Quickies

Skepchick Quickies 11.3

Amanda

Amanda works in healthcare, is a loudmouthed feminist, and proud supporter of the Oxford comma.

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29 Comments

  1. In its report, the board concluded James is “unable to practice with reasonable skill and safety,” and placed limitations on her work for at least two years.

    The board’s way of saying “this woman is crazier than her own patients.”

    But she’s still licensed …

  2. RE: Home Flu Cures
    My grandmother used to give us warm whiskey with a little honey in it when we had the flu. We never pretended that it made us well. It just made us happier about being sick for a little while.

  3. @durnett: And sometimes, that’s enough. My ex prefers a mixture of mead, chamomille tea, and orange juice (I think she was using chamomille mead for a while… that stuff was vile, but it knocked you out). It soothes the throat, and makes you nicely sleepy… not a cure, but certainly good for the symptoms.

  4. Aren’t a lot of alternative therapies just cheaper? If you have no health insurance or what you have you can’t really use, you might choose something else.

  5. I loved that one doctor’s advice: Get in bed, hang a hat on your bed post, drink schnapps until you see two hats. There, you know longer feel (or care about) your flu symptoms. Now that’s some “alternative medicine” I can believe in.

  6. I thought it was a little funny when one woman said that she and her daughter had the flu for a week, then she boiled some onions and get better. I wondered how long the flu lasts without any intervention, and later the article said that it typically lasts 3-7 days. She would have gotten better no matter what she did.

  7. Alternative medicine is cheaper compared to actual medicine. But only from the point of view of how much money actually leaves your wallet.

    If you compare how much you spend to how much your health actually improves, alternative medicine is prohibitively expensive (as in, it still costs lots of money, and the benefit is strictly limited to the placebo effect).

    At which point a bottle of scotch is actually the cheapest alternative. And you can still use it long after your illness has passed.

  8. I had a cold or something a few years back, and decided to treat it with an herbal remedy of sorts. I rolled up a joint, and smoked it out in the back yard.

    The next morning I was sick and groggy beyond belief. And out of weed.

    I never repeated that experiment again.

  9. “Wafer becomes heart tissue?”

    With no scientific analysis at all and “identified” by a biased observer?

    Oh, puh-lease! :-P

  10. “Wafer becomes heart tissue?”

    So, a wafer fell into a cup of water and got soft and mushy, and the first assumption is that it’s been converted into heart tissue?

    She’s at best going to have William of Ockham rise from the grave and come to her house just to beat her with a garden hose.

  11. The therapist who implanted false memories really fries my goat. I would think criminal charges would have been considered aside from her losing her license. Now she’s getting her license back. I guess she meant well and we know that’s what’s really important. :-(

  12. @DataJack: I loved that one doctor’s advice: Get in bed, hang a hat on your bed post, drink schnapps until you see two hats.

    I drank until I saw two penises once. It turns out my vision was fine, but I still had had way too much to drink.

  13. “These remedies are so heavily diluted that often none of the original substance remains, just “a memory in the water”—a claim that makes some scientists dismiss homeopathy as quackery.”

    I’ve also heard that some scientists think the Earth goes around the Sun…

  14. @Steve: Now you’ve gone and given me the mental image of a time traveling version of Inglourious Basterds starring various great thinkers/skeptics/scientists from times past, where their only goal is “Killing woomeisters.”

  15. Lt. Storm
    Nah, that can’t be it. There must be an even more convoluted explanation, more convoluted than Jesus. A butcher must have been drinking through that container while hacking the meat away, and then it magically appeared in the church.

  16. @James Fox: Fries your goat? Clearly this statement is indicative a history of childhood abuse at the hands of your Satan worshiping parents, who would fry goats in front of you when you were but a lad.

    All kidding aside (get it, kidding), I’m in agreement with you about the therapist, but because many state boards are not in agreement about what passes as “therapy”, people like this nutbag are free to spread their ideas.

    I love the part where she is quoted as saying, “This is going to sound loony tunes,” James told state investigators. “She [a patient] had been set up from conception to become the bride of the High One at age 50 and at that point she would supervise the cult rituals.”

    Loony toons? Nah, this sounds perfectly reasonable.

  17. @Garrison22: Fried, roasted, toasted and grilled, goat lamb, pig and cow. My family knew no bounds when it came to sacrificing animals at the alter of family gluttony. And now that I’m a high priest I’ve been training my own children in the sacred rituals.

    Therapy should come from a bottle anyway.

  18. Sometimes I wonder about the people who come up with these “miracles”. I mean, even if they actually happened, what’s the bloody *point*? If I were God I could come up with much better miracles than crying statues and magic stuff happening to wafers.

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