Sixteen Volts

The leftists often like to take pride of being "reality-based" since they accept the theory of evolution whereas the American right mostly supports creationism. (The left isn't really that enthusiastic of applying the theory of evolution to humans, but that's a topic for another posting.) I truly wish that they applied some of their supposed pro-science rationality in other issues such as alternative medicide and especially homeopathy, which the leftists seem to eagerly and uncritically support.

Homeopathy: now there is a looneytune idea that makes even Biblical creationism and fat acceptance look like heights of rationality by comparison. Homeopathy is based on the scientific and medical knowledge of the 18th century and the doctrine of vitalism, which science discredited a long time ago but which most people both in left and right still in fact ideologically subscribe to. The basic idea of homeopathy is that if large doses of some substance causes some symptoms in a human, an extremely small dose (actually diluted to be so infinitesimally small that there will not even be one molecule of the substance left in it) will instead cure an illness that has those symptoms. By this logic, for example, if alcohol makes you disoriented and throw up, an infinitesimally small dose of alcohol would cure you from illnesses whose symptoms are disorientation and throwing up.

The only thing more astonishing than the sheer stupidity of this idea is its power to convince people to breezily accept it. Since especially the leftist women tend to be significantly less reality-based and scientifically literate than men, it is no surprise that they comprise the vast majority of homeopathy users. The marketers of homeopathy of course know this, along with the fact that the words "alternative", "challenges the mainstream" and "natural" will always turn off the leftist critical brain, and use this to its full potential. In a homeopathic consultation, as in all alternative medicine, the doctor's main job is to talk to the patient and convince her that she is a fabulous personality, which women of course like better than the cold and sterile diagnosis of a real doctor.

Of course, few leftists are stupid enough to leave their personal health to homeopathy alone, so they happily use homeopathic remedies for minor illnesses but running to real doctors the moment something serious strikes them. They get their vaccinations and other conventional medicines, oblivious to the idea that if the worldview of homeopathy was even remotely true, conventional medicine (and especially vaccinations and surgeries) could never really cure anything and could only do harm. So if you are intellectually honest, you choose either mainstream medicine or homeopathy, but not both. Of course, such binary black-and-white thinking doesn't matter to pomo leftists, when they get strike a blow against the scientific mainstream and be a real individual not constrained by patriarchy.

Of course, some homeopathy supporters are actually true believers and totally reject the mainstream medicine. I don't even want to imagine how much it would suck to be their child.

At this point, I really have to mention one particularly satisfying event. Satu Hassi, a former stalinist turned a man-hater feminist (no surprise there, I guess) who then went on to become the leader of Finnish Greens and a member of European Parliament, used to actively advocate homeopathy. Along with the opposition of nuclear power, shilling for the alternative medicine must be the biggest crime against humanity of Greens. I once sat through a visiting lecture she gave at the university, since it's good to learn what stalinists and feminists are really like, the blogosphere not really existing back then. During this lecture, she kept telling us how important it is to always challenge your assumptions and the mainstream thinking. Since this was a technical university, she kept the man-bashing to the minimum, but some gleeful hate inevitably seeped through.

Eventually she starting gushing over homeopathy, explaining how it even works for animals "for which there can be no placebo effect", but the evil patriarchal science keeps homeopathy down and so on. Judging from her near-religious tone, she was quite serious about this. A few years after this event, the news media reported she had herself developed breast cancer. Now take a really good guess: as soon as her own life was on the line, did she follow her feminist principles and reject the "invasive Western phallocratic medicine" to choose homeopathic treatments instead? Or did she immediately run to real doctors who practiced mainstream Western medicine? Surely a leftist would impose the rules that she wants to impose on other people also on herself... right?

In this light, I have a very simple challenge for every homeopathy supporter with which you can prove to me and everyone else that you are serious in your beliefs. Next time there is some serious disease outbreak in the third world, I propose that instead sending in real doctors, we fly in a team of homeopaths to take care of the emergency. They could take their whole array of homeopathic tinctures and other snake oils with them and potentize them there, so the medicides needed by thousands of people would probably fit in one homeopathic healer's breast pocket. What you do think of this idea? Do you think that it would be OK?

And we don't even need to wait for an outbreak to strike, since the Americans could right now take the free clinics and other charity medical services that serve the poor people and transform them to use homeopathic remedies only. In Canada, the socialized system could also start applying homeopathy on poor people. Surely the poor deserve the best treatment, and the exciting and natural homeopathy is much better than the boring plain old mainstream medicine, right? I can't even imagine how thunderously enthusiastic the leftist response would be if the sick people who are poor were from now on treated with homeopathy. Just think about the massive savings when the greedy drug companies no longer get to extract massive profits by charging $20 for a pill, since with potentization, one ounce of some substance would be enough for the population of the whole world! (Besides, why wait: just toss some homeopathic substances to the sea, where it will dilute and eventually spread its vitalistic, harmonical and non-phallocratic vibrations to all water on Earth, so anybody who ever drinks any water will be cured!)

Once this happens, I will believe that homeopaths are in fact serious in their beliefs about effectiveness of homeopathy. But not one moment before. Of course, I bet that the homeopathic doctors themselves know perfectly well that their whole doctrine is a fraud, and would never be so stupid as to accept the above challenge. Instead, they like to live in a niche where they get to happily extract money from marching morons for whom "I had a flu, then I took some homeopathic medicine, and in a few days I was cured" is a serious argument, and leave all real illnesses and diseases to real doctors so that their ruse doesn't get blown.

By the way, why do you think that homeopathy and alternative medicines only seem to handle illnesses which are either virtually harmless or which there is no known mainstream cure at all (e.g. AIDS), and leave all serious illnesses for which there is a well-known mainstream cure (e.g. malaria) for the mainstream medicine? Why not demonstrate the superiority of homeopathy by curing these diseases and illnesses just as well as the mainstream medicine? And where is, pray tell, a burn ward that operates on the principles of homeopathy and relies on homeopathic medicine for relieving pain and healing the body?

(Edited slightly)

Posted by Ilkka Kokkarinen on Wednesday, January 18, 2006 at 9:21 AM