>Pro-tip: When posting to Slashdot, or any other website, write your post in an off-line text editor, then cut-and-paste it into the textarea. That way if their buggy JavaScript, or you fat fingers, delete it, you can just re-paste.
OR you could just install Lazarus and let technology handle the grunt work for you.
I suspect you'd get false positive every day, as kids love to open and close cabinets, especially if you're going to put a teddy bear inside.
But yeah, great idea.
As of right now, I would like to vote for Rand Paul. Only person who believes in the Constitution.
His foreign policy isn't as nutty as the media has made it out to be.
>>You know what they call "alternative medicine" that is proven to actually work? MEDICINE.
Do you know what they call people who quote memes without knowing that they're actually wrong?
Urban legend spreaders.
Ok, I guess that's not as pithy.
But seriously, that's not the difference between alt med and medicine. Even though peppermint oil has a strong research base showing its effectiveness for IBS, it will never be medicine, even though it works, because it's something you can pick up at any supermarket or GNC.
And that's not splitting a hair, either. It is not regulated by the FDA as a drug, so it is not "medicine", even though it is highly effective.
The official definition of alt medicine (from the FDA, WHO, NHS, NIH, etc.) is any medical practice not typically performed in usual practice of medicine.
>I'm disappointed that even the geeks of
Even though Peppermint Oil had the highest ratings in both quality of research and effect size, of any of the studied IBS treatments in the paper, I'm sure there are a number of people reading this on Slashdot right now secretly suspecting that it must be bullshit because it sounds too "alt meddy" to them.
>Meanwhile, a lot of prescription medication is clearly dangerous. How many herbal supplements have been taken off the market recently because of health risks? Ephedra is the only one that comes to mind, and it isn't even all that dangerous by pharmaceutical standards. How many FDA-approved drugs have been taken off the market recently? Dozens.
In the IBS paper alone, there were several drugs that were pulled from the market for being too dangerous.
But it works the other way as well. Just because something is all hippie and natural doesn't mean it's inherently safer or doesn't have side effects. St. John's Wort has drug-drug interactions with many many drugs due to its effect on CYP3A4. Grapefruit juice, incidentally, is dangerous as well if you're on a lot of drugs due to its opposite effect on it.
Just because the FDA doesn't ban them doesn't mean they aren't going to be bad for you. In general, the FDA does not regulate herbs unless they can no longer be generally regarded as safe (GRAS).
>>Your either from Pakistan, India or a CTO with a budget.
Pretty sure he's from Whooshistan.
While you are right that there are a lot of studies showing no effect or a negative effect from alt med drugs, there are also peer-reviewed and high-evidence studies showing that some of them do work and are effective.
My wife is a member of ASPEN, and so I get to read through a lot of their journals with her. In a paper on treatments for IBS, the "drug" that had the highest strength of evidence, and effect size was... peppermint oil. The research shows pretty conclusively that it is better than a lot of IBS-specific medicines that have come out in recent years, several of which got pulled from the market for being dangerous, and now can only be prescribed in limited situations.
Peppermint oil will never be a medicine, because you can buy it at the grocery store. But it *is* highly effective at treating a very serious disease.
>Why? People buy it anyway and the studies cost many millions of dollars. They have NO interest in proving (or disproving) anything about these supplements. In fact they had congress pass laws explicitly preventing the FDA from regulating them so that they wouldn't have to prove their claims.
Fun fact. There are actually peer-reviewed scientific journals, for reporting these kinds of results. Some common "alternative medicines", like tea (boring, I know), have had literally hundreds of studies on their effectiveness at doing various things, with well understood results.
This does not mean they're effective. I skimmed numerous studies on milk thistle that all agreed it didn't have any of the reputed health benefits for the liver.
You can learn more about all the data the NIH tracks on alt med here: https://nccih.nih.gov/health/p...
Or read through a peer-reviewed journal here: http://www.alternative-therapi...
Kleeneness is next to Godelness.
