HarryKeogh
Unregistered
- Joined
- Jan 2, 2003
- Messages
- 11,319
Same Newspaper, Two columnists, One week apart: Can you guess which column was written by the M.D. and which was written by the writer whose columns "appear on Wednesdays and Sundays, with a usually lighthearted look at our city, our government and our (or at least HER) family"
http://www.nydailynews.com/front/story/285718p-244665c.html
Okay, so the echinacea worked
Here I am, sniffling in the drugstore, requesting - and probably mispronouncing - echinacea.
Me, who believes in herbal remedies about as much as I believe in woodland sprites. Me, who would rather eat roast raccoon than a tofu hot dog. Me, who thinks anyone into New Age nonsense must have a cranium the size of a healing crystal.
And yet, dutifully I am popping the echinacea (ek-in-AY-sha) exactly the way my hippie baby-sitter has instructed: with achamomile tea chaser, as if some namby-pamby flower and hokum herb are really going to kill my cold.
And here I am, half an hour later, feeling so EXCELLENT that finally I must ask: Since when did New Age nuts start sounding kind of, you know, reasonable?
Maybe even right?
http://www.nydailynews.com/city_lif...6p-243017c.html
Q: I received by mail a free sample of a natural homeopathic flu remedy called oscillococcinum. How well does it work?
J.D. BROOKLYN, N.Y
A: Oscillococcinum is a complete sham. Its name comes from strange vibrating bacteria seen by French physician Joseph Roy in the blood and tumors of cancer patients; in tubercles of tuberculosis patients, and in patients who had eczema, mumps, chicken pox and measles. No one else has seen these organisms before or since. What's more, eczema is not caused by bacteria, and mumps, chicken pox and measles are caused by a virus.
Roy's belief was that oscillococcinum are everywhere. For reasons that are unclear, he took the liver and heart from a Muscovy duck, placed them in a bottle to allow for decomposition, and diluted the material with so much Ÿwater that it was impossible for even one molecule of liver and heart extract to remain. This is in keeping with the belief of homeoŸpathy that the more diluted an Ÿextract is, the better it is.
The homeopathic view is that even if no molecules of extract remain in the dilution, they leave behind a "memory" that may be of benefit. That's as absurd as saying that one may become rich by breathing the air at a bank.
Why are unproven homeopathic drugs allowed to be sold? They fall under the protection of the 1938 Federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act, pushed through Congress by a homeopathic physician who also happened to be a U.S. senator.
http://www.nydailynews.com/front/story/285718p-244665c.html
Okay, so the echinacea worked
Here I am, sniffling in the drugstore, requesting - and probably mispronouncing - echinacea.
Me, who believes in herbal remedies about as much as I believe in woodland sprites. Me, who would rather eat roast raccoon than a tofu hot dog. Me, who thinks anyone into New Age nonsense must have a cranium the size of a healing crystal.
And yet, dutifully I am popping the echinacea (ek-in-AY-sha) exactly the way my hippie baby-sitter has instructed: with achamomile tea chaser, as if some namby-pamby flower and hokum herb are really going to kill my cold.
And here I am, half an hour later, feeling so EXCELLENT that finally I must ask: Since when did New Age nuts start sounding kind of, you know, reasonable?
Maybe even right?
http://www.nydailynews.com/city_lif...6p-243017c.html
Q: I received by mail a free sample of a natural homeopathic flu remedy called oscillococcinum. How well does it work?
J.D. BROOKLYN, N.Y
A: Oscillococcinum is a complete sham. Its name comes from strange vibrating bacteria seen by French physician Joseph Roy in the blood and tumors of cancer patients; in tubercles of tuberculosis patients, and in patients who had eczema, mumps, chicken pox and measles. No one else has seen these organisms before or since. What's more, eczema is not caused by bacteria, and mumps, chicken pox and measles are caused by a virus.
Roy's belief was that oscillococcinum are everywhere. For reasons that are unclear, he took the liver and heart from a Muscovy duck, placed them in a bottle to allow for decomposition, and diluted the material with so much Ÿwater that it was impossible for even one molecule of liver and heart extract to remain. This is in keeping with the belief of homeoŸpathy that the more diluted an Ÿextract is, the better it is.
The homeopathic view is that even if no molecules of extract remain in the dilution, they leave behind a "memory" that may be of benefit. That's as absurd as saying that one may become rich by breathing the air at a bank.
Why are unproven homeopathic drugs allowed to be sold? They fall under the protection of the 1938 Federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act, pushed through Congress by a homeopathic physician who also happened to be a U.S. senator.
