To the people defending magic(k): If you want to know why people here get so incensed about New Age religions and therapies, and take umbrage at your “all possible worlds” approach to epistemology, consider the following:
No peer-reviewed scientific studies, no proven string of successes, no proper causal explanations. Just anecdotes and mumbo-jumbo.
But hey, it MAY have worked. Shit - it MAY STILL work! Who are we to say otherwise?
Perhaps Mr. Steward didn’t believe in it enough. These spiritual phenomenon are very sensitive to belief, you know. Hell, maybe there was a skeptic in the room when the treatment was administered - his or her “negative psi energy” alone would be enough to reverse the effects of this wonder medicine, and cause death instead of give life.
Perhaps he took the treatment during the waning phases of the moon. Healings should always be done during the waxing phase - every idiot knows that.
Or perhaps he was simply “meant” to die. After all, we don’t know everything about the universe - who are we to question God[dess]'s ways and means?
On the same note: a recent People magazine article trumpeted that Suzanne Somers has sworn to use only “natural” therapies in her fight against cancer (breast, I believe?).
May the Goddess save her poor, misguided soul - or, at least, whisk it speedily to the Summerland.
Or maybe this man was so far gone with cancer (he was dehydrated and bleeding from his gums and penis upon arrival!) he was willing to try anything.
Obviously, he didn’t care whether the treatment was FDA approved or not.
Maybe I missed the part of the story where the New Age wackos kidnapped this man from his home and dragged him kicking and screaming to a witch doctor who tied him up and forced him to partake of “Magickal” cures and treatments.
Perhaps we should note that this man was a grown adult capable of making his own decisions, however stupid they may be.
Belief in magick and New Age healing didn’t kill this man. A former nurse using an unlicensed product incorrectly killed this man. Now, you want to rant about unlicensed medical professionals obtaining and using (incorrectly) unregulated and unlicensed medical procedures and treatments, I’ll get behind you. However, you can fuck off with your “magick kills innocent people” bullshit.
It’s an example, Beth, of how the concept of “magic(k)” can be harmful when it’s touted as fact. This man believed that this “magical cure” would, in fact, cure him (even though he was, admittedly, on his last legs).
Touting a scientifically/medically unsound procedure/medicine as genuine does more harm than a thousand guns.
Just because someone needs a cure doesn’t absolve them from checking out the source of that treatment. The dead guy is just as much to blame as the people who incorrectly administered the treatment to him.
In the old days we had all kinds of patent medicines available that supposedly would cure various ailments but really didn’t. When people died because they trusted the people who sold them, was it the fault of their own stupidity?
I think it’s fucked up that you can get around laws that were put into place to prevent this kind of quackery by distancing yourself from real medicine as far as possible. If some doctor sells a treatment that does no good and results in someone’s death, it’s malpractice. If some ‘shaman’ sells some mystical herbal treatment, it’s all OK.
If they chose the patent medicines over treatments that had been tested and retested to be safe and effective, then yes.
If they took the medicine because it was the only treatment available and there was no regulating committee to offer safe alternatives, then no.
The man from the OP falls into the first category. I refuse to feel sorry for anyone who will have a substance intravenously placed in his body that he did not bother to check out fully and know the risks of.
Not all “natural remedies” claim to be magic(k). Some are herbal concoctions that are supposedly “ancient secrets” or some such. Just to clarify that not all “new age” things are magic(k). (May as well be though).
FTR, I’m not defending the people who claim to be able to cure cancer with carrot juice and things like that.
But we live in a capitalistic society–caveat emptor. An individual who willingly partakes of holistic/magickal/herbal treatments and “cures” without researching to find out if they are safe is just as much to blame if something goes wrong as the person administering said treatment.
And what happens when they try to research it, Come to a place like this (that fights ignorance) to find out what the intelligent people think about it, and discover it is accepted. They seem to be prone to believe things on faith, why not believe that we are the pinnacle of right and wrong.
I forget, in the world of the elitist snob, the ignorant need not be taught, they deserve to die because they were bamboozled by a bunch of greedy capitalists. :rolleyes:
One difference jumps out at me: one person is trying to save their life, and as such their judgement is bound to be compromised. The other person is, in many cases, looking to profit off of that desperation. Furthermore, I don’t see much differnece between preying on people who could be better educated if they put the effort into it and attacking people who could have been stronger and known how to defend themselves with only a little effort.
Regarding Suzanne Somers: the annoying thing about that case is that she has already had surgery and radiation treatment–what she is opting out of is some chemo that many doctors don’t even recomend having in the first place. So modern science had a big big hand in saving her life, but alternitive medicene will get the credit.
That’s so irrelevant and you know it. We’re talking about epistemology, and the harm that idiotic ideas can lead you to inflict on yourself.
So you’re telling me that if the treatment had been “correctly” administered (and how do you “correctly” administer a treatment with zero scientific evidence to back it up??), his cancer would’ve been cured and he’d lived to a ripe old age? Sorry, don’t buy it.
Look, I’m not unsympathetic. I know people on their last legs of cancer who are willing to try almost anything. And you can bet that if I had cancer and had been through years of chemo with little success, I’d be downing wheatgrass shots morning and night.
But when you’re so desparate that you willingly submit yourself to the hands of an unlicensed practitioner using an unapproved product, when you fail to gather any independent objective scientific evidence for the product outside of the sales brochure and swallow the hype about the potion being “magic” - then yeah, you bear some brunt of the blame for your own demise.
And so does your irrational belief in New Age healing and magick.
FWIW, I’ve also heard of people who have used “alternative” therapies right from the get-go, forsaking chemo and other modern treatments. They’re quite dead now, thankyouverymuch.
The person who partakes of a treatment without researching it fully is guilty of carelessness and, in all probability, desperation.
But the person who administers a treatment without researching it fully is guilty of gross negligence (in an ethical, rather than legal, sense), and the person who administers a treatment knowing that it is untested, inefficient, and/or unsafe is criminal scum.
The patient and the practitioner do NOT share the blame equally.
Good points, Spoiler. I agree. Perhaps I was a bit heavy-handed in my initial assessment. The blame is not equal in cases such as these.
However, I still maintain that the full weight of the blame does not rest solely upon the shoulders of individuals who sincerely believe in non-traditional healing. Much of the blame can be attributed to capitalistic individuals who are not trying to aid people in their quest for health but rather, are trying to make a quick and easy buck. I think we would do well to remember that those are two separate groups–sometimes they overlap but they are two different schools of thought.
What this proves is two things:[list=1]
[li] Some people are in a situation so desperate they will try anything[/li][li] Some fuckers are sick enough to take advantage of that[/li][/list=1]
And I’m not sure what that has to do with epistemology.
OK, I have a question. A friend of mine is going for “magnetic therapy” for shoulder pain. Studies show that the only way magnetic therapy helps is through a placebo effect . . . So if I warn my friend that it’s medically useless, I may be killing the only good effect it MAY be having . . . On the other hand, she may be shelling out hundreds of bucks for fraudulent magnetic “braces” and appliances.
Do I tip her off (send her a printout from Quackwatch, for instance?) or do I keep mny counsel?
Would you want to shell out hundreds of bucks for fraudulent magnetic “braces” and appliances? Tell her that through dilligent research on the SDMB you have discovered the secret to the magnetic cure: it works, but all it takes is some simple fridge magnets. Then she’ll get the placebo effect without getting fleeced. If that doesn’t work, then hit her with the truth.
“Always work in cooperation with M.D.s. Under no circumstances should you ever advise a person to not follow a doctor’s advice or not seek the aid of professional therapist!”
And further on, “This [healing] ceremony will not replace the treatment of a regular physician.”