Sounds like a Suzanne Somers type with a medical degree.

Gracie, there are a lot of us out there who are alive thanks to prescribed medicine, as you and I know. I doubt seriously that most people, faced with a life-threatening illness--due to genetics, the environment (think Love Canal), or other factors--would reject medicine.

And oh... my friend who has the genetic disorder of too much cholesterol... he did not start running until after he was diagnosed. Had a heart attack that doctors said would have killed him had he not been running. So no crazy disorder caused by over exercising, or whatever was stated by another poster, caused his heart attack.

Bless your daughter and wish her many many more years of good health :)

There are tests that are important for men and women as they age, such as bone density, colonoscopy and sometimes endoscopy. This beyond the quarterly monitoring blood tests for sugar and cholesterol, and thyroid function.

Sex specific tests such as mammograms and checking for indications of testicular cancer are important too.

The OP has raised the issue of danger from a colonoscopy before and I have to think that having a colonoscopy has been recommended by his doctor.

There are dangers to everything medical. It is a calculated risk that we have some control over by continuing to be educated by the enormous amount of good and poor information on TELEVISION and by choosing the best physician we can find and following his advice and by choosing the best medical facilities too.

We further educate ourselves by anecdotal information from people we trust and by reading CURRENT medical information from accredited institutions. Of course we are using common sense in all of these matters unless we have some other issue that overrides common sense.

I think that some people have tunnel vision about current issues for a variety of reasons. They are convinced they are right and will not seriously entertain any other way to think. AND you cannot win any argument with a person with a certain type of untreated OCD.

I was just reading an unrelated article about medicine. It made a good point that nothing in medicine is black and white. Everything is gray.

Are doctors and mainstream medicine infallible? No. People make mistakes, illnesses don't respond to the selected treatment, etc.

But does that mean that everyone should become a vegan, and suddenly all illness and disease will disappear? That's just as obviously absurd.

So if somebody wants to be a vegan, and they feel that it helps them - Fine. But for the most part, telling the general population that they should stop depending on medical science won't be too productive.

On the other hand, If somebody wishes to utilize mainstream medicine, and subject themselves to every test and prescription that their doctor recommends - who am I to judge? But, telling all Vegans that they are gullible nutjobs probably won't sway them.

You quoted me as saying the following: "The problem is sometimes one of catching certain cancers too early which leads to unnecessary treatments."

Notice I didn't say ALL cancers, I said certain cancers.

Sometimes with early detection it's difficult to be certain if a cell is actually cancerous or not. These bad looking cells sometimes clear up and go away on their own. I wasn't talking about endometrial cancer.

You say that you weren't referring to endometrial cancer.
What type of cancer do you mean by "certain cancers"?
Do you have any statistics to back up your statement that "catching certain cancers too early leads to unnecessary treatments"?

Many complain but few actually read anything.
 

The Book: "Should I Be Tested For Cancer? Maybe Not And Here's Why"

The author: H. Gilbert Welch is Professor in the Department of Medicine and Community and Family Medicine At Dartmouth Medical School and Co-Director of the VA Outcomes Group in the Department of Veterans affairs. White River Junction, Vermont.

Being a professor in a medical school I think it's safe to assume that he teaches medical students. What could be more mainstream than that?

I highly recommend that everyone read his book and keep it handy as a reference. He doesn't advise anyone not to get tested, he simply explains the risks and rewards of being tested.

Often, the medical community, through associations like ACS, will promote testing by giving misleading statistics. They will say things like getting tested for a certain cancer will lower risk by 20%. But they never say 20% of what? They don't want to give the absolute number because it's small.

For example: It might be said that a certain test, like the fecal occult blood test, will lower the chances of dying by a third. That sounds like a lot, right? Wrong! Actually, in a study, they had to give 1,000 50 year old men fecal occult blood tests for 10 years to avoid one death. About 1/3 of them (333) would get false positives and be sent to get a colonoscopy. If one of them were to die from the colonoscopy, the net result would be: One life saved and one life lost. A draw.

But, normally, we wouldn't get to know that. That's because the one who died wouldn't be included in cancer statistics. That's because he didn't die from cancer he died from the colonoscopy.

I just gave the title of the book in the previous post, along with some information about the author.

xxx

xxx

I agree with Bare. I almost always do.