]]>Why do christians think that their version of god is a jealous co-dependent lover? That if you seek ANY spirituality outside of their faith you should fear the consequences (god will be jealous and yell/break dishes/break up with you)? You would figure that people so confident and unshakable in their faith of the invisible man in the sky would not feel so threatened by a mere human reading your aura (telling you things about yourself that you have already revealed).
]]>But I’m curious as to where you are getting the information that “Acupuncture and other naturopath techniques — specificaly, homeopathy — have been so roundly debunked as effective remedies”? Considering I spent four years researching and learning about these methods, reading quite a bit of the research and literature out there, and have had countless friends and clients heal due to these remedies when “modern” medicine failed them, I take offense.
Sure, there is plenty of “evidence” that “debunks” these remedies. There is just as much, if not more and more every day, that backs them. Just a few years ago, acupuncture was decried as a simple placebo effect (funny how placebo effects often rank at 40 or 50%, yet they are “flukes”), and now the NIH gives quite a few dollars to researching it. Hell, even Kaiser covers it in many of its hospitals. As for homeopathy, here’s a little tidbit:
In 1991, three professors of medicine from the Netherlands, none of them homeopaths, performed a meta-analysis of 25 years of clinical studies using homeopathic medicines and published their results in the British Medical Journal.4 This meta-analysis covered 107 controlled trials, of which 81 showed that homeopathic medicines were effective, 24 showed they were ineffective, and 2 were inconclusive. http://www.healthy.net/scr/Article.asp?Id=942&xcntr=3
Those results certainly are better than some of the FDA “proven” medications on the market, many of which get yanked 3-5 years later because of their deadly effects.
Lastly, homeopathy, acupuncture (which is simply one small part of the much larger system of Chinese Medicine), and Ayurveda have been around a lot longer than allopathic (western) medicine. Sometimes thousands of years longer. To take something we have created in the last 150 years, the scientific method, and try it put it on something that was measured by the case study method–millions upon millions of case studies–has fatal flaws. And our tried and true scientific method often yields conflicting results in studies that take place apart from each other.
To me, people should have the health care choices that they believe in. None of this is to say that there shouldn’t be research, or testing, etc. In fact, I think there needs to be a lot more testing on both sides, with the company developing the product not being allowed to put money into the testing.
People should also be able to choose an approach that much of the world outside of the West believes in – intuitives, gurus, etc. – if they like without being called a “credulous fool.”
]]>