by Randomness 104） 癌症治疗（Fooled-伯克希尔哈撒韦中文网
当我从亚洲或欧洲旅行归来时，我的时差反应经常会让我在很早就起床。偶尔，我也会打开电视机，看看市场信息。令我惊讶的是，这个时段有很多替代药品供应商对其产品疗效的大肆宣传。毫无疑问，这是由于那个时段较低的广告费造成的。为了证明疗效，他们会找一些被治愈的病人的感谢来做见证。例如，我曾看到一位前喉癌患者，解释自己是如何通过服用一种复合维生素而获得拯救的，而且该产品价格非常低廉，只有14.95美元——他应该是非常真诚的，当然他的见证也会有报酬，比如终身免费获得该产品等好处。尽管我们的时代取得了很大进步，但人们仍然相信疾病可以被这些偏方治愈，没有哪个科学证据能比真诚和饱含情感的见证更能说服他们。这样的见证并不总是来自于普通人；诺贝尔奖得主(在别的学科领域)的褒奖就更有力度了柯家洋 。诺贝尔化学奖得主莱纳斯·鲍林(Linus Pauling)就相信维生素C的药用价值，他自己每天都坚持服用大量维生素C。由于他的强力推荐，很多人就把维生素C具有疗效当成了常识牛金生 。许多医学研究无法验证鲍林的说法，人们却置若罔闻，因为很难推翻“诺贝尔奖得主”的见证，即使这个诺贝尔奖得主并没有资格讨论医学问题。
除了有些人靠这些见证赚取经济利益外，这些说法对大部分人都是无害的——但是许多癌症患者可能因此舍弃了更科学的治疗方法，采用这些替代疗法，结果丧失了宝贵的生命 (同样，不科学的方法被归纳在所谓“替代医学”之下，即未经证实的疗法，医学界很难说服媒体相信替代医学并不是医学)。读者可能会怀疑我的说法，因为这些产品的见证人看起来满脸真诚，但这并不意味着他是被那些虚假的治疗方法治愈的。这种原因被称为“自愈性复原”，只在极少数的癌症患者身上发生，出于完全未知的原因，癌细胞被消灭，病人“奇迹般地”恢复了健康。某些改变导致患者的免疫系统从体内清除了所有的癌细胞。这些人喝一杯佛蒙特州的泉水或者嚼些干牛肉，就像吃这些包装精美的药丸一样，同样可以治愈。最后，这些自愈性复原可能也不是自发产生的；它们可能有些关键因素，只是我们还没有发现而已。
已故天文学家卡尔·萨根是科学思维的忠实推动者，沈佳润也是伪科学的死敌，他对法国卢尔德能够治愈癌症的传闻进行了研究，据说在那里，人们通过与圣水的简单接触就能治愈癌症。并从中发现了一个有趣的事实，即在参观该地的所有癌症患者中，治愈率(如果有的话)居然低于自愈性复原。而且也低于那些未曾去过卢尔德的患者的平均治愈率！那么问题来了，统计学家是否应该得出这样一个结论，即癌症患者在参观完卢尔德后生存几率反而会下降呢？
未完待续
原文：
Cancer Cures
When I return home from an Asian or European trip, my jet lag often causes me to rise at a very early hour. Occasionally, though very rarely, I switch on the TV set searching for market information. What strikes me in these morning explorations is the abundance of claims by the alternative medicine vendors of the curingpower of their products. These no doubt are caused by the lower advertising rates at that time. To prove their claim, they present the convincing testimonial of someone who was cured thanks to their methods. For instance, I once saw a former throat cancer patient explaining how he was saved by a combination of vitamins for sale for the exceptionally low price of $14.95—in all likelihood he was sincere (although of course compensated for his account, perhaps with a lifetime supply of such medicine). In spite of our advances, people still believe in the existence of links between disease and cure based on such information, and there is no scientific evidence that can convince them more potently than a sincere and emotional testimonial. Such testimonial does not always come from the regular guy; statements by Nobel Prize winners (in the wrong discipline) could easily suffice. Linus Pauling浪凌飞 , a Nobel Prize winner in chemistry, was said to believe in vitamin C's medicinal properties, himself ingesting massive daily doses. With his bully pulpit, he contributed to the common belief in vitamin C's curative properties. Many medical studies, unable to replicate Pauling's claims, fell on deaf ears as it was difficult to undo the testimonial by a "Nobel Prize winner," even if he was not qualified to discuss matters related to medicine.
Many of these claims have been harmless outside of the financial profits for these charlatans—but many cancer patients may have replaced the more scientifically investigated therapies, in favor of these methods, and died as a result of their neglecting more orthodox cures (again, the nonscientific methods are gathered under what is called "alternative medicine," that is叶城天气预报 , unproven therapies, and the medical community has difficulties convincing the press that there is only one medicine and that alternative medicine is not medicine). The reader might wonder about my claims that the user of these products could be sincere, without it meaning that he was cured by the illusory treatment. The reason is something called "spontaneous remission" in which a very smallminority of cancer patients, for reasons that remain entirely speculative, wipe out cancer cells and recover "miraculously." Some switch causes the patient's immune system to eradicate all cancer cells from the body. These people would have been equally cured by drinking a glass of Vermont spring water or chewing on dried beef as they were by taking these beautifully wrapped pills. Finally, these spontaneous remissions might not be so spontaneous; they might, at the bottom, have a cause that we are not yet sophisticated enough to detect.
The late astronomer Carl Sagan, a devoted promoter of scientific thinking and an obsessive enemy of nonscience越南乳瓜 , examined the cures from cancer that resulted from a visit to Lourdes in France, where people were healed by simple contact with the holy waters明空美玉, and found out the interesting fact that, of the total cancer patients who visited the place, the cure rate was, if anything辽工大团委 , lower than the statistical one for spontaneous remissions. It was lower than average for those who did not go to Lourdes! Should a statistician infer here that cancer patient’s odds of surviving deteriorates after a visit to Lourdes?
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