I don't have any, I'm sure there are some floating about somewhere, frankly I cant be bothered looking. I have already seen all the proof I need, i.e. seeing sick people become healthy, no amount of "words on paper" is gonna make any difference to my experience. Hence, I say "go look for yourself". And just to take the **** - Confucius said: "Traveling a thousand miles is more knowledgeable than reading a 1000 miles of scrolls".
Now there's a name for a novel! Mr. Nefarious Junk! I thought it was really interesting. He couldn't do it simply because he didn't make Bruce Lee noises. Having the haircut is good, but without the noises, how could he possibly expect to do it?
Hey Tpyeon, Like I say, I can only talk about qi-gong that I know of, and they are not very similar to sports exercise, in the sense that very little if any movement is involved, its more a kin to yiquan zhang zhuang, but with quite different mental activity. So, I’m not sure if I would call it exercise as such, or maybe just “awareness exercise” or something like that. But, like you say, it does seem like excellent things for anyone regardless of illness or not. But yeah, the right exercise for the right condition definitely makes sense. I would not do qi-gong for preparation to running a marathon, well, not unless it would allow me to blast incapacitating “qi” balls at the opposition. Though, good health is good health , so anything which leads to is in a sense useful for any activity, except perhaps sickness. As with regard to clinical studies, yeah, I don’t see why not. But, with something like qi-gong and the amount of variations, I would say that each one would have to be tested individually. I’ve seen many which are useless IMO, and many which are great, I would not like to see them all tarred with the same brush.
So all that talk of proof and in reality you have nothing. That sums it up nicely. I'm sure you have a nice list of anecdotes but the fact is you have no idea what healed these people. All you have is someone telling you it was Qi and you bought it lock, stock. Nice. The Bear.
Myeong Soo Lee a; Kevin W. Chen b; Kenneth M. Sancier c; Edzard Ernst a Qigong for cancer treatment: A systematic review of controlled clinical trials Conclusion: "We conclude that the effectiveness of qigong in cancer care is not yet supported by the evidence from rigorous clinical trials." The others I found which had positive results , ALL had questionable methods.
Interesting, yes. But what does it tell you? This reminds me of H K Beecher's study of heart surgery where the sham surgery group had significantly better treatment outcomes to the real surgery group. Didn't do for heart surgery though did it?
LOL... I have something, compared with your nothing its quite a lot. If qi-gong is used in hospitals in several countries for its positive effects on patients, its not an anectode, is it? Its reality. Of course, you would not know this if you never leave your village. Your idea of evidence is a piece of paper or an interweb publication. A sign of true intelligence! Where did I say this? Please quote me.
Yes, my evidence is a piece of paper written by people who have training and employed recognised research methods. Bleeding was used for centuries as a recognised method of treatment and some people did get better after bleeding would you prefer to be bled rather than have antibotics which used clinical trials (on pieces of paper) to treat an infection? The Bear.
So they have instituted treatments that have never undergone a rigorous clinical trial, sound like quality places. Next you'll tell me that homeopathy is a science. The Bear.
Edzard Ernst? Do you mean that highly respected big pharma stooge? LOL. Well here's the rub. You get to decide which studies use acceptable methods. So suddenly all that evidence-based objectivity is reduced to a matter of your opinion.
Well a lack of a control group does kinda ruin a study. It's not me who decided these methods it is the scientific community designed them over years to make research as rigorous a possible. Sure they're not perfect but it's better than anything else anyone has came up with. "Edzard Ernst MD, PhD, FRCP, FRCPEd Laing Chair in Complementary Medicine Professor Ernst qualified as a physician in Germany in 1978 where he also completed his MD and PhD theses. He has received training in acupuncture, autogenic training, herbalism, homoeopathy, massage therapy and spinal manipulation. He was Professor in Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation (PMR) at Hannover Medical School and Head of the PMR Department at the University of Vienna. In 1993 he established the Chair in Complementary Medicine at the University of Exeter. He is founder/Editor-in-Chief of two medical journals (Perfusion and FACT). He has published more than 30 books and in excess of 700 articles in the peer-reviewed medical literature. His work has been awarded with eight scientific prizes. In 1999 he took British nationality." You sure you got the right guy? This history doesn't sound like a pharma stooge. The Bear.
Just how many orthodox medicine treatments do you think have been proven with a rigorous clinical trial? Every hospital in this country is, as we speak, administering treatments with no sound scientific reason for doing so. Are you aware just how common off label prescribing is in the UK? I'm all for scrutinising the effectiveness of medical treatments from all systems of medicine but the standards used to assess them should be consistent. At present it is one rule for alternative medicine and quite a different rule for allopathic medicine.
Your the one always going on about bleeding in training, perhaps you should re-examine your stance on that. Like I say, I have no such studies, but that is not to say they do not exist (not that I know if they do or don't), but if a treatment is used in hospitals in several countries abroad, do you think that the people who run these hospitals just thought "hey, well back in the day bleeding patients worked sometimes, so hey, what the hell, lets get some qi-gong going", I doubt it. I'm sure it was more like, some patients noticed improvements from these practices and these eventually filtered through to doctors who tested and included these practices due to their effects. Anyway, its all just assumption on my part here, but like I say, if something is widely used in hospitals in several countries, surely its for a good reason. Just cause, we here in the West don't have their studies (if they exist and they probably do), their experience, and their framework for understanding these practices, does not mean they don't work. Assuming these practices dont work because they are foreign is just silly.
If you were noticing this, the next thing you would do is organise a research project and a clinical trial and try to find out whats going on. That's what everyone else does who stumbles on the something like this. I just find it a little interesting the resistance in undergoing clinical trials. I nice double blind clinical trial with good methods and I'll back your arguement 100%. The Bear.
That study has been superceded and it's conclusions called into question. So it's not a good one to back your argument. The Bear.
thanks! i was looking for something more about placebos and the like. i'll order it at my local friendly library. so this is interesting. are we know debating the effectiveness of scientific trials? the use of medicines in hospitals? the reliability of sources? how capatilism skews medicine/science? whatever system/ideology/method you can think of, it will be open to corruption what sets the evidence based model apart is that it strives for transparency, consistency, reliability, precision and accuracy and that it is open to criticism. although not perfect, is there a better model? can the advocates of alternative medicines really say the same? here is a really excellent article exploring that: http://www.badscience.net/2007/11/a-kind-of-magic/ back to the qi thing though; what experiments would we like to see being done if we could?!
Superceded by? LOL. Well aren't conclusions always called into question? I wasn't really using it to back my argument. Beecher's work played an important role in highlighting many issues that are still relevant today. My argument really is that trials have to be appropriate to what they are assessing. I mean, where are all the double-blinded placebo-controlled studies into surgical techniques? Kind of difficult to blind the surgeon to what technique he is using. Acupuncture has more in common with surgery than it does with drug therapies. It involves the insertion of surgical steel instruments into the body to effect physiological change. I'm also interested in people's expectation of evidence, why it is insisted on for some medical practices but not others.
