onsdag den 4. januar 2017

Against the Nanny State

In 2016, I saw how a big tax-supported TV production ("Snyd eller borrelia") neglected a critique of danish diagnoses. The diagnostic methods for ALS, ME, fibromyalgia, skizophrenia were completely left out of the programme, and instead it ended on a note of closure when a man was told that his tick infection was a fraud and he instead got an ALS diagnosis. The documentary did not examine ALS at all, not the supposed science behind it, not the compared benefits and risks between the man's desired and current treatment versus the 'State Certified' ALS treatment.

I took extensive notes from the show, but the core of it was half a dozen anecdotes, so the question is how necessary it should be to add to its conclusion that 'false positives are a real thing, and you can't blindly trust private laboratories'.

One danish politician (a social democrat) was instant in her willingness to shut down the laboratory in question and perhaps go even further and 'safeguard' all patients by shutting down clinics all over Europe.



My hypothesis is that danish doctors downplay their own cognitive biases. Bias is often spoken of in terms of economic self-interest (for example, "the car dealer sold me a bad car, and he was so biased he walked away laughing"). But the danish welfare doctors are biased against 1) challenging the legal system/bureaucracy 2) expending too much mental and physical energy when they can sit back instead and call the problem simple and solved 3) going against colleagues and/or friends in other departments of the same organizational structures.  

I'm so fucking done with this hypocrisy that I will never again support a move towards more taxation or more welfare. To me, welfare has become a tool to obfuscate the cost/benefits of an economic decision. If you want to obfuscate your uselessness as a politician, you can just throw money at welfare and get an easy pass for 'helping the weak'. If you want to really seem like a hero, add some free education to really lift the poor and the cursed out of their condition. No matter what their local conditions are, just throw a university degree at everyone.

I find it ridiculous that it's been so easy for me to get a psychiatric diagnosis, and meanwhile get attacked and oppressed for not being scientific. If anyone deserves the scientists' attacks and mockery, it would be the perpetrators of diagnosing citizens without proving or testing anything, except for a short talk and some weak correlations with other people who felt the same pain.

At least I have a chain of causal effects to explain my hypothesis. A tick-bite after 24 years of strength and vigor, 1 year after a successful trek along a Norwegian fjord with steep climbs, then after a few days in a forest garden, a sudden collapse into exhaustion and chronic pains.

Psychiatry doesn't explain that. They're deluded.

I read an article that asked the authorities why they still use a limited test. Their argument was that they trust the official report/manual. But why trust a limited test that only even looks for three subspecies of one type of infection. If I walk into a hospital and ask for antibiotics after a tickbite, I expect to be scientifically tested for tick-infections in general, and I certainly don't expect to be denied treatment on the basis of my immune system's response to three subspecies of one bacteria. To test me in such a preposterously limited way is not scientific. Especially given the lack of alternative explanations/hypotheses. And even more so given the actual rash that I presented and that doctors thought to be erythema migrans.

I should be a lot angrier and more hostile than I am. Because, I know the battle is lost. I know the system is built in such a way that it can never be moved by 'the little man', and can never be radically overturned on any scale.

My only hope right now is enough time and energy to closely read through meta-studies and/or investigative journalism and REALLY pick apart old foundations for the persisting recommendations. I want to tear down the wall between me and my right to buy medicine, my right to take a personal risk.

Further reading against the state:
https://c4ss.org/content/16623
https://www.libertarianism.org/explore/type/essays?searchquery=health
https://mises.org/library/whats-really-wrong-healthcare-industry
https://mises.org/library/myth-free-market-healthcare
https://archive.org/details/cu31924030333052
https://www.libertarianism.org/publications/essays/era-expert-failure

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