Re: (Fwd) Re: guidelines/ethics

Lee Daniel Crocker (lcrocker@calweb.com)
Mon, 30 Dec 1996 16:47:49 -0800 (PST)


> While I appreciate your insistence on real scientific analysis, i think
> you are giving to much of a benefit of the doubt to the establishment.

If I sound like a lackey of the AMA, allow me to correct that. I have
no love for them, or the FDA, or any other forced monopoly. I simply
wish to debunk the "The establishment supresses cheap cures" meme that
charlatans employ to justify their snake oil. The standards of science
and of any rational thought do not allow "taking sides". I'm not on
the side of convention or the side of alternatives--I am a rational
mind, and I respect only the facts. Both sides are guilty of many
crimes against truth, but if I did have to pick which is more guilty,
it would be the alternative crackpots. They offer ancedote after
anecdote--just as you did in the message I'm replying to--without even
a trace of scientific integrity or restraint, and then gladly sell the
unproven treatments to the uneducated masses, consequences be damned.

I am amazed that some seemingly rational minds are even persuaded by
something as thoroughly disproven as colloidial silver. If it really
worked--if one single responsible peer-reviewed study proved that it
did something useful--it would be all over every paper in the nation,
and any doctor would be crazy not to take advantage of it. HMOs would
dump the expensive stuff from their formularies in a minute if it was
cheaper and as effective. But the plain facts are that it's a fraud.

Spare me the personal story, I'm not interested. Show me proof.