So Many Morons (So Little Skepticism To Go Around)

Money can't cure stupid.

"To conclude,...or even to imply, that Tai Chi has anti-ageing effects is as far-fetched as claiming the tooth fairy has money problems."

Right Again: Leland Yee Locked Away For Criminality

Wow - first Kevin Trudeau and now this - am I on a streak?

Chinese Medicine proponent, and Democrat California state Sen. Leland Yee, has been arrested for corruption. 

Good. It just goes to show you, it's not enough to see the treatments are fake, but the people behind them as well. I knew Yee from my years in San Francisco. The bad ones.

 He was a con artist from the word "go",…

How Americans Waste Money Complaining About Waste

Science can find this a billion times over, and the fools keep letting these charlatans put even more holes in their bodies than the ones they have anyway, being all too "spiritual" while others go without:

  Acupuncture is little more than a theatrical placebo.

Damn, you guys, go to the theater - or the movies, even. At least, then, you'd be getting something for it,…

 

If I Want To Stick You I'll Stick You (But Not For Money)

Whoo-hoo - it's the lit now:

"Twirling toothpick tips against the skin 'works' just as well or better than 'real' acupuncture. To top it all off, acupuncture and “traditional Chinese medicine” as we know it today were basically reinventions of Chinese folk medicine promoted by Chairman Mao to his people beginning a few years after World War II because his Communist regime couldn’t provide enough 'Western' doctors to supply the health care needs of the Chinese." 

 Repeat as needed,..

 

Speaking In CodE

Orac finally got to Chairman Mao's acupuncture story and fills us in, further, on the "science":

  "Common portrayals of acupuncture paint it as being 3,000 years old, as implausible as that is. Why implausible? For one thing, the technology to make such incredibly thin needles didn’t exist 3,000 years ago,…It has also been argued that acupuncture evolved from bloodletting based on astrology."

Whatever - have it your way:

Integrate that shit - the problem's Big Pharma,...

 

Wha? Say Wha?? The Crack Emcee Is Still Alive? Wha?

Storm Large is Wang Qingren is The Crack Emcee is a liar:

Chairman Mao Invented Traditional Chinese Medicine

Why did the U.S. Senate unwittingly endorse 1950s Chinese Communist Party propaganda?

Doesn't matter - cut it off,....

You Stand Watch: I'm Taking Care Of The Rest

Hey - I'm here today (I'm out of work, where else would I be?) but my music software got corrupted overnight, somehow, so I've got to spend a bit of time backing up my stuff before I can do much else. Sorry - can't be helped.

I've put some of the more neglected tags at the bottom of this post so, if you want, you can amuse yourselves with some of the less-seen items/topics until I get started again - and just keep clicking from there. I won't be too long:

I'll be putting something new up between each stage of the operation.

Have fun!

CMC

P.S.

Clicking on the "music" or "videos" tags, and continuing on to the Older Posts at the bottom of each page, is bound to surprise you.

Captive Audience

Wow - I just checked my stats this morning, and there's a whole lot of folks here today, probably against their will - so, let's give 'em something to read:

Supporters of those "peace activists" who set-up Israel are becoming even more peaceful. Let's hope they face the same result - more peace!

A guru to India's rich and famous got attacked recently. Good. Money changes everything. (BTW - it wasn't Sai Baba, seen above, though somebody should be on that pedophile's case,...)

Scientology is still feeling the creep in Australia. Is it just me, or wasn't America where L. Ron Hubbard's cult broke into the government, trying to steal information? Then why aren't we on these asshole's tail?

Anybody?

Speaking of the American government and science (kinda) everybody hated it when Bush was in and global warming wasn't taken seriously. Even people in the government. Now, with Bambi in charge, they take it seriously - but now, just like everyone else who's part of the scam, they're in trouble. And they said Bush was stupid.

Yea, right.

One more time - with emphasis:

The placebo effect requires lying, and almost all of NewAge's "alternative" medicine - including Chinese medicine - consists of the placebo effect. Which means (drumroll, please) somebody's lying,...

O.K., sorry, I gotta go - but I'll be back later and, in the meantime, y'all can click the tags below the sign imploring you to donate (you do want to donate, don't you?) to spend more time with my wit, wisdom, and bile - always knowing "I Love You, My Darlings", from the bottom of my black-stained heart.

C-ya!

I'm So Glad They've Got Acupuncture In There

Keeps 'em honest.

Hat Tip: iOwnTheWorld

No Thanks. It's Cool. I'd Much Rather Go To The Doctor,...

"A herbalist who sold pills that gave a woman cancer and kidney damage walked free from court yesterday as a judge called for tougher regulation of traditional Chinese medicines.

Ying 'Susan' Wu, 48, sold little brown pills called Xie Gan Wan to Patricia Booth from her traditional medicine shop over five years. She said the 'natural' treatment for a skin condition was so safe that in China children drank it 'like Coca-Cola'.

But Mrs Booth, 58, a senior civil servant, contracted bladder cancer, suffered failure of both kidneys and had a heart attack."

-- The Daily Mail

Poor Bones

ScienceBlogling PalMD does a good job of eviscerating the false claims of expertise by woo practioner 'Dr.' Patricia Fitzgerald and the rest of the witch doctors over at The Huffington Post, so I thankfully don't have to (so many fucking morons, so little Mad Biologist...). But PalMD neglected to mention one thing about 'Dr.' Patricia Fitzgerald:

She is the "Wellness" editor of The Huffington Post.

That's right: a full-blown woomeister is the equivalent of The Huffington Post's medicine and health section. Is she an M.D.? Nope. Is she a Pharm.D.? Uh-uh. Maybe a Ph.D.? Guess what? No. How about a R.N., an N.P., or maybe an MPH? Hell noes! Here's her bio:

Patricia Fitzgerald is a licensed acupuncturist, certified clinical nutritionist, and a homeopath. She has a Master's Degree in Traditional Chinese Medicine and a Doctorate in Homeopathic Medicine. She is the founder and Medical Director of the Santa Monica Wellness Center and the author of the best-selling, award-winning The Detox Solution: The Missing Link to Radiant Health, Abundant Energy, Ideal Weight, and Peace of Mind. You can learn more at TheDetoxSolution.com.

Her mission is to inspire others to live their passion, while creating and enjoying optimal physical, emotional, and spiritual well-being.

Guess what comes next?

She has a doctorate in homeopathic medicine, which probably isn't as bad as a degree in sociopathic medicine.

So what is homeopathic medicine? Wikipedia actually has a pretty neutral description which attempts to describe it somewhat fairly but can't because homeopathy is so fucking stupid:

Homeopathy is a form of alternative medicine that treats a disease with heavily diluted preparations created from substances that would ordinarily cause effects similar to the disease's symptoms. As first expounded by German physician, Samuel Hahnemann, in 1796, homeopathic preparations are serially diluted, with shaking ("succussing") after each step, under the belief that this increases the effect of the treatment. This dilution often continues until no molecules of the original substance remain....

Homeopaths believe that the methodical dilution of a substance, beginning with a 10% or lower solution and working downwards, with shaking after each dilution, produces a therapeutically active "remedy", in contrast to therapeutically inert water. However, homeopathic remedies are usually diluted to the point where there are no molecules from the original solution left in a dose of the final remedy. Since even the longest-lived noncovalent structures in liquid water at room temperature are only stable for a few picoseconds, critics have concluded that any effect that might have been present from the original substance can no longer exist.

-- Mike - who we hope doesn't mind us swiping a big chunk of his post, but it's so hilariously brilliant we had to share it - turning more people on to Mike The Mad Biologist.

Next: He's Beating The Kids And Kicking The Dog

I love your blog.

It is truly awesome.

I was a card carrying member of the New Age for more than half my life. I have a masters degree in Oriental medicine and a doctorate in homeopathy. I spent 20 years studying the stuff. And stuff is a kind word. It's more like shit. That's right, after drinking the kool-aid for two decades, I finally drank the antidote and it wasn't a homeopathic one. It was a full potency cure called rational thought. I now believe that 99.9% of 'New Age' hogwash (and that includes CAM) is nothing more than a poison arrow of quackery and sham aimed at the gullible and the weak. Like a cult member deprogramming themselves, I am slowly trying to make sense of myself and re-train my brain muscles. Your blog is like a deliciously strong cup of coffee after awakening from a very, very bad dream. Keep up the good work, the world needs people like you to cut through the bullshit like a samurai of sanity.

Did I also mention that I used to be a Democrat?

:o)

-- Donavan Freberg (above) delivering the message many claim is impossible because, you know, TMR is so damn "mean" - and NewAge beliefs are just too fucking awesome to ever be abandoned - but delivering it none-the-less, on TMR's post about Tim Minchin's Anti-NewAge Beat Poem "Storm".

Donavan,

On behalf of the entire TMR team: Thank you.

The Most Accurate Definition Of "Pin Head"

"When I started looking into acupuncture, I remember hearing someone say: ‘There must be something to acupuncture. After all, you never see any sick porcupines.’

Unfortunately, when I examined the research, it became clear that sticking needles in patients is not as effective as many clinics claim. Indeed, research published last week reinforced the notion that the philosophy of Chinese acupuncture is mumbo-jumbo of the highest quality."

-- Simon Singh, announcing - one more time - that "acupunture's benefits are all in the mind," in The Daily Mail.

Show Your Hand (Hide Your Face)

"The Nineties was,...the decade of the New Age. In London, 'New Age' pretty much boiled down to reading self-help, going to therapy, consulting alternative practitioners and doing a lot of (horribly gruelling) Ashtanga yoga. I heartily embraced all of this. Having been brought up in a very pragmatic and secular atmosphere, I found it exciting to let a little magic back in. I didn't really believe in astrology, for example, but I enjoyed the mysticism of it and even went to classes for a bit.

The downside came some years later, when all that magic had morphed into a worrying tendency to magical thinking. I was trying to get pregnant and an idea was beginning to take hold in my woolly New Age head that my failure was something to do with my faulty attitude. Homeopaths, Chinese doctors, acupuncturists and well-meaning friends implied that I just didn't want it enough. So really my failure was, in some ineffable way, my own fault – and that's enough to make anyone anxious.

The tipping point with the alternative world came when a friend of a friend swore by an applied kinesiologist she knew. The recommendation was so heartfelt and I wanted to get pregnant so much that I didn't dare not go. The practitioner put brightly coloured plastic eyeshades on my head while making me hold small glass vials of nutrients and doing 'muscle tests' – she moved my arm up and down.

It didn't work but, as always with alternative therapies, I got the feeling that was my fault. I should have taken the pills that didn't seem to be doing anything for longer. I shouldn't have eaten dairy. I shouldn't have used peppermint toothpaste. I should have had those mercury fillings removed. I think, though, it was the coloured eyeshades: they were just too hokey. Thank goodness I went to a proper doctor, had my fallopian tubes unblocked (the real problem) and got pregnant immediately."

-- Amy Jenkins, explaining how an appeal to "mysticism" - and her so-called "friends" - caused her "woolly New Age head" to become a mental (and financial) victim of NewAge practitioners quacks, before joining the ranks of The Independent.

Keeping It Old School

"Although acupuncture and herbalism have been practised in one form or another for thousands of years, most of what we now call 'traditional' Chinese medicine is quite a recent invention.

It was concocted in the 1950s from a hotchpotch of folk myths and superstitions.

Our hopes of being taken seriously as a research institution are being severely damaged by our association with such quackery,..."

-- Dr. Mike Eslea, stating the case in an "open letter" to Dr. Malcolm McVicar, vice chancellor at the University of Central Lancashire, and partially reprinted in the Lancaster Evening Post.U.K..

Caught Another One

"A reflexologist was jailed for eight years today for sexually assaulting four women during treatment sessions.

Stuart Hill, 57, who was supposed to be massaging their feet, touched them intimately after telling them he was using the latest Chinese massage technique to make them better.

The 'hormone therapy', which he said was banned in the UK, involved placing a high-street vibrating massager on an intimate part of the patient's body as she lay on his treatment bed.

Hill claimed this would make her aroused and 'orgasmic' and so would make her feel better.

The reflexologist also said he could tell whether a patient had cancer by inspecting her feet or lymph nodes.

Hill, who was previously jailed in 2002 for sexually assaulting two patients, denied the later offences, claiming during his trial at Durham Crown Court that he had 'healing hands' and had not sexually assaulted the women.

However, the jury convicted him unanimously today of six charges of sexual assault, two of assault by penetration and one of indecent assault between 2002 and 2007."

-- The Daily Mail

One commenter added:

"Was this woman plain stupid or what ? you couldn't make it up. If it were not so tragic it would be very funny."

Indeed.

Acupuncture: The Weenie Defense

"Big Up" to Joseph C! (Where's the duct tape when you need it?)

The Little Yellow Devils Are Too Tricky For Us

"Universities in China don’t teach their students how to stick needles into 'energy meridians' – they teach bacteriology, immunology, anesthesia and good, proper science. 'Traditional Chinese medicine' embarrasses them as being archaic, quaint and sometimes dangerous folklore."

-- David Crawford of Kelowna, British Columbia, in a letter to the editor of the Vancouver Sun about the use of acupuncture in Canada.

"Here's where things get amusing,...patients in the sham acupuncture group improved more than patients in the 'true' acupuncture group,...In this study, which was the largest, best-designed trial thus far for acupuncture,...sham acupuncture was better than 'real' acupuncture!"

It's a real bitch when your study shows about as conclusively as possible that acupuncture is nothing more than a placebo,...this study is yet another in a long line of negative studies funded by the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine. Yes, indeed, it's your tax dollars at work again."

-- Orac at work again, on yet another study that proves acupuncture is fake, the believers are stupid; they're wasting everybody's tax money, and - yea - they're racist to boot.

Because All The Deaths Of PhDs Should Be All-Natural (And Chinese)

“Chinese herbal medicine killed a young woman who used it to treat a stomach upset and skin rash, an inquest heard.

The remedy caused Ling Wang's liver and other organs to shut down.

The 25-year-old was taken to hospital but slipped into a coma and died. She was too ill to tell doctors which medicine she had taken, and experts found it hard to analyse.

It is not known where Miss Wang was given the medicine.

Doctors said it may have been a remedy called Jin Bu Huan, which is available as a tea or a pill and is said to have painkilling properties. Studies have shown it can affect the liver.

Dr Stephen Stuart, a consultant pathologist at the city's Freeman Hospital where Miss Wang died, said: "When I first met Ling she was extremely unwell.

"Her blood pressure was low but her heartbeat was very quick and she was not able to hold a conversation. She became comatose. We suspected it was a Chinese herbal remedy of some type."

He added: "Chinese remedies are often a mixture of different compounds. No treatment we tried had any impact.

'There was simply nothing-we could have done for her.'”

- From an article titled "PhD student dies after using Chinese herbal medicine to cure upset stomach" in The Daily Mail