds almost too good to be true: a cheap and simple drug that kills almost all cancers by switching off their "immortality". The drug, dichloroacetate (DCA), has already been used for years to treat rare metabolic disorders and so is known to be relatively safe.

It also has no patent, meaning it could be manufactured for a fraction of the cost of newly developed drugs.

http://bit.ly/4Bz2uV

Good old placebo effect, which has been shown to actually cure some people.

Okay, I'll explain it to you.

Cancer cells get their energy from sugar. JUST FROM SUGAR. Almost every healthy cell in your body can live off sugar OR energy generated from fat (ketones). So if you don't eat carbs or sugar, you starve the cancer, while your healthy cells live off the ketones your body produces.

Fruit are high in sugar. So fruit feeds cancer.

Your body NEEDS fat. So a low fat diet is bad for you. Your liver makes the majority of the cholesterol in your body. Without animal fats, your liver is forced to made the Pattern B (bad for you) LDL cholesterol. So you NEED animal fats. You can live without them, but you won't be as healthy as you would be if you consumed animal fats. Modern literature on the subject suggests that 78% YES SEVENTY EIGHT PERCENT of your calories should come from FAT. Fat is neutral to blood sugar. Carbs spike blood sugar, which causes your pancreas to release insulin. So does protein, but protein also spikes glucogone, which is the opposite of insulin. Insulin and glucogone cancel each other out.

Here's what you need to grasp: If you aren't eating carbs or sugars (which are just simple carbs), YOU CANNOT GAIN WEIGHT. Insulin is the hormone that commands fat cells to store fat. If you aren't telling your fat cells to store fat, then they won't.

So what does this backwards third world country know that we don't know? Probably nothing. That means that our country has no intentions of being successful in treating cancer... or else they just don't know enough to be successful. All that money people donate to the American Cancer Society... billions of dollars... what the hell are they using that for?

People need to wake the hell up.

The Government outlawed the snake oils, not the drug companies. The Government shouldn't stand between the doctor and the patient, period. Let the doctor give the treatment the patient wants and everyone can live by the motto "buyer beware".

Carbs are also vegetables and fruits.

The great apes only eat vegetables and fruits and they gain weight.

Cows are not meat eaters, and they gain weight. So your statement that if you don't eat carbs you can't gain weight is not true.

In fact, raw vegetables burn more calories being digested than they give the body in return. That is why the Dolly Parton soup will cause you to loose weight the more of it you eat.

A balanced diet is the best. Your body needs carbs for energy. You can live on ketones but you still need carbs or you will find yourself dragging around with no energy because it takes too long to digest the ketones.

So, do whatever works for you. Low carb, high fat did not work for me at all.

No, what the government has done is outlaw vitamin therapy by doctors. They can't stop people from taking their own vitamins although they would love to do that too.