Another New Age healer in trouble

Is this really worth responding to? Only peripherally, of course.

Others before me have already remarked on the fact that Karadzic, who received traditional medical schooling, looks a lot like Harold Shipman, also a traditionally schooled medic.

Or have I missed a more obvious implication?

Isn’t the real point that anyone – well-meaning old biddy or evil murdering bastard – can become a healer, therapist or nutrionist? No real expertise or knowledge required. Certainly no boring old scientific qualifications needed. A scandal, if you think that education is a way of equipping people to, you know, do stuff properly. Like save lives.

I would like you to post something about the terrible rewriting of history that was carried out in India when the nationalist BJP was in power. They rewrote history to claim that all Indoeuropean cultures had originated in India (in point of fact they originated somewhere in southern Russia) and that Persian and Western cultures are all derivated from Indian. They used the whole power and resources of the Indian state, which are huge, to promote this unhistorical nationalistic nonsense, and unfortunately had the support of some Western scholarly morons to whom the prospect of “sticking it to the Man” in the form of scholarly consensus was more important than scholarly honesty and good practice. These poisonous lies are circulating through India, feeding the already ugly fanaticism of Hindutva ideology, and encouraging all kinds of backward and superstitious practices.

I also find it fascinating how easily Karadzic was able to make the switch from one form of ideologically-infused cynical psychological manipulation to another. There seem to be some interesting links between the this mix of mysticism, relativism, anti-rationalism and linguistic trickery (eg. “ethnic cleansing”) within some extremist political creeds, and the way that similar ideas are used to support the dotty ideology of AM.

Richard – please expand on or provide these ‘interesting links’…

Vinny – it’s a pretty big topic, but this is the kind of thing that got me thinking about these parallels: http://www4.dr-rath-foundation.org/open_letters/img-nyt0506/speech_drrath.htm. Rath is definitely one of the dottier AM characters I’ve come across, and his rhetoric and style – and in particular his use of conspiracy theory – remind me a great deal of some pretty insidious forms of political extremism.

I see what you’re getting at. Are there any ‘AM’ people you consider less ‘dotty’? Or are you saying that ‘alternative medicine’ is in total a dotty ideology with nothing in it worth considering?

Well that depends on the claims being made, I guess. The main idea that strikes me as dotty is that certain forms of medical treatment exist in a kind of ‘alternative paradigm’ where the standards that define mainstream medical science (randomised controlled trials, peer review etc.) somehow don’t or shouldn’t apply.

Hoxsey treatment cures cancer

http://www.brasschecktv.com/page/69.html

Response to Fabio P.Barbieri :-
It is well known that the what hitherto passes of as Indian history is really a 150 year old European rewriting that represents the colonial needs of the day and reflects racist, christian-apologist and missionary ideas. it is well known that none of what passes of as European historiography of early india is backed up by archeology or traditional folklore. Additionally the bogus claim of mainstream western historians that that linguistics (philology) alone should be the cornerstone of Indian history in negation of archeology, and local literature is slowly being rejected. It is only by virtue of linguistics that the claim of southern russiona uhreihmat of indo-europeans has been forwarded – and even this foundation is shaky. There is no attested great-culture in the specified timeline, nor adequate climatic conditions, nor any attested lore that points to such in southern russia which might have given birth to such a culture of people and caused there subsequent movement (migration) to other parts of the world. However the myths of southern-russian origin still persist.
The culture (indus-valley), the lore of outward migration (the various vedas/puranas etc), tropical climatic conditions(for incubation of a large population), the reasons for otward migration (war/drying up fo the legendary saraswati river) are all present in the indian context.
Ancient persian records (Avesta/Gathas) record journey from ancient ancestral land that was the saptha-sindhu(seven rivers). Many ancient indo-european dynasties in the middle-east had indic affinities to close to be dismissed as coincidence.
In short negating india’s indegenious account of her own history is arrogance. Given that Europe stole riches and resources from the rest of the world, it is not surprising that Europeans had stolen India’s richer and far older history to aggrandize themselves with ideas of being at the center of world history.
However this is changing – Indians are waking up to their own true past, and no amount of churlishness on part of people like Mr Barbieri is going to stop an Idea whose time has arrived.