“In the end we have no clue”.
Round and round we go, with seemingly little forward motion, so I’ll attempt one LAST time to provide the grounds for going ahead with interventions, and then agree to disagree and leave it at that, unless novel arguments are put forward. Somehow you imagine that your anti-polypharmacy stance is novel or informative. I assure you that it has been thoroughly assesed and investigated - just because some of us reach a different decision, doesn’t mean we’re blissfully unaware of the issue. You are not telling us anything new in any of those points you just made, we just also, in addition, see a different side to it.
There are two fundamental insights that underpin the interventionist perspective.
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Non-intervention, is also an action. I had a neighbor who was drinking himself to death. He was a very talented man and it was a tragedy. Once after he came out from rehab, and was relapsing, he mentioned to me, in passing, that he stopped taking some recommended drug (Antabuse?), because, as he said “I don’t want long term side effects, who knows what they put in those drugs”. A year later he was dead. We are all dying and doing nothing doesn’t delay that process either. Not taking a drug(s) is a choice that also has consequences.
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Knowledge is not an end state, it is a continuum. “In the end we have no clue”. On one level this is a meaningless statement. Because we hardly have a clue about anything “in the end”. As Matt Kaeberlein said “food is just a very dirty drug”. Food=drug, we don’t have a clue “in the end”, if your standard is “in the end” meaning knowing everything about it - there’s nothing we know by that absurd standard (about food, drugs, the atoms that food, drugs and everything around us is composed of, space-time and so on down to infinity), so you too “in the end” don’t know if your non-action action of not taking a drug prolongs your health/life - do you know “in the end” that taking rapa is a negative? Yet you chose one course of action also based on not knowing “in the end”. On another level saying “In the end we don’t have a clue” is a diametrical opposite of the truth in a very profound way. Because the truth is: IN THE END ALL WE DO HAVE ARE CLUES. The exact opposite. We don’t have, and never will have perfect knowledge (“in the end”), we will only know more or know less - you don’t reach a state of perfect knowledge, absolute certainty, you are always on a continuum of knowing.
And this is the focus of the argument. We all operate, necessarily on imperfect information, including the scientists you mentioned. Spoiler alert, the polypharmacy-avoiding you, also make choices based NOT wisely on “no clue in the end” as you imagine, but like the rest of us, based exactly on clues. The difference is how many clues you weigh, how well you assess the plausibility, how risk tolerant you are, how lucky your guesses, how wise your choices, where your priorities lie. Your anti-polypharmacy stance is wise, risk averse, defeatist, silly, smart, sharp, trivially banal and shallow. It’s all of that simultaneously.
I THEREFORE FIND THIS ARGUMENT TIRESOME STUPID AND UNPRODUCTIVE.
Which is why I keep saying, let’s not try to bias our search for solutions with ideology - not the non-drug naturalistic fallacy, or the opposite. Drugs are not some special devil, it’s just a tool. Look at it coldly, without ideological blinders.
Let us, as we try on this site, focus on the clues, the reasoning, the new information, the old information in a new light. That’s productive. Upbraiding people about polypharmacy as if they never heard of it is unproductive - yes, and odds are that some of us know a heck of a lot more about that than those who bring it up. Risk is baked into the whole enterprise to begin with. When the astronauts were first entering a rocket to the moon how productive would it have been for you to rush out of the crowd and proclaim “STOP, this is extremely risky, never been done before, I personally never would!”. Yes, they know the risks, know of more risks, and chose the mission for a reason. Productive is to discuss the details of the mission, knowing the risk is always there. Get onboard, or remain in the observing crowd, but alerting to the risks is nothing but saying “don’t do it” as the countdown is starting. That’s one way no progress can unsafely be made, while we hang out in the trees trying to avoid the snakes hiding in the branches.
As a good palate cleanser, read the Richard Miller interview linked around this site, including by RapAdmin, wherein Miller addresses why drugs that work in aging mice are relevant to humans, ITP trials of drug combinations and other topics.
So let us focus on the data and strategies in an environment of limited and never perfect information, and abandon unproductive ideological arguments - now is the time to roll up one’s sleeves, and not fold one’s hands.
And this is hopefully the last time I have to address this topic. To the rare soul who has read through this entire novel - persistence is its own reward
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