Maybe you’ve noticed, maybe not? What’s the latest cure discovered by Big Pharma? What’s the most important disease cured in the last year? The last 5 years? The last 10 years? The last 20 years? We hear lots of news about “potential new cures”, “promising new treatments”, “moving closer to a cure”, as well as “walk, run, jump, swim, bike… for a cure”. Sometimes the press, in desperate enthusiasm to find a cure, reports a cure. Look closer, read carefully. Most are simply “hope for a future cure”, because cured is not defined.

Where are the cures? Where are the cured?

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I often say I’m taking my car to the vet, the car veterinarian. When my car is sick, it’s my pet and the mechanic is my vet.  It’s a useful metaphor, one we can use to explore and understand the concepts of curing. Continue reading →

Maybe you’ve noticed the latest alternative medical news fashion. CBD cures everything. But where’s the truth? Can cannabis oil really cure? Which diseases can it cure?  After all, cure is disappearing from most medical theory and practice.  Continue reading →

The field of medicine has its own language, and frankly, it’s a mess. Different fields of medicine have different languages, which sometimes disagree on the simplest terms and use many words inconsistently. Is depression a sign, a symptom, an illness, a disease, a disorder, a medical condition, or as defined in the latest edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, a symptom domain? It’s all of the above, depending on the patient, the person speaking, the situation, and other factors. Depression can also be applied to physical attributes which might be natural, unnatural or a sign of illness.

Cures Do Not Exist in Medicine

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Are the benefits of acupuncture just placebo effects? Unfortunately, “probably just a placebo effect” is simplistic nonsense. Let’s begin with a clear look at the placebo effect, starting with Webster’s dictionary:

Placebo Effect (Webster’s)

“improvement in the condition of a patient that occurs in response to treatment but cannot be considered due to the specific treatment used” Continue reading →