Re: CPAP is a patch, not a cure...
Personally, I consider that statement to be not just ridiculous but also misleading and damaging. Its only purpose in my view is to attempt to denigrate an amazing solution to a very real problem, a solution that is saving lives. Now. Today. In the real world. That's why I find the content offensive when it is used in that way.
"Your proven 'patch' is only a patch so let's imagine that maybe one day there will be other patches that aren't proven at all yet and that as far as we actually know will only be less-successful patches than the present successful patch but anyway let me trick you with my imagining that those patches will be called by someone a 'cure'!"
The worst science-fiction is the genre that pretentiously takes itself seriously as historical fiction that is set in the present.
If something better that CPAP comes along, I'll use it. Until then, I won't be distracted by what I consider to be flights of fancy of "hey, maybe this will happen," and "hey, maybe that will happen." And, "This isn't ridiculous because some guy somewhere actually once said it out loud and is now 'studying' it!"
When you choose a
medical approach, you go with present science before you turn to the non-scientific approaches that are a crapshoot and that are only pretending to have some scientific basis already. And "hey, I just thought of this possibility as an alternative to PAP therapy" is NOT, I repeat NOT, science. It just isn't. It doesn't even rise to the level of pseudo-science or junk science. It's just some random thought that passes through some random guy's head. And the fact that some hungry researcher once got paid to be tricked into studying it doesn't mean it has any basis in truth or any connection to reality. Until some connection with reality is made, the idea still flounders in the realm of not-yet-reality.
Posting random possibilities as if they are more than that is just so much noise that will only serve to obscure any real scientific breakthrough because everyone will be tired of reading these sorts of cries of "Wolf!" We have enough trouble debunking claims from the likes of FauxClean (thank you for that name, Grace) without having to debunk every possibility of something that in some alternate universe decades from now might be something valid to supplant PAP as the most elegant approach.
Any post that implies "Don't bother with PAP because it isn't good enough and something better may be just around the corner" is a post that can lead someone to make a choice that can lead that someone to his death. "Something better is just around the corner" ignores the fact that if you believe it in the case of PAP for OSA, the coroner could arrive before that corner comes. It is not harmless mental meanderings. It is dangerous to use that stuff to put down CPAP, in my opinion.
"Cure" or not, it is the best there is and should be given the full shot before moving on to less-successful or less-proven methods for second-best (or in the case of some ideas, no-best) approaches. I consider the ideas posted in this way to be a less-than-patches that have never cured anything or anybody and that steer people away from what they should be steering toward.
So if you want to post fanciful non-proven ideas about possibilities for the future, it might be best to label them that way for the sake of honesty and safety instead of using them for attacking PAP and making people think it is antiquated technology before that is actually true.
Jim
