It may sound like I'm condemning all anecdotal information. Not at all. We
use it all the time. If I need some work done on my car, I'll ask my friends for
recommendations for mechanics. That's anecdotal information. Usually this
works out fine. But there are no guarantees. Maybe all the mechanic's work was
really done by a helper who just quit. Maybe my problems are completely
different from those of my friends, more complicated, or on a foreign rather than a
U.S. car.
It would really help if I knew something about how a car worked and it would
be even better if there were a source of objective outside information about
the procedures.
Most of us know a little something about cars, even if we can't fix them
ourselves. If the mechanic were to tell me that the reason my engine won't start
was that the gyroscopes in the tire weren't aligned with the phase of the moon,
I'd laugh in the person's face. I sure wouldn't listen to anything else said
about cars.
But people on this very list have posted information about the way our bodies
work that is just as much moonshine. What's totally frightening is that
people didn't laugh or stop listening. Why? Because just as nobody is taught how
properly to evaluate a study, nobody is taught even basic knowledge about the
way our bodies work.
Those of us with medical problems or conditions of any kind have an absolute
need to learn as much as possible about human physiology. You don't have to
become an anatomist, you don't need advanced medical training. You just need to
know enough to understand when people are talking moonshine to you.
Where can you get this knowledge? Well, not from any of the alternative
sites. They don't even want to know how you body works. How could they sell you
magnetic bracelets or magic crystals if you knew anything about the body?
And you can't get it from pure anti-milk sites. That's like getting your
information about the Democrats from the Republican National Committee website.
You might think you were getting at least half the truth, but it doesn't work
that way. All you get are the negatives. It's not just that the positives are
never mentioned, but that the negatives are manipulated. The conclusions are
quoted without any evaluation of studies as a whole. Comments are ripped out of
context, and put together in creative new ways. Sometimes the remarks have no
relationship to anything the original might have said. Instead of gaining
information, you actually lose overall knowledge.
Medical studies have many faults. Many of them are just resume padding. Some
of them are funded by firms who have a stake in the outcome. (Although who
else is going to put up the money? I often wonder.) Most cannot be taken on
their own but have to be evaluated as part of a much larger whole, and this is
again, difficult and time-consuming.
But the alternative is no alternative. Even the people who most loudly decry
the medical establishment are perfectly willing to quote them whenever a
result is on their side. Because real medicine doesn't take sides. It publishes the
positives and negatives, the cures and the dangers, the successes and the
failures. Medicine changes with the times.
This upsets many people, I know. We all want certainty. But that's the basic
difference between faith and medicine. The faith healers of all kinds and
types and sorts will sell you certainty. They have a product, whether it's in a
bottle or in a belief, and this product will help you, no ifs, ands, or buts.
And this never changes. That's the guarantee that it's wrong.
Medicine is uncertain. It changes, updates, revises and contradicts itself.
It's difficult and expensive and time-consuming. And it's the only thing we
have. Accept no alternatives.
Steve Carper
Steve Carper's Lactose Intolerance Clearinghouse
http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/stevecarper
Planet Lactose Bog
http://planetlactose.blogspot.com/
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