Mercola— The Most Influential Spreader of Coronavirus Misinformation Online NYT

[pamojja]

I think it's foolish not to also include pharmaceuticals in your arsenal.

Would only be foolish, if the natuals - lifestyle changes including diet, and comprhensive supplementation wouldn't have worked to have cause my remissions.

The opposite, being on polypharmacy for the rest of my life without remissions - as recommented by each and every doc in my case (and at times becoming insulting whenever not giving my informed consent) - would have been truely foolish.

 

[pamojja]

Seems clear this is a major money making enterprise.

Really almost everone has to make a living. Being successful isn't something bad in itsefl. Also docs have to. But contrary to some of my coventional docs, Mercola never insulted me for not buying any of his products.

 

[Viala]

Natural substances also react differendly to different bio-chemical individualities. However, from the 250 natural substances I ingested the last 13 years I had no serious side-effect (except nutrient imbalances possible to correct). While with only 2 pharmaceuticals I had bleedings with baby-aspirin, and need to double up the doses of B9, B12 and CoQ10 to balance seriously induced deficiencies by metformin.

I have similar experiences, I don't know how many natural substances it was, just that it was many, with a lot of them I had great success and no side effects. Several drugs that I used throughout my whole life had strong side effects, so I am not a fan. Of course it's not always black and white, there was one natural substance that had stronger side effects and I wouldn't take it again, and one drug that helped me for a while without major side effects.

In general I am pro natural option. We need minerals, vitamins and other natural substances to make our bodies and our immune systems strong. Maybe we still don't know enough about them, and if we knew it's possible that we would be able to avoid many diseases. I respect people who share their knowledge about natural substances.

 

[YippeeKi YOW !!]

What?

I understand the literal meaning of your post. But why?

Because, logic.

There is little in life that's all bad (I said "little", not "nothing", cause you know, chocolate) or all good for every single person on the planet. So logically, prescription drugs are bound to fail some of the people some of the time, and in some very dramatic and painful ways. As it happens, they fail a lot of the people a lot of the time (hence the current problems with polypharmacy) and way more frequently and more catastrophically than say, Vit D or Vit C, and the patient gets to pay extraordinary prices for that privilege.

As highly amped substances created to produce immediate impact and highest possible income, they're bound to do more damage, just in side effects, than milder approaches. Add in careless, even reckless prescribing by a Dr focused on getting rapid improvement and the attendant patient gratitude for same, and their potential negative impact soars.

Prescribed carefully by well-informed, patient-involved Drs, they also can succeed. Just not often enough. And for some of us in these threads, not ever.

I'm all for the "Whatever Works For You Is A Good Thing" treatment premise, but Mercola products are incredibly overpriced, his premises are shaky, he latches on to a fad or a catastrophe. He preys on the desperate and the uninformed, ad he makes more money than Croesus. He's pretty much everything I despise in humanity.

 

[YippeeKi YOW !!]

Really almost everone has to make a living.

Mercola's living is just north of $100,000,000 and going up from there even as I speak. Write. Whatever ....

 

[pamojja]

Mercola's living is just north of $100,000,000 and going up from there even as I speak.

If he sticks to his ethics, and condinues to not insult anyone not buying from him - as some of my docs do - then all the millions to him. I think he needs really this deep pockets to fight the FDA, CDC and all their lawsuits. Less and he since long would have been out of business.

Rich do have extravagant hobbies. To take it up with endless power just for the fun of it, doesn't seem that dull as some other millionairs. After all, its about the abuse of power to limit the free choice which kind of medicine one likes to take. Or not to take.

 

[YippeeKi YOW !!]

you might have noticed that human life expectancy has increased massively--more than doubled-- since the introduction of more complex pharmaceuticals like antibiotics, vaccines, etc.

And sanitary water, and sewage systems, and flush toilets, and safer food sources, and shorter work weeks, and more and safer housing, and better education for everyone, not just the privileged, and I could go on and on but modern medicine cant seem to do much with my boggy, foggy brain today.

Medicine steps in to take the credit wherever it can reap rewards, and is pretty quick to dismiss information that's less laudatory and supportive of its ..... hmmmm.... ethic.

I think it's foolish not to also include pharmaceuticals in your arsenal. I don't really understand that approach. When the horse chestnut stopped being effective we switched to midodrine with excellent results.

I totally agree with you, and dont mean to flippantly dismiss your point re modern medicine. Some of which isn't all that modern. Aspirin is White Willow bark extract, used by Native cultures for centuries, possibly millennia. Egyptians were treating inflammation of the brain and removing tumors with trepanning 3000 years ago. Gums, resins, plants, herbs, clays, barks, even flowers, honey, and bee venom have been used forever, and a surprizing amount of modern medicine is based on the observation and recycling of those uses into a more 'modern' form.

Even if we weren;t dealing with this sneaky little sledgehammer of an illness, it would be foolish to dismiss any healing discipline, whether allopathic, Ayurvidic, TCM, or just an array of supps. But modern medicine as it's practiced in the West isn't usually intended to heal. It's intended to treat. To reduce or eliminate symptoms. To placate the patient.

And of course, to produce a good income stream for all concerned. Well, almost all.

I'm so glad that you did get results from the horse chestnut, and when that stopped working, equally good ones form midodrine !!! A smart and caring way to approach what must be a painful situation for you. Watching someone you love suffer is a particular kind of hell.

Onward and upward !!!!

 

[YippeeKi YOW !!]

and condinues to not insult anyone not buying from him - as some of my docs do -

A sorrowful number of Drs are true @sswads. I've had the same experience. They're teeny, tiny, miniscule, very very VERY small little wee people, and apparently think that if you'd prefer not to take XYZ Pharma, you're somehow impugning their honor. And their income. The combination is too much for them ....

 

[YippeeKi YOW !!]

To take it up with endless power just for the fun of it, doesn't seem that dull as some other millionairs. After all, its about the abuse of power to limit the free choice which kind of medicine one likes to take.

Mercola is definitely NOT " .... taking it up with endless power....", he's fighting against being tried for fraud and misrepresentation. He doesnt seek out the FDA and other regulatory bodies, they find it necessary to rein in Mercola's enthusiasm for the fast buck, regardless of potential damage to the customer, and damn the torpedoes.

He doesn't fight them. He meekly, and quickly, withdraws the offending substance/treatment/questionable medical device from the market and quietly slinks out of the room ....

 

[pamojja]

He doesn't fight them.

Your of course can have that impression. And it might be wrong.

There is the understanding that to know if someone is truely free of greed, aversion or ignorance, one has to observe by living with that person for a long time.

My understanding is that most of us are not completely free from such faults. Nor is Mercola, nor does he claim.

 

[YippeeKi YOW !!]

Your of course can have that impression. And it might be wrong.

Please forgive my forthrightness here: it's not. He knows exactly what he's doing. He spends a great deal of time with his staff developing new .... 'treatments'. Modalities. Medical devices. And then selling them in the most lurid, fear-mongering psuedo-scientific prose possible.

It's true that some of what he's recommended has value, which is why I started reading his site many years ago. But things changed, as they often do, and I almost immediately knew that, and got the hell outta Dodge.....

There is the understanding that to know if someone is truely free of greed, aversion or ignorance, one has to observe by living with that person for a long time.

And again, forgive my directness. Still too PEM-ish to be diplomatic ...
It announces itself in every self-serving action, in every gross insult to thought and research, in every risk it's willing to take with someone else's life and well-being, in every outlandish claim and price tag, in every oleaginous appeal to humanity's innate fear of dying, in every appeal to the conspiracy theorist that lives inside all of us ...[/FONT]

But we're all entitled to our opinion, and while I totally disagree with yours, I value and honor your right to have it.

 

[JES]

If he sticks to his ethics, and condinues to not insult anyone not buying from him - as some of my docs do - then all the millions to him. I think he needs really this deep pockets to fight the FDA, CDC and all their lawsuits. Less and he since long would have been out of business.

If he sticks to ethics, which doesn't only include to "not insult anyone", I agree. The problem is he has made hundreds of unsubstantiated claims in areas where he seems to have little expertise on, claims ranging from microwaving altering food chemistry, mobile phone radiation causing cancer and the latest anti-vaccine stuff.
If he sticks to selling his overpriced supplements, which in my own experience are safer than prescription drugs, but often also less potent, then I wouldn't have a beef with him.

 

[YippeeKi YOW !!]

If he sticks to selling his overpriced supplements, which in my own experience are safer than prescription drugs, but often also less potent, then I wouldn't have a beef with him.

I agree with you. On that basis, I wouldn;t have a beef with him .... maybe just a small cutlet ....

It's a caveat emptor world and he has the right to gouge whatever he can get, at least monetarily ....

 

[Learner1]

What?

I understand the literal meaning of your post. But why?

Well, let's see...

Arsenic and uranium are natural but they can kill you.

Liothyronine, hydrocortisone, and testosterone are substances needed by the body, but they are FDA-approved drugs

 

[YippeeKi YOW !!]

There is the understanding that to know if someone is truely free of greed, aversion or ignorance, one has to observe by living with that person for a long time.

There's also that venerable old saying over here, "If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, and acts like a duck, odds are pretty good that it's a duck ...."

 

[wabi-sabi]

It's a caveat emptor world and he has the right to gouge whatever he can get, at least monetarily ....

In many industries, yes. But I wonder if this principle should apply in healthcare. I don't know the answer to this question- but customers in healthcare are also patients- vulnerable, sick, afraid and at a disadvantage towards the healthcare provider.

Caveat emptor may not afford enough patient protections.

 

[YippeeKi YOW !!]

In many industries, yes. But I wonder if this principle should apply in healthcare. I don't know the answer to this question- but customers in healthcare are also patients- vulnerable, sick, afraid and at a disadvantage towards the healthcare provider.

Caveat emptor may not afford enough patient protections.

I dont regard Mercola as anything other than a very actively self-interested busy, busy, busy merchandizer, so that never crossed my mind.

But caveat emptor applies, I feel, especially forcefully in pursuing and monitoring our medical treatment, and any time we're dealing with the medical community. To assume that anyone in that industry has read, absorbed, or even remembers the Hippocratic Oath is just courting disaster.

Patient protections seem to be largely illusory ... it's another version of the wild west, unless you have one of the exceptional Drs I've heard about, but never actually met ....

 

[YippeeKi YOW !!]

Well, let's see...

Arsenic and uranium are natural but they can kill you.

Liothyronine, hydrocortisone, and testosterone are substances needed by the body, but they are FDA-approved drugs

... Succinct and right on !!!

 

[wabi-sabi]

But caveat emptor applies, I feel, especially forcefully in pursuing and monitoring our medical treatment, and any time we're dealing with the medical community.

Pragmatically, yes. But I'm more interested in thinking about how a medical system should be, rather than how ours is. If think about how I want a medical system to function, I want some patient protections. I find it useful to think about what those protections should be and how they should work to benefit patients.

I was taken in by Mercola some years ago (to my shame!) and I am a reasonably intelligent person (you know, except for the ME/CFS that's killing my brain) and reasonably well educated. If I can be fooled, so can may others. That's not OK in something so important as healthcare. Use cars maybe yes, healthcare definite no.

So the question is, how we design a set of patient protections that allow healthcare people to innovate and pursue novel solutions for hard diseases like ours, and at the same time inhibit people like Mercola who are pretending to do so with some sort of buck the system rhetoric that's so popular these days?

 

[andyguitar]

If think about how I want a medical system to function, I want some patient protections. I find it useful to think about what those protections should be and how they should work to benefit patients.

Are'nt people in Mercola's profession subject to regulation by an organisation they belong to? Like say Vets or plumbers might be?