This is really what gets me so angry...

[LeftishBrit]

I have sometimes wondered why I get so angry on a certain forum. After all, I'm hardly a flame-warrior in general; have survived one notoriously controversy-filled forum for nearly three years with scarcely a post deleted; have survived five and a half years on DU with only two people on my iggy list and not been tombstoned YET - and yet I can become a raving maniac after five minutes of a altie-med/'Western' medicine debate.

I think I've worked it out.

It is the fundamentally *reactionary* nature of the anti-'Western medicine' ideologues. I certainly don't think that everything about modern medicine is perfect or that doctors never get stuck in dogmas that they should be questioning (I should know; my Crohns disease went undiagnosed for 10 years because of medical dogma of the time that children couldn't have it). I even think that *some* of the suggestions of the altie-med people are at least worth investigating; e.g. I think there should be more systematic research into whether some people need more than the 'officially' recommended doses of certain vitamins, though I don't think that Big Vitamin Supplement will ever provide a cure for everything!

BUT BUT BUT...

The basic proposal of the more hardline people in the altie-med camp is that we should reject all recent developments in favour of a return to the past. The argument is basically that because our own grandparents/ the ancient Chinese/ our early hunter-gatherer ancestors, etc. did not vaccinate/ take antibiotics/ take antidepressants/ have operations, we should *on principle* not do any of these things, but should consider what our ancestors would have done. Never use a new remedy if you can find an old remedy! And reject all the evidence that our ancestors were mostly dying before the age of 50, and many of them before the age of 5 (and that is the people for whom we have official records, which before a certain time usually means the comparatively rich. If the lords and ladies were dying young, we can be sure that the peasants were dying even younger!) Suspect the new; stick to the old!

Of course, not every new development is good just because it's new - but an automatic rejection of the new and an attitude that 'if it was good enough for great-great-grandma (who died at 45 after producing 8 children of whom 5 lived to grow up), then it's good enough for you and me! seems to me the absolute antithesis of all that is progressive!!!

And the reactionary nature of the attitude sometimes becomes quite blatant. A TV celebrity argues that we are becoming 'a culture dependent on vaccines, drugs and surgery' in the tone of the Thatcherites and Reaganites inveighing against 'a culture of dependency on benefits'. A right-wing anti-public-services East Europaean leader is commended for refusing to provide his people with the swine flu vaccine on the grounds that the government (rather than the vaccine manufacturers) might have to pay compensation for any ill-effects. Far-right birther sites are treated as valid sources on the evils of the government provision of vaccines and medicines. A DU-er argues that we are becoming a 'society of wimps' because we are giving children too much protection against car accidents, passive smoking, bullying - and, through vaccines, infectious diseases.

It seems that there are too many even on the supposed left who are prepared to swallow reactionary right-libertarian 'survival of the fittest' attitudes to health; and the anti-progressive 'Grandma Knows Best' attitude to 'modern medicine' often goes hand in hand with this.

Hence the steam that sometimes emanates from my ears.

[Orrex]

1. That's it--I'm putting you on Ignore.

Actually, your points are all right on the money. There's a horrifying campaign being waged against science, education, and critical thought, and I'm amazed at the reasons that drive some people sign up for the wrong side of the fight.

Regarding the alternative vs. Western medicine debate, I recently put forth this statement in the Healthscare Lounge:

I would be very interested if someone could tell me about a basic principle of alternative medicine and/or homeopathy that has been disproven via alternative medicine and/or homeopathy.

It was part of a reply that came late in a thread that was already winding down, but I've determined that it summarizes my basic complaint about alt-med.

[Odin2005]

2. IMO a lot of it goes back to the BS myth of the "Nobel Savage".

The moronic notion popular with many on the left that "primitive" people are somehow more wise, physically and mentally healthy, more sexually liberated, more peaceful, more "in touch with Nature", more spiritual, more egalitarian, etc. then we are. Mixed in with this is a common Western ascetic attitude that treats enjoyment as evil and suffering (usually espoused in such forms as "living simply") as good for the soul.

[salvorhardin]

3. Yes

There's a good degree of Orientalism too I think in the way that Asian folk medicine is somehow viewed as pure, and uncorrupted and therefore better or more knowledgeable than science based medicine.

[Warpy]

11. I've had extensive interactions with tribal people over the years

from within and outside the US and I can tell you for a fact that the noble savage is neither.

But you're absolutely correct that the wooheads are all poisoned by Rousseau's notion that at some time in the past, we were perfect creatures living perfectly in a perfect world.

The best thing about a hunter-gatherer culture is the leisure. Everyone has plenty of it. The worst thing about it is dying at 30 of rotten teeth after you've lost most of your children to diarrhea.

[salvorhardin]

4. I think the key to not letting it all affect us so much is to clearly define our goals

Not to give short shrift to any of what you said, because it's all absolutely correct. But if we want to stay sane, we have to change our expectations and more clearly define our goals when posting in that forum.

What our are goals? I think we have to face the fact that we're just not going to cause people to change their minds, to reverse attitudes that they've spent years developing. And we're not responsible for what they do, or how they spend their money.

In my humble opinion, about all we can do is to put the information and the scientific perspective out there and ask questions that might lead people to think more critically. We've got to expect the blowback from the ones who are so entrenched in their conspiracist beliefs that anyone who counters their BS is automatically a shill or dupe for Big Pharma (or ZOG, or NWO, or shape-shifting alien lizard people or what have you) and just learn to not take it personally.

Mike Meraz has a great podcast that's just getting started that addresses communications skills and the human aspect of skepticism called Actually Speaking. He's only produced three episodes so far, but I highly recommend it.
http://www.actuallyspeaking.com/podcast

[LeftishBrit]

6. I agree with all you say...

and in general my strategy is to post 'to the board'; i.e. give my opinions on the issue so that anyone interested can read them, rather than to a particular individual who won't change.

I'm actually pretty easy about how other people live, spend their own money, etc. And I'm pretty tolerant of what some would call 'health woo' and even anti-vaccination views (from a private individual; not from someone like Wakefield or an influential journalist) so long as it's not linked with a general anti-progressiveness.

What bothers me most is seeing right-wing glorification of 'toughness'; 'we shouldn't give the weak too much help as it will just encourage weakness'; 'people should take personal responsibility and not depend on the state' on a liberal board - whether the help is in the form of welfare benefits, consumer protection, or vaccinations. (In the Gardasil threads, a few people were even taking the religious-right view that the vaccinations would encourage promiscuous sex.)

Similarly, the other thing that tends to upset me is people suggesting that the far right is sometimes right; that one shouldn't reject far-right views out of hand; that the left/liberals have 'no monopoly on truth'; or that left and right should unite together - whether this comes from moderates suggesting 'coming together' with right-wingers, or anti-establishment leftists proposing making common cause with anti-establishment right-wingers. I am not here talking about people suggesting the need for pragmatic compromises, or pointing out that individual far-right-wingers may be ill-informed rather than evil (quite true); but about suggesting that the far right has valid points. This has ranged from a former moderate member who kept trying to persuade me that 'some problems need left wing solutions and some need right wing solutions'; through a recently TS'd DU-er who was I think liberal on only one issue and who tried to defend the racial attitudes of Berlusconi and Wilders; to the commonest one here: the view that left and right are just artificial labels used by the 'elite' to divide us.

I suppose that part of it is that I and several of my family members have health problems just of the sort and to the extent that we can live well in a society that's prepared to make adaptations to such, but would be dead or very miserable in one which valued 'toughness' and lack of adaptation to weakness.

[salvorhardin]

8. I understand

I think, at least for those individuals who don't actually believe what they're saying, that a lot of those sentiments come out of fear and feelings of helplessness. There are still far too many on the left though that really do buy into this kind of reasoning, especially in the US. I blame our Puritanical and Prosperity Gospel heritage, as well as the sort of ultra-individualism that is part and parcel of the American experience. And then there's the people who are just plain bigots. That's what I was seeing in the Gardasil threads.

I wouldn't be here either without "socialized" health care, although I wouldn't need the degree of health care I need now if we had had a sensible public insurance plan when I was in college.

[mr blur]

5. I think I'm right in saying,

that the idea of the superiority of "traditional Chinese medicine" was actually established and pushed by Mao in the middle of the last century.

Powdered rhino horn, anyone?

(Agree with you completely, btw)

[LeftishBrit]

7. Big Rhino Shills!

Sounds plausible - I will check on that with a friend, who is a Chinese-British medical researcher

[salvorhardin]

9. Yes, you're right.

Harriet Hall had a great article about this in Skeptic Magazine a while back, albeit in relation to acupuncture.

The earliest accounts of Chinese medicine reached the West in the 13th century: they didn’t mention acupuncture at all. The first Westerner to write about acupuncture, Wilhelm ten Rhijn, in 1680, didn’t describe acupuncture as we know it today: he didn’t mention specific points or “qi;” he spoke of large gold needles that were implanted deep into the skull or “womb” and left in place for 30 respirations.

Acupuncture was tried off and on in Europe after that. It was first tried in America in 1826 as a possible means of resuscitating drowning victims. They couldn’t get it to work and “gave up in disgust.” I imagine sticking needles in soggy dead bodies was pretty disgusting.

Through the early 20th century, no Western account of acupuncture referred to acupuncture points: needles were simply inserted near the point of pain. Qi was originally vapor arising from food, and meridians were channels or vessels. A Frenchman, Georges Soulie de Morant, was the first to use the term “meridian” and to equate qi with energy — in 1939. Auricular (ear) acupuncture was invented by a Frenchman in 1957.

The Chinese government tried to ban acupuncture several times, between 1822 and World War II during the time of the Chinese Nationalist government. Mao revived it in the “barefoot doctor” campaign in the 1960s as a cheap way of providing care to the masses; he did not use it himself because he did not believe it worked. It was Mao’s government that coined the term “traditional Chinese medicine” or TCM.

In 1972 James Reston accompanied Nixon to China and returned to tell about his appendectomy. It was widely believed that his appendix was removed under acupuncture anesthesia. In reality, acupuncture was used only as an adjunct for pain relief the day after surgery, and the relief was probably coincident with the expected return of normal bowel motility. A widely circulated picture of a patient allegedly undergoing open heart surgery with acupuncture anesthesia was shown to be bogus. If acupuncture is used in surgery today, it is used along with conventional anesthesia and/or pre-operative medication, and it is selected only for patients who believe in it and are likely to have a placebo response.
http://www.skeptic.com/eskeptic/08-10-08#feature

[Orrex]

10. No way! I read here on DU that acupuncture has been practiced unchanged for millennia!

Don't tell me that I've been misled?!?