Lazlo wrote
What's wrong with dealling with the causes of ill health? That's what I want to talk about. Most infant mortality is caused by diarrhea and other illnesses associated with poor sanitation and nutrition. most advances in public heath have happened through people getting stronger, not having access to more doctors. I'm saying that good food and enough rest are more important than having lots of doctors.
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We all understand that diet and environment are important factors in determining health. No-one here would disagree with that. The rest of your post reads like unfounded conjecture with a toal lack of logical argument. The people I have encountered who show this hostility to medicine show exactly the same hostility to science. I cannot help but see it as a response to a lack of understanding.
Lazlo, you included the following in your post:
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"....Death from these conditions is almost unheard of for infants in more developed countries... ."
http://www.prb.org/Content/NavigationMenu/PRB/Educators/Human_Population/Health2/World_Health1.htm
Which would seem to imply that countries without a developed medical and sanitation system are plagued by higher, and not lower as you claimed, infant deaths.
The last reference you included had the following line in it:
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Even after procedures and medications have been shown (a) not only not to work, but (b) to cause injury and death at a statistically significant level, they continue to gain in popularity and use.
So, here the author uses evidence-based analysis to assess the usefulness of medical practices, and yet here:
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We've been told that it's only the treatments of orthodox medicine that have passed careful scientific scrutiny involving double-blind placebo-controlled studies. Concomitantly, we've been told that alternative or complementary health care has no science to back it up, only anecdotal evidence. These two ideas have led to the widely accepted "truths" that anyone offering an alternative or complementary approach is depriving patients of the proven benefits of safe and effective care, and that people not only don't get well with alternative care, but are actually endangered by it.
the same author (a phd no less) decries the exact same approach when applied to so-called "alternative therapies". Now, as i'm sure you know, the prevailing medical orthodoxy is oriented around evidence-based practices. I work for the NHS Audit body, and checking whether treatments actually work is exactly what we do, so I know what i'm talking about here.
John says
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also - one of the problems of relying on proof is that you are implicitly claiming that we need to look to the present to understand the future. If we think that it is important to build a new type of future we need also to have the courage of our convictions and not necessarily rely on proof, but on argument and opinion.
Arghh!! Utter, utter crap. If I have bowel cancer, and need a treatment, and we don't use evidence-based treatments, I could be convinced by your quack telling me that bile-chanting (nicked that from The Day Today if anyone cares) will work, instead of chemotherapy. Subsequently, I will die. Good job I didn't require any oppressive "proof", eh? I'm sorry, but i'm a scientist, and I find these sorts of statements the most bollocky bollocks liberal crap i've ever read. Sorry.
Most people get to be doctors because they're middle/upper class, and during their elite training their attitude towards our pleb bodies isn't improved. 
).
Detrimental, yes. Irrelevant, no.