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RIP Moebius/Jean Giraud (1938 – 2012)
14 hours ago
I had always wanted to go to a rodeo, but like so many dreams, the romance didn't last. Men falling off horses soon ceases to entertain, and cowboy hats and appalling music are only funny if you have another cynic to exchange cracks with. So it wasn't that late when I took the dark dirt track home, and I wasn't that drunk, but I was being silly and I did deserve to fall over. I slept easily enough at home, but soon awoke in agony, unable to find a position which afforded relief to my left arm, which had broken my fall and perhaps some bones. Delirious with pain and endorphins, I hallucinated horses until the morning, when a friend took me to hospital.
I always expect to see zombies in hospitals, but apart from some loud retching and a Down's syndrome girl smiling broadly at me from beneath her severe head wound, there was nothing to take my mind off my poor arm. The radiologist and the doctor diagnosed a fracture and put me in an ambulance across town. I had to interrupt the driver from his natter with a nurse by beeping his horn and saying "oi, let's go, my arm is broken!", but eventually we arrived at Sao Benedito hospital, where the orthopaedist told me it didn't look broken. He was clearly brighter than the other two, and we disagreed good-naturedly about alternative medicine as he set the cast as well as any medieval bone-setter might. He gave me a prescription, insisting that I take it, and told me, for the love of god, not to take arnica, because it causes horrendous internal burns.
He is right, of course. Arnica is highly toxic, as are the sources of many homoeopathic medicines, but homoeopathy is a distinct discipline with its own principles and practices, much ridiculed by mainstream medics. He also commented that its effect was unproven. I don't know about homeopathic preparations of arnica, but plenty of studies attest the action of homoeopathic remedies. Plenty show no effect as well, but that does not disprove homoeopathy. Science doesn't work like that. A negative result doesn't falsify homoeopathy, it means that the test does not support the hypothesis that a certain medicine has a certain effect, which is quite different - many allopathic trials do not support their hypotheses.
Meta-analysis adds up the results of many trials, but it only takes into account experiments done and published. When the paradigm is alternative, research is discouraged and obstructed by the larger labs, and publishing in the medical press is subject to a great deal of censorship. Michel Schiff reports that during a controversy over the results of a high profile experiment supporting homeopathy, 21 replications from various labs were rejected, and the relevant journal reported only one failed replication. (Read more here)
The burns are a tragic example of what happens when paradigms are inexpertly surfed. Justifiably suspicious of pharmaceuticals, people are looking towards alternatives, but ingesting a homeopathic source plant as if it was a herbal medicine is thoroughly confused, and potentially fatal. These burns prove nothing more than that a little knowledge can be dangerous, and that we should be careful when our health is at stake. The many YouTube videos attacking homoeopathy with the assumptions of allopathy are doing the same thing, jumbling up paradigms, whether it is James Randi complaining that there are no molecules left in homoeopathic dilutions, as any homoeopath readily admits, or teenagers munching entire pots of homeopathic pills and saying "look, nothing happened!"
I skilfully rode a bus to the rodeo, but I did not mount a furious horse and press a few coins into its hoof. That would be the wrong practice, like drinking arnica juice as if it was nettle tea, and I would deserve any injuries sustained. Swallowing herbs as if they were allopathic pills can also be as dangerous, because the question of dosage is complex and the effects tend to take longer, but basically because you need to work with the plant, getting to know it and coming to respect it as you do so.
I did laugh at the rodeo, from my lonely cynical tower, but not for long because I had better things to do, like monkeying about until i hurt myself. The cowboys had a great time, and I had a good time too, on my own adventure. I got an inside look at Brazilian hospitals, I hung out with nurses and was driven around in an ambulance, all the while giggling and light-headed from my hi-grade endogenous opiate trip. Refusing pain-killers made me feel far more manly than angry horse antics could have done, and asking the homoeopath for exactly what the doctor had forbidden made me feel pretty hardcore too. People enjoy different things.
Paradigms, like pleasures, are a matter of taste, not truth, but make sure you know what you are doing before riding someone else's horse.
I always expect to see zombies in hospitals, but apart from some loud retching and a Down's syndrome girl smiling broadly at me from beneath her severe head wound, there was nothing to take my mind off my poor arm. The radiologist and the doctor diagnosed a fracture and put me in an ambulance across town. I had to interrupt the driver from his natter with a nurse by beeping his horn and saying "oi, let's go, my arm is broken!", but eventually we arrived at Sao Benedito hospital, where the orthopaedist told me it didn't look broken. He was clearly brighter than the other two, and we disagreed good-naturedly about alternative medicine as he set the cast as well as any medieval bone-setter might. He gave me a prescription, insisting that I take it, and told me, for the love of god, not to take arnica, because it causes horrendous internal burns.
He is right, of course. Arnica is highly toxic, as are the sources of many homoeopathic medicines, but homoeopathy is a distinct discipline with its own principles and practices, much ridiculed by mainstream medics. He also commented that its effect was unproven. I don't know about homeopathic preparations of arnica, but plenty of studies attest the action of homoeopathic remedies. Plenty show no effect as well, but that does not disprove homoeopathy. Science doesn't work like that. A negative result doesn't falsify homoeopathy, it means that the test does not support the hypothesis that a certain medicine has a certain effect, which is quite different - many allopathic trials do not support their hypotheses.
Meta-analysis adds up the results of many trials, but it only takes into account experiments done and published. When the paradigm is alternative, research is discouraged and obstructed by the larger labs, and publishing in the medical press is subject to a great deal of censorship. Michel Schiff reports that during a controversy over the results of a high profile experiment supporting homeopathy, 21 replications from various labs were rejected, and the relevant journal reported only one failed replication. (Read more here)
The burns are a tragic example of what happens when paradigms are inexpertly surfed. Justifiably suspicious of pharmaceuticals, people are looking towards alternatives, but ingesting a homeopathic source plant as if it was a herbal medicine is thoroughly confused, and potentially fatal. These burns prove nothing more than that a little knowledge can be dangerous, and that we should be careful when our health is at stake. The many YouTube videos attacking homoeopathy with the assumptions of allopathy are doing the same thing, jumbling up paradigms, whether it is James Randi complaining that there are no molecules left in homoeopathic dilutions, as any homoeopath readily admits, or teenagers munching entire pots of homeopathic pills and saying "look, nothing happened!"
I skilfully rode a bus to the rodeo, but I did not mount a furious horse and press a few coins into its hoof. That would be the wrong practice, like drinking arnica juice as if it was nettle tea, and I would deserve any injuries sustained. Swallowing herbs as if they were allopathic pills can also be as dangerous, because the question of dosage is complex and the effects tend to take longer, but basically because you need to work with the plant, getting to know it and coming to respect it as you do so.
I did laugh at the rodeo, from my lonely cynical tower, but not for long because I had better things to do, like monkeying about until i hurt myself. The cowboys had a great time, and I had a good time too, on my own adventure. I got an inside look at Brazilian hospitals, I hung out with nurses and was driven around in an ambulance, all the while giggling and light-headed from my hi-grade endogenous opiate trip. Refusing pain-killers made me feel far more manly than angry horse antics could have done, and asking the homoeopath for exactly what the doctor had forbidden made me feel pretty hardcore too. People enjoy different things.
Paradigms, like pleasures, are a matter of taste, not truth, but make sure you know what you are doing before riding someone else's horse.
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