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Saturday, May 7, 2011

Just a Different Philosopy?

A friend of mine posted an interesting link on facebook to a study that was done on some potential medical uses for cannabis, and we started up a discussion about it. It was all going well until someone wrote this.
"There's one called Sativex which is legal here... but as any herbalist will tell you, there's a huge difference between the whole plant or a herbal tincture, and an isolated compound from it produced by a pharmaceutical company."
I responded by saying that there is a difference because the isolated compound is the one that actually performs the required function. In the case of this cancer study, it was the THC that inhibited the Epidermis Growth Factor, the other compounds are simply not required for the task and could perhaps even be counter productive.

The aforementioned person then jumped into a conspiratorial barrel of quackery with this statement.

"Then we might as well condemn all herbs to the rubbish bin, discount millions of years of evolution, throw out all knowledge about nutrition, agree that no plant can have any impact on human health, and survive entirely on synthetic chemicals men in white coats agree are *required for the task*, right? Just sayin' :P "
Now I do not know this person, so I don't want to make any judgements about them, but the attitude that I get from this is extremely anti-science. If you want to bash science based medicine, and take herbal remedies instead, go for it, I won't stop you, but what will you do if/when you get so ill, and none of your alternative medicine seems to do the trick? Don't go grovelling to a real doctor, because as you have clearly shown us, you have a deep seated contempt for those evil "men in white coats". FSM forbid, if you need an organ transplant, or any other kind of surgery, it would be awfully painful without those horrible synthetic chemicals that we call anaesthetics.

Needless to say, I responded to their nonsense, trying my best to hold onto my sanity. I was graced by a reply that really disappointed me. They replied by saying: "Think we're just coming from totally different philosophies on health and herbs KJ. But each to their own."
Yes, we have different philosophies, mine is based on evidence and reason. When evidence and reason show my position to be false, I change it. Your philosophy seems to be irrational ranting and delusional belief based, sorry to break it to you, but alternative medicine is baloney.

This whole ordeal reminded me of a song I discovered via. Pharyngula a while ago, if you're of the skeptical mindset, and don't mind a bit of country music, I urge you to check out this video


2 comments:

  1. That video is great stuff. I might "borrow" it.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Yeah it's quite brilliant and deserves all the publicity it can get.

    ReplyDelete