Have a look at this first then come back............the following is also pasted as a comment on the page if you don't want to - under my user name pianomarc.
BLOG POST
The way I see it, the MSS are raising awareness of a case of large scale deception - the stuff has no use and yet people are still allowed to sell it under the guise of a treatment for medical ailments...... the Muslim cleric is telling lies in the same way as the homoeopathic industry for the benefit of his belief...... I don't think a woman's cleavage could cause an earthquake, that's just plain stupid but ultimately harmless apart from the issue of women's rights and extremist interpretations. I don't think medicine should rely on any kind of belief for it to work, that's also just plain stupid and also potentially very harmful. Common sense seems to spur the majority into action regarding the former, but seems sadly lacking regarding the latter.
I also think that supporting these belief based phenomenon has much wider implications. Its is belief in witch-craft that gets humans to burn other humans alive in Kenya, graphic footage is available. Belief in homoeopathy also got a 9 month old baby killed by its parents for a relatively minor and treatable eczema. They are currently serving jail terms. I can provide a link to the Sydney Morning Herald's story.
I know of nothing more abhorrent than to push another living human being into a raging fire pit, or to think of a small child, unable to harbour her parents beliefs yet, dying in the way she did.
To compare what the MSS and 10-23 are trying to do with the Muslim clerics actions is nothing short of ridiculous. Some peoples beliefs get suspected Kenyan "witches" and some unfortunate Australian babies killed......not the same thing? Well, its that belief in something that isn't there that's done it for the both of them at the end of the day. Is one of them wrong or are both of them wrong?
Thursday, 29 April 2010
Tuesday, 27 April 2010
Testing from the iPod
Wow, I don't think blogging can be any easier than this..... Stumbled on a free wifi connection in the shopping center and am sat on a park bench waiting for the kids to finish music class. Going to spend my birthday money on a nice bottle of olive oil and contemplate my first move against the outrageous prescription of a magnetic collar for an arthritic dog that a friend of a friend was given. I was a little unsure how to go about this so I emailed Marsh from the Mersey Side Skeptics and he basically told me to follow my instincts. It seems obvious to me that a magnetic collar will have no effect on the body - any body in normal fettle without added extras like steel pellets or knitting needles swallowed in error - because we would never survive the likes of MMR scans, as Marsh pointed out to me. I don't know why it is people get taken in by this and as long as there is a market for it, it will be gotten to market somehow. I hope to be able to report that I saved at least one poor soul from parting with almost £40......I have a feeling it's going to take more time and effort than is strictly necessary but nobody else is trying to stop him. Watch this space as they say....and many thanks to the MSS and Michael Marshall for the encouraging words.
http://www.merseysideskeptics.org.uk
http://www.merseysideskeptics.org.uk
Friday, 16 April 2010
Homoepathy proponents STILL fight back........
Many years ago we began studying all of these herbal and alternative therapies and the stuff that worked is now just called plain "medicine".........it was proved to have worked through proper investigation and testing. So far homoeopathy has not successfully been proven. Apart from the fact that the dilution makes no sense, its science just doesn't add up. People have a tendency still to believe these things work based on hear say and if they want to waste their money on it, then of course that's up to them, it's foolish to those of us who do have the ability to do our own thinking, but ultimately its very dangerous as can be seen by the DEAD child in the video who couldn't read the crap that's on its advertising nor understand any of the people saying "it worked for me". Lets just recap on the video, its not made up. That's a DEAD 9 month old baby who's parents were convicted and jailed because they held back on real medicine - that would have seen that this little baby was alive today - because they held a belief in this rubbish.... IF homeopathy DID work, why would they bother to print stuff like "does not cause drowsiness" on the label of homoepathic sleeping pills.... and why did that baby die of complications brought on by not treating its eczema that in its worst case, some cortiosteroid cream would have probably done the job. It may be just a coincidence that they were Indian and living on Australias "hippy coast" where all kinds of alternative stuff prevails.......they took the baby to India by the way for advice from a leading homoepath......nice advice!!
The main problem lies in the fact that homoepaths qualify each other, there is no government regulated body that overlooks their courses and people who embark upon these courses do feel that they are studying a genuine therapy and so are bound to feel a bit aggrieved when they pass out only to find that the world is looking at their craft now and people are actually questioning it form all angles. The people who say "it worked for me or my friend" are without realising it, deluding themselves and helping to motivate an industry that in some cases has the cheek and audacity to tell the world they can cure aids and malaria and sell pills to people who are in enough bother already for money they cannot afford. There is a serious enough problem with childhood diarrhea in Africa - which is mainly caused by bacteria and parasites, to you and I with a normally healthy diet, it would clear its self up after a few days providing there were no serious underlying causes - and if we have taken anything, say a homoepathic pill, we would indeed tend to think that it was that that had done the trick........its a different story in Africa, howeve,r and even real medicine struggles to cope. A supply of clean water would help, and I suppose homoepathy does offer us at least that, as there is not much else in it - but you cant go to these people and say, "if you BELIEVE in this it might work for you, it did on a friend of mine"..... they don't have time for that, they are dying in large numbers every day. I am talking about children here......
Its an individual choice to use these "cures" and that's up to you, but it does have wider implications - people DO DIE because this stuff exists, .... I know plenty of people also die because of illness that real medicine is struggling to come to terms with, but at least the doctors administering that stuff have real qualifications and are using real scientific protocol to
try to save lives. Their losses must be hard to bear - they want you to live after all, but to shun them in favour of a 300 year old unproven system based on "energy" and "belief" must be harder to swallow.
The main problem lies in the fact that homoepaths qualify each other, there is no government regulated body that overlooks their courses and people who embark upon these courses do feel that they are studying a genuine therapy and so are bound to feel a bit aggrieved when they pass out only to find that the world is looking at their craft now and people are actually questioning it form all angles. The people who say "it worked for me or my friend" are without realising it, deluding themselves and helping to motivate an industry that in some cases has the cheek and audacity to tell the world they can cure aids and malaria and sell pills to people who are in enough bother already for money they cannot afford. There is a serious enough problem with childhood diarrhea in Africa - which is mainly caused by bacteria and parasites, to you and I with a normally healthy diet, it would clear its self up after a few days providing there were no serious underlying causes - and if we have taken anything, say a homoepathic pill, we would indeed tend to think that it was that that had done the trick........its a different story in Africa, howeve,r and even real medicine struggles to cope. A supply of clean water would help, and I suppose homoepathy does offer us at least that, as there is not much else in it - but you cant go to these people and say, "if you BELIEVE in this it might work for you, it did on a friend of mine"..... they don't have time for that, they are dying in large numbers every day. I am talking about children here......
Its an individual choice to use these "cures" and that's up to you, but it does have wider implications - people DO DIE because this stuff exists, .... I know plenty of people also die because of illness that real medicine is struggling to come to terms with, but at least the doctors administering that stuff have real qualifications and are using real scientific protocol to
try to save lives. Their losses must be hard to bear - they want you to live after all, but to shun them in favour of a 300 year old unproven system based on "energy" and "belief" must be harder to swallow.
Monday, 22 March 2010
Starting A Group
I have decided that rather than just stomp around town getting angry at every health food shop and "alternative" therapy centre, I am going have decided to try to begin a local group of like minded thinkers and to that end have emailed a couple of my favourite orgs for advice. Time will tell if they respond favourably, but it has to be better than my see sawing blood pressure and those awful forums full of, in this order; trolls, IDiots, Creat -ins, snobs and superiority-complex dick heads. I read them all and its a sad fact that misinterpreted moods in the written word cause chaos. So I am going to try to bring together some people - real people who think like I do and do some talking about serious subjects close to home using good old fashioned mouths, brains and ears as tools and hopefully giving woo in Lanzarote a run for its money. If anyone would like to help me or just join, please contact me. I am hoping any advice I get from my hero's orgs will avoid any pitfalls I come up against and at least give the thing some semblance of organisation. It could take a while, but I am just sat on the sofa right now doing NOTHING about the pseudo-sciencey stuff around me that makes me sad and disgruntled and I would like to try to start to do SOMETHING.
Sunday, 14 February 2010
Happy Day From 250 Miles Up.
I am honoured and delighted to have found the twitter feed from a real live astronaut, Soichi. He has a regular feed and posts most days and is well worth a follow if you do not already. He even obliges by taking the odd photo and posting them for all to see upon request, and even if you dont manage to get him to snap your choice, the existing ones are just so bloody fascinatingly interesting. Give him a look, he has some links to a few other 'nauts so it should always be possible to keep a live link up to the ISS when he returns to earth.
Particularly interesting was the pics of the space shuttle approaching out of the darkness ready for its recent docking for a 2 week stay, half of which is over now.
I am posting this picture in the hope that even a few of you get stuck in, jump on to twitter and see the things that are going on in the name of science, right at the cutting edge on the way out to space.
Particularly interesting was the pics of the space shuttle approaching out of the darkness ready for its recent docking for a 2 week stay, half of which is over now.
I am posting this picture in the hope that even a few of you get stuck in, jump on to twitter and see the things that are going on in the name of science, right at the cutting edge on the way out to space.
Sunday, 3 January 2010
The Irish and their "new" Medievil law,,,,,
In support of the abolition of this crazy way of thinking I am republishing my favorite quotes from the Atheist Ireland website, the rest of the full 25 quotes can be found HERE
This is the most backward thinking idea to have ever hit a modern country; in fact I am so bemused by it I can only think that its leaders do not want to live in this modern world and wish to drag their constituents back into the dark ages. Maybe when the dust settles they will see the size of their error and revoke this idiotic law, but I hope in the mean time no big corporations use it as an excuse to get the flock out of there and damage its already wobbly economy.
Anyway, on with the quotes :
George Carlin, 1999: “Religion easily has the greatest bullshit story ever told. Think about it. Religion has actually convinced people that there’s an invisible man living in the sky who watches everything you do, every minute of every day. And the invisible man has a special list of ten things he does not want you to do. And if you do any of these ten things, he has a special place, full of fire and smoke and burning and torture and anguish, where he will send you to live and suffer and burn and choke and scream and cry forever and ever ’til the end of time! But He loves you. He loves you, and He needs money! He always needs money! He’s all-powerful, all-perfect, all-knowing, and all-wise, somehow just can’t handle money! Religion takes in billions of dollars, they pay no taxes, and they always need a little more. Now, talk about a good bullshit story. Holy Shit!”
Ian O’Doherty, 2009: “(If defamation of religion was illegal) it would be a crime for me to say that the notion of transubstantiation is so ridiculous that even a small child should be able to see the insanity and utter physical impossibility of a piece of bread and some wine somehow taking on corporeal form. It would be a crime for me to say that Islam is a backward desert superstition that has no place in modern, enlightened Europe and it would be a crime to point out that Jewish settlers in Israel who believe they have a God given right to take the land are, frankly, mad. All the above assertions will, no doubt, offend someone or other.”
Frank Zappa, 1989: “If you want to get together in any exclusive situation and have people love you, fine – but to hang all this desperate sociology on the idea of The Cloud-Guy who has The Big Book, who knows if you’ve been bad or good – and cares about any of it – to hang it all on that, folks, is the chimpanzee part of the brain working.”
Sunday, 29 November 2009
Homeo-phobic musings..........
Well, I woke up, tuned in early to make sure I had a connection and settled back to watch as the homeopathic top dogs crumbled under the barrage of evidence. The live streamed House of Commons Science and Technology sub-Committee’s question and answer session on the 25th of this month was as I expected it to be. Scientifically based responses from the supporters were non-existent and Dr Ben Goldacre, Edzard Ernst and Tracey Brown were like Man Utd. playing in the park on a Sunday against a bunch of school kids. So bad were the answers given in response to questions raised by the committee that I was forced to read the Guardians comments arriving on their Science Blog rather than look at the faces of the stuttering defenders of this sham that is homeopathy.
What was most memorable about the whole days homeo bashing was not the contents of the video of the session its self, but rather interestingly the stubborn defence of homeopathy that continued to drip in for the rest of the day on the aforementioned comments. Mostly based on anecdotal evidence, ranging from a South African guy who's dog managed a leap up on to the sofa after being given some "memorised water" to a rather spirited attempt by a young lad who's father had been brought back from the brink after years of conventional treatment only to miraculously recover after some quack remedy. Like I say mostly anecdotal and the arguments kept coming. Nothing the sane and enlightened amongst the commenter’s could say would sway these people and their steadfast beliefs. This got me to thinking about something I have suspected for a long time. Once a person has stepped onto the pseudo band wagon, it’s VERY hard to get them to even consider that they may not be doing the right thing. I suppose it has a lot to do with human nature. The same is not generally true of the skeptics I find, although we have our zealots too. All we want is to be shown hard evidence. Show me and I am converted. I can see how it works from the other side though, after all I have kids and they do it all the time. Picture this:
Son : "I am so into xxxxxxx. they’re great and are bound to be around for years and years. I think I am gonna have their name tattooed on my forehead."
Dad: "That’s a really bad idea, apart from ruining your looks and making your self look foolish, history tells us that most bands don't make it past a couple of years and your opinion of them could change."
Son: "That’s never gonna happen, these guys are great."
Dad: "……..it’s a bad idea, the past has shown...."
Son: "What do you know, you don't even listen to `em"
Dad: "I am just saying that ......."
And so on and so on...... The kid is not going change his mind on the say so of his “square” old man. And so it is with people who have had the use of a homeopathic "drug". If they don't kick it in to touch when it doesn't work first time they are going to believe it has worked forever. That their bruising or rash can go away on its own won’t even come into it, nor will they ever see this as a coincidence if the homeopathic route was taken. Once the ego has "set" it’s very hard to change back. It takes a strong mind and the ability to show you made a mistake and that’s not easy for anyone to do. If it was, divorce and marriage guidance councilors would have no need to exist because we would all be able to see our own faults and apologise and change our behavior accordingly.
The motivation behind the scientific and corporate minds defending homeopathy at the Home Office party last week have another agenda, of course, driven by another ugly human trait. Greed, plain and simple. What worries me though is not that they are making money but that the arguments for the efficacy of the treatments just do not stand up to any form of scrutiny at all and they steadfastly refuse to acknowledge this. Contradictions were flying all over the place and so much waffle and stuttering going on it was like catching a kid red handed with his hand in the cookie jar. I am happy to believe in homeopathy if you can just show me it works. Just show me, that’s it. Clear up a random rash and let me see the results, repeat the exercise again with a further random sample and then again with another. Do it over and over, until there can be no doubt that this works, the same way as the big pharmaceuticals have to do it. Bringing a drug to market is a long process and a very costly one at that. Why these charlatans should get away with this scam is way off the scale of normal rationally working minds. I think it should be stopped in its tracks.
Never mind that its supposedly harmless –( what the hell point is there in a harmless drug, by the way), the facts are that it’s not. Australia found out recently the hard way with the death of a 9 month old baby girl who was killed by her parents withholding conventional medicine in favor of homeopathic drops to cure eczema. Well, it didn’t cure her, it killed the poor mite. Now you know why I can’t believe in it. There was a perfectly random rash to be cleared up and HOMEOPATHY COULDN’T DO IT. Do us all a favor, spare Boots the chemist any more “Ratner” moments and don’t allow any more people to die needlessly. It’s the end 2009, it’s about time we let go of this ancient and useless rubbish and let science, with all its faults, free to get on with the job of curing us of our ails.
What was most memorable about the whole days homeo bashing was not the contents of the video of the session its self, but rather interestingly the stubborn defence of homeopathy that continued to drip in for the rest of the day on the aforementioned comments. Mostly based on anecdotal evidence, ranging from a South African guy who's dog managed a leap up on to the sofa after being given some "memorised water" to a rather spirited attempt by a young lad who's father had been brought back from the brink after years of conventional treatment only to miraculously recover after some quack remedy. Like I say mostly anecdotal and the arguments kept coming. Nothing the sane and enlightened amongst the commenter’s could say would sway these people and their steadfast beliefs. This got me to thinking about something I have suspected for a long time. Once a person has stepped onto the pseudo band wagon, it’s VERY hard to get them to even consider that they may not be doing the right thing. I suppose it has a lot to do with human nature. The same is not generally true of the skeptics I find, although we have our zealots too. All we want is to be shown hard evidence. Show me and I am converted. I can see how it works from the other side though, after all I have kids and they do it all the time. Picture this:
Son : "I am so into xxxxxxx. they’re great and are bound to be around for years and years. I think I am gonna have their name tattooed on my forehead."
Dad: "That’s a really bad idea, apart from ruining your looks and making your self look foolish, history tells us that most bands don't make it past a couple of years and your opinion of them could change."
Son: "That’s never gonna happen, these guys are great."
Dad: "……..it’s a bad idea, the past has shown...."
Son: "What do you know, you don't even listen to `em"
Dad: "I am just saying that ......."
And so on and so on...... The kid is not going change his mind on the say so of his “square” old man. And so it is with people who have had the use of a homeopathic "drug". If they don't kick it in to touch when it doesn't work first time they are going to believe it has worked forever. That their bruising or rash can go away on its own won’t even come into it, nor will they ever see this as a coincidence if the homeopathic route was taken. Once the ego has "set" it’s very hard to change back. It takes a strong mind and the ability to show you made a mistake and that’s not easy for anyone to do. If it was, divorce and marriage guidance councilors would have no need to exist because we would all be able to see our own faults and apologise and change our behavior accordingly.
The motivation behind the scientific and corporate minds defending homeopathy at the Home Office party last week have another agenda, of course, driven by another ugly human trait. Greed, plain and simple. What worries me though is not that they are making money but that the arguments for the efficacy of the treatments just do not stand up to any form of scrutiny at all and they steadfastly refuse to acknowledge this. Contradictions were flying all over the place and so much waffle and stuttering going on it was like catching a kid red handed with his hand in the cookie jar. I am happy to believe in homeopathy if you can just show me it works. Just show me, that’s it. Clear up a random rash and let me see the results, repeat the exercise again with a further random sample and then again with another. Do it over and over, until there can be no doubt that this works, the same way as the big pharmaceuticals have to do it. Bringing a drug to market is a long process and a very costly one at that. Why these charlatans should get away with this scam is way off the scale of normal rationally working minds. I think it should be stopped in its tracks.
Never mind that its supposedly harmless –( what the hell point is there in a harmless drug, by the way), the facts are that it’s not. Australia found out recently the hard way with the death of a 9 month old baby girl who was killed by her parents withholding conventional medicine in favor of homeopathic drops to cure eczema. Well, it didn’t cure her, it killed the poor mite. Now you know why I can’t believe in it. There was a perfectly random rash to be cleared up and HOMEOPATHY COULDN’T DO IT. Do us all a favor, spare Boots the chemist any more “Ratner” moments and don’t allow any more people to die needlessly. It’s the end 2009, it’s about time we let go of this ancient and useless rubbish and let science, with all its faults, free to get on with the job of curing us of our ails.
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