Comment by zemvpferreira
17 hours ago
Hear hear. An alarming amount of people around me have had serious health scares directly caused by manipulation. A friend of a friend was nearly left paraplegic after a sports "straightening" by a well-known local specialist.
A close friend who had an extremely aggressive breast cancer at 35 (and is given to natural cures etc etc) took up acupuncture as a secondary treatment. All well and good until the third session, when the acupuncture people tried to get her to drop out of chemo and radiotherapy to fully commit to their treatments. Alternative medicine as a term should be considered fraud and its more radical practitioners thrown in jail immediately.
I forget which comedian said it in a bit they did but it's always stuck with me.
Something along the lines of "If alternative medicine worked we would just call it medicine."
"By definition", I begin "Alternative Medicine", I continue "Has either not been proved to work, Or been proved not to work. You know what they call "alternative medicine" That’s been proved to work? Medicine."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Minchin%27s_Law
https://youtu.be/HhGuXCuDb1U?t=178
(The whole thing is worth rewatching)
Tim Minchin
"Alternative medicine was either not proved to work, or proved not to work. Do you know what we call alternative medicine that's been proved to work?
Medicine." —Tim Minchin
Yikes. I've tried accupuncture. It _can_ work wonders for pain. But as a cure-all? Total quackery. Sorry your friend was approached like that in a time of need.
I have tried it a couple of times. For muscle tightness, there is some science behind why it works (and indeed this worked for me). Did it work better than a very painful massage session? No. But it was a lot less painful!
Appreciate your kindness. Unfortunately it’s very hard to understand if a woo-woo provider is waiting to prey on you when you’re at your weakest. I prefer not to support any pseudoscientific treatment modality if I can help it. Stick to disciplines who are subject to a higher degree of effectiveness and scrutiny and you’ll be saving yourself and others. Anything called mecidine and anyone called a doctor must uphold the highest standards.
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"I personally know more skydivers injured by parachutes than whatever they are supposed to prevent"
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I said killed
Stickfigure changed his comment from “drivers”/“airbags” to “skydivers”/“parachutes”
What I would say to “parachutes” is that evidently so many people do not go skydiving - why?
If doctors were peddling skydiving as a cure to anything, I would be just as skeptical as when they suggest radiating yourself to death.
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