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Subject:Quackery and RSIs (was: Re: [2] tolerance... ) From:John F Renish <John_F_Renish -at- NOTES -dot- SEAGATE -dot- COM> Date:Tue, 19 Aug 1997 13:01:54 -0500
Virginia Day sez in response to Bob Morrisette:
<snip>
Many people acknowledge more than one way of knowing. Western
medicine and its scientific approach is just one. Also, belief is a
choice, and a powerful one. You can choose to use only western
medicine if that fits with your beliefs, and others on this list can
choose the healing system that matches their beliefs.
While I have a strong factual orientation toward everything I do, I
also believe in tolerance. Please give it a try.
</snip>
The problem is that unscientific (non-Western or traditional) medicine rests on
unproven and unprovable assertions (meridians, auras, chakras, evil spirits,
and the like) and that it does not have a body of replicable research that
demonstrates its efficacy is greater than placebos--it relies entirely on
anecdotal evidence. It's not "alternative" medicine; it's _unproved_ medicine.
Give me positive prospective peer-reviewed double-blind replicated studies
every time--if several such said I'd do well to drink my own urine (a
widely-accepted "alternative health" practice), I'd do it. In fact, advocates
of this and a myriad of other fanciful ideas cannot point to any such studies.
If you would not get in a plane built on unproved engineering precepts and if
you would not drive across a bridge built according to unproven stress analysis
methods, you would be a fool to trust your body to _anything_ wrapped in the
"alternative medicine" label. Perhaps some of it is good, but there is no way
to separate the grain from the chaff absent rigor, something "alternative"
medicine generally eschews and sometimes even mocks.
I could not bear to see this list (which is presumably for people who make
their living from the application of scientific principle) left hanging with a
call for willful ignorance masquerading as tolerance. If you want to discuss
superstitious credulity, please take it offline.
John_F_Renish -at- notes -dot- seagate -dot- com
My remarks do not represent any other person or entity
"A collision at sea can ruin your entire day."
--Thucydides
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