If "nothing else works" then clearly you've already sought out conventional medical care, I don't think many people would object to you trying something "alternative" alongside that (even if it's likely to do bugger all), the issue comes from people using it as their only form of care. People have died attempting to rid themselves of easily curable illnesses using only snake oil.
+Jordan White I think you (or I) are reading this (beautiful) statement wrong. Tim is saying that alternative medicine that has been proven to be working is called medicine. I think people here have a big misunderstanding about how drug-companies work, and what money can do. It's a shame, but it's the truth. We all just let it happen, and let them get away with it...
+ESSBrew the thing is that most people are ignorant about the state of the art in the medical field and think that they have an incurable disease when in fact they can be cured (some cancers) or can be treated for a long life (HIV positive). In these cases alternative medicine proponents can actually do harm to people that can be treated otherwise.
...and as a result, the Medical Estiblishment should not be *exclusively* trusted to look out for patients' best interest. History has shown they're unfit for that job!
It may have changed since I last checked but drugs used to be categorised as Prescription Only, Pharmacy and General Sales List. GSL is stuff like asprin or some cold remedies that you can buy anywhere like a normal product and have normal ads. Pharmacy drugs you have to get at a pharmacy sold to you by someone with actual training and they're kept behind the counter, hence the tv ads always say "ask your pharmacist about......". Prescription drugs are marketed to medical professionals only.
They play here all the time, you'll see late night show doing skits about them from time to time. There was a drug that they were advertising and it said it can cause death - not kidding.
They weren't legal in the US once upon a time. They were made legal by a change of the laws in the 90s. They still make me cringe pretty much every time. I don't watch broadcast TV and I'm glad they mostly haven't infested RU-vid yet (I've seen a few here, but not many).
Hmm, well .......... don't they break up kidney stones using ultrasound? But the thing is, if sound waves did manage to break apart tumor cells, they would also break up regular healthy cells too? I guess the key would be to focus the sound on an exact point in the body.
@@Saugaverse They cured a guy with severe parkinsons by destroying the part of his brain that caused it with ultrasound, so they're able to aim it properly in the body
@@Saugaverse kidney stones can be destroyed, because they are stones. Soft tissue as muscle, tumor or anything else in the body is not harmed. So, it doesn't work.
In other words, "serious medical treatments must be vetted by a medical professional before patients get their hands on them." Why do we not do that here in the US? It sounds like a perfectly good requirement to have.
I'm pretty sure we do have similar laws. When you buy things like homeopathics, and herbs, and other alternative medicine, there's a statement on the packaging that says something along the lines of, "this is not approved by the fda and does not claim to heal or cure disease."
blubonion Right, but it can still be sold to consumers. And prescription treatments are advertised directly to consumers all the time here, swaying the people to pressure their doctor into giving it to them.
Yeah, the problem is it encourages bad medical practices. It's like cereal commercials during morning cartoons, the kids aren't going to go and buy the products directly but they'll pester their parents until they get them, and the parent that gives in quicker will be the 'favourite'. It does happen globally though, 'Antibiotics' has basically become a household name and what you expect to get when you go to the doctors sick, contributing to over-prescription and resistant bacteria.
Because the US has for-profit healthcare. Which is a beyond-batshit policy to have in a country, and one that no-one in their right mind would support were it not already implemented.
Probably why you all appear to dislike the NHS. It's misunderstood in the US and you're under the thumb of all the insurance companies who keep coming out with the bollocks "We're not paying out because it was a pre-existing condition". The US fails to realise that we also have private healthcare as well if we choose to pay for it.
Here in Canada medical ads on tv can say what their product is called, or what it does, but not both. This has resulted in some very creative ads for Viagra and similar products.
I can just imagine the strange conversations Canadian doctors must have when a woman or kid ask them if they think they should use Viagra. Must be awkward.
An example from a couple of years ago. Taxi pulls up to house. Well-dressed middle-aged man gets in. Taxi waits. Well-dressed middle-aged woman follows. Man comments to driver "She couldn't decide what to wear." Voiceover: "Ask your doctor if XXX is right for you."
I think the idea is that you'd need a doctor to say that. And legitimize Doctors probably isn't going to take chances on their license for a dubious device. Though now we have TV and web celebrities, it can get very murky. It seems TV hosts rarely get fired for someting like this, and web show creators won't lose their sub for endorsing this if they are themselves a new-age/alt-medicine show. At the end of the day, use one's best judgement.
in civilized world it is the doctor who picks the treatment, not the patient. Doctors aren't stupid, they will not risk prescribing some snake-oil just because XY famous person said it works.
DestructionCoach that is a different problem you are talking about. In most countries only doctors are allowed to prescribe real medicines and only ministry of health (or some subsection theirof) can classify something as a medicine. If a person is gelable enough to go to non-doctor to prescribe him a non-medicine, there is little we can do to save him.
In my country, in order to increase the skepticism and awareness of normal audience, soap operas would have arcs that have characters being duped by fake medicine and other types of scams.
In the UK, you have the right to be able to see a doctor for nothing at the point of service. In the US, you have no such right. You pay your doctor - either directly or through insurance. If you're paying your doctor then you could also persuade them that for the sake of continued business (and their income) to prescribe you a drug - even if there is limited need for it. It's what happens in many of the celebrity addiction cases. Michael Jackson could ask his doctor for anything he liked because he was the doctor's boss. So the doctor gave him what he wanted and it ended up killing him through overdose. Possibly the same for Prince. Doctors take the Hippocratic Oath (or a modern variant of it) that they shall not knowingly do harm but this doesn't mean they all follow it. I have medical family and I'm proud of what they do. They have never knowingly caused harm or done something that wasn't in the best interests of the patience. I'm sure they've made mistakes in the past but never intentionally. They've also worked in a system that means they are salaried (effectively) by a non-interested party and that is a great thing to have.
In the UK "nothing at the point of service" In the US "You pay your doctor - either directly or through insurance" If you're going to include insurance in your premise, why are you ignoring tax that funds the NHS? You're making it sound like they do it for free.
dave, that's a social cost, not a personal one. you don't pay based on your usage, just as your contribution to schools, maintaining roads, etc. plus they said "nothing at point of service", knowing that it's paid somehow. you're nitpicking for (i'm presuming) a political point. much insurance in the us does not completely cover medical costs, there are co-pays or they may just straight-up refuse to cover it if it's for a serious enough reason. the nhs turns down promising cures if they're too expensive but they won't refuse to treat _you_ if it's too expensive. well, unless it's a mental health condition. mental health services have really awful funding right now under the current government's budget and so do turn patients away based on that sometimes. but that isn't the system working right - when with health insurance, it is.
Kit Vitae "dave, that's a social cost, not a personal one. you don't pay based on your usage" Which is exactly the same as insurance. You pay x over time to a middleman, the middleman foots the bill. "you're nitpicking for (i'm presuming) a political point." I want to iron things out to see if it goes anywhere mind expanding. The rest of your text is besides the point. You are claiming it's different because some insurance requires semi-upfront payment. That doesn't change the fact that in all the aforementioned instances, customers are still paying for a service one way or another.
Dave I'm not. I'm quoting the NHS charter. Insurance (optional) and tax (non-optional) are very different things. Tax is taken directly from your earnings. You don't choose whether or not you pay it. Insurance can be opted-out from and by that measure you choose to pay for the service and that rate at which you pay is directly affected by the amount and purpose for which you use it.
Prior to 2005, they didn't happen in the US either. Frankly, I think advertisements for things like Lawyers, Pharmaceuticals, Doctors, etc... should all be banned again.
I've always thought it to be insane that pharmaceutical companies in the US can advertise directly to the public. I'm glad to see that a lot of other people in the world think so too.
You might want to look into what doctors in the US get for pushing pills made by certain farmacutical companies. (John Oliver or John steward did a pretty good report about it a view years back). It is shocking that a doctor in the US might not have the patient as his number 1 in his mind (example: medicine x and y both cure A. X is more expensive but the doc. gets a view bucks extra per botlle he sells guess what he is going to prescribe?).
On the other hand, the system of selling to doctors is also really problematic in the US. Drug companies spend significantly more on marketing (which includes the 'only barely not legally bribes) than R&D.
+MyriadesusTV Yes: in medical journals, professional magazines, and so on. It's a specific exemption in the law - otherwise they could have inadvertently banned scientific journals discussing cures!
I would love to see how Noel Edmonds would explain how a shaking mat would cure me of my tumour which is deep within my brain. And just to say, I am metalhead so I have tried headbanging and that didn't do a thing so how can a vibrating rug do anything
Have you tried hoping to get better? Maybe thinking positive? Maybe some water which has been sound treated? I can treat water with positive electrical charges for a million dollars, that would fix it. Wish you the best of luck with your tumour. optimism doesn't help with a cure, but it sure as hell is better mentally
sonic treatments work for kidney stones, but that's a big machine that guzzles a lot of power.... Not a yoga mat... I've also never heard them working for tumors.
@@panda4247 it was renamed to the Royal London Hospital of Integrated Medicine a long time ago, and it's mainly separate from the NHS. They do provide some services to the NHS, but no homeopathy. Mainly accupuncture and stuff like that.
That is some crazy good lawmaking! I regularly watch Last Week Tonight with John Oliver and it's pretty clear that these kinds of common sense laws are just terribly hard to implement in the States.
Although our advertisements are good meme fodder. 12 hour small relieve of headache, possible symptoms; nausea, headache, migraines, death, extreme death, bleeding penis, exploding eyeballs.
Indeed, the active ingredient in willow bark that actually works is now called "aspirin". There's a bunch of common medicines that originally were old herbal medicines, going back centuries. Folks used to chew on willow bark to ease their pain and for headaches. But science investigated. Discovered and isolated the active ingredient that works and then turned it into a product that was named "aspirin" (which is more concentrated in comparison to just chewing on willow bark, so works better, and doesn't contain all the additional useless things that willow bark also contains). And, indeed, it works. So it's considered to be medicine. "Many a true word spoken in jest" and all that.
Tom Scott, I just want to say that I absolutely love your channel. There hasn't been a single video of yours that I haven't liked. You know what you are talking about and have a very professional attitude. You deserve a lot more subs than you have. Keep up the good work!
Great video. I remember a few years back a headline "doctors refuse cancer man medicine because its 'too expensive'". I turned around to my friend and said "that's because it hasn't even been entered into or completed trials.." The man was on This Morning the next day, saying the "doctors don't care about me and my £150,000 a year drug!" I'm almost 99% certain the doctors didn't even have the option to prescribe this extortionately expensive drug.
I really like how the Cancer Act still holds true today, especially more pseudoscientific cures are in the rage in some areas. Like in Malaysia, unfortunately many still believes such devices helps to cure the unlikely instead of having recommendations from professional registered doctors to use the usual and their advices. I hoped that the medical council here could take some of the examples from such act to enact an act similar to this to curb such problems
all your statement proves is: You don't have CLUE what doctors are taught - and more importantly NOT taught at medical school. You also obviously have NO idea of the level of subtle sponsorship and dis-information they're feed from the outset of their training!
I wish that there were laws like this in the USA, because the drug companies here have so many ads that vaguely claim so much that people who don’t need them, or worse shouldn’t take them at all, are asking their doctor for something that they saw on tv, without real knowledge of the drug, and doctors have to figure out if they really need it, or just want what the commercial told them they need.
We really need something similar in Brazil :) We just had a case of a "doctor" (who really wasn't a doctor) who was using a public university as a personal lab to produce a compound that he claimed that could cure cancer (Phosphorylethanolamine). And what did the authorities do? They gave this compound a huge amount of money for research - even though it is in the very early stages, way too early for any claim with no control tests being done, just him handling some pills for decades to random people and when one or two got "cured" (ignoring the thousands that died) they started to think that it was working.
and WHERE do you think that money ended up? (Or didn't you think? ) I'll tell you now, there's a 99% chance most of it ended up in clandestine off shore accounts of the people who handed it out.. Why do you think Biden is sending $Billions to Z in the Ukn? Bc Z takes his 10% and sends the rest back to the US via channels Hunter set up while he was 'working' in the Ukn - wake tf Up
"Medicine" is about as productive as alternative medicine, real progress is made when the whole body is improved with many small improvements that add up to alleviate a problem.
@@bloodmoonhowl Right so when you get a pneumonia you would refuse penicillin? After all the cause of the issue is more likely based on a persons state of mind and medicine is the devils work.. smh.
I've always understood the fact that we can talk advertise to the public in the UK, but it's incredibly interesting that we have a specific act for cancer that's over 75 years old and it's still relevant.
In America, by government mandate doctors aren't supposed to recommend anything that isn't FDA approved so a lot of treatments can't even be mentioned unless a drug company went through the billions of dollars and years long process of getting approval.
+X3C And how's that going for you? There are cases like Addiy, where feminists lobbied an ineffective, poorly studied 'female viagra' through FDA approval. Look it up on RU-vid, I recommend TL;DR-channel's videos on the case.
When I was in Canada at christmas, I saw a medical advert and realised that we only get indigestion and painkiller adverts in the UK but this was full on medicine which I guess adopts that American idea that everything is sellable!
Damn straight. I think it should be like this in the U.S, and we need to further educate the public on real medicine, and to be skeptical about miracle cures.
This is the norm in Europe. I'm completely baffled that this is allowed in the US, it would cause scandals here. These ads put distrust in the doctors and make consumers think that they can help themselves. Unthinkable
40 years ago in the USA you were not allowed to advertise prescription drugs to the public (nor could doctors, hospitals, or lawyers advertise). They had a thing called the “Physician Radio Network” which was a radio program just for doctors. It required a radio not readily available to the general public (SCA, similar to Muzak). Doctors could get the radio for free because it was used ostensibly to provide them with medical news, but was really a way of advertising prescription drugs. In college I build an SCA radio and used to listen to PRN. I remember thinking how silly the ads sounded. And now the current ads are even worse.
It wasn't that long ago that the US was that way. But recent regulations have made it significantly more difficult for drug manufacturers to advertise and target medical professionals, so they've retooled most of their marketing toward consumers themselves. The hoops to advertise to doctors can get a little ridiculous in places. Giving a doctor a pen with a drug's name on it is against the law now because apparently these extremely well educated medical professionals who have dedicated years to saving lives are swayed to act in ways that go against their patient's well being because the pen's logo told them to.
In Canada we have the drug ads without the long list of side effects. Advertisers are only required to put the side effects in fine print at the bottom.
I'm American, and I envy anyone that lives in a country that has that law. I am sick and tired of all of the people tricking themselves and others into thinking that something that sounds too good to be true will work. They sell others a product that won't live up to the desperate hopes and expectations, and when they see for their own eyes that it didn't work... Of course there will be survivors who happened to use it. These people will continue to spread the false information, acting like it's a better solution than the modern medicine that extends lives, but only sometimes saves them. Better than sending people **straight** to death.
Fairy lights are pretty And on top of that the fact that they call it "alternative medicine" i stead of "medicine" proves that it doesn't work. If it did, they'd just call it medicine. Also the people running these aren't allowed to say that the medicine is proven to work, so they rely on others spreading anecdotes.
It's possible that one of the things that keeps that from happening is all of the cynics who believe doctors who have a cure for cancer would withhold it from the public for as long as possible to make sure their patients keep coming back to them.
TripleM That makes no rational sense. When people have asthma they choose to buy an inhaler. When people have diabetees they choose to buy insulin. When people want to save lives for a living, they choose to study conventional medicine. At least in most of the developed world.
Which is exactly why we need those laws. It's not for uneducated dolts to choose their own medication. It's for qualified doctors who know what they're doing.
as an american, it's kinda weird how used to those drug ads i am. it's really common to hear ads listing side effects much worse than whatever the drugs are supposed to treat. and yes, it is extremely common to hear death as a potential side effect
here in Australia, we got the same sorta thing. over here there are no ads with the words ask your doctor today cause any drugs you need to see a doctor about is never on tv. the only ads about drugs are ones you can get over the counter like panadol or zing tables or something like that. if you can't just go to your chemist without seeing your doctor and asking for it then it's not on tv.
The whole thing that we have in the state where drug companies are advertising on television is the most shifty thing I can ever think of. It's basically the drug companies saying that you, who have no medical training at all know more about your medical conditions than your doctor who has gone through years of medical training so pressure him to give you a prescription for our drug. It's SO shifty. It shouldn't be allowed.
Why shifty? The drugs in question are by prescription only, i.e., prescribed by an MD. Do you think all doctors just kowtow to their hypochondriac patients' demands? The practise of Pharma giving Drs. trips to Bermuda for selling x lots of New Improved WonderKure seems much more shifty, imho.
For what other reason would these drug companies be marketing to the public? Your doctor should be the one to be making the decisions about the drugs their patient takes without any pressure from the patient telling them otherwise because of something they saw on TV. This is why it's shifty. It's circumventing the doctor and marketing straight to the patient who doesn't have the medical knowledge to know enough to make a decision like this. THAT'S why it's shifty. And Pharma does NOT give doctors vacations for selling certain amounts of their drugs. Nice conspiracy theory there. Drug companies may have some rotten practices, but they aren't that rotten and they aren't in conspiracies with doctors.
BlackburnBigdragon 118,000 hits on google for 'big pharma doctors kickbacks' Included CBS news, npr, propubilca. Some really tin-foil hatters there. I prefer consumers be educated at least the ads are required to list all known side effects. You seem to hold doctors in some priestly caste holding mass in dead languages so the huddled masses will remain obedient to their betters. Oh wait, Rx are filled out in latin. QED
AS much as I'm dubious as to the value of EMP treatment (at least EMP levels you'd find in a mat or a pair of shoes) are we talking a scientific journal, ro a web blog? Because they're not the same thing.
I'll second that! I think drug adverts in the U.S. should be targeted to physicians who can verify the product's efficacy and can legally prescribe it.
The thing is, they lobby doctors too, in a big way. I think John Oliver did a segment on it. You Americans and your health sector... so wonderfully broken :P
Mark Speir From my point of view, you have a 'little' too much money in your political system. This is perfectly demonstrated by the almost 2 year campaign season for the presidency - nobody can afford a campaign that long with out selling out even the very last little shards of soul one might have.
I think here in Germany, some „medications“ can have advertising. At least in pharmacies they usually have advertising posters in their windkws and i think i might have come across one or two online. BUT those were all for non-prescription medication only. Like a cold remedy or a lavender sleeping aid or something like that. I had never thought about it, but yes i never see advertising for actual medication and i think thats a very good law.
Wow, I'm on Humira for crohns and I can't imagine it being advertised. It's definitely not the kind of thing that should be messed around with, just used to treat specific illnesses when diagnosed by a doctor.
Here in Canada we are allowed to have commercials for prescription medications, but instead of that whole spiel about side effects (which, quite frankly, puts me off taking a good portion of them) they just usually have "ask your Doctor" at the end. They don't even outright say what the medication is for, although the cheeky Cialis ones were clear enough.
funny, in France it's illegal for a doctor to advertise any medication at all, that's why medical ads have a little line saying "doctor licensed in the UK"
I wish we had such law in Poland. Here you just have one advert of some "medicine" after another, curing "diseases" that don't even exist or shuldn't be treated without consulting a physician. It's a nightmare.
like im usually super not interested in the things he talks about in his videos but for some reason i find his videos very interesting and entertaining
That really seems like a good law. If you sell them to people, it's almost certain you're marketing your product, not the cure. If you sell them to doctors who then prescribe them, you will have your products known and sold, and possibly get a Nobel Prize in Medicine. It's a win-win!
This makes... A shocking amount of sense actually. I always wondered why medicines were advertised on TV, I just assumed they were all on-the-shelf stuff XD
Sad that Noel has lost the plot. The biggest change I saw on moving from the UK to the US was that the TV was full of snake oil adverts. This is a primitive country compared to Europe.
I wish we had similar laws here. I don't want to be sold a medication. I am not a doctor. I am not going to go to my doctor and ask for a specific medication. If I am sick, I will go to my doctor and let him figure out what is the best medicine for me.
Even as a veterinarian, I get that. Unfortunately almost all of those requests are for things that have no good data to back up their usage and I have to spend an inordinate amount of time educating the person.
@Animuldok The only things I've ever gone in and asked for by name in a vet are 'that giant bottle of Frontline, please, Georgia flea season is upon us.' and the big tubes of Ivormectin, because I was taught how to safetly dose from those and they're a LOT cheaper.
Well, this video was most likely recorded in Britain, where they drive on the left side of the road, while Americans drive on the right, so that explains why you think they're driving "wrong". I'm not sure why this difference exists, but it's just the way things work.
I'm a British driving instructor. If you look more carefully, you'll see that all the cars (note that I do not and didn't use the US word automobile) cross the double, dashed "give way" lines from the wrong direction.
I should hope that the Royal London Homeopathic Hospital is in Britain. On the driving comment, there's a shadow behind Tom, in the lower left corner. Could there be a car blocking the way, forcing everyone on to the right-hand side of the road?
I think you're right - I'd not noticed it before. In any case, there is still space for people to turn the corner without cutting it. Anything parked so that it forces people to go the wrong side round a corner, must be parked illegally. This is why you may not park within 30 feet (IIRC) of a corner, yellow lines or not.
