Tuesday 21 August 2007

Richard Dawkins

This one was better. He aimed fairly and squarely at 'alternative' medicine and generally hit home.

Essentially all alternative medicine is the placebo effect dressed up. Without any of the rigorous scientific tests that real medicine has to go through, it has none of the development costs, therefore can afford to spend more time with people.

In an era where people crave attention, and are eager to embrace their spiritual side where religion once sat, alternative medicine captures the placebo effect for more and more of us.

What really riles me is the NHS pending money on it. Not only that, but the NHS is refusing treatment for kidney cancer to those in certain unlucky postal areas, whilst we are spending £300m on tattoo removal each year.

Can that be right? If the NHS refused to pay a penny to reverse anything we have done to ourselves by choice, and if it refused to use treatments not sanctioned by peer reviewed science, and if it stopped paying sodding management consultants, how many lives could be saved?

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