Ayuveda in my paper

The online version of my local paper carried a story today under the guise of its Lifestyle and Health section about a reporters experiences trying out some Ayurvedic "medicine". It seems at least to my equal parts horror or pleasure (horror that they paid to have this and pleasure that it was not a local reporter) that this story has been imported from the LA Times and/or Washington Post. Skimming over it immediately prompted me to leave a lengthy comment on the site which I will post below for your reading pleasure.

The article mentions that few "western" doctors espouse these types of healing methods due to lack of (or inability to conduct) scientific studies.

However, those in learned circles, or at least with a working knowledge of anatomy, physiology, biochemistry and physics as well as a rational brain can clearly see that methods that have no basis in any scientific understanding of the body, such as the "doshas" (which cannot be shown to exist) have no point in being studied in clinical trials until there is a viable method for their mechanisms of action.

This is all very similar to the ideas (the four bodily humours) that science correctly discarded at the end of the middle ages as utter nonsense. Many feature of the Ayurveda and indeed traditional Chinese medicine are based on disproven ideas of how the body works.

And while more and more this sort of non-reality medicine creeps into the western (especial post-modern) philosophies, you find that in their native countries (in this case India - but it also applies to China) the locals are abandoning these methods for ones that actually work by methods other than relaxation and the placebo effects.

The statements about nutrition and the need to balance what you eat are not restricted to Ayurveda, and can be found just as readily in science-based medicine.

And as for food having energies - Yep it does... you might have heard of them they usually go by the name Calories.

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Not Vaccinating IS Child Abuse

Not vaccinating, for anything other than medical reasons, is among the worst kind of child abuse, and not just of your own children.

There is a significant proportion of the population that cannot be vaccinated for medical reasons and these people require the benefits of herd immunity to protect them from the harms the rest of us are protected from by being vaccinated.

Now for those that don't know, herd immunity is when enough people (>95%) are vaccinated and there is no ability for the disease to have a reservoir in the population and hence infect people. If too many people do not vaccinate then diseases that can be avoided can become rampant in the community, e.g. the measles outbreaks in the UK in the last few years.

Edit: Oh and in case you missed it the point of this was to direct you to Mark Crislip's wonderful post at sciencebasedmedicine about exactly what we are vaccinating against.

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Giving Thanks

In the spirit of the US holiday of thanksgiving that occurred so recently (Ok it was a week ago now almost), and that I got a chance to participate in due to a friend of ours from the states hosting a thanksgiving dinner, I would like to post some thoughts I had about the general tradition of giving thanks before meals (rather than the tradition specific to this holiday).

Yes I have some thoughts about saying grace before meal.

It is supposed to be sauying thanks for the food that we are about to receive but how inconsiderate is it to not give thanks to the people who actually provided the food the farmers who grew it, those invovled in the processing of it (ie bakers butchers etc) and possibly most importantly in our consumer age the person who earned the money to buy it. (ok I could really get pedantic and talk about the ancients who domesticated the crops and cattle - by genetic modification through cross breading and artificial selecttion but then that really should be a subject for its own whole history of science post).

How arogant is it to ignore all the effort that goes into the food we eat and give thanks only to god.

If you take the farmer or the baker out of the equation it pretty much falls over for most people in this day and age so it is to them that the bulk of thanks should go.

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Contradiction in Terms

Low Calorie Energy Drinks. Such as Tab.

C'mon.... Seriously.... Are you kidding me?

How can an energy drink be low calorie?

OK we ALL know that they are stimulant drinks. Maybe something should be done about the false advertising.

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Religious Freedoms

Two items from Bob Park's What's New newsletter both of which deal with religion or at least the religious imposing their ideas on every one else.

STEM CELLS: BUSH DECLARES "ALL HUMAN LIFE IS SACRED."
Peace activists say the same thing. The President said this while issuing his second-annual summer-solstice-veto of legislation to lift his ban on embryonic stem cell research. He said that the United States is "founded on the principle that all human life is sacred" – unless you’re in Iraq, where 80 American lives have been sacrificed so far this month. I couldn’t find such a principle in the Constitution; instead I found the First Amendment. By imposing his bizarre religious belief that embryonic stem cells are people on the rest of us, the President has violated the constitutional rights of every living, breathing American.

POPULATION: HOUSE REVERSES BAN ON CONTRACEPTION AID.
Before you applaud, it faces a veto, and there are not enough votes for an override. The ban is a key element of Bush foreign policy, though why the U.S. opposes birth control in other countries is beyond comprehension. Uncontrolled population growth will, in time, overtake every advance in human condition.

But of course you might say that these are Bush's policies and he has every right to act on them. However even the religious among us can see that these policies are grounded in his religion.

And hopefully everyone should understand that having someones will imposed upon then especially when it comes to religion is outlawed by among other things the first amendment to the constitution of the USA and Article 18 of the Universal declaration of Human Rights.

I am not claiming that Bush is not allowed to have his beliefs but what he is not allowed to do is to force others to have those beliefs too.

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A household of three

I heard on the an ad for the current affairs program Close Up last night, that they were interviewing the "Lion Man" who has been charged with assaulting his partner (and yes she is a woman) who he found in a ménage et trois [sic]. Now if you have any knowledge of french you will know that the phrase is ménage à trois, but the presenter clearly pronounced it with a short "e" sound rather than the short "a" sound that it is supposed to be. (OK here feel free to have a go at me for not using the correct phonetic letters to describe the sounds - but that is just not my thing, at least I have better things to do today than teach my self them.)

This of course like most good mispronunciations, totally changes the meaning of the phrase. So instead of the intended "household of three" (literally) it became "household and three" which a child can see is quite meaningless.

How can someone who is supposed to be one of the countries best TV presenters be so clueless or careless about pronunciation. Especially since this sets an example to people for how they are supposed to talk, or at least say words and phrases that are not natural to them

So what should be done about this? Maybe we should institute lessons in elocution and the "Queen's English" for all TV and radio presenters. Though I doubt that will really prevent the slide into laziness that the English language is currently taking.

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America's deadliest terrorists strike again

A doctor's clinic in Texas where abortions where performed has had a close shave when police found a bomb in a duffel bag outside.

This is an all to common situation at abortion clinics in the US where christian fundamentalists are conducting a reign of terror.

Yet does this even raise the eyebrows of homeland security? I think not... after all good christian Americans are not the problem are they?

The Bush administration's War on Liberty continues unabated as does terrorism!

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Please, Your Tshirt is a Security Threat

A passenger has been barred from an International flight from Melbourne to London for wearing a tshirt which calls Bush "The worlds #1 Terrorist" on the basis that the T-shirt could have upset other passengers.

And to make matters worse:

Qantas issued a statement saying comments made verbally or on a T-shirt which had the potential to offend other travelers or threaten the security of aircraft "will not be tolerated."

Now how on Earth does this threaten the security of the aircraft? Is the Tshirt going to spontaneously combust in mid-air?

Still it is good to know that America's allies are standing proudly along side the USA as they fight the "War on Liberty" all over the globe.

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Only In England...

Only in England could some D-list celebrities (who could arguably be described as quintessential English "slappers") think that they are better than possibly the world's most famous movie star (she is a household name in India) purely because she is different to them.

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Naught of Comet McNaught

Why is it that when the best opportunity of my life time to view a spectacular comet occurs it is cloudy?

It has been cloudy here all week and I am getting frustrated. Today has been horribly grey but even on the sunny days we have had this week there has been plenty of high cloud, well at least enough to prevent a decent attempt at viewing.

Oh well at least I saw last year's (OMG that makes it seem so long ago) transit of Mercury - and helped many others see it too.

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