Quackery

Much as I love ducks, this has nothing to do with them.

A couple of days ago a friend introduced me to Mitchell and Webb on YouTube, and specifically their wonderful skit on Homeopathic A & E.  It exactly hits the mark. If you want to waste time and money on homoeopathic treatments nothing anyone can say will dissuade you.  But when your life is on the line, you want a real doctor.

I'm happy to give alternative treatments room to prove themselves. Acupunture is making headway. There are results such that it can be used for anaesthesia in serious operations.  This despite the mumbo jumbo surrounding it. Shiatsu derives from the same mumbo jumbo, and uses the same points, for pressure rather than needles. I have had an insight into the training Shiatsu therapists undergo, which includes some detailed anatomy. And I've seen it at work. My sister benefited from Shiatsu treatment for her sciatica. Of course it may not have been the Shiatsu that helped her, but it may. I'd like to see it tested as Acupuncture has been.

Homeopathy has been put to scientific test and found totally lacking. The House of Commons Science and Technology committee decided that observed results are due entirely to the placebo effect. You can read a well-referenced explanation of the claims of homeopathy and how they violate the basics of physics and chemistry on Wikipedia. But at least homeopathy does have an organisation and some training, even if the training is largely mumbo jumbo.

Unhappily anyone can set up as a therapist or healer. I knew someone who was suffering acute mental distress who was persuaded to go for past life regression treatment. The idea is that something from a past life is causing your present problems, which can be relieved by accessing the cause. Reincarnation is an attractive idea for some, but there is absolutely no reason to believe it. Who we are is intimately and totally linked to our physical bodies and the circumstances of our present lives. All the evidence points to one conclusion: when our brains stop, we stop. When our bodies waste away we, as persons, are no more.

One has to admit that there is no conclusive proof that nothing survives death. Such evidence is impossible to obtain. But the evidence linking our conscious selves to our physical existence is so strong it would be remarkable in the extreme if this were not so.

None the less, people by and large cannot imagine and are deeply antithetical to non-existence. And, since most of us are not aware of, nor educated enough to judge, the scientific evidence that makes survival of death seem so very unlikely, the hope persists, and on this forlorn hope past life regression trades. That the person of whom I am about to speak was highly educated, employed as a therapist by the NHS working with mental health, yet still was taken in by this idea indicates how strongly it appeals.

I'll call her Mary. Mary had experienced a great deal of distress from problems related to anxiety for a number of years. I guess she was unwilling to attribute them to her mental health for professional as well as personal reasons, and over time quite a few straws were clutched at. But the anxiety got worse, her distress increased, and she was at times suicidal.

Someone convinced Mary to try Past Life Regression Therapy. I don't know the details: one of the conditions imposed on her to get "benefit" from the treatment was never to speak about what she had experienced. All I can say for sure is that it had something to do with deer. Whether as a hunter, the hunted, or in some other way I do not know. Very soon after the treatment Mary's condition became significantly worse. She was suicidal and terribly distressed. I cannot say that this was directly linked to the past life regression she had tried, but I do know that there was an association in time. Correlation does not prove causation, but it looks suspicious.

Finally the NHS intervened, a psychiatrist visited Mary at home and she was admitted as an emergency to a mental hospital. This was not the end of her troubles. She went through agonies, including the end of her marriage, but, last I heard, she was well on the way to recovery and living an independent life.

Conventional medicine, and a drastic change in her life circumstances, helped Mary where quack treatments could not.  Of course! I am angry that she was given false hopes, and let down by those who offered them.

And I am utterly and implacably opposed to quakery and the damage it does to people who are seduced into resorting to it.

Ducks, on the other hand, are charming creatures, great fun to watch, and really tasty roasted.