The Society of Homeopaths is holding a symposium on the treatment of AIDS in December. Their flier states that “Harry van der Zee will introduce us to a completely different and controversial treatment for AIDS in Africa using a new set of healing remedies created by Peter Chappell.”
And what is this “completely different and controversial treatment” you ask? He offers “healing downloads”:
“Downloads are based upon resonance which is an ancient principle for healing and resonance is a natural law that has always existed. Modern quantum physics is confirming resonance works on all levels of existence.”
And how do you get these “healing downloads”? Well he sells them on iTunes of course “engrafted” onto jazz music!
“The music is simply the carrier and alerts you to listen. The download is engrafted on the music by a special process. That is the new technology.”
Hell maybe we can just preload his quantum engrafted ancient healing resonance music on all those XO Laptops! That’ll solve the African AIDS crisis in no time!
ugh
It’s this sorta shit that pisses me off about hemopathology and all the other new ager placebo crap. I’m not gonna even bother disproving hemopathology for you here as others have done it better than me.
I ran into someone tangentially in my social circle the other day who exclaimed the benefits of using magnets to balance the body. I admit that my initial response was mildly snarky, and in turn their response was basically an outright distrust of “western medicine” because that’s “how [they] were raised.” For them it had become a religion.
Reiki, acupuncture, hemeopathology, prayer, MMR vaccine hysteria, witch doctors, raping virgins to get rid of AIDS — it’s all part of the same circle of faith-based medicine. At best it’s hucksterism sucking money out of wallets of dupes; and at worst it’s spreading disinformation and killing patients who forgo vaccines and real treatment. Obviously, it’s mostly the latter that pisses me off about the former.
When faced with this sorta new ager stuff (fairly common here in San Francisco), I think it’s important to challenge these ideas. However, it can be hard not to come off sounding disdainful (because frankly that’s basically how I feel).
Any other skeptics out there have ways of approaching these conversations?
2 Comments »
Great post.
Truthfully, I just normally avoid having a real conversation, the same way I do with any religious person. Polite, mild inquiry, but little depth and no hint of my opinions.
If I do go deeper, I try to always honor their experiences while drawing a distinction between that and actually knowing something: Yes, X is an unpleasant problem. Yes, doing Y makes you feel better. Yes, one way to explain that is Z. But there are also other ways to explain your experience, like A, B, and C. Telling the difference is hard.
I think it’s great that they observe and experiment with new things and try to figure out what’s going on. I just hate the way they latch onto one theory as The One True Explanation. So I try to gently undermine the bad while boldly appreciating the good.
The problem is at least in the case of this person was that they don’t experiment with new things. They were raised with these beliefs and never attempted to challenge them.
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