The Chicken or the Egg paradox

I'm sure many are familiar with the old paradox of did the chicken or the egg come first?

Some say the chicken came first because it had to nurture the egg, others say the chicken had to come from the egg, still other says...

But this blog nor post is about attempting to resolve that specific paradox. It is, however going to discuss a similar paradox concerning biid.




That is, which will come first, the treatment that requires the study of effect of said treatment before said treatment will be willing to be administered.

So will the study come first, or the treatment?

It seems that answer lies in muddier water than that of the chicken and the egg...

It seems that no one is willing to try the requested treatment due to that there is no solid evidence to support that it will in fact treat said problems.

However to get said evidence, at least one must be willing to perform said treatment an chronicle it, and perform the requested treatment on a statistically significant number.

I know, that doesn’t really solve or answer the dilemma.


However I will put forward a vague idea on how to get the statistical data needed to determine the best and most effective treatment.

The numbers or amount mention aren’t important, except that they be statically significant in number. I am not stating that the number to be given are o are not either way. Nor is it important that I’ll probably be stating things that lean towards amputation. As that is my personal issue, but this does not mean to exclude other desiring different ‘abilities.’

There seems to be only four general courses of treatment for biid.

1. Do nothing.
2. ‘talk therapy’
3. ‘pharmaceutical’ drugs/therapy
4. the requested surgery.


Over the course of a set period of time, say the average time it usually takes one to adequately adjust to, say a singular amputation.  The areas to keep track of over that time would be as follows:

1. Their overall physical health
2. Their overall mental health.
3. Their overall emotional state.

The above should include all of the following, their level of physical activity, their variety and frequency of said physical activity, the reoccurrences of the urges to remove said limb, the severity, length, and episodes of depression.  And their general emotional state on a interval time basis.
Of course a baseline would have to be established for each subject of the areas in concern before any treatment can begin.

The improvements, un-improvement, or lack of any changes in each group of treatment option should tallied up and compared to each other treatments. The results should lend credence to which treatments are actually a viable option, and which are anything but. However this is not to be based on any alleged, real or not, legal, ethical or moral grounds in regards to which treatments would be a viable option, and to which have the best overall outcome.

In addition the three areas of concern should not be averaged individually over any treatment group, as this would tend to skew the results. Rather they should be averaged over the specific subject, and that result should be used for the rest of the analysis.


If there is anyone who is qualified be willing to undertake this endeavor, I would be more than willing to volunteer.

Now to get to another side of this, is that it seems that the ones who are studying and researching biid are more focused on finding the underlying cause rather than finding the best way to treat it.

While it is true that this can lead to the best way to treat it, the exact opposite can equally be true.

The opposite being, that finding the best way to treat it can lead to finding the underlying cause.


-David