10:23, Mike Adams, And Pat Morita

Daniel-san, best defense no be there. These were (approximately) the words of Mister Miyagi in the delightful Karate Kid movies (I believe that quotation comes from Karate Kid 2), but it’s a very true statement. If you don’t want to get punched in the nose, you move your nose away from the punch. It just makes sense.

The 10:23 Campaign is a punch to the nose of homeopathy and alternative medicine. If you aren’t familiar, the purpose of the campaign is to show that homeopathic remedies do nothing. On Feb 5-6, 2011, skeptics in cities across the world overdosed on homeopathic tinctures in public as a means to shine the light on the process. If you overdose on sleeping pills and you don’t fall asleep, it says something rather loudly about the efficacy of those sleeping pills. Yet nobody died, required medical attention, felt sleepy, or in any way fell to the effects of an overdose of pills.

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Put Up… Shut Up… Get Rich…

I love the taste of my own words. It’s part of being an open-minded person, and I think it is a good thing. When I am shown to be in error, I am grateful to the person who showed me this. I prefer to be right in all things (which of course I am not), and I’d rather admit my mistake and learn from it than cling to something that isn’t true.

One of the first and hardest lessons children learn is to accept when they are wrong. Sadly, most children do not seem to learn that lesson. I have seen both children and adults argue vehemently on a point where they are wrong, and when there is no more room to wriggle out of the trap and the evidence is stacked up against them, rather than accepting the situation, the response is so often to divert the attention, to lie, or to become sullen and mean.

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Magic Hands Make Magic Cures From Magic!

Ugh.

So I’m reading my local newspaper and I stumble across this article entitled Touching Lives With Therapeutic Touch, all about a local woman who uses the magic of TT to cure people. Seriously? Therapeutic Touch? Are we still actually living in a world where people spend money on this service?

The article… no, let’s call it what it is. The advertisement does include a statement that hints that the science behind Therapeutic Touch is “treated with heavy skepticism”, which I guess is the nicest way possible of saying that even a nine year old girl can prove how stupid it is (and get published in JAMA for it). Aside from that, though, the whole piece is one big plug for the benefits of TT.
And it’s typical woo, too. It makes comments like this:
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Excellent Example Of How To Deal With Woo-Flingers

Oh Australia, you’re making me wear a smile today. It isn’t because of your cute animals, or your history of penal colony-hood, or even your silly accents. Today, it’s because you’re doing something very right in your legal action between the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) and Darryl Peter Jones.

See, Darryl Peter Jones figured it would be a great way to do his part for the world by promoting the idea that diet and exercise could beat cancer. Now, based on what I know about cancer, diet and exercise are certainly a part of the process of fighting the disease, but a cure? Well, that would require some kind of evidence. Darryl didn’t provide any, aside from testimonials, and he went on to claim that he had the science to back up the fact that his treatment was more effective than any of the conventional treatments.

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It’s Not What You Know, It’s What You Don’t Know

Another great article by Scott Gavura on Science-Based Medicine (The risks of CAM: How much do we know?) has resulted in my writing a post on the topic of alternative medicine. His article is a very clear and direct explanation of the differences between prescriptions and supplements, and talks about the mistakened opinion many have that supplements are inherently safer than prescription drugs. Scott is a pharmacist, and sees this opinion manifested in goodness knows how many faces per day.

Ultimately, this attitude is akin to saying, “I’ve heard that guns kill people, so I’m not going to buy one. Instead, I’m going to hold this bullet and tap the back end with a stick.” Okay, maybe I am oversimplifying, but what I’m getting at is that not knowing about potential side effects and interactions does not mean something is safe. I don’t know how many times I’ve heard people express their concern over the warning section of advertisements for new pharmacological products (“Warning, may cause dry throat, sore eyes, sudden leprosy”). Yes, be concerned. That is why they are required to tell you these things, because you have to weigh the potential for harm with the potential for good. By not engaging in proper testing prior to releasing products on the marketplace, the supplement industry remove that capacity for you.

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Well Done, Marketplace!

It’s not often that we see a news broadcast about a type of alternative medicine that asks any questions. Generally speaking, these sorts of stories glamorize the amazing awesome magic powers of whatever practice they are talking about, show a brief clip of a doctor or scientist who doesn’t like what he’s seeing, and then go on with “However, as much as that doctor thinks that, this group of educated internet moms know better…” Not so for this recent edition of Marketplace (us Canadians can watch it here, or you can check it out in two parts on youtube here and here), who soundly thrash homeopathy.

The arguments are generally in line with what the skeptical community have said all along, that the science behind homeopathy is laughable and the false sense of security extremely dangerous, but perhaps it will help by presenting this in an at times incredulous fashion delivered by a reporter rather than the nerd you know on the company’s help desk who thinks he knows a lot about medicine.

Homeopathy doesn’t make sense. There’s no nice way of putting it. The science behind it made sense in the early 1800′s, but it’s simply an embarrassing notion at this point knowing what we now know about disease, the chemical makeup of water, and how the body works. The reporter does a great job expressing her amazement at the smug internet mom who is sure that if more people did the research, they would fortify their children against polio with drops of water which is so powerful that science hasn’t developed a microscope small enough to detect the active ingredient yet. That’s amazing power!

Jim

How To Use More Than 10 Percent Of Your Brain

Seriously, I’m about to tell you how to use more than 10% of your brain. And I’m giving this incredible knowledge away from free. Are you ready? This is a major thing, so you might want to brace yourself against something or put pillows down so that when you fall and strike your head, you don’t end up damaging that very brain I’m about to tell you how to use more than 10% of. Are you safely housed in an environment that can ensure you do not damage your body parts when you fall? Well then, here’s how you do it.

Orgasm.

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Homeopathic Toothpaste

My lovely lady was the receiver a while back of a tube of homeopathic toothpaste. Given my intense love of homeopathy, I had many a giggle over the idea, and this morning felt like bringing the topic a little attention.

For starters, I have to doubt the product. If like cures like, wouldn’t it be smartest to take some actual plaque from someone’s teeth, dilute to the point of ridiculousness, and then sell the resulting water? Of course, aside from the actively insane homeopathy crowd, it would be awfully hard to market water soaked in tooth decay, so I suppose the choice made a lot of sense.

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There Are No Germs Here In My Cave

Dr. Steven Novella has a fantastic article about germ theory denialists on Neurologica today, and I thought I’d pass it along. I highly doubt that any of my readers are germ theory denialists, so to be fair I am not trying to change minds with this post today. So what’s my objective?

To laugh at stupid people.

I admit it, I’m a small man sometimes.

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The One True Cause

The one true cause of disease is heavy metal toxicity. Exposure to such things as mercury, lead, Judas Priest, and cadmium results in damage to the way cells are formed and function. However, the answer is simple. All you need to do is chelation therapy to strip out the heavy metals from your system. This is accomplished by using a chelating agent, something that is more attractive to the heavy metals than we are, and that will flush out of the system.

The three true causes of disease are nutritional imbalances, toxic accumulation, and inflammation. If you don’t get enough vitamins, your body will rot from the inside out. Our bodies are veritable wastelands of toxins which can only be cured through HEPA filters, reverse osmosis water, and careful and primarily organic food consumption.

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