1. What does nationalism and authoritarianism have to do with anything? By gratuitously sticking these words into your argument you undermine your credibility as a neutral commentator.
2. Even if they didn't push it, the west has been stealing ("appropriating" in liberal speak) Ayurvedic remedies for years. Take turmeric for example. The GoI had to sue to keep turmeric patent free.
1. Because both states are nationalist and authoritarian, and both states have an alternative medicine practice that's culturally tied to them. It's a pretty good analogy imo, and it helps to understand how such a state would act by having an anlogue to compare it to
2. Ayurvedic and TCM largely refers to those things which haven't undergone clinical trials to understand their efficacy as prescribed medicines. Anything from that sphere which is clinically proven to work and is dispensed as prescription medicine just becomes part of medicine. It's not about "stealing" or whatever, it's about whether people should be given proven effective medicines or hopefully effective medicines, the former being what we should promote globally
> Ayurvedic and TCM largely refers to those things which haven't undergone clinical trials to understand their efficacy as prescribed medicines.
Interestingly enough, RCTs of acupuncture (with sham needles) show pretty large effect sizes for many treatments but only in China, which is super weird. The most likely explanation is that the blinding doesn't work (which is a perennial problem in basically all RCTs), but it's interesting nonetheless.
Keep in mind that the Western system is not perfect either. Many good natural medicines are ignored by western countries because they have not undergone clinical trials. Why haven't they undergone clinical trials? Because that takes large amounts of money and no one is going to make that investment unless they can patent the molecule.
Of course, natural medicines that have been in use for hundreds if not thousands of years are not patentable, so no one will do a clinical trial for them. As a result, when you go to a doctor in a western country they are completely ignorant about natural medicines and will only prescribe drugs pushed by big pharma.
> Why haven't they undergone clinical trials? Because that takes large amounts of money and no one is going to make that investment unless they can patent the molecule.
The Ramdevs and Patanjalis of the world could easily afford to do this and would boost their sales 100x if they could. They already sell unpatentable remedies and powders with great profit (but decamp to Western hospitals when they are actually sick)
We don't have to look at TCM or Ayurveda. Let's consider a simple, well-known, natural molecule: magnesium. Go to Amazon and search for product reviews for magnesium and magnesium l-threonate supplements. You'll see tons of people using magnesium effectively for muscle tightness, and insomnia. Yet doctors never recommend it, and are confused when told that it works for you. Why is this? It is because big pharma is not pushing it. There are no major clinical trials going on for it in order to prove that it is safe and effective for these purposes. Why? Because it is not patentable.
Doctors test for deficiencies in vitamins and minerals
and recommend cheap effective supplements to address them and other conditions all the frickin time.
My partner is currently taking completely unpatentable iron supplements for a deficiency and I am taking cheap, unpatentable psyllium husk for gut health and cholesterol management, both on the advice of our (Western, evidence-based) doctors.
This meme that ‘western’ doctors are only interested in peddling expensive pharmaceuticals and don’t look ‘holistically’ at patient health, or recommend cheap, effective treatments … it’s just not true at all.
It is absolutely true for certain conditions. If you have insomnia and go to a doctor they want to put you on Ambien CR for the rest of your life. There aren't even any reliable tests for magnesium deficiency. Psyllium husk for cholesterol? Never heard a doctor mention that, all they recommend is statins. Your experience is clearly different from mine. The notion that Western doctors recommend natural medicines when possible is extraordinary. If they did, naturopathic doctors will not have jobs.
‘Western’ doctors generally recommend things that work and are proven to work. They don’t always get it right but in general that is at least the driving idea. Psyllium husk is a source of dietary fibre and has been shown to to absorb cholesterol from bile as it passes through the digestive tract, hence it can be recommended as an evidence-based first attempt at reducing levels. Statins are likely to be an escalation from there if it doesn’t help.
Naturopathic ‘doctors’ have jobs because the credulous believe they’re something other than quacks. Naturopathy is a grab bag of unproven, alt-med bullshit and should be regarded as nothing more than charlatanry.
Your view of western medicine is nonsense driven by antipathy. Yes, there are problems with money from big Pharma corrupting the system. That doesn’t mean any of the woo-woo alt systems are any more real. They’re all far worse because they don’t even start with an evidence base.
> Your view of western medicine is nonsense driven by antipathy.
The same could be said about your view of natural and traditional medicine.
> ‘Western’ doctors generally recommend things that work and are proven to work.
That's true of traditional medicine as well. The difference is how they are proven. Western medicines prove using a double blind study. It is expensive and you can't get funding for such studies unless an investor is assured of returns for their investment, which is only possible for novel, patentable medicines. And that means many natural medicines that work are ignored by the Western system. Traditional medicine on the other hand prove that something works not using double blind studies but 100s years of actual experience.
An example is magnesium. Doctors don't know that it works for muscle tightness and insomnia because no one has done a double blind study on it with thousands of patients. And nobody will because magnesium is not patentable. And so they prescribe Ambien CR, a very harmful and addictive drug. It is a very broken system, and you don't seem to want to acknowledge those limitations. (And no, no reliable tests exist for magnesium deficiency but that's a side point.)
> Naturopathy is a grab bag of unproven, alt-med bullshit and should be regarded as nothing more than charlatanry.
Yeah.. this attitude is the problem.
> They’re all far worse because they don’t even start with an evidence base.
They do, perhaps not in a way that satisfies you, but they do. The evidence is based on 100s of years of experience.
It's a common way in native English speaking countries to disparage someone, to compare them as a small failed version of something worse.
It's also confusing to non native english speakers, and even to people from "mismatched" english speaking cultures (an Englishman, a Scotsman, an Australian, and a central North American enter a bar; Oscar Wilde tells them they're separated by a common language).
The HN guidelines suggest people refrain from hyperbole, sarcasm, idiomatic metaphors, and generally having fun with language :( <- sad face
I found a zoom daemon running on my kid's MacBook a year after uninstalling it. Turns out uninstall didn't kill background processes, needed a reboot to flush it away.
I swear I remember this being called a feature, they left something around after uninstall so that if you clicked a Zoom link it could reinstall the client seamlessly. An ease-of-use thing for less technical people.
I pay the equivalent of usd 20 for 5 mobile plans, a fibre connection and a landline per month with no throttling on any connection. AFAIK no operator here offers locked phones at all any more.
A new thing in India is a zero-cost EMI scheme where some intermediary company refunds the cost of the interest over a short period: typically 6 months.
I haven't tried it yet, but a dealer told only to use such a scheme if I didn't plan to use the credit card for anything else during that period.
I can't figure out how they're making money on this scheme.
https://thecradle.co/articles-id/35568
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