Allopathic?
 

Not sure why these forums have selected allopathic to mean " M.D. physician." This term was created by Samuel Hahnemann. I am an older physician. This term, allopathic represents to me, a term used by individuals from non-conventional practices.

I would have created two physician forums: D.O. and M.D. Perhaps out of date adjectives should remain in the vocabulary of quacks.


But, maybe now, the term quack is also "politically incorrect."

I don't think that the creators of this forum are the ones to originally refer to M.D.'s as allopathic doctors.

With that being said, this subset of the forums is for medical students who haven't obtained their M.D./D.O. degree yet so it might be another misnomer to call them by those names.

I think sah means that we should restructure the whole place with two distinct forums: MD and DO.

Then you would have subforums in each for medical students, physicians, etc. so that the categorization is by degree (MD or DO) rather than status (student, physician, etc.). Makes sense.

No, his point is that the word "allopathic" was created by Samuel Hahnemann specifically as a way to diss mainstream medicine, which he thought was a bunch of dangerous quackery. So why, then, would we use a word that was specifically created to disparage our field?

I don't think the word "allopathic" has a negative connotation anymore. Most people probably just interpret it as meaning "not osteopathic" or in other words "normal."

To be fair, mainstream medicine in 1810 was super duper quackery and honestly more harmful than homeopathy. Placebo effect + harmless water >>>>>> dangerous chemicals/bleeding/leeches. I mean really if it were 1810 you'd see me at the homeopaths doorstep too.

nm

No it really didn't work. And it really did make people sicker.

Good to see you're still spouting the party line....

nm

I hope we aren't seen as barbarians. Even if the treatments we use become irrelevant compared to those of the future, at least the methodology behind their development is rigorous.

Dude, what meds straight up don't work? Maybe they don't work as well as some of the competition but they all "work". Do many meds make people sicker? Yes. Does everyone get to have their cake and eat it too? No.

And I don't even know what to tell you about cancer drugs. If you give anyone the choice to die now or later their going to pick later. We do the best we can with what we have. If you're so disgusted by it why don't you use your MD you're going to earn, yet abhor so much, and go into research to develop some new drugs?

nm

Are you just going to ignore all the drugs they used that has ZERO benefit and only harmed people?! While I am sure some drugs back then were tested in some way before being sold commercially, many were not at all...

nm

Most drugs or treatments will "work" for certain groups, and not for others. Even bloodletting can "work" for certain problems, such as iron overload associated with hemochromatosis. The problem with blood letting is that it was used for all sorts of stuff that it provided negative benefit for. Thus, people will often say that blood letting "did not work".

Antibiotics are currently offered to many patients suffering from non-bacterial problems, such as common colds. One might thus equivalently say that they often do not work.

This isn't to say that medicine doesn't work. Rather, it means that we need to keep working to improve the standards of care. I think the basic system that we have worked out for evaluating how to make those improvements is sound. Rather than throwing up our hands and giving up because things aren't perfect, we need to keep doing the things that we know will help us to improve the situation.

Most people don't even know it's a word. If you told someone you were sending them to an allopathic doctor they'd probably think it was some sort of specialty. If you explained to them that it's a doctor who believes that medicines should be used to treat disease, they'd probably be like... "yeah, and? what aren't you telling me?"

This is why homeopaths invented the word in the first place. No need to rationalize it after-the-fact.

Ok I never even mentioned this in my post wow. I am referring to his alternative plan on organizing the forum and randomhero's response that putting students under an MD heading would not make sense.

The terminology is plain stupid. Allopathic? We're the "other/miscellaneous" doctors?

I've never seen that term used so much except on these forums. I never even heard the term before I came here.

We go to Med School, not Allopathic School. We get MDs, not ADs. It's not a term that doctors named themselves. It is just dumb and people need to stop propagating it.

In what sense? Primitive relative to some non-specified future date? Everything is definitionally primitive if your point of reference is where we might be in 100 years.

What matters is whether or not there is evidence the treatment works.

Yeah, the adverse effects of chemo suck, but so does dying of cancer and chemo is often the best way to avoid or forestall that. If it is in line with the patient's priorities, it is hardly barbaric. It is offering the standard of care based on observed results, rather than unfounded theories or convincing guesses.

I can't argue about Vioxx, that seems pretty clear cut that was a pharmacological disaster.

My point is the drugs have to be "proven" to work, at least as well as the standard of care or because it performs well with less side effects compared to the standard. Do drug companies conceal information and lie? Yes. Do doctors prescribe drugs to the wrong demographic or for off label use? yes. Do most drugs need more testing in order to clarify in what populations they should be used? Most certainly.

Are statins over prescribed? Most certainly. Do statins have a place in medicine? The evidence undeniably says yes.

At least we have some barrier to entry into the market for drugs. Huge leap over over what they used to do in 1850.

This is exactly my point.

nm

Uh vioxx was very good at doing what it was intended to do: have an anti-inflammatory effect while causing less GI bleeds, in fact vioxx was better than celebrex at treating pain. The increased risk of MI is a class effect. Interestingly, some researchers have found substances that could be used adjuvantly with cox-2 inhibitors that could retain their benefit but reduce the frequency of adverse effects.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases...0417124231.htm

nm

That's actually not what the term allopathic means.

It literally means using treatments that cause different symptoms from the ailments they're supposed to cure.

As opposed to homeopathic treatments, where you try to cure a symptom with a dilute mixture of a substance that elicits the same symptom.

It's a phenomenally stupid term, and it's embarrassing that SDN uses it for its forums.

I'd actually say statins are underprescribed. It should be in the water.

I agree though that the term allopathic is derogatory.

I think his point was that this doesn't even require a name, although it would be funny to refer to it as Traditional Medicine...

As an analogy, there might be a homeopathic firefighter out there who will show up to a burning house with a single match. Doesn't mean that the guys who drive the tanker truck are suddenly "allopaths". :laugh:

I know, just wanted to clear up that the "allo" part refers to symptoms, not schools of medicine.

Osteopath is an even sillier term, but appropriately so.

What does that have to do with what I posted? The vioxx efficacy research wasn't done by that person.

Firefighting is something homeopaths are actually good at. They grind up one match, dilute it in several thousand gallons of water, and spray it all over the burning building. Ta da! The fire is extinguished!

I'm just quoting this here to document your idiotic statement and poor logic.

He's got a point though, wasn't Herceptin excessively delayed by the FDA approval process (thereby leading to its reform)?

Touche! :laugh:

nm

Not sure what your point is. Do we need big brother to watch our drugs or not?

By your logic we should get rid of clinical trials too because by golly we could be saving lives during that time. If it works for one guy it's good enough for everyone right? F--- controls, anecdotes are basically the same thing. And might as well get rid of peer review too because that just delays helping people even more.

Then when all the checks are gone you and your tricky homeopathic/alternative "medicine" bull****ters can sneak some chakra hocus pocus through the door masquerading as legit therapies. Nice try buddy, not going to happen. I realize you're probably mad now, might want to get some acupuncture to relieve the stress and negative energy in your body.

I wonder if the SDN overlords will/would change the forum name? I doubt it.

Although, the Lounge did get permanently renamed "wolf's den"... for now.

What would this forum be called?

"Numba One Gunna's [MD]"?

How about they just simply rename them to:

"Doctor of Medicine [MD]"

"Doctor of Osteopathic Medicine [DO]"

nm

To be completely accurate, I just did a simple Google search and many laws in different states and even some federal agencies refer to MDs as allopathic physicians/medicine.

Words are just that, words... It's all about context... "Allopathic" and "Osteopathic" are just designations/terms to differentiate the two types of physicians in this country and it has been used for decades and it has even been incorporated into state laws... So it's not unique to SDN and they are not meant to be derogatory terms!

Nobody ever said it was unique to SDN, but nothing you wrote changes the fact that the word was invented by a homeopath as an insult. Facts are just that, facts.

Now if you wanna say that we should 'get over it', that's a different issue.

vioxx is nothing compared to the TNF inhibitors...

And yet "A vast majority of Americans (88 percent) are confident that prescription drugs made in the United States are safe." :eek:

I'll accept the term allopath when DOs abandon the term doctor.

:meanie:

o please, way to throw a pointless, inflammatory red herring into the argument

I'm becoming convinced that the only reason the whole D.O. vs M.D. battle still exists is because of SDN (how else would all the elitist premeds find out about it)

@Johnnydrama Coming from a medical student knowing that your attendings/resident mates could be DO's, it's pretty dump.With the rate at which DO's are matching allo, I take it you would probably hate your job for ever!!! get over yourself

Just teasing.

In all honesty, would still not know what a DO was if not for SDN. Outside of the Midwest, they still aren't widely accepted.

The only things I object to are the terminology (ie allopathic vs osteopathic) and OMM (ie glorified chiropractic). DO programs should all be converted to MD programs and this silly debate stopped once and for all.

What's up with this personal crusade against TNF blockers? I already responded to this ridiculousness when you made a similar comment in another thread.

Words are not just words. Words have meanings. As people that are supposed to be communicate effectively, we use words that are the most appropriate for the situation. By the selection of one's words, one can show himself to be ignorant and inconsiderate.

As a polite society, we've decided that a group of people should be allowed to name themselves. Oriental and Occidental are ways to differentiate two types of people, but we don't use the former because Asians object to the history and the meaning.

Chiropractors don't post in a forum called Quack Talk. They're probably smarter than us in that respect.