So What IS the Problem? -> -> -> -> ->
Could it be a heart problem? No, not a cardiovascular disease. A mental / emotional problem. Now I don't know anyone who can even "read minds" accurately, much less "hearts". But we do seem to have an unintentional confession in the presentation by Professor Emeritus Paul Kurtz (State University of New York at Buffalo) to the first North American conference of the Committee for Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, U.S.A.
Quoted in part (all-caps added): "In response to the growth of public interest in alternative medicine, many medical schools are now teaching courses in it. We thus are suddenly faced with the extraordinary growth of alternative therapies, often in COMPETITION with scientific medicine."
"With THIS PROBLEM in mind, many of us associated with the skeptics movement decided to organize a systematic response to alternative medicine." -- "In Defense of Scientific Medicine" -- reprinted in "Science Meets Alternative Medicine: What the Evidence Says About Unconventional Treatments" (c)2000 by Wallace Sampson, M.D. and Lewis Vaughn.
What was "this problem" again? "Competition"? (Is this a classic "Freudian slip", or what?) Competition isn't always about money, however. Remember, human nature also loves to feel important and, for some reason, to feel a certain power or control over others. For example, another speaker at the above mentioned conference related a well known U.S. congressman's testimony some years ago to a congressional subcommittee on "alternative medicine" about his personal experience with the (at the time) widely reported health benefits of a key ingredient in mammalian mothers' first milk, having bought some from a dairy farmer he knew, and even in "cold print" the feeling was evident that the speaker and his colleagues were just so proud of themselves that they got the dairy farmer arrested for "practicing medicine without a license".
Of course, only the fanatically opposed get this ridiculous. There are many medical doctors who are genuinely interested in their patients' welfare, just like many (but not all) politicians sincerely desire to benefit the human race, but what either can accomplish is limited by the greedy (for money, power, prestige, etc.) system of which they're a part. The truly caring physicians usually are also far too busy doing just that to research better alternatives or even to keep up with such research done by others. Thus is perpetuated sincere but uninformed one-sided viewpoints!
For many people even in a well-intentioned (but powerful) system, the brain may be brilliant but when the mind-and-heart faculties of it cooperate in mischief with a self-assured disposition, the frequent result is all the classic symptoms of "General Bullmoose Syndrome". Never heard of the ailment? Anybody remember political/social cartoonist Al Capp's satirical comic strip "Li'l Abner" set in Dogpatch, U.S.A.? His embodiment of private sector powerful interest groups was a fictional (yet very real) Washington, D.C. character he named General Bullmoose, whose overriding motto (obviously held up to ridicule) was: "What's good for General Bullmoose is good for everybody!".
<- <-<-<- "The Bell Cow?"
Copyright © 2004 David Monniaux.
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"Napoleon on his Imperial throne" by Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres
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"Natural" Healing
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Unconventional Concepts
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"Prejudice means literally pre-judgement, the rejection of a contention out of hand, before examining the evidence. Prejudice is the result of powerful emotions, not of sound reasoning. ... But we cannot reject out of hand, any more than we can accept at face value ..." --- Carl Sagan, "Sense and Nonsense at the Edge of Science"
Such a viewpoint doesn't have to be hateful. It can in fact be motivated by the most noble, charitable, philanthropic, etc. intentions. It only needs to be strongly held without regard for, interest in, or even curiosity about the evidence.
This neither describes all professional opinions nor is limited to professionals. It may, however, define the only "heart disease" that's contagious. Sadly, the most caring individuals are the most susceptible. The "established" way of healing ("allopathic medicine" in the Western world) is part of their "culture" -- their "religious upbringing", if you will -- even if they profess none. Especially friends and family. They really care about you and want the best for you. But love can be as misguided as zeal. Ever see a toddler not quite mentally and emotionally ready for it given a new pet, and who "loves" the baby duck, kitten, puppy or whatever so much it gets literally squeezed to death? Zeal OR love that's uninformed, mis-informed, or insufficiently informed can have similar results at any age.
These web pages are not "officially" copyrighted, that is, registered. Although in the U.S. they are legally "unofficially" copyrighted automatically when produced in any fixed publicly readable form, (See U.S. Library of Congress Copyright Summary.) you not only have permission, you are encouraged to print copies to share with anyone you think might benefit. (But please don't alter them and try to copyright the result.) And then try to be patient.
Sadly, recovery from this "illness" can be agonizingly slow and painful. Even in this more "enlightened" twenty-first century, (as the following true story illustrates) it appears that a professional chemist with degrees from Oxford and MIT, Anthony Standen, picked a timelessly apropos title for his 1950 book:
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Growing Up REALLY Drug Free
--- A True Story
U.S. Government Photo, CHugach State Park, Alaska.
How Do You See YOURself?
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Tunnel Vision?
U.S. National Park Service Photo by Jonathan S. Garcia
"My Mind Is Made Up! Don't Confuse Me With The Facts."
"Sacred" Cow, New Delhi, India;
Marc Shandro, Wikimedia Commons contributor
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