Alternative Reality

 

A friend of mine owns a pharmacy. With mail-order pharmacies taking a big cut of his business, the cost of regulatory compliance skyrocketing, and tightening margins on most of his inventory to compete with Walmart, etc., he is always looking for ways to generate revenue. He sells canes and walkers now. And CPAP supplies. And vitamins that I’ve never heard of. Well, now, he’s gotten into CBD oil. He has marketing brochures on display in his shop and I find them fascinating:

First, check out the strategy of the layout. At the top, it asks, “Do you suffer from any of these disorders?” And then it lists lots of popular conditions, which have nothing to do with one another. The only thing these conditions have in common is that they cannot be objectively measured (with the exception of diabetes). They vary from things that everybody has to a certain degree (anxiety, insomnia, chronic pain, etc.) to things that are scary (cancer and Alzheimer’s disease) to things that are frequently in the news now (addiction to, well, anything). You’re probably thinking, “Wow! It’s remarkable that one drug can cure all these different diseases! What an incredible claim!”

Right. Well, notice the next line: “Have you heard about CBD?” That would have been a good place to point out that CBD cures all the diseases they list. But they don’t do that. That interrogative is followed by this paragraph:

Cannabidiol (CBD) is the most abundant non-psychoactive cannabinoid found in hemp and is being scientifically investigated for numerous indications. CBD possesses superior anti-oxidant and anti-inflammatory properties and has been found to have numerous positive effects on the body, providing balance through its interaction with receptors and other systems.

One notes that the paragraph does not reference any of the diseases listed at the top of the brochure. It also does not reference any data to prove that it successfully treats, well, anything at all. Allow me to reprint that paragraph, with my comments in bold, in parentheses:

Cannabidiol (CBD) is the most abundant (What a happy, plentiful, environmentally conscious, woke word. Irrelevant, but happy.) non-psychoactive cannabinoid found in hemp (Not marijuana – nudge wink…) and is being scientifically investigated (The less something has to do with science the more important it becomes to use the word science.) for numerous indications (Like what? The indications listed above? Doesn’t say.). CBD possesses superior anti-oxidant and anti-inflammatory properties (Superior to what? And with what objective benefit?) and has been found to have numerous positive effects on the body (What positive effects? Numerous? Too many to list them all, I suppose.), providing balance through its interaction with receptors and other systems (I do this for a living, and I have no idea what that means.).

This is different than, say, statins. The data on the lifesaving benefits of statins is so consistent, and so overwhelming, that it has become unethical to do a placebo trial on statins. This is America – you’re not allowed to intentionally kill people in research studies, so you can’t deny half the study participants a drug that you know can save their life. It took decades, and thousands of studies, done by hundreds of organizations around the world, to reach that point.

And despite such overwhelming data, I can’t get some of my patients to take statins.

Oddly, many of those patients who refuse statins will then put on their sustainable, living-wage, alpaca sweater and drive their Prius down to my friend’s pharmacy to spend $300 on a bottle of CBD oil, which has nothing recommending it except the above brochure which basically says, “This doesn’t work!!!

I’m fascinated by alternative medicine. Or, actually, I’m fascinated by the fact that there are no alternative dentists. This really is an interesting phenomenon.

Part of it, I think, is simply an expression of the horrifyingly bad education that most people get in the sciences during their schooling. They memorize the periodic table but don’t understand chemistry. It takes years of training to have such a poor understanding of science. And the more meaningless certifications our schoolteachers are required to get, the more you frustrate and drive away prospective teachers who actually know something about, say, chemistry. They go do something more rewarding and with fewer regulations. Like work in the pharmaceutical industry. And we’re left with teachers who have a doctorate in education and don’t understand their subject matter.

Second, science is sort of treated like a black art. I think since so many people don’t understand it, they view it almost like magic. Every movie has an evil scientist. Science is used to make supernaturally powerful weapons to blow up the world, not to grow enough grain to feed the world’s population.

Third, we seem to worship the amateur and disdain the expert in today’s society. Before buying something on Amazon, you don’t read about it in expert journals, you read the reviews written by amateurs with no particular expertise – people you’ve never met who use bad grammar and lots of emojis. The lack of data behind CBD makes it more attractive to some people, sort of like the economic theories of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez are more attractive to some people precisely because she doesn’t understand economics. I don’t understand this. But I seek out user reviews of products like everybody else. So there you go.

This is all fine with me, really. I’m a little uncomfortable with the ethics of some of these companies, but they’re always careful with their claims. They don’t say, “Lowers blood glucose by 23%.” They say, “Provides balance through its interaction with receptors and other systems.” So the company is not lying, they’re just not saying anything. And they’d better not say anything – the FDA would stomp on them.

So the company is just trying to be slick. Not to be insensitive, but if you get fooled by that, that’s your own fault.

So I’m not angry about this stuff, I just don’t understand it. I won’t take a medicine until I understand the specific risks and benefits. If those risks and benefits are not clearly understood, I’ll take something else, thank you very much.

But my pharmacist friend says he can’t keep these $300 bottles on the shelf. His customers complain that their penicillin costs $10 instead of $5. But they gladly pay $300 for a bottle of, well, a bottle of they’re not sure what. And they go home happy.

And they vote.

The whole point of this article, in case I was unclear, is that if Republicans think they can win elections by discussing real problems and explaining logical solutions to them, they’re bonkers. That’s not how most voters think. Or perhaps feel. Make decisions, I should say.

So what should Republicans do? Should they come up with their own version of rainbows and unicorn dust (and CBD oil), to directly compete with the Democrats’ approach?

I don’t think so. Somebody has to be the grown-ups here. Somebody has to remain rooted in reality.

But this is going to be hard.

There is no one so blind as he who will not see. And we have to show them reality. Something they go to great lengths to avoid seeing.

Good luck.

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  1. Spin Inactive
    Spin
    @Spin

    Ah, CBD oil.  The No-Salt of the current era.  Cures what ails ya!

    • #1
  2. 9thDistrictNeighbor Member
    9thDistrictNeighbor
    @9thDistrictNeighbor

    My favorite pharmacy is the same way. Family business, knows everybody by name. They do a big business in medical supplies, supplements, essential oils, whatever the market will bear.  CBD popped up by the back pharmacy counter about a year ago.  They even had a sample out for a while.  Smelled nice. The display keeps getting bigger and bigger.

    • #2
  3. Misthiocracy secretly Member
    Misthiocracy secretly
    @Misthiocracy

    The list of ailments for which one can get a California Medical Marijuana Card is so ludicrous that songs have been written about it:

    • #3
  4. jsteuart Member
    jsteuart
    @jsteuart

    Well said!  CBD oil has become a regular addition to our daily routine in the last 6 mo as a result of real medical needs, both canine & human.   We were first introduced to it as a way to treat the pains of our aging beagle/lab mix, for whom any method of relief was welcome, and seemed to work well enough for him.  Of course, it then became a talking point with friends & neighbors and the anecdotal cure stories rolled in and my wife added it to our daily supplemental regimen to address heart attack symptoms, stress & general pains of aging.  So that’s a common story, I’m sure, but the interesting thing to me, as I was reading your observations, was the thought that this daily taking of CBD oil has brought with it, to me at least, a nagging uncertainty, a tension between the supposed health benefits of the supplement and the cost in both dollars & mental commitment to the process.  Like having to balance an object on the top of my head while walking, lol.  I seem to add these minor habits to my life over the years and I find myself inspired to stop and vigorously shake myself free of all these attachments, like a dog after a bath!

    • #4
  5. Slow on the uptake Coolidge
    Slow on the uptake
    @Chuckles

    Dr. Bastiat: I’m fascinated by alternative medicine. Or, actually, I’m fascinated by the fact that there are no alternative dentists. This really is an interesting phenomenon.

    This is an absolutely fabulous post!  Thank you.  So much in here  to like.  But the above quote is just totally excellent.  Says so very much.

     

    • #5
  6. Misthiocracy secretly Member
    Misthiocracy secretly
    @Misthiocracy

    jsteuart (View Comment):
    Like having to balance an object on the top of my head while walking, lol. I seem to add these minor habits to my life over the years and I find myself inspired to stop and vigorously shake myself free of all these attachments, like a dog after a bath!

    The danger of any substance that helps you feel “normal” is that you only know it’s working if you stop taking it. This is why mental patients are so apt to go off their meds.  “I feel fine, so why am I wasting all this money on pharmaceuticals?!”

    • #6
  7. Fake John/Jane Galt Coolidge
    Fake John/Jane Galt
    @FakeJohnJaneGalt

    Sounds like snake oil to me.

    • #7
  8. Slow on the uptake Coolidge
    Slow on the uptake
    @Chuckles

    You mean there aren’t myriad doubler-blind studies strongly supporting the delirious conclusions of multiple refereed papers by medical experts having no financial connection to the providers to encourage the widespread application of this latest miracle cure?

    Can this stuff actually be better than a Benny Hinn healing?

    • #8
  9. Aaron Miller Inactive
    Aaron Miller
    @AaronMiller

     

    Dr. Bastiat: And despite such overwhelming data, I can’t get some of my patients to take statins.

    I know intelligent and studious non-hippies who question the value of statins. As someone who never needed anything of the sort, I only vaguely recall the discussions. But the gist was that statins work as advertised but also pose risks which in many cases outweigh the benefits. That seems reasonable.

    Intelligent and informed people can draw different conclusions about the balance of risk and reward. The extensive education, experience, and collective studies of physicians should not be dismissed lightly. But ultimately a patient is the “boss” in that customer relationship. There are too many poor studies and mediocre doctors to simply trust them. Quality of medicine, like so much else, adheres to a Bell curve.  

    Like a lot of people, I’m generally skeptical of pharmacological and medical trends. The most basic reason is that neither a body nor a lifestyle is so uncomplicated a subject as to enable accounting of all variables. Physiological effects over a course of weeks, months, or years cannot be observed in isolated correlation to one or even several factors. 

    Studying active physiology is often like studying meteorology. I value weather forecasting, but more as guidelines than prescriptions. 

    • #9
  10. danok1 Member
    danok1
    @danok1

    She Who Must Be Obeyed keeps trying to get me to try CBD oil for my RA pain. I keep telling her I’ll ask my rheumatologist about it (to avoid interactions…at least that’s what I tell SWMBO). And I somehow keep forgetting to ask Dr. Z.

    • #10
  11. Misthiocracy secretly Member
    Misthiocracy secretly
    @Misthiocracy

    Fake John/Jane Galt (View Comment):

    Sounds like snake oil to me.

    Quibble: According to many accounts snake oil worked, as long as it was real snake oil.  It was introduced to America by Chinese immigrants who used the fat of the venomous Chinese Water Snake as a topical pain reliever.  Chinese water-snake oil contains 20 percent eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA), which does indeed have analgesic and anti-inflammatory properties.

    The problem with American snake oil salesmen was that the stuff they sold was fake, made from ingredients like mineral or vegetable oil, cayenne pepper, turpentine, camphor, etc.

    • #11
  12. Aaron Miller Inactive
    Aaron Miller
    @AaronMiller

    Many ladies I know are gung-ho into herbal remedies. I take them almost as seriously as doctors. There’s something admirable about recommendations along the line of, “I don’t know how it works, but it does!”

    Anecdotal evidence often offers more context than statistics. 

    • #12
  13. JosePluma Coolidge
    JosePluma
    @JosePluma

    Looks like the homeopathic and vitamin scammers have found a new grift.

    • #13
  14. Front Seat Cat Member
    Front Seat Cat
    @FrontSeatCat

    Baby boomers, the biggest group now starting to retire or have done so, were also the first hippies. Pot and drugs were a part of the culture – so was health food, herbs, grow your own food, etc. So now with all the new health aches and pains, it seems to fit with the mindset from back then – more healthy, less side effects. Statin long term have side effects. Watch any drug ad on TV when they list all the terrible side effects – who wants to take it to fix one thing?

    I’ve seen this cannabis type stuff at my doctor’s office, a farm stand who is selling “tea”, at the health food store – I’m amazed this stuff is legal? You are right, not enough controlled testing on these things. The nurse practitioner when I saw the cannabis ad said a patient of theirs in a wheelchair who is in constant pain says it has worked well.  I guess this is the direction we may be going.  My issue is I get the medical part, but who wants a buzzed out culture? It gets legalized and people’s reactions are slowed – that’s a problem.  

    PS To comment #4, if you are having some of the symptoms you mentioned, you should get yourself a serious check up and not mask it with something like this…..yikes….

    • #14
  15. Front Seat Cat Member
    Front Seat Cat
    @FrontSeatCat

    PS – We watched a great concert the other night on AXE TV with the band YES – good grief – Rick Wakeman saved his cape!  The music was very psychedelic just as I remembered it – The lead singer still sounds amazing, great show – it was at The Apollo Theatre, but what was funny was when they panned the audience, everyone was grey-haired or bald.  I said to my husband, I guess they’re all still smoking pot, but now for medical reasons!

    • #15
  16. Susan Quinn Contributor
    Susan Quinn
    @SusanQuinn

    Dr. Bastiat: Second, science is sort of treated like a black art. I think since so many people don’t understand it, they view it almost like magic.

    You mean . . . it’s not?

    • #16
  17. Misthiocracy secretly Member
    Misthiocracy secretly
    @Misthiocracy

    Front Seat Cat (View Comment):
    Baby boomers, the biggest group now starting to retire or have done so, were also the first hippies. Pot and drugs were a part of the culture – so was health food, herbs, grow your own food, etc.

    Quibble #1: Hippies, even when the term is defined broadly, were a small proportion of the Baby Boom generation.  According to some opinion polls of the time, the majority of Baby Boomers were reportedly pretty conservative.  For example, reportedly a majority of college-aged kids in the late sixties supported the Vietnam War.  (Caveat: I don’t have a citation to back up that claim.)

    The thing is, the Baby Boom generation was so freaking huge that it means that even though the hippies were a small minority there was still a heck of a lot of them in terms of raw numbers.  But still, they were not representative of the Baby Boom in general.

    Quibble #2:  The hippies of the late-60s/early-70s were not the first “hippies”.  George Orwell complained about this sort of folk way back in 1937:

    In addition to this there is the horrible — the really disquieting — prevalence of cranks wherever Socialists are gathered together. One sometimes gets the impression that the mere words ‘Socialism’ and ‘Communism’ draw towards them with magnetic force every fruit-juice drinker, nudist, sandal-wearer, sex-maniac, Quaker, ‘Nature Cure’ quack, pacifist, and feminist in England.

    You can see the hippie ethos all over the place even earlier than that.  The 19th century Romantics, John Humphrey Noyes (who coined the term “Free Love“), the Fellowship Of The New Life, Mother Earth MagazineRobert Owen, Wilhelm Reich (who coined the term, “Sexual Revolution”), Aleister Crowley, the “health food” movement that seems to date from about 1879, etc. etc. etc.

    The Great Depression and World War II put a damper on this sort of ethos because it appeals mostly to wealthy young people, with youth and wealth being two commodities the supply of which had been greatly reduced between 1930 and 1945.  It took about 20 years for the ethos to make a comeback, because that’s how long it took to grow a new crop of wealthy young people.

     

    • #17
  18. PHCheese Inactive
    PHCheese
    @PHCheese

    I am on my fifth statin having side effects from the other four. I am currently stopping taking the fifth to see if it is causing numbness in my feet at night.i have another week before I decide. I will ask for something else though.

    • #18
  19. Spin Inactive
    Spin
    @Spin

    Slow on the uptake (View Comment):

    You mean there aren’t myriad doubler-blind studies strongly supporting the delirious conclusions of multiple refereed papers by medical experts having no financial connection to the providers to encourage the widespread application of this latest miracle cure?

    Can this stuff actually be better than a Benny Hinn healing?

    I did some research in to this some time ago, and the only scientific studies I could find were the ones that said, contrary to popular belief, that most CBD oil has THC in it.  The really high priced stuff doesn’t, because those people have spent the time to ensure they get the product right.

    All the studies about whether CBD oil actually works for anything are “ongoing” and have been for some time.  

    I guess if you want to, you can go by what people on Facebook say.  But they all believe that Trump colluded with the Russians.

     

    • #19
  20. Full Size Tabby Member
    Full Size Tabby
    @FullSizeTabby

    Dr. Bastiat: One notes that the paragraph does not reference any of the diseases listed at the top of the brochure. It also does not reference any data to prove that it successfully treats, well, anything at all. Allow me to reprint that paragraph, with my comments in bold, in parentheses:

    I sometimes perversely entertain myself dissecting advertising claims in a manner similar to what you have demonstrated here. 

    I have done that also with political statements and speeches (it helps that I rarely listen to radio or TV, and get most of them in a transcript form). Fascinating to contemplate why they choose certain words, and particularly about what they do not say.

    Leftists have had decades of practice manipulating the language so that the hearer things they heard one thing, when in fact the speaker said the opposite, or so that they don’t actually commit themselves to what it might sound like they’re saying, or so that they deflect attention away from inconvenient facts or consequences, etc. 

    The Left may have made a tactical error with the Green New Deal because the description was short enough, and did not use enough obfuscatory or deflective language, that normal people could actually see the disaster that it described.  

    • #20
  21. Phil Turmel Inactive
    Phil Turmel
    @PhilTurmel

    I can’t say I’m surprised.  Americans have a very long history of buying into various forms of snake oil.  In my book, the most egregious is the chiropractic world of “subluxations” and “adjustments”.

    • #21
  22. Misthiocracy secretly Member
    Misthiocracy secretly
    @Misthiocracy

    Susan Quinn (View Comment):

    Dr. Bastiat: Second, science is sort of treated like a black art. I think since so many people don’t understand it, they view it almost like magic.

    You mean . . . it’s not?

    The difference between science and magic is that there are limits to science.

    • #22
  23. Susan Quinn Contributor
    Susan Quinn
    @SusanQuinn

    Misthiocracy secretly (View Comment):

    Susan Quinn (View Comment):

    Dr. Bastiat: Second, science is sort of treated like a black art. I think since so many people don’t understand it, they view it almost like magic.

    You mean . . . it’s not?

    The difference between science and magic is that there are limits to science.

    Now, Mis, that’s not what the Left tells us. Science has determined unequivocally, the science is settled, that man-made climate change is real. Haven’t you been paying attention?!

    • #23
  24. Misthiocracy secretly Member
    Misthiocracy secretly
    @Misthiocracy

    Susan Quinn (View Comment):

    Misthiocracy secretly (View Comment):

    Susan Quinn (View Comment):

    Dr. Bastiat: Second, science is sort of treated like a black art. I think since so many people don’t understand it, they view it almost like magic.

    You mean . . . it’s not?

    The difference between science and magic is that there are limits to science.

    Now, Mis, that’s not what the Left tells us. Science has determined unequivocally, the science is settled, that man-made climate change is real. Haven’t you been paying attention?!

    Indeed, it’s because science has limits that they are able to weave this tale.  If there were no limits to science then there wouldn’t be any problem because we could count on the scientists to come up with a workaround.  Instead, we are told that we have to revert to pre-18th century governance, technologies, and standards of living because we’ve (allegedly) already reached the limits of what science can accomplish.

    • #24
  25. CarolJoy, Above Top Secret Coolidge
    CarolJoy, Above Top Secret
    @CarolJoy

    Statins are medicines that cause muscle weakness. This is stated on TV commercials whenever ads for the “cholesterol lowering drugs” are advertised. Also, the same warning  is included in the insert. The number of statin patients who have developed ALS is of great concern.

    Unlike other meds, where when a patient notices a bad effect, they stop taking the medicine, with statins, in some cases even getting off the drug immediately does not affect the side effect.

    The other thing about statins is that at one time, they were brought about to induce a lowering of cholesterol numbers in people who had high cholesterol numbers. These days, having a cholesterol reading of 160 will get you a lecture about the need for statins. There is nary a single woman post-menopause ion the USA who does not have  a reading of her cholesterol at around 160 or higher.

    In Denmark, people have very high cholesterol readings but fewer heart attacks than people in the USA. This could be due to two life style variances among the populations. One is that in Denmark, dairy products are not homogenized, so if a person eats a lot of dairy, the harmful particles do not enter the blood stream in the way that occurs here. (Can’t remember if it is the lipids that are the  concern or something else.) Secondly people in Denmark tend to bicycle  and engage in more physical activities  more than us  even as they are in their mid-fifties up to the day they die. Americans are much more likely to become couch potatoes.

    • #25
  26. CarolJoy, Above Top Secret Coolidge
    CarolJoy, Above Top Secret
    @CarolJoy

    Okey dokey here is something to consider:

    • #26
  27. CarolJoy, Above Top Secret Coolidge
    CarolJoy, Above Top Secret
    @CarolJoy

    Right now, my big concern about the marketing of CBD oil is that a consumer doesn’t know the purity of the item they are buying. Nor do they know of the potency. Although my worry is not about someone getting high from it, as CBD doesn’t have the THC that does that, it is a shame if people are buying a  product that has little efficacy due to lack of potency.

    December 2015, I cured my elderly cat of throat or thyroid cancer using CBD, and although the vet offered treatment for my cat, his treatment was $ 350 a week for an indefinite time frame. My treatment was a freebie gift from a  friend. All the cancerous nodules went away after three weeks of rubbing the salve across the entire throat of the cat.

    • #27
  28. Misthiocracy secretly Member
    Misthiocracy secretly
    @Misthiocracy

    CarolJoy, Above Top Secret (View Comment):

    Okey dokey here is something to consider:

    It seems like a reasonable claim, but I’d like to see a citation for where this claim comes from.

    • #28
  29. Stina Inactive
    Stina
    @CM

    Dr. Bastiat: Third, we seem to worship the amateur and disdain the expert in today’s society.

    Is that really all that surprising given how duplicitous the most visible “experts” have been?

    I wanted to know how CBD fares for hyperemesis. The current handling of it is to prescribe class b drugs made for cancer patients that carry with them risk of fetal deformation.

    • #29
  30. The Reticulator Member
    The Reticulator
    @TheReticulator

    Dr. Bastiat:

    This is different than, say, statins. The data on the life-saving benefits of statins is so consistent, and so overwhelming, that it has become unethical to do a placebo trial on statins. This is America – you’re not allowed to intentionally kill people in research studies, so you can’t deny half the study participants a drug that you know can save their life. It took decades, and thousands of studies, done by hundreds of organizations around the world, to reach that point.

    And despite such overwhelming data, I can’t get some of my patients to take statins.

    I’m one of those people whose doctor hasn’t got me to take statins, although she has tried.  I don’t deny the life-saving effects, if you count life as being not dead. I have embarked on serious weight-loss and exercise programs to bring down my bad cholesterol levels, with good enough success to get my doctor to calm down about it. It remains to be seen how well I can sustain that progress.  

    I don’t know anything about CBD, but from what you quote it sound like quack medicine.  I don’t subscribe to the magic pill or magic food theories of health. Spent too much of my life in the biological science business, I guess.  

    • #30
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