[extropy-chat] Effectiveness of Medicine (was: Robin Hanson on Cynicism)

[Robin Hanson]

At 12:05 PM 9/24/2005, Morris Johnson wrote:
>Nutrigenomics has added food to the list of mechanisms
>that regulate genetic expression.
>Darwin and Crick meet Einstein so to speak.
>If you can invest units of time and thought to
>monitor, reflect and modify your environment and substance
>intake (food and drink) you can modify the natural course of
>events programmed into your genes and if some epignetic
>evidence is taken more broadly, very nearly alter the DNA itself.
>... I feel I will take the risk that I will drop dead tomorrow
>as a result of my tinkering against the possibility that my next
>50 are just the run-up to many more. ..
>I went to a Natural Health Products meeting this last week. One
>of the presenters showed how various sources of smoke ...
>So knowledge leveraged money spent on individually driven health
>choices can dramatically effect the effectiveness of medicine and
>do so at quite a nominal cost in comparison to the critical care
>medical products and services.  Even where individual choices lead
>to catastrophic results it is a good thing as it can  add to the
>knowledge base of those who did not make the "catastrophic choices".

Well you can certainly "effect" you health at low cost by taking
random chemicals pitched by "Natural Health Products" salesman
- as you point out this sometimes produces catastrophic harm.
But this is hardly evidence that people on average improve their
health by such actions.


Robin Hanson  rhanson at gmu.edu  http://hanson.gmu.edu
Associate Professor of Economics, George Mason University
MSN 1D3, Carow Hall, Fairfax VA 22030-4444
703-993-2326  FAX: 703-993-2323