Let's have a show of hands

[Orrex]

[TechBear_Seattle]

1. Other

I believe that AMA, rightly, suppresses so-called remedies with no proven efficacy.

[Warpy]

2. Blame the DEA for suppressing

the natural remedies that WORK.

[pecwae]

3. And big pharma. nt

[sharp_stick]

4. The FDA should be

the ones stomping on snake oil not the AMA.

[hashibabba]

5. The problem is...

it's not all snake oil. Studies (yes, double-blind) are being done on many remedies that are proven helpful for certain conditions.

[Warpy]

6. Um, they're not PROVEN until the double blind study

has been done. That's what establishes proof. Proof is different from anecdote. People who swore by quite a few herbs (and still do) need to know there is no effectiveness beyond the placebo effect, and they can get that with something cheaper and more benign.

St John's Wort is one of the worst offenders, lots of interactions and no efficacy beyond the placebo effect achieved with both it and the dummy pill.

[LetsThink]

8. But I think Senator Kennedy has a bill .............

....that will mandate all drug trials be made available to the general public. So far, it's just the ones pharma companies want to provide to the FDA-- the ones supporting their case to bring a drug to market. Making it a law that ALL trials must be made public will uncover a lot of issues which may now lurke in the 'unpublished' grey areas........

[LetsThink]

7. Probably due more to pressure / enticements from Pharma.....

.....giants than AMA policies.........

[Celebration]

9. why the AMA?

Maybe I am nitpicking but I see the AMA as not having much to do with this. Physicians are actually all over the map on this issue, and I doubt that the AMA has much to do with suppressing effective natural treatments. I could be wrong.

However, are pharmaceutical companies actively suppressing natural treatments? You betcha. Many, but certainly not all doctors do passively accept the pharma reps bait-- hook, line and sinker. Of course there is the non disclosure of such things as the risks of Vioxx, etc. It is not appropriate to blame doctors.

This is a poll designed to skew the polling results, by trying to lay blame on the AMA rather than where it really belongs.

From the results of the poll, it appears it didn't work. Most likely there were a lot of "yes" votes done to confound the results of the poll.

[Orrex]

10. Well, let's be honest about this

It's not as though I intended it as a serious, double-blind study of the real state of modern perceptions re: the medical industry.

But of the past half-dozen threads or so that I happened to read in this forum, all of them were heavy with the "they're suppressing the truth about X" vibe, so I felt like posting a bit of low-grade snark.

Additionally, "the AMA" took up less space than "Big Pharma and the FDA," so I went for parsimony.

[Celebration]

11. the snarky poll

Produced snarky results. I doubt if most people answered honestly but felt justified in answering the way they did because of the way the poll was phrased.

[Orrex]

12. So then what's the problem?

If anyone read the poll and thought "here's a serious and objective examination of the subject," then I apologize to that person.

But I think that most people understood my intent...

[FlaGranny]

13. I had to chose

the second option because the AMA isn't the organization that has anything to do with which drugs are on the market and which are not. It is the FDA at the urging of pharmaceutical companies.