Natural Cures

[forsyth]

So I was reading one of the many many books about "The Very Bestest Secret Natural Cures Possible Really that Are Suppressed!"

Okay, so it wasn't quite as bad as those ones the felon ex-used car salesman guy sells. But it had somebody proudly proclaiming their PhD, and their chops as a nutritionist, and their general expertise. Okay, fine then. But then as I was flipping through it, I kept finding places where they talked dismissively about "things that work even though nobody's done double-blind experiments" and other general science and expertise bashing.

And I thought, instead of bitching about how science doesn't recognize your favorite thing's true miracle powers to cure gout, heart disease, athlete's foot, acne, and flatulence, why not just do the experiments yourself? Set up an experiment, give X people your miracle food, give Y people a regular diet, and see if the incidences of gout, heart disease, athlete's foot, acne, and flatulence are statistically different between the two groups. And do it more than once, with a pretty good sized value for X and Y.

But I guess it's more work and isn't as easy as trying to sell books by convincing people you have SEKRIT KNOWLEDGE that the Food/Medical/Scientific/Shoe establishment wants to keep from you. But it'd do you and humanity a lot more good.

Comments

[leticia.livejournal.com]

I remember one I looked at once which started off with how you totes know western medicine is messed up because it's all about symptoms and not causes. His example is taking aspirin for a headache, when headaches are not caused by aspirin deficiency. To which my immediate mental response was "Can you prove they're not? Aspirin is based on the chemical compounds in willowbark, actually, thus it is ultimately a natural, herbal compound which, the rest of your arguments seem to say, we're just missing or we'd be perfectly healthy."

[forsythferret.livejournal.com]

I'm rather sympathetic to some of the things about symptoms vs. causes, and goodness knows the US diet is craptacular in everything except processed wheat and high fructose corn syrup, but the whole "Evidence? BAH!" thing drives me nuts.

Also, aspirin for a headache is a bad example, since headaches come from many causes, including temporary inflammation, which goes away with time, so the only cure is...to wait, and mise well get rid of the pain first. And if we're lacking micronutrients, then why not help figure out what they are, instead of spinning conspiracy theories about the ebil medical establishment?