Salvaging Health

The imminent decline of effective Western medicine, in an overpopulated world, makes it imperative for the world's races to interbreed as much as possible, to spread natural resistances around. "Pure" races are fodder for infectious epidemics. The best chance for your kids to survive is if you give them the widest possible variety of genes.

Respectfully,
Myriad

I'll admit, that was pretty funny.
 
I would not class these types of deaths as due to "western medicine" so much as the malpractice of application and the proper following of our own medical practice standards and guidelines in all cases in western healthcare systems.

Malpractice is which is appealingly common.
 
Far be it for me to defend Greer, but I think the main point of his article wasn't any defense of "alternative" medicine or homeopathy (or what have you), but what can be preserved post peak of "Western" Medicine. If anything, it seems he was indicating the ease of which "alternative" medicine quacks/hustlers proliferate in trouble times was more reason to get serious with the "salvage" business of actually effective medicine (that's the jive I got at least). Of course, one would have to accept his particular hypothesis for the future of our societies (I don't), but within the context of his thought, it's an interesting topic to explore.

Too bad however, his article didn't actually mention how anything could be "salvaged", kind of just said "the professionals should see to it since I can't"
 
I see he's implying revolution in the UK after the riots, which shows his distance from reality.

It seems Europe is being engulfed into a lot of related turmoil.

I'm not peddling any "revolution" is coming, but why dismiss it so easily? I'm in North America though, so it's harder for me to get a personal grasp of these issues...
 
Devil's advocate time?

As state of the art medical remains out of reach for most people, the woo-therapies should be seen in that light. As long as they are cheap, and don't really do anything, i think they can be beneficial.
Sometimes it helps to simply feel that some action is being prescribed by someone.
A believer can achieve a mild mood boost concerning their hopeless state, even if they merely modify their behavior in a fairly meaningless way.

A hopeful sort of woo is better than a tried and proven cure that will never be available, due to economic constraints.
Confirmation bias and placebo effects beat the despair of not being able to feed a starving child.

Desperate people seek any form of hope they can access.
If top of the line western medicine was available to all, or even half of the world's people, our collective arrogance would be well founded.

First world woo is another matter entirely. Even that sort of woo is understandable, given some of the history of blunders and bloopers within the mainstream.

One needn't look far for problems in health care.
Its not the science at fault.
Its more like classism and racism at fault.
Even sexism.

Good medicine is elite; most people aren't.

This is all about to get worse.
 
It seems Europe is being engulfed into a lot of related turmoil.

I'm not peddling any "revolution" is coming, but why dismiss it so easily? I'm in North America though, so it's harder for me to get a personal grasp of these issues...

The "turmoil" a few country are on , is at the moment highly exagerated IMHO by the media (highly localized with small population, and is more random peak of criminal violence than any real desire to revolt). I betcha if I spent time looking at the history of any country or even the USA, I could find the equivalent turmoil highly localized by small population in some big city. Think for example of the burning of the car in 2005 in France. If it was catching and spreading it could be worrying, but at the moment ? Nah.
 
This is progressing far beyond what my sensibilities permit without devolution to-ward the uncivil,...adieu!
 
This is progressing far beyond what my sensibilities permit without devolution to-ward the uncivil,...adieu!

This thread is disappointingly childish. *sigh*

I persevere though.
 
So you support abandoning evidence based medicine in favor of anecdotal based medicine?
 
It's a practice, duh!

One which I most certainly don't want to see abandoned.

It's not anything! It was created to basically mean not-homeopathy, and since homeopathy is just bottles of water than any treatment would qualify as "allopathy". It's like defining the world into people who believe cars work by little trolls that move the wheels in circles and everyone else, it's a completely useless definition.
 
It's not anything! It was created to basically mean not-homeopathy, and since homeopathy is just bottles of water than any treatment would qualify as "allopathy". It's like defining the world into people who believe cars work by little trolls that move the wheels in circles and everyone else, it's a completely useless definition.

It is. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allopathic_medicine

I support it.
 

Way to read:

Allopathic medicine and allopathy (from the Greek prefix ἄλλος, állos, "other", "different" + the suffix πάϑος, páthos, "suffering") are terms coined in the early 19th century[4] by Samuel Hahnemann,[2][5] the founder of homeopathy, as a synonym for mainstream medicine.

No, there's medicine, and there's not-medicine. You're advocating the use of not-medicine for, as far as I can tell, no real reason. Evidence based medicine uses natural sources, they use whatever works. Alt-med just makes baseless claims and then charges sick people with the promise of a miracle cure.
 

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