Why quackery makes me angry

[fair_witness]

I ranted earlier about the jackass who thinks all doctors are only in it for the money and therefore hasn't vaccinated his daughters and doesn't think anyone else should, either. Today I ran across this statement from another jackass who's selling yet another kind of snake oil (this one is supposed to cure "AIDS, hepatitis A,B and C, malaria,

Comments

[moonanstars]

There was an article the other day about how measles deaths have swung back up close to the levels they were at ten years ago because of the anti vaccine idiocy and the complacency that it was controlled in Africa so they didn't have to spend the money to get the jabs. Not remembering the figures off the top of my head but in 2008 it was something like 120,000 deaths worldwide but in the next couple of years they expect it to top a million again.

I want a really big get a clue bat.

[fair_witness]

Something. Yeah.

What I'm also hating right now is that because we haven't always used antibiotics judiciously, we're seeing more and more antibiotic-resistant bacteria. A recent article in (I believe) The Lancet has predicted that in 5-10 years, we'll be back to where we were before antibiotics were developed. That has frightening implications for things like transplantation surgery, not to mention more routine surgeries, especially cosmetic surgeries. People might not want to risk that face lift or nose job or eye lift if they could die from a postoperative infection.

Short version: Not-thinking gets us into a whole mess o'trouble, because quick fixes don't always fix it.

[moonanstars]

and they had the whole article about the medical tourism and ending up with the superbugs in places like India right now.

[fair_witness]

Right, right. Medical tourism horror stories can be pretty damn scary on their own, IMO. I'm so grateful I've never felt desperate enough to risk any kind of surgery in another country, far from my usual support system.