Hospitals don't heal? And other questions about certain claims I can't find evidence for
-
I'm watching a debate with this guy called Nassim Taleb. And one of his strange claims was that there were data collected during hospital strikes where elective surgeries were suspended which don't show increase in mortality (in his own words we do not live less.)
Now, there's a terrible number of problems with this claim: how long were they closed? In which regions (people could travel elsewhere) and the key word elective surgeries, that suggest they could be performed in a later time or that even don't pertain to the length of life.
However, I'm very interested in reading the actual data and I can't find anything.
Does any one of you know maybe not the exact links, but at least where I could look for them?
-
Elective surgery means stuff you choose ("elect") to have done, rather than lifesaving necessities. Plastic surgery is one of the classic examples.
Saying that people don't die any more when denied surgery that wasn't going to save their lives is a rather tautological claim.
-
@kt_ Sorry, I don't know any links, but I'd like to respond to your title. Hospitals (and doctors and nurses and even surgeries and drugs) in fact do not heal your body. They can only attempt to provide optimum conditions for your body to heal itself, in ways such as putting broken bones or torn tissues back in the right positions for "normal" function or assisting in the removal of invasive or faulty components. We have come to understand a lot about how the human body works, but as yet, we still cannot quite make repairs to it in the same way that we can fix a faulty engine or a broken machine or bugs in a program.
Just about the closest we have so far is organ transplants, but even those need to be accepted by the rest of the body. This is partly why auto-immune diseases are so hard to treat; the body either will "reject" itself at the drop of a hat or will allow anything at all with no filter controls.
-
@djls45 thank you, captain obvious. Always on stand by, are you?
I know medicine works, in fact I state that indirectly in the OP. ;)
-
@djls45 said in Hospitals don't heal? And other questions about certain claims I can't find evidence for:
This is partly why auto-immune diseases are so hard to treat; the body either will "reject" itself at the drop of a hat or will allow anything at all with no filter controls.
This is the thing I've always wondered about. We know how to
INSERT
a new entry into the body's immune database: vaccination. It's a well-understood technology that's been tremendously successful since its inception. How is it that we don't know how toDELETE
one?
-
@kt_ said in Hospitals don't heal? And other questions about certain claims I can't find evidence for:
I'm watching a debate with this guy called Nassim Taleb. And one of his strange claims was that there were data collected during hospital strikes where elective surgeries were suspended which don't show increase in mortality (in his own words we do not live less.)
... isn't the entire definition of "elective surgeries" surgeries that aren't required to live? a.k.a. optional? Stuff like plastic surgery or removing non-cancerous growths, etc.
Why would you expect a stoppage of elective surgeries to affect the death rate at all?
EDIT: Googling this guy, I found this Reddit page which seems to have pretty lengthy refutations of his claims, including the medical one: https://www.reddit.com/r/skeptic/comments/2i2wln/lets_have_a_skeptical_look_at_specific_claims/
He seems to think absolutely nothing human beings do is of any value.
-
@masonwheeler said in Hospitals don't heal? And other questions about certain claims I can't find evidence for:
How is it that we don't know how to DELETE one?
Because removing 100% of a patient's bone marrow is usually fatal.
-
@blakeyrat said in Hospitals don't heal? And other questions about certain claims I can't find evidence for:
... isn't the entire definition of "elective surgeries" surgeries that aren't required to live? a.k.a. optional? Stuff like plastic surgery or removing non-cancerous growths, etc.
Why would you expect a stoppage of elective surgeries to affect the death rate at all?
'd
@blakeyrat said in Hospitals don't heal? And other questions about certain claims I can't find evidence for:
Because removing 100% of a patient's bone marrow is usually fatal.
I said delete a row, not drop the database!
-
@blakeyrat said in Hospitals don't heal? And other questions about certain claims I can't find evidence for:
@kt_ said in Hospitals don't heal? And other questions about certain claims I can't find evidence for:
I'm watching a debate with this guy called Nassim Taleb. And one of his strange claims was that there were data collected during hospital strikes where elective surgeries were suspended which don't show increase in mortality (in his own words we do not live less.)
... isn't the entire definition of "elective surgeries" surgeries that aren't required to live? a.k.a. optional? Stuff like plastic surgery or removing non-cancerous growths, etc.
Why would you expect a stoppage of elective surgeries to affect the death rate at all?
Well, as I said I would not. However, the way he said it looked like someone was using the data to make some stupid claims. I'd like to acquaint myself with this cause I have the feeling my jehova witness might use it when we meet again. :D
-
@masonwheeler said in Hospitals don't heal? And other questions about certain claims I can't find evidence for:
How is it that we don't know how to DELETE one?
As blakey alludes, we know how to delete them all, then insert stuff back. And while often fatal, also lifesaving in the case of stuff like leukemia.
-
@kt_ said in Hospitals don't heal? And other questions about certain claims I can't find evidence for:
I'm watching a debate with this guy called Nassim Taleb. And one of his strange claims [...]
My extent of knowledge of Nassim Taleb is his book "Black Swans", which I have and have read. In it, he basically encourages people to make their risk choices based on "known unknowns" instead of "unknown unknowns".
-
@djls45 said in Hospitals don't heal? And other questions about certain claims I can't find evidence for:
@kt_ said in Hospitals don't heal? And other questions about certain claims I can't find evidence for:
I'm watching a debate with this guy called Nassim Taleb. And one of his strange claims [...]
My extent of knowledge of Nassim Taleb is his book "Black Swans", which I have and have read. In it, he basically encourages people to make their risk choices based on "known unknowns" instead of "unknown unknowns".
It sounds bad. Is it as bad as it sounds?
-
@masonwheeler said in Hospitals don't heal? And other questions about certain claims I can't find evidence for:
How is it that we don't know how to DELETE one?
There are allergy therapies that revolve around dosing small amounts of an allergen repeatedly(like every day for four years) to retrain the immune system.
That obviously sucks, but the alternative is finding the memory B cells responsible for making a specific antibody and killing just those ones. Straightforward, but also completely impossible.
-
@kt_ said in Hospitals don't heal? And other questions about certain claims I can't find evidence for:
@djls45 said in Hospitals don't heal? And other questions about certain claims I can't find evidence for:
@kt_ said in Hospitals don't heal? And other questions about certain claims I can't find evidence for:
I'm watching a debate with this guy called Nassim Taleb. And one of his strange claims [...]
My extent of knowledge of Nassim Taleb is his book "Black Swans", which I have and have read. In it, he basically encourages people to make their risk choices based on "known unknowns" instead of "unknown unknowns".
It sounds bad. Is it as bad as it sounds?
Not exactly..? If you don't know what will happen, and you can't even guess, then don't bother worrying about it. If you can make some guesses about what might happen, then that's useful data to include in your risk assessments.
-
Based on reviews like this one:
I highly doubt he has evidence to back up his claim.
Also why is my carriage return disappearing. WTF, NodeBB.
At a conference in Mexico in 2009 (which you can see on YouTube) he claimed that the supposed knowledge of modern doctors has made no contribution to extending our life expectancy. The human body, like the weather and the economy, is too complex to be amenable to science. As evidence, he claimed that when elective surgery is briefly suspended (perhaps because of a strike), death rates do not increase. I will not insult you by pointing to the well-known facts that contradict this scepticism about modern medicine, nor explain how Taleb's "evidence" could be correct without supporting his conclusion.
And apparently, yes, he did say "elective surgery" without providing any explanation of why he'd expect a suspension of elective surgery to change life expectancy.
-
@masonwheeler said in Hospitals don't heal? And other questions about certain claims I can't find evidence for:
@djls45 said in Hospitals don't heal? And other questions about certain claims I can't find evidence for:
This is partly why auto-immune diseases are so hard to treat; the body either will "reject" itself at the drop of a hat or will allow anything at all with no filter controls.
This is the thing I've always wondered about. We know how to
INSERT
a new entry into the body's immune database: vaccination. It's a well-understood technology that's been tremendously successful since its inception. How is it that we don't know how toDELETE
one?Because we don't really know how to
INSERT
, just how to trigger the body to do it. We know that when you show it something new, it usually learns the new thing all by itself, but there's no equally simple way to get it to forget something once it's learned.
-
Bad idea, if anyone knows anything about risk.
Unknown Unknowns should affect your risk assessment, but if they're 90% of your risk, you either shouldn't do that at all, or you suck at risk assessment.
For example.
If you had a magical power that could teleport you randomly. Of course there's a small chance you might find a new planet with new life, but the unknown unknowns are so large, it's not worth the risk.
But if you're deciding whether to take a taxi, and your unknown unknowns include evaluating whether a meteor will fall on you because the driver chose the left lane instead of the right one... yeah, it's pretty safe to say you don't know how to evaluate risk, and that particular unknown unknown shouldn't bother you.
Realistic breakdown.
Porting code.
- Known Known. It's on a 2010 server.
- Known Unknown. What programming language?
- Unknown Unknown. Are we going to get stuck because there are portions of the code that are unreadable? The server is in a 3rd world country that just recovered from civil war, are there going to be any more conflicts lately?
-
Ok, I've another one. I'm right now reading Hitchen's god is not great and since I know he made some false claims there I'm fact checking everything (and it all checks out, up to this point).
There's this one claim I have a trouble researching and I thought you American guys could shed some light to it.
Parents who imagine that a man named Joseph Smith was led to a set of buried golden tablets have married their underage “Mormon” daughters to favored uncles and brothers-in-law, who sometimes have older wives already.
I know this isn't a statement about a general practice of believers, however it seems to indicate there were concrete cases reported somewhere. Any hint?
-
@AyGeePlus said in Hospitals don't heal? And other questions about certain claims I can't find evidence for:
There are allergy therapies that revolve around dosing small amounts of an allergen repeatedly(like every day for four years) to retrain the immune system.
Yes, I'm aware of this. A friend of mine had incredible success with it, suppressing allergies that ranged from "misery" to "life-threatening" down to "barely notice it" levels over the course of a few months.
That obviously sucks, but the alternative is finding the memory B cells responsible for making a specific antibody and killing just those ones. Straightforward, but also completely impossible.
Why? We know they exist. We know what they do and more-or-less what they look like. Infeasible with current technology, perhaps, but impossible? I highly doubt that!
-
@masonwheeler said in Hospitals don't heal? And other questions about certain claims I can't find evidence for:
impossible? I highly doubt that!
Let me rephrase: Completely impossible without nanotechnology.
All you would need to do is go through the entire body, find every memory B cell(actually not that hard) figure out what antibodies it makes( non-destructively) and laser it if any of those react to X.
-
@kt_ said in Hospitals don't heal? And other questions about certain claims I can't find evidence for:
you American guys
Cc @abarker? I think there was a whole thread for that stuff back in the Lounge somewhere.
-
@masonwheeler said in Hospitals don't heal? And other questions about certain claims I can't find evidence for:
@AyGeePlus said in Hospitals don't heal? And other questions about certain claims I can't find evidence for:
There are allergy therapies that revolve around dosing small amounts of an allergen repeatedly(like every day for four years) to retrain the immune system.
Yes, I'm aware of this. A friend of mine had incredible success with it, suppressing allergies that ranged from "misery" to "life-threatening" down to "barely notice it" levels over the course of a few months.
That obviously sucks, but the alternative is finding the memory B cells responsible for making a specific antibody and killing just those ones. Straightforward, but also completely impossible.
Why? We know they exist. We know what they do and more-or-less what they look like. Infeasible with current technology, perhaps, but impossible? I highly doubt that!
I think it would be like deleting viruses from a computer hard drive using nothing but a steady hand and a magnetized needle, without trashing the rest of the filesystem.
-
@anotherusername Well that's when you need the nano bots to select the correct T-cells and remove them individually without harming all the others. We're probably a century away from that technology right now though.
-
I notice that this goes beyond polygamy, and potentially into incest.
A brother-in-law wouldn't be incest, it would just be a double marriage between two families, but a favored uncle would be.
-
@xaade said in Hospitals don't heal? And other questions about certain claims I can't find evidence for:
I notice that this goes beyond polygamy, and potentially into incest.
A brother-in-law wouldn't be incest, it would just be a double marriage between two families, but a favored uncle would be.
Not if the uncle's an uncle by marriage (to another wife). Then he's just married to two women who are related to each other, but not to him.
-
@anotherusername true...
We aren't nearly as precise in English as Chinese is...
-
@kt_ It seems to be just a general bitching about the beliefs of Mormons. In the history of the religion, has at least one person promised an underaged bride to a favored uncle? Almost certainly. You're talking about millions of families. It'd be stranger if it hadn't ever happened in the history of Mormonism.
That doesn't mean it's an approved or accepted practice, especially not now in 2016.
I'm not sure exactly what you're looking for other than that.
-
@mott555 said in Hospitals don't heal? And other questions about certain claims I can't find evidence for:
I think it would be like deleting viruses from a computer hard drive using nothing but a steady hand and a magnetized needle, without trashing the rest of the filesystem.
A literally perfect analogy.
-
@masonwheeler said in Hospitals don't heal? And other questions about certain claims I can't find evidence for:
I said delete a row, not drop the database!
It's a highly replicated database.
It's easy to add some soap to clean water. It's very hard to take out the soap out from soapy water.
-
@blakeyrat well, from the context it looks like he's referencing the recent years/recent few decades, so I was wondering if he's referencing some cases that have probably been heavily reported in the US during the past 30-40 years?
However, indeed it looks like general bitching about Mormonism, but heck! if he says something I'd rather check if it's true.
It pays, too. Some stuff I've found due to that:
with stress on these last paragraphs:
Cardinal EMMANUELWAMALA
Archbishop of Kampala
Well if it is wrong to use the condom, then her choice is the right one.
BRADSHAW: Even if it costs her life?
WAMALA: Yes. Maybe that is why you get martyrs.
BRADSHAW: You're really saying that it could be better to die than to use a condom if that's your belief?
WAMALA: If that's one's belief, yes, it's better.
BRADSHAW: That's a harsh doctrine, isn't it?
WAMALA: Well, Christ's teaching has never been easy, has it.And also importantly:
-
@AyGeePlus said in Hospitals don't heal? And other questions about certain claims I can't find evidence for:
@masonwheeler said in Hospitals don't heal? And other questions about certain claims I can't find evidence for:
impossible? I highly doubt that!
Let me rephrase: Completely impossible without nanotechnology.
All you would need to do is go through the entire body, find every memory B cell(actually not that hard) figure out what antibodies it makes( non-destructively) and laser it if any of those react to X.
Part of what makes it difficult is that our understanding of how to control biological processes on a microscopic scale is fuzzy at this point. I'm sure it'll be easier once our understanding is crispr.
-
@kt_ said in Hospitals don't heal? And other questions about certain claims I can't find evidence for:
well, from the context it looks like he's referencing the recent years/recent few decades, so I was wondering if he's referencing some cases that have probably been heavily reported in the US during the past 30-40 years?
None I'm aware of.
Since there's no footnote or anything, I'd guess it's just generalized bitching and not a reference to a single specific event. But I don't know his writing style, I'm just assuming.
-
@kt_ oh and this one's mighty interesting:
-
@blakeyrat said in Hospitals don't heal? And other questions about certain claims I can't find evidence for:
@kt_ said in Hospitals don't heal? And other questions about certain claims I can't find evidence for:
well, from the context it looks like he's referencing the recent years/recent few decades, so I was wondering if he's referencing some cases that have probably been heavily reported in the US during the past 30-40 years?
None I'm aware of.
Since there's no footnote or anything, I'd guess it's just generalized bitching and not a reference to a single specific event. But I don't know his writing style, I'm just assuming.
Well, he's no Dawkins, there are no links. On the other hand as I've said earlier: I've checked several other claims and they all checked out, so there's that…
AFAIR even his book on mother Theresa didn't have footnotes, and it consisted of almost solely facts.
-
@xaade said in Hospitals don't heal? And other questions about certain claims I can't find evidence for:
But if you're deciding whether to take a taxi, and your unknown unknowns include evaluating whether a meteor will fall on you because the driver chose the left lane instead of the right one... yeah, it's pretty safe to say you don't know how to evaluate risk, and that particular unknown unknown shouldn't bother you.
It sucks when you have to account for meteors impacting your decision-making.
-
@kt_ I find that one a little suspicious, as the germ theory of disease wasn't widely accepted until the 1850s. Then again, people knew that disease could pass from one person to another via some mechanism, so.
-
@blakeyrat said in Hospitals don't heal? And other questions about certain claims I can't find evidence for:
@kt_
That doesn't mean it's an approved or accepted practice, especially not now in 2016.Not by the main church, officially, no. They do (unofficially, of course)
encourageallow a "Temple marriage" following a civil divorce. Mormon doctrine teaches that a Temple marriage is inviolable, so even in the case of a civil divorce, those two are still "married" in the eyes of the church, and this has been used to implement polygamy.Then there are the fundamentalist branches of Mormonism who read their scriptures that state that polygamy is required to enter the "celestial" heaven (the highest, above the "terrestrial" heaven and the "telestial" heaven [only ex-Mormons and evil despots like Hitler are condemned to Hell]) and follow them still today.
-
@Groaner Fuzzy is quite possibly the biggest understatement I have seen this year.
-
@djls45 said in Hospitals don't heal? And other questions about certain claims I can't find evidence for:
Then there are the fundamentalist branches of Mormonism who read their scriptures that state that polygamy is required to enter the "celestial" heaven (the highest, above the "terrestrial" heaven and the "telestial" heaven [only ex-Mormons and evil despots like Hitler are condemned to Hell]) and follow them still today.
Separate but equal heavens?
-
@blakeyrat said in Hospitals don't heal? And other questions about certain claims I can't find evidence for:
He seems to think absolutely nothing human beings do is of any value.
Depends how far forward in time you look doesn't it?
-
@masonwheeler said in Hospitals don't heal? And other questions about certain claims I can't find evidence for:
I said delete a row, not drop the database!
Your marrow produces thousands or whatever of different antibodies. Quick, pick out the cell(s) that produce the one you want to get rid of.
Vaccination, by comparison, is easy: it's literally faking being infected.
-
@Groaner said in Hospitals don't heal? And other questions about certain claims I can't find evidence for:
meteors impacting your decision-making
Once again, you have lived up to your name. Appulse.
-
@masonwheeler said in Hospitals don't heal? And other questions about certain claims I can't find evidence for:
How is it that we don't know how to DELETE one?
The immune system has very extensive backups for every entry in its immune database.
-
@anotherusername Also, yes.
-
@anotherusername said in Hospitals don't heal? And other questions about certain claims I can't find evidence for:
@masonwheeler said in Hospitals don't heal? And other questions about certain claims I can't find evidence for:
@djls45 said in Hospitals don't heal? And other questions about certain claims I can't find evidence for:
This is partly why auto-immune diseases are so hard to treat; the body either will "reject" itself at the drop of a hat or will allow anything at all with no filter controls.
This is the thing I've always wondered about. We know how to
INSERT
a new entry into the body's immune database: vaccination. It's a well-understood technology that's been tremendously successful since its inception. How is it that we don't know how toDELETE
one?Because we don't really know how to
INSERT
, just how to trigger the body to do it. We know that when you show it something new, it usually learns the new thing all by itself, but there's no equally simple way to get it to forget something once it's learned.Yeah. We know the (undocumented) API calls that lead (as a side-effect) to an INSERT, but we don't even know what the DB schema is. And it's probably worse than Discourse's DB so...
-
@mott555 Not quite that difficult, actually. We're getting pretty close, I think, to being able to actually craft antigens to find specific memory cells and neutralize them. Really, I think a lot of major medical advancements are on the horizon - all we need is more funding. Even just in my Biology undergrad, I learned things which would probably have the potential to cure cancers, autoimmune disorders, genetic disorders, most viruses, aging, and any tissue damage which is not immediately fatal, if only someone actually got in a lab and devised a method for making them happen reliably in vivo, and preferably at low cost.
-
@Fox when can I be immortal like a really shit version of apocalypse from the x-men?
-
@sloosecannon said in Hospitals don't heal? And other questions about certain claims I can't find evidence for:
we don't even know what the DB schema is.
We do know a fairly large portion of the readme, but it's all come from fiddling around with other people's installs and then writing our own readme.
@sloosecannon said in Hospitals don't heal? And other questions about certain claims I can't find evidence for:
And it's probably worse than Discourse's DB so...
As hard as it may be to believe, the human immune system's DB pretty much makes Discourse's look like this one.
-
@lucas1 Probably within the next two or three decades, barring a Trump presidency and ensuing nuclear apocalypse.
-
@lucas1 Also it'll probably be expensive for a good while. Unless The Robot Overlords destroy the world economy around the same time and money becomes pointless because scarcity is a thing of the past.