QUACK ALBUM CONTINUED

In many forms of quackery, the approach adopted is the manikin model, for both diagnosis and healing. The basic (and of course utterly absurd) idea is that some easily accessible body part is somehow a literal map of all the internal organs of the body! This accessible part might be the soles of the feet, or the palms of the hands, or even the iris of the eyes. But whatever it is, there are mystical, invisible supernatural connections between these readily accessible external  features of the body, and everything inside the body! The two most commonly encountered forms of this kind of quackery are reflexology and iridology. Both began in the late 19th Century, but were extensively modified, simplified, or made more elaborate and complex by numerous practitioners throughout the 20th Century. Almost any medical quack who offers a variety of "healing modalities" will offer reflexology or iridology as options.  Iridology, for obvious reasons, is used mainly for diagnosis, but reflexology offers not just diagnosis, but also healing--- by massaging, flexing or just touching various areas of the soles of the feet or palms of the hands.  [Of course, since the Renaissance, examining the palms has also been standard method of fortune telling!] Like so many healing pseudosciences, these bizarre approaches are based on a completely imaginary magical worldview, and have no possible connection to any aspect of reality.



 

Experience teaches us that there is almost no claim so obviously absurd that it will not be taken seriously by about 1/3 of the population. Social media are chock full of completely insane claims, promoted as fact. And there is no real protection anywhere, other than your own sound judgement. Families which have sued quacks when a beloved relative died of an easily treatable ailment under care of the quack soon discovered that juries and judges almost never rule against quackery. Nor is there any protection from the government. In the US, beginning in the 1960s, some government agencies actually encouraged quackery as "alternative medicine," and various members of the US House and Senate managed to pass laws that, still on the books, protect quack remedies from being sued for false claims of health benefits, and even protect explicit forms of quackery from possible legal penalties.  Several medical doctors have actually made a career of promoting various varieties of quackery, including Andrew Weil, Mehmet Oz and Deepak Chopra. In the 19th Century, when mainstream medicine still had strong elements of quackery, a number of medical doctors created their own forms of quackery, many of which persist today.

Ayur-Veda (or Vedic) healing was initially promoted by the TM Movement's guru Maharishi Mahesh Yogi circa 1980, but a former follower of the Maharishi, Deepak Chopra, gave it a much wider popularity. And of course any Hindu familar with the ancient magic healing rituals has the ability to set up anywhere as an authentic Ayur-Vedic practitioner, treating any and all diseases. The "healing procedure" usually consists of a set of prayers, sacrifices and ceremonies to appease various Hindu gods, plus specific treatments such as drinking urine, bloodletting, getting enemas of urine and blood, carrying an umbrella whenever you are outside, eating goat feces, drinking herbal teas, sexual abstinence, and using a large range of authentic Hindu spices on food. A typical Hindu healing and sacrificial ceremony, the Yagya, could cost anywhere from $5000 to $15,000 depending on the severity of the illness, the number of gods prayed to, and the cost of the animal sacrificed!  Of course. for the usual customer, the appropriate products are various pills supposedly made from various herbs, spices and rare plants.  You just get the pills, so you have to imagine the plants were used to make them somehow.


The main Hindu god to whom prayers are offered in Ayur-Vedic healing is Dhanvantari

One of the most frequently encountered forms of quackery is nutritional quackery. The idea is that (1) some foods are bad for your health, while others almost guarantee good health; or, (2) no food can guarantee good health, you need to take supplements! The sad fact, however, is this: there is essentially no nutritional advice you see in the media or on the internet that is in any way based on any valid scientific research.  Just in my lifetime, what constitutes a "balanced, healthy diet" has completely flipflopped about three times. Do you really need to drink an impossible amount of water every day for good health?  Do you really need to take 10,000 steps a day for good health?  Are fatty foods "bad for you"?  Is meat "bad for you"?  Are milk and eggs really dangerous to your health?  Etc., etc., etc.  Just what kind of research could possibly lead to such sweeping conclusions? Hint: a standard research method is the so-called "food diary."    An organization to which I once belonged, over the years, had several UT professors of nutrition speak on "healthy diets."  There was not the slightest similarity between the "expert" advice on healthy, balanced diets presented by any one professor versus that presented any other.  Each had his or her own specific, idiosyncratic  food choices to recommend.  An internationally famous example of this distressing phenomenon was Adele Davis. Common sense and moderation remain your best guide to food choices; in general, try to ignore what you see on the media.  "If it tastes good, it's bad for you," is not a reliable rule to follow.


A typical highly unbalanced "healthy" diet recommended by someone or other.



UFOs