More things never to say to me

[sabotabby]

"Oh, my son has cancer. Colorectal cancer. He's treating it naturally."

No.

Comments

[robby.livejournal.com]

The reason that homeopathic "medicine" isn't regulated is that chemically, it's just water. Some of the "natural" herbs that people buy as medicine are very dangerous. You might as well pump cement into your butt to make it bigger. Oh wait, people do that.

[sabotabby]

People do–no, I am not actually sure I want to know.

[robby.livejournal.com]

If you're feeling brave, google "cement butt enhhancement"

[springheel-jack.livejournal.com]

only don't

[sabotabby]

No, I think I'm better off not knowing.

[frilled-shark.livejournal.com]

I know I heard something about a man who did a similar thing to his penis and/or testicles, but I no longer remember where and am unwilling to Google it.

[robby.livejournal.com]

When he did it, it probably removed him from the human gene pool, so in that sense it's a positive sort of stupid do-it-yourself medical proceedure.

[symbioid.livejournal.com]

Maybe she meant "He's treating it, naturally."

And glad you've got some support to distract you :) And thanks for the condolences.

[sabotabby]

No, she definitely meant homeopathic nonsense. She then went into a rant about the connections between Israel and Big Pharma. I was like, "O RLY?"

[springheel-jack.livejournal.com]

That's a new one. It's the Jews? Really?

[sabotabby]

I asked for elaboration, because I'm a masochist, and apparently it's mostly that you can't criticize either. Which is interesting because I don't remember the last time they set up a parliamentary committee to quash proponents of homeopathic medicine. I should mention that she's also Jewish. It was a strange conversation.

[marlowe1.livejournal.com]

ah, a brave Jewish fighter against the Zionist plots to cure cancer.

Ugh. a few months ago one of the FB friends posted an anti-vax poster about how it's TOO risky to vacinate your children. I called her a moron and she thought that I was out of line. Then I realized that she was fucking evil.

But yeah, those big bad pharmaceutical companies making EVIL drugs like vaccination.

And then on that SAME DAY she talked about being on drug trials to treat her diabetes.

I hate people.

[sabotabby]

Anti-vaxers are the worst because, while people who decide on homeopathy over evil Western medicine can get themselves killed, anti-vaxers get innocent children killed. RAEG.

[rackletang.livejournal.com]

Exactly. Anti-vax is one of my bugaboos out here, where we're having a freakin Whooping Cough epidemic. Like, I get it, my BFF's dad had Guillaume-Barre Syndrome for the last 20 years of his life, and it sucks more than most things, and that's a possible side effect, but I still got my damn TDAP because I am not a sociopath.

[ironed_orchid]

Man, she sounds like an evil person with severe cognitive dissonance. Step away.

[sabotabby]

She's really nice, actually! But she's in her 80s and going a bit batty in the way that some folks do when they've a) had to face a lot of trauma and adversity for their beliefs, and b) gotten inside an echo chamber that drowns out critical thinking.

I notice this a lot in the older generation of activists. In fact, the lady I'm having a flamewar with is exhibiting the same tendencies, but in the other direction (mindless rage in defence of Israel and against book larnin'). You get set in your ways and everything becomes about that one issue that's really personal.

[ironed_orchid]

I meant the anti vax person that marlowe1 mentioned... and said was evil.

[sabotabby]

Ah. Definitely evil.

[radiumhead.livejournal.com]

Heres a quesion i always had: if herbal medicine is so fucking great, why did they invent real medicine in the fucking first place?!??

Obvious answer: theres some things herbs cant fix and you need REAL MEDICINE for that.

People are stupid assholes.

[sabotabby]

It totally works but it's all a conspiracy by Big Pharma to suppress The Truth. I am risking my life and freedom to type this comment.

[radiumhead.livejournal.com]

Get out of the house!! Run!!!

[frilled-shark.livejournal.com]

Oh noes, the agents of PharmaZOG are monitoring this blog and are already on your tail!

[terry-terrible.livejournal.com]

There's some one knocking on my door.

OH NO, REMEMBER ME 4 DA CAUSE!!!!!!

[khalinche.livejournal.com]

Nobody should say that to anyone. Because nobody should be fucking doing that. Christ.

[sabotabby]

I feel like adults do have the right to suicide, if they've been informed of all their options. But man, it's stupid.

[khalinche.livejournal.com]

It's fucking appalling. Anyone who follows that course of action should be made to sit down and read the coroner's report for the Penelope Dingle case - a woman with colo-rectal cancer who followed instructions from her inappropriately-close and abusive homeopath and husband instead of medical guidelines. It ended...badly.

[sabotabby]

*Googles*

Jesus Christ.

[khalinche.livejournal.com]

Sorry to have shown you that. But seriously, it should be required reading for anyone who thinks natural remedies or homeopathy are somehow fluffy and harmless.

[ironed_orchid]

That happened in my home town. If any of my hippie friends talk about alternative medicine bullshit again I will link them to this case because I suspect that their homeopaths will not be sharing it.

[cucumberseed.livejournal.com]

Yeah. I remember that one.

[xturtle.livejournal.com]

The only natural treatment for cancer is death. I say this as someone who works in integrative medicine. It's called integrative because we recognize that some "alternative" modalities greatly ameliorate symptoms that cancer treatments cause. They just need to be combined with the things that, you know, cause those symptoms.

Also, natural medicine =/= homeopathy. There are plenty of modalities that a naturopath or integrative physician will recommend that have actual evidence behind them. Just not for actually curing cancer. That they leave to the poisons and surgeons and radioactive materials.

(I'm probably preaching to the choir, but if any of these sound bites helps you combat the crazy, I've been of use. We tell them to walk-ins and call-ins who desperately hope to avoid chemo or radiation. It's heart breaking, but at least they're calling a research department at a University, and not the nearest snake-oil selling bastard.)

[sabotabby]

Well, yeah. PT and acupuncture helped far more in terms of alleviating the pain than any doctor did. But they failed to locate the tumor that was about to snap my spine in half, because that's not what they're for.

[nichtsda.livejournal.com]

First: UGH.

Second: You know that thing where you think something but then don't say it because it'd be inappropriate? How do so many people not have that?

Third: I don't understand when we had this big shift in attitude about homoepathy -- how did rejecting what people like to call "western" medicine* suddenly give you an edge of superiority? My grandmother was into homeopathy and herbs instead of prescriptions, and our entire family thought she was ignorant. Who started this idea that intelligent people drink pomegranate juice while losers get chemo? Was it Oprah? (I assume it must be Oprah because I can't believe we'd think Suzanne Somers was a credible and wise source of any knowledge, much less medical.)

Fourth: I want to go on record as hating the expression term "Western medicine." It implies that anyone who's not white never made any contributions to science. If your appendix bursts while in New Dehli, Tokyo, Beijing, Seoul, etc. and you go to a hospital, they're not going to treat you with incense and acupuncture.

[sabotabby]

All of these things.

I blame hippies. Somehow. And Oprah, yes.

[nichtsda.livejournal.com]

Right, I forgot about the hippies. Especially the hippies who decided they'd kinda still be hippies but they would still get to profit handsomely and run things and tell people what to do. I don't mind the hippies who live off-the-grid in isolated parts of the US Northwest and want to be left alone. Those ones will die out. The others, however, choose to live among us and cause problems.

Case in point: just the other week, the Marital Partner and I were in a natural foods store buying our vegan shit and having a private conversation, when some old hippie woman walked up because she eavesdropped on us, took one of our lines out of context ("This is why we don't have children"), and felt it necessary to give us horseshit advice about how our vegan diet might be preventing us from conceiving.

Since I do have the thing what makes me not say what I'm thinking at the moment, I half-smiled and said "Uh... ohhh-kaaay..." and ran away, instead of transforming into a demon, picking her up and flinging her into the display stand of Oscillococcinum*, and roaring "FUUUUUCK YOUUUUU HIPPIEEEEEEEEE."

*Homeopathic crap drug supposedly for colds that gets sold in drugstores somehow. I say it's not a real cold remedy if you can't make meth out of it.

[sabotabby]

WHY do complete strangers feel the need to comment on people's lifestyle choices? This makes no sense. Fucking hippies.

*Homeopathic crap drug supposedly for colds that gets sold in drugstores somehow. I say it's not a real cold remedy if you can't make meth out of it.

Hahahaha.

[marlowe1.livejournal.com]

I remember a hippie friend saying "Homeopathic medicine has been around for thousands of years and modeern medicine is a century old and homeopathic is EXPERIMENTAL?"

As if tradition somehow trumps germ theory.

[ironed_orchid]

And interestingly enough, they were not even right about that. Homeopathy like modern medicine is post scientific revolution. Sure, the stuff they use was used by Galen etc. But the idea that you could use tiny doses didn't come about until the 18th C.

[firecat]

I wonder if Steve Jobs would be alive today if he hadn't spent a number of months treating his cancer naturally.

[sabotabby]

I heard that he tried all the things, including science. I could be wrong, though.

[firecat]

He tried natural remedies for 9 months before having surgery and other western medical treatments, according to Wikipedia. I don't know if he tried homeopathy in specific.

[agatharuncible.livejournal.com]

I love ~natural~ stuff (not homeopathic treatments, though) and I always feel embarrassed when people say stuff like what that person said. It's one thing to avoid using drugs for colds or PMS or something that is a natural part of daily life since the beginning of time, but common sense says that cancer is not like any of those things at all and that relying on herbs to cure it (?!) is probably a terrible, terrible idea. Unless people are living in the Middle Ages where there is no option other than smoking some daffodils and being glad that at least it's not the plague, that is.

[terry-terrible.livejournal.com]

. He's treating it naturally."

*headexplodes*