Froch interview with the Guardian

Antibiotics are not dangerous or worthless. Prescribing them unnecessarily is. So giving them to people for viral complaints to stop them whining as some doctors do is ridiculous and risky.

It is wise to have a healthy diet and avoid taking pills when you can. But if you get seriously ill it is nothing short of stupid not to take advantage of modern medicine.
Aspirin as a blood thinner for people with heart conditions is proven to help. It is actually from tree bark, so is a "natural" remedy. But it is mainstream because it works.

An "alternative medicine" is one that has not been proven over the course of controlled, double blind tests. Once it becomes proven to work, it is no longer "alternative".
So putting your faith in alternative medicines is simply putting your faith in unproven treatments and conjecture. If you are seriously ill rather than with a bout of flu or something similar then I'd say blind faith whether prayer, homeopathy or crystal healing is far more foolish than tested and proven treatments based on science.

P.S The book being by a fraud is 100% relevant seeing as Froch lists this man as the sole reason for not going to the doctor anymore. So he has made his decision based on this mans views, a man who is a total joke. And you called Froch intelligent for making this decision.
An intelligent person would have read the book, been interested and intrigued by what he said and then gone to see if there was more on the topic or contra evidence. He would then have found that listening to this money grabbing, fraudster is far more dangerous and foolish than listening to his doctor.

 

Yes, because mainstream medicine never passes anything unless it is proven to be significantly effective. Oh wait.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15630849?dopt=Abstract

It's strange why Ben Goldacre never pulls this study up isn't it. But nope, this study back in 04 was met with a strange silence. Best just to ignore it and carry on blathering on about Gillian McKeith and be the the feather-fisted Hector Camacho of quack-busting

 

Why should he target chemo? It works for some cancers. He was strongly critical of the pharma industries, but his main ire is for the media and how they report science and medical stories.

It is quite well known that not only is chemo pretty limited in its use and more recent research has shown that it does not fight cancer in the way it was thought to anyway.
It is fairly useless if the cancer has damaged the TP53 gene which is responsible for triggering the enzymes which can kill cancer cells by making the cell effectively "commit suicide".

But if you have Hodgkins Lymphoma, chemo has a huge succes rate.

Let me ask you this. If you were diagnosed with Hodgkins Lymphoma where recent studies showed that those with a favourable diagnosis who were treated with chemo had a 98% 5 year survival rate, would you take it or opt for an alternative medicine?

Chemo had results in certain cancers and was passed due to this and due to a lack of an alternative. Some success was better than no success. But yes it is variable and sometimes virtually useless. But this is often spelt out. A family friend is currently dying from a rare form of NH Lymphoma and was told how low the impact of chemo would be, and that radiotherapy had a high probability of causing brain damage too.

It was offered and the potential benefits in percentage terms explained.

You act as if chemo is totally useless in all cancers. It isn't. And the sort of study you quote is a part of modern medicine. Testing and inputting those results into the wider framework are essential. It is why this derided "modern medicine" has teams of people working constantly to look for better treatments and trial new drugs, invest in new angles like gene therapy.

What scrutiny and peer reviewed tests does crystal healing or any of the other myriad "alternative" treatments expose themselves to?

 

Yeah im danish, I never heard who the guy were, just that they wanted to bring in a russian MW to try and bring some speed into the sparring, instead of sparring with heavier LHW guys like Karo Murat etc.
I know the other sparring partner is a polish SMW boxer named :

Piotr Wilczewski he is ranked 66 at SMW


I also Box alot and I train kids in boxing...boxing has really exploded here in Denmark since Kessler got on the scene...we have 100 kids in the age from 6-12 years of age training boxing, and thats about 5-6 times as much as a small club like ours normally have, so we have alot to thank Kessler for.
I predicted a loss for Kessler against Ward and I do the same this time. But I really hope im wrong

 

I love Froch interviews but he's often full of ****. Alternative medicine?

I just copied that quote myself! I take it you've read Bad Science then? One of the best books I read last year. Froch can only harm his career subscribing to that ****

 

I typed this in the post before:

"It's all about objectivity. Having the knowedge to make a decision on something regardless of whether it is from the alternative or mainstream medicine.

Objectivity today is seriously lacking because most people only know one way to deal with things i.e getting drugged up. "

That's my stance on it and I've always said that chemo is very useful for some lymphomas and testicular cancer, however in the overall scheme of things these cancers do make up a significant chunk of people who get cancer. Even in terms of lymphoma, Hodgkins is responsive, non-Hodgins not so much.

As for Goldacre not mentioning it, why doesn't he? I thought this would be a quite big news for someone with a column dedicating itself to bad science. All this stuff about about there being 'advances all the time' and with the 'great strides' being made apparently, and cancer still has a mortality rate of over 91%. In the vast majority of cancers, chemotherapy is the greatest quackery of all. Why doesn't he do an article discussing it? Is he afraid, or is everyone afraid, of cutting the crap and having a truthful no-bull**** discussion about such an important issue?

Again, objectivity is what I want. Why can't people be informed about this stuff is what I want to know, and why are studies like this swept under the carpet.

 

Yes it is a very good book indeed.

 

I found a link that confirms that Kessler has sparred with Piotr Wilczewski for his upcomming fight with Froch.

http://www.bokser.org/content/2010/03/31/161601/index.jsp

 

That is all fair enough mate. But I would say he probably doesn't target it because it does work very well for some cancers. Knowing how the media are, if he wrote an article highlighting the failings of chemo in many cancers, within a couple of weeks numerous papers would run with it and have people thinking that chemo is useless.

Like that family in the US who had a boy with Hodgkins Lymphoma but refused chemo and wanted to use alternative medicine instead.

The risk of criticising something as life and death as chemo in a public forum or mainstream media is that it gets misrepresented. That might not be his reason at all, but email him.

And your initial post said that Froch was intelligent for his views on medicine. "Medicine" is a bit broader than chemo. And his views are that he will "never" go to a doctor again because of reading a book by Patrick Halford.

What you say above is perfectly reasonable, but rejecting modern medicine and any advice of a doctor in exchange for taking anti oxidant pills and wearing a magic pendant as prescribed by Halford et al is madness.

 

I would like to think Froch would have the intelligence to know what's best in any given situation, but he does sound very bloody-minded and angry about it. People like him who know a bit of something but not enough, can be very dangerous. It's hard to find that happy-medium when it comes to these matters, dogma on both sides often ruins what can be insightful discussions but it's enjoyable having them with someone like yourself.

 

:good

And in fairness to Goldacre he repeatedly says that having a balanced diet is hugely important and common sense. It is when certain people try to make a fortune out of peddling lies to people in fear that it becomes sinister. So the blokes pushing homeopathy as a better HIV treatment than anti retrovirals in South Africa should be ****ing arrested.

 

Froch is now a confirmed idiot.

 

Jeg bor i Aalborg men bokser i Lindholm Bokseklub