I'm merely trying to get posters like Timebandit and Sineed to understand what they can validly claim (success rates of chemotherapy in these kinds of cancers) and what they can't validly claim ("no other therapies work"). This will help clean up our discussion immensely, and would probably lead most of us to the conclusion that we shouldn't even be posting on this topic.
What you are suggesting is the creation of a control group who are to be deprived of access to a demonstrably effective treatment (chemotherapy) in order to prove that the other therapies they would turn to are less effective (or entirely ineffective). That should clear up the argment immensely, of course, given the preponderance of existing evidence, this is likely to prove detrimental to those individuals who are part of the control group. How do you suggest they are selected... should we ask for volunteers, or select them on the basis of certain observable characteristics?
How should we set up the control groups unless you're suggesting we accept Western based coloonialim above all?
RP, I actually do not believe there is a need to provide the level of proof that Jas appears to be demanding in order to "clean up the discussion". I was, sarcastically, trying to point out that, given the preponderance of evidence already in place, a "control group" would have to be sacrificed in order to satisfy that absolute level of proof that Jas has been repeatedly demanding. My questions as to how the members of such a control group were to be selected was an attempt to get Jas to focus on the implications of playing rhetorical games about "proof" on real lives. Sarcasm might not have been the best route to go, but that was the route I took. Frankly, even with the sacrifice of a control group it could still be argued that the proof was not "absolute"... since it would not necessarily rule out the intervention of someone's invisible sky friend.