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[Malleus]

I suggest Milton that you take some time out to at least peruse Thomas Szatz's book, because you're quite clearly completely unaware of the anti-psychiatry movement. You could always start at The Myth of Mental Illness.

But isn't this a digression? I thought this thread was about Ottava?

This post has been edited by Malleus: Wed 11th November 2009, 12:36am

[tarantino]

Your analysis is also very simplistic, ignoring as it does the cultural aspects of "mental illness". Many of those revered as saints in medieval times would be considered the most hopeless lunatics if they were alive today. When do you think that the concept of mental illness first emerged?

Many of the symptoms exhibited by saints could be explained by a physical illness, temporal lobe epilepsy. From personal experience, I believe this to be a likely explanation.

A relative of my mine exhibited many symptoms of various mental disorders. They had rapid mood swings, auditory and visual hallucinations and violent outbursts, among several other problems. After years of ineffectual and sometimes harmful treatment by psychiatrists, a neurologist was consulted, and it was discovered they were having seizures. An effective anti-epileptic was soon found and all symptoms were significantly lessened or disappeared entirely.

This post has been edited by tarantino: Wed 11th November 2009, 1:25am

[Milton Roe]

I suggest Milton that you take some time out to at least peruse Thomas Szatz's book, because you're quite clearly completely unaware of the anti-psychiatry movement. You could always start at The Myth of Mental Illness.

I'm well aware of the book and read it years ago. Szasz reminds me of those people who refuse to believe that HIV causes AIDS or that cigarettes cause cancer. How do you PROVE it to them? Turns out you can't. It's almost impossible to prove a causal relation to somebody who refuses to believe it, if you can't do the demo where you deliberately cause the effect. As here. Szasz gets rid of all mental diseases by refusing to recognize them. I can do the same with all physical diseases as well, for Szasz is quite wrong that only mental disease require a participatory judgement to be recognized. Recognition of all pathology requires a judgement. Consider the problem of a veterinarian at a zoo. How do you know which animals are ill? One solution is simply to decide that none of them are, no matter what they do and how they look. There you go. Even if they die, nobody claimed zoo animals are immortal, did they?

Of course, no zoo will pay you to be that kind of a vet. And nobody would pay Szasz to be that kind of a shrink. It's not a very helpful attitude.

[Obesity]

I suggest Milton that you take some time out to at least peruse Thomas Szatz's book, because you're quite clearly completely unaware of the anti-psychiatry movement. You could always start at The Myth of Mental Illness.

You may also wish consider the wisdom of a different Thomas, one Thomas Mapother IV, who offered a similar sentiment:
"You don't know the history of psychiatry. I do."

[Malleus]

Your analysis is also very simplistic, ignoring as it does the cultural aspects of "mental illness". Many of those revered as saints in medieval times would be considered the most hopeless lunatics if they were alive today. When do you think that the concept of mental illness first emerged?

Many of the symptoms exhibited by saints could be explained by a physical illness, temporal lobe epilepsy. From personal experience, I believe this to be a likely explanation.

A relative of my mine exhibited many symptoms of various mental disorders. They had rapid mood swings, auditory and visual hallucinations and violent outbursts, among several other problems. After years of ineffectual and sometimes harmful treatment by psychiatrists, a neurologist was consulted, and it was discovered they were having seizures. An effective anti-epileptic was soon found and all symptoms were significantly lessened or disappeared entirely.

I'm glad that your relative was finally sorted out, sounds like quite a distressing experience. My point though was that such behaviour would not have been considered a symptom of "illness" during the medieval period, whatever its cause, whereas depression is now one of the most common "illnesses" in many countries. I think I'm right in saying that depression is now the most common illness in the UK. Depression in its more severe forms may be debilitating, but an illness?

I suggest Milton that you take some time out to at least peruse Thomas Szatz's book, because you're quite clearly completely unaware of the anti-psychiatry movement. You could always start at The Myth of Mental Illness.

I'm well aware of the book and read it years ago. Szasz reminds me of those people who refuse to believe that HIV causes AIDS or that cigarettes cause cancer. How do you PROVE it to them? Turns out you can't. It's almost impossible to prove a causal relation to somebody who refuses to believe it, if you can't do the demo where you deliberately cause the effect.

A causal relationship can be demonstrated to be statistically significant rather easily, as I'm sure you know. What's rather more difficult to prove to any individual is that their own smoking will shorten their life, as it's only a probability after all, not a certainty; "My mother lived to be 98, and she smoked 20 cigarettes every day of her life."

[tarantino]

A causal relationship can be demonstrated to be statistically significant rather easily, as I'm sure you know. What's rather more difficult to prove to any individual is that their own smoking will shorten their life, as it's only a probability after all, not a certainty; "My mother lived to be 98, and she smoked 20 cigarettes every day of her life."

An exception, certainly, that was most famously exemplified by George Burns and the jazz musician Eubie Blake who smoked (they say 2 packs of cigarettes a day) for 85 years. Shortly before Blake's death at the age of 96 he said " If I'd known I was going to live this long, I would have taken better care of myself.".

Burns smoked 10 cigars a day for 70 years and lived to be 100. He said “smoking is one of the leading causes of statistics.”

[Happy drinker]

Burns smoked 10 cigars a day for 70 years and lived to be 100. He said “smoking is one of the leading causes of statistics.”

I'm surprised to see George Burns accused of plagiarism.

Fletcher Knebel (T-H-L-K-D)

[Milton Roe]

I suggest Milton that you take some time out to at least peruse Thomas Szatz's book, because you're quite clearly completely unaware of the anti-psychiatry movement. You could always start at The Myth of Mental Illness.

I'm well aware of the book and read it years ago. Szasz reminds me of those people who refuse to believe that HIV causes AIDS or that cigarettes cause cancer. How do you PROVE it to them? Turns out you can't. It's almost impossible to prove a causal relation to somebody who refuses to believe it, if you can't do the demo where you deliberately cause the effect.

A causal relationship can be demonstrated to be statistically significant rather easily, as I'm sure you know. What's rather more difficult to prove to any individual is that their own smoking will shorten their life, as it's only a probability after all, not a certainty; "My mother lived to be 98, and she smoked 20 cigarettes every day of her life."

Actually, it's worse than that. Forget the grandmother and her n = 1 contribution. How does one demonstrate that smoking causes cancer, with mere statistical evaluation of people who chose to smoke vs. people who don't? Turns out that you can't do it. Even if one group has more disease than the other, past all reasonable possibility of chance association, this only suggests some kind of causality, but not necessarily the kind you're interested in. For example, if A correlates with B, it may be that A and B are caused by C. In the case of smoking, people who choose to smoke are NOT THE SAME POPULATION as people who don't. So they're self-selected, and different to begin with. You can't control for such differences unless you design a randomized controlled trial in which people are randomized to smoke or not, and then this is enforced to make sure that those assigned to smoke do so, and those who don't, don't. You'll never see such a study. The closest that thas ever been done is several smoking intervention trials in which people were assigned at random to heavier or lighter pressure to stop smoking. Alas, no intervention trial is perfect and many people will be unable to quit. And again there's every reason to suppose that those who try to quit but cannot, are not the same people as those who try and succeed. So they undoubtedly differ in other ways from the smokers, than just smoking.

If you think such factors aren't important, you should take a look at the epidemiology for vitamin E supplementation and the statistics behind hormone replacement for post-menopausal women. In each case, the evidence that vitamin E supplementation and hormone replace were beneficial, was massive. But this was all post-hoc analysis, which could not control for the fact that pill-popping women tend to take care of themselves better than woman who don't bother, IN GENERAL. So they're not the same groups to begin with, even disregarding the hormone/nutrient effects.

Finally, the biomed establishment was forced to run some double-blind prospective randomized placebo controlled trials of vitamin E. And also (different trials) hormone replacement. These resulted in massive failures. Very few of the good effects suggested by the epidemiology were seen. So the differences seen in retrospective statistics were NOT due to the molecules, but were INDEED self-selection bias. Wups. Now-- prove that's not happening for cigarettes, but in the other direction.

Don't expect any help from animal models-- if you're looking for lung cancer or heart disease produced by smoking in animals, forget it. It's never been seen.

[Malleus]

You'll get no argument from me. I've never smoked, but my wife does and she's a professional pharmacologist, with a PhD. She's often pointed that there's actually no very convincing study on the harmful effects of smoking. Or even, come to that, any bad effects from driving after having consumed a moderate amount of alcohol. In fact some studies seem to suggest that it's actually beneficial. Or so I'm led to believe.

I'm always amused, btw, seeing a 1930s/40s film in which someone visits a doctor. Inevitably the doctor will offer his patient a cigarette.

This post has been edited by Malleus: Wed 11th November 2009, 11:46pm

[Newyorkbrad]

You'll get no argument from me. I've never smoked, but my wife does and she's a professional pharmacologist, with a PhD. She's often pointed that there's actually no very convincing study on the harmful effects of smoking.

I'm not known for name-calling, but this is blithering idiocy.

[Malleus]

You'll get no argument from me. I've never smoked, but my wife does and she's a professional pharmacologist, with a PhD. She's often pointed that there's actually no very convincing study on the harmful effects of smoking.

I'm not known for name-calling, but this is blithering idiocy.

Then you're clearly a blithering idiot, as it's perfectly true.

[everyking]

You'll get no argument from me. I've never smoked, but my wife does and she's a professional pharmacologist, with a PhD. She's often pointed that there's actually no very convincing study on the harmful effects of smoking.

I'm not known for name-calling, but this is blithering idiocy.

Then you're clearly a blithering idiot, as it's perfectly true.

At first I thought we had drifted hopelessly off-topic, but then I read this post and I thought of Ottava again.

This post has been edited by everyking: Thu 12th November 2009, 3:02am

[Malleus]

At first I thought we had drifted hopelessly off-topic, but then I read this post and I thought of Ottava again.

I'm encouraged that you're capable of "thinking".

[everyking]

At first I thought we had drifted hopelessly off-topic, but then I read this post and I thought of Ottava again.

I'm encouraged that you're capable of "thinking".

Even if Ottava is banned, his spirit will endure as long as editors are still insulting one another for no good reason.

[A Horse With No Name]

Even if Ottava is banned, his spirit will endure as long as editors are still insulting one another for no good reason.

You make Ottava sound like Elton John's tribute to Marilyn Monroe: your candle burned out long before your legend ever did.

Which may be the first (and probably last) time Ottava was compared to Marilyn Monroe. Goodbye, Norma Jean, indeed!

[Milton Roe]

Even if Ottava is banned, his spirit will endure as long as editors are still insulting one another for no good reason.

You make Ottava sound like Elton John's tribute to Marilyn Monroe: your candle burned out long before your legend ever did.

Which may be the first (and probably last) time Ottava was compared to Marilyn Monroe. Goodbye, Norma Jean, indeed!

Actually, Ottava's work is there being compared with Elton John lyrics. A much better match...

[Malleus]

Even if Ottava is banned, his spirit will endure as long as editors are still insulting one another for no good reason.

You make Ottava sound like Elton John's tribute to Marilyn Monroe: your candle burned out long before your legend ever did.

Which may be the first (and probably last) time Ottava was compared to Marilyn Monroe. Goodbye, Norma Jean, indeed!

I don't know if you saw the Queen's performance (I mean Elton John, of course) at Princess Diana's funeral, for which he changed the words so as to refer to Diana instead of Marilyn. I have rarely seen such a vomit-inducing travesty in my entire life.

At first I thought we had drifted hopelessly off-topic, but then I read this post and I thought of Ottava again.

I'm encouraged that you're capable of "thinking".

Even if Ottava is banned, his spirit will endure as long as editors are still insulting one another for no good reason.

What leads you to believe there's "no good reason"?

[everyking]

I don't know if you saw the Queen's performance (I mean Elton John, of course) at Princess Diana's funeral, for which he changed the words so as to refer to Diana instead of Marilyn. I have rarely seen such a vomit-inducing travesty in my entire life.

Elton John gets this treatment too? It seems to me you're sympathetic to Ottava and hostile to virtually everyone else, which is, on reflection, vaguely horrifying.

[Malleus]

I don't know if you saw the Queen's performance (I mean Elton John, of course) at Princess Diana's funeral, for which he changed the words so as to refer to Diana instead of Marilyn. I have rarely seen such a vomit-inducing travesty in my entire life.

Elton John gets this treatment too? It seems to me you're sympathetic to Ottava and hostile to virtually everyone else, which is, on reflection, vaguely horrifying.

And your opinion is of interest to me why exactly?

[Cedric]

Even if Ottava is banned, his spirit will endure as long as editors are still insulting one another for no good reason.

You make Ottava sound like Elton John's tribute to Marilyn Monroe: your candle burned out long before your legend ever did.

Which may be the first (and probably last) time Ottava was compared to Marilyn Monroe. Goodbye, Norma Jean, indeed!

I don't know if you saw the Queen's performance (I mean Elton John, of course) at Princess Diana's funeral, for which he changed the words so as to refer to Diana instead of Marilyn. I have rarely seen such a vomit-inducing travesty in my entire life.

Really? Was it that much more vomit-inducing than her brother's eulogy? The scion of one family of inbreds calling out another family of inbreds during a funeral service with the children of the deceased present? Despite the applause of the crowds outside, I found it all quite self-indulgent and disgusting. I and my siblings may be the product of many generations of British peasants, and yet we had no difficulty at all in interring our parents' remains after quite respectable and moving funerary services. What a curse it must be to be a nob.