- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmy.world
YouTube starts mass takedowns of videos promoting ‘harmful or ineffective’ cancer cures | The platform will also take action against videos that discourage people from seeking professional medical …::YouTube will remove content about harmful or ineffective cancer treatments or which “discourages viewers from seeking professional medical treatment.”
Well colour me shocked. That YT would do the bidding of big pharma… Never.
You’re right, we should let these vile scammers prey on vulnerable people when they’re at their most hopeless. They don’t deserve their money! They won’t have any use for it!
Fallacy much?
The fact that there’s debate about the efficancy of certain medicine doesn’t change the fact that we atleast have a relatively good idea about what doesn’t work. People like Steve Jobs would probably have a thing or two to say about that aswell.
“Big pharma” has better things to do than produce purposely harmful medicine. Fortunately, poisoning your customers is a big danger to profitability. If at all, a “traditional medicine” approach that was not a scam would be immediately adopted, marketed and commodified by the pharma industry, not suppressed and fought.
“Big pharma” companies do have a potential interest in covering up the harms of medicines in their patent rosters. If it doesn’t straight up kill their customers, it’s less money they have to spend on R&D for less harmful treatments.
Not to imply random snake oil assholes selling ivermectin etc. don’t have similar, worse interests. But no one in the space whatsoever is just immune from standing to gain from doing something bad without serious oversight from all angles. That includes vigorous and scientifically-minded public conversation about it - not just walled off to professionals. There’s no magical formula here, you need public education and open information, to not only just have correct information but refute incorrect information. If you have this big walled garden around “The Truth” and delete everything else, well, we just lived through the consequence of that with COVID, it breeds distrust and pseudoscience.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artemisinin
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digoxin
there are probably more, starting with aspirin (salicin), modern opioids (opium) and modern anticholinergics (atropine). there’s also plenty of stuff in traditional medicine that maybe does nothing beneficial or even kinda works but it’s way too toxic for modern regulatory agencies, like all heavy metals and aconitine
Taking these medicines in the forms they are found in nature is a horrible idea. Most of the plants they come from are poisonous because the therapeutic index of most of the drugs here are low, meaning the line between medicine and poison is very fine. Purifying the ingredient and allowing tight control of the dosage is the reason any of these are able to be used safely. Please don’t go around eating bits of foxglove or belladonna.
As you’ve seen, modern medicine is not shy about taking ingredients found in nature when they actually have a useful purpose in medicine, and enabling them to be actually used safely instead of taking some random unknown dosage of a potentially deadly drug and hoping for the best.
Except for fixing vitamin and mineral deficiencies, supplements are ineffective at best and dangerous at worst. They’re in desperate need of better regulation in the United States. They scam tons of people and get away with ridiculous claims like fighting dementia based on no evidence that would be totally illegal for any actual pharmaceutical company to claim, all while selling bottles of stuff with “proprietary formulas” or claiming to have plants that aren’t even in there when independent researchers look at them. All totally legal by the way, no requirement for ingredients listed on a supplement to reflect reality. Stay away if you value your health or your money. Not saying pharmaceutical companies are always shining beacons of beneficence here, obviously I have many problems with them as well, but they at least have some sort of regulated evidence base for the most part.
i’m with you, i’m just saying that the bits of “traditional medicine” that work (as in, have active compounds) become medicine without adjectives
not really, if you know how much of the active compound is out there. but this limits applicability heavily (can’t put herbal extract in iv bag). pure compounds are much better (better stability, higher degree of quality control etc)