A Series of Tubes

I always have trouble determining who to vote for in local elections. The only information I have previously used is the small blurb that I get in the official election material. I decided to hunt down information on the people running for city council and post my thoughts on their campaigns. I think the best place to start is the candidate forum videos below. I found the videos on the Santa Cruz Community TV website and the Forum is put together by Santa Cruz Next:

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So after talking about Chiropractic care I realized that I was getting a ton of ads for chiropractors. The thing is that my reader base is probably less likely to click on ads to go get a chiropractor after I just discussed how chiropractors have a shady history and use pseudoscientific instruments to give them the illusion of technical and scientific knowledge. The only way someone would click on one of those ads is if the ads were for pirate chiropractors (come on google… show me some pirate chiropractor ads). “Yar! Yer spine be like the captain’s hook.”

The thing is that I’ve made various unflattering statements about many groups. One of these days I’m going to need something from a jehovah’s witness chiropractor who is married to a mormon that really likes homeopathy. That would be karma. Of course I don’t believe in karma either. And naturally I’m now thinking of a post that I could write about karma. I wonder if I would get ads on how to get better karma. I’m sure someone has written a book about it.

I need to make sure that my next post is about something that I like. That way the google ad gravy train makes its next stop right here on my blog.

So recently I have been using a computer that does not have firefox installed and instead only has internet explorer 6 installed. This is basically puts me in a computer user vortex of evil torment. I noticed that my blog does not display properly under IE 6. As a matter of fact IE 6 crashed completely about half way through writing this post. I might have to change my theme in order to correct the rendering errors. In the mean time I’m going to complete my post in the computer lab. What I really want to tell you about is not my  computer and browser difficulties but rather something that happened during lunch.

The area in front of the bookstore is the place where you get accosted to sign petitions, are given various fliers, and whatnot. Recently all the frats and sororities have their tables set up which is probably a topic for yet another post. Next to the fratties there is a guy with a demo for action chiropractic center. I always wondered if chiropractors were legitimate or snake oil vendors.

So I went to go talk to the person in front of the action chiropractic center demo, Dr. Ron Schmidt. According to his bio on his website, he graduated from Palmer west. This institution gets it’s name from Daniel David Palmer, the founder of modern chiropractic therapy. Palmer had previous experience as a spiritual and magnetic healer. From the wikipedia entry on the guy:

While working as a magnetic healer in Davenport, IA, he encountered a deaf janitor who he discovered had a palpable lump in his back. He theorized that the lump and his deafness were related. After a reported successful restoration of the man’s hearing^[2], it led to the beginning of Chiropractic history. His theories revolved around the concept that altered nerve flow was the cause of all disease, and that misaligned spinal vertebrae had an effect on the nerve flow. He postulated that restoring these vertebra to their proper alignment would restore health.

Also from wikipedia is the following juicy quote from DD Palmer: Read more

As I’ve mentioned before the tree sit has a bit of a “us versus them” feel with some tree sitters protesting science. There was a post on indymedia that justified the expansion of the University when it was for art but not when it was for science:

” The construction (below Performing Arts, right above the Music Recital Hall) is the new building that will house the Digital Arts & New Media program.

Pretty cool stuff, and not Science, but Art!”

This got me thinking about other battles science has had such as that between intelligent design and darwin’s theory of evolution (A picture of darwin pulled from wikipedia is shown at left). I recently went and watched NOVA’s series on the dover school board trial.

There are unfortunately prices to be paid if you don’t take science seriously, just as I think people are missing out on great cultural experiences by not exposing themselves to art. The price you pay in the case of science is that you are susceptible to bogus, unproven, and potentially harmful non scientific theories. In the case of Darwinism and creationism, recently returning under the name Intelligent Design, throwing out Darwinism means that you would throw out modern genetic theory.

The discarding of science is not just the domain of the religious right. I highly doubt that the tree sitters are fundamentalist Christians. Actually before I get into this I would like to point out that I have no idea what any of the tree sitters views are regarding evolution or modern medicine.

The discarding of science on the left comes in the form of alternative medicine which is unproven, unscientific, and mostly based on theories of diseases that predate the germ theory of disease. For this post I will focus on Ayurveda because it provides a contrast that highlights my point most beautifully.

Ayurveda is an ancient Indian healing practice that uses ancient religious beliefs to prescribe various teas, oils, scents, and massages to cure you. I like my massages, teas and whatnot, but the disregard of repeatedly confirmed modern scientific medicine is what gets to me. Deepak Chopra, shown at left, is probably the most public face on Aryuveda. You can see Deepak’s lack of respect for science in his defense of Intelligent design and his use of the term “quantum healing” which has nothing to do with anything quantum at all. But what about those teas oils and scents. Do they work? Do they have any effect?

Well the placebo effect can account for any anecdotal evidence provided to support Ayurveda, which is why modern medicine requires that double blind studies be done in order to rule out any placebo effect. What does Ayurveda provide you with? The answer is a triple whammy: lead, mercury and/or arsenic.

Toys are being recalled left and right from Chinese manufacturers for having toxic levels of lead, yet Ayuredic medicines, which has been scientifically shown to contain toxic levels of lead, mercury, and/or arsenic in 20% of properly administered medications, continues to be sold. This means that you may be (20% chance per medication) at risk for dangerous levels of heavy metal toxicity from a non scientific, unregulated, and ancient medication. The thing is that the toxic levels of metals are actually part of the prescribed cure in Ayurveda so you can’t take them out:

“Heavy metals are integral to some formulations and have been used for centuries. There is no point of doing trials as they have been used safely and have mention in our ancient texts.” cited from here.

So there you have it. Failure to understand and a failure to respect science can be harmful to your health.