Reply #8: Picking up where I left off...

[Silent3]

I'm not sure what you mean by "imbalance,"...

I left that open to the interpretation of the respondent. For some people, the idea of balance (and likewise imbalance) relates to yin vs. yang, proper "flow" of "qi", aligning ones "chakras", etc.

Regardless of whether the balance is of some mystical force or measurable electrolytes, there's a common underlying assumption in the way many people think about health: that there exists some "balance" we can find where good health naturally follows. Achieve this balance, and you won't have allergies any more, you won't catch the flu, you won't develop cancer, your skin will be clear, etc.

What I want people to question is the whole notion that such a "balance" exists, whether "balance" means perfection, a less-than-perfect optimum, or if "balance" is even the proper conceptual framework for evaluating different health issues. What, after all, is being balanced?

Suppose that through a quirk of your immune system that you could either be resistant to malaria or resistant to hepatitis, but not both at the same time. Which of those two states would be the "balanced" state?

3) Every disease and ailment can be cured by the mind/spirit alone -- neither artificial or natural medicines are truly necessary.

This is an all or nothing question.

Indeed it is, as intended.

Not every disease can be cured by mind/spirit approaches.

That's what I think. That's what you think. There are other people who post on DU who would disagree.

In other words, the placebo effect is not simply the subjective misreporting of well-being; it has a biochemical, physiological basis that is as yet not understood.

I concur. The placebo effect does have limits, however, yet there are posters on DU who really do seem to think that you can "create your own reality" and go well beyond any documented capabilities of the placebo effect.

5) We're as healthy as we want to be. If we aren't fully healthy, that's a choice we make.

Not sure what you mean by "want to be" but surely life choices affect our health.

This question was aimed specifically at the extremist "create your own reality" paradigm which basically says that if you get cancer, it's because either you let yourself believe you have cancer, or even that you "wanted" to experience what it was like to have cancer. Under this paradigm there's no sense arguing, "But of course I don't want cancer!", because people who think this way will ignore your words and look at your condition and assert that it is your condition that shows what you willed into reality for yourself.

6) Living in a clean, pollution-free environment and eating only natural foods would ensure the greatest level of health that is humanly possible.

Again, this is posed as an all or nothing type question and combines two different issues.

Deliberately posed as such. There are people who would answer "yes" to this question despite the all-or-nothing nature of the question and the conflation of two issues.

There are two elements to this kind of thinking: First, that "humans (especially those greedy corporate types) have screwed everything up!", which goes beyond merely blaming humans for the many environment and health is for which we can rightly be held responsible, to the assumption that there is some underlying potential paradise we're missing out on, and that all deviations from that paradise are the fault of human beings.

The second element is an overly idealized, Disney-fied view of the natural world which is full of fresh mountain streams, singing birds and pretty flowers, and, if this world has any humans in it, they're noble and wise, living simple happy lives in harmony with the land. This world doesn't have a whole lot of rotting badgers which have fallen into the water upstream making people sick drinking the water downstream.

I'll skip over a bit of your responses now to get to this...

Upper management of all corporations, including management of drug companies, are concerned above all with earning profits and maintaining a high share price. If they weren't above all concerned with those matters, they could be removed by a hostile takeover, or worse, sued in a shareholder derivative lawsuit. By law, they have to pursue those objectives. A lab technician may be as public minded as anyone, but he doesn't determine which drugs will be developed or how they will be marketed, nor does he determine the overall strategy of the corporation. It is in the interest of upper management to expand their markets by increasing drug sales.

The basic behavior model of corporations should not be news to anyone nor viewed as a "conspiracy theory." How some hardcore defenders of drug companies have come to see this routine economic observation as shocking, false or conspiratorial, is frankly stupefying.

It's one thing to recognize the obvious fact that corporations are driven by profit. It's another thing to imagine that all corporations routinely break all legal and ethical barriers to maximize their profits, that truly egregious behavior can successfully be hidden indefinitely, and that malfeasance is so successfully hidden that only very rarely can it be exposed.

That Merck wants to sell stuff that even healthy people want doesn't surprise me. That Merck routinely meets behind closed doors with, say, Archer Daniels Midland, to design poisonous, unhealthy foods, and the profitable cures to counteract them, is quite another matter.