Pseudoscience Gets Me Riled - I Won't Apologize Again.

Ben Goldacre has just written a nice little piece on those who deny the HIV/AIDS connection, and my blood started to boil - in support of him, of course.

Why?

My feet still hurt, alright? After several years the pain has not gone away despite surgery, orthotics, deep-muscle massage and stretching exercise to relieve nerve impingement, despite prostate-strangling mind-numbing drugs (two months of the Cymbalta poison was all I could handle!) - well, they are better than they were thanks to the drugs - but they continue to give me trouble.

But, no, emphatically NO, I will not see a homeopath.

Homeopathy is dangerous. It kills people. "New(actually "old")age" medicine in general kills people. The arguments behind many popular pseudoscientific ideas have caused wars and incited otherwise preventable carnage. The oversimplifications and unprovable "logic" of anecdote have provided lunatic adherents with sufficient confusing verbiage to pollute the thinking of otherwise rational people. I hate it, hate them.

Enough, already.

I will not tolerate it. Homeopathy is up there with the HIV/AIDS refuters, with Holocaust deniers, with Mormons knocking on my door offering autographed 1st editions of Ayn Rand's ravings.

Go away!

I reserve the right to get angry and righteous (in the Pulp Fiction sense) if you mention it again, and I will not apologize...


E@L


(OK, it's just people in general that I hate. Pass me my Schopenhauer, I need a laugh.)

[Addendum: Actually, as homeopathy posits that the less you have of something the greater is its effect - a sort of new-age inverse square law - by having none of it, I should obtain infinite benefit!]