> You are trying to disqualify clinical experience and an empirical approach, despite both being part of the Western scientific method for several centuries.
Being treated by any doctor (other than a surgeon when on the verge of death) has only over the past century become something that was likely to extend your life rather than shorten it. This is a result of double-blind studies and statistical analysis.
"This is a result of double-blind studies and statistical analysis."
First of all, if you want to shrink all of medical research to seeing a doctor, do you have any evidence that your statement is true?
Second of all, most of the big breakthroughs in life extension were thanks to medical research that was neither double blind nor statistical, including:
1.) In the late 1700s, Edward Jennings invents the vaccine for smallpox.
2.) John Snow's theory of cholera in London 1854
3.) In the late 1800s Louis Pasteur and Joseph Lister develop the Germ Theory Of Illness, including such practical ideas as:
3.a) Louis Pasteur invents pasteurization.
3.b) Lister uses antiseptics to sterilize surgical instruments and clean wounds
Being treated by any doctor (other than a surgeon when on the verge of death) has only over the past century become something that was likely to extend your life rather than shorten it. This is a result of double-blind studies and statistical analysis.