<Rich.@.> wrote in message
"]news:[email hidden]...
Quoted message said:carabelli said:
"Bew" <qw@nonamewhatsover> wrote................
Quoted message said:Cool , you had your say , bye bye .
Quoted message said:I think the majority of alties here expect and would prefer discussion
among
Quoted message said:Quoted message said:themselves without confrontation.
Of course. And I could understand why. Their belief that various alternative treatments really
work is either due to faith or an assumption about cause and effect wrt their personal experience.
When they are asked to provide the objective evidence that the alternative treatment really works
they are unable to do so and get frustrated. They then often will lash out and attack the person
asking the question. It is quite predictable.
My sense is that many of the alties really want/need to believe that the alternative
treatments work.
Many of the alties have rejected conventional medicine and really need to have something that
they believe will either treat their illnesses or prevent future problems.
This is especially true among the somatically hypervigilant who need to believe in order to
reduce their anxiety. Questioning them about various alternative treatments threatens their
security so their negative reaction is understandable.
The alties keep trying to drive the skeptics and those who question alternative therapy efficacy,
away from this group. I have been a regular poster in this newsgroup since shortly after its
inception well over a decade ago. The names change but the dynamics remain the same. I don't
believe that there is a single altie that was a regular when I began posting in this group that is
still here.
Aloha,
Rich
..
I'm not a true regular... I pop in once in a while. I decided to because of participation in an
email list pertaining to one child's severe speech disability, which has an occasional posting
declaring some odd oil, vitamin or cranial massage, etc has made a remarkable improvement their
child --- or even that some "lab" has found a horrible chemical (like bismuth) in their child's
hair and now they must give the child some kind of "oral chelation" therapy (I still do not
understand why a parent would force a kid to consume possibly dangerous chemicals on the advice
from the person who sold them a hair "analysis"😉. I will often use the links posted on this
newsgroup to post antidotes to some of the misinformation posted ... and occasionally see
unmoderated reactions to things that were posted on the list (I saw the Feb. 9th press release on
the Institute of Medicine meeting way before it was posted twice here this week, which is why I
knew about the presentation slides).
BUT... recently a relative has started to go heavily into alternative medicines to help her "ills"
of the past 5 years. She has sent me "whale.to" links on the dangers of vaccines, decided to clear
her kitchen of any food that had certain ingredients, and has bought and bought lots of supplements
and herbal compounds --- despite having quit her job a couple of years ago and living off of her
savings. Last month she became so irrational her family checked her into a psychiatric hospital,
where she was diagnosed as being bipolar. She was placed on medication and has improved significally
(and hopefully will de-clutter her house, there are pathways between boxes, video tapes, and 3
exercise machines to get from room to room).
I think many of the more ardent alt-med posters (not all... especially those who are trying sell
their nostrums) are not really thinking clearly. Many may actually believe that convetional medicine
is evil... and one particular one may actually believe he has completed the work and received a PhD,
a kind of "delusions of intelligence". Truthfully, to glean the most useful information quickly that
I have kill-filed many of those folks, but not all -- just the more manic ones.
In the past month our family has learned lots about mental illness, with one scary revelation. It is
very common and often genetic. At anytime one of us can start to suffer from the delusions,
disorganized speech, depression, voices, etc, etc. Sometimes it is only a matter of time (most of
the information I found was for geriatric patients, which my relative is not).
By the way on a related note, I have learned a new word this week: cyperchondria . On www.google.com
it brought up 5990 hits.
