Monthly Archives: September 2011

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I opened the window and influenza

Main symptoms of influenza. (See Wikipedia:#In...

Image via Wikipedia

There are contagious diseases in this world; everyone knows this.

Some of these disease can kill or permanently incapacitate; everyone knows this too, although not all realise these include so-called ‘childhood illnesses’.

The cumulative effect of thousands, even millions, of people forced to take time off work because of illness during an epidemic costs the economy billions of (insert national currency here) every year. Not everyone realises this.

For many of these diseases, there exists a vaccine. Most people admit this, but a very vocal and evidence-resistant minority deny it. Or, worse, claim that the vaccine is more dangerous than the disease it can prevent, or at least attenuate.

No, seriously.

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Gut reactions – Bowtrol Colon Health

bowtrol-colon-cleanse-scam-review

Image by BowtrolColonCleanseScam via Flickr

I have no desire to actually research this particular detail, but sometimes I do wonder just how long the mantra of “make people shit and get rich” (© Spike Milligan) has really been around. I suspect it’s a long, long time. Quite possibly yer neolithic shaman, not having the faintest idea how to treat an illness, gave the patient a powerful herbal laxative on the basis that it might not cure them, but by Jove it would take their minds off what ailed them.

Apparently it’s still a good selling point, since the number of webshites (pun intended) hawking detox and colon cleansing is impressively, even terrifyingly, high. Type the words “colon cleansing” into a search engine and see how many results you get. I’ll pick on Bowtrol Colon Health, for the simple reason that they have been dumb enough to punt their woo on Twitter and my faithful trawl net scooped them up.

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Fear and Loathing in the Homeopathy world – “Contagion”

I haven’t seen Contagion, but this is only because it doesn’t get shown in this benighted country before 9th November (the cinemas here seem to be trying to drive themselves out of business by showing pap that would usually go straight to DVD and charging €10 a head for the privilege, and that’s just for 2D). Nevertheless, apart from the entertaining prospect of seeing GOOPneth Paltrow’s character dying horribly, I am looking forward to seeing Jude Law play the nasty bit of work who tries to peddle woo and sabotage official efforts to contain the outbreak.

Medical and epidemiologist cyberpals have had much praise for it, which is impressive for anything coming out of Hollywood and purporting to have any resemblance to the real world. So when I see screaming tabloid-style headlines like this:

DANA ULLMAN’s Homeopathic Educational Services blog: The New Film, “Contagion,” Infects the Public with FEAR

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Isopathy? Iso not convinced

Look, I’ve had a bloody hard couple of days, I’m tired and there is too much Stupid in the world. Much of it is running for the Republican nomination, or closely associated with that villainous hive of scum and twattery. Someone should drop a dead satellite on that lot and those that aren’t insured against satellite-crushing will just have to take their chances (/heavy_sarcasm).

Unfortunately, there’s still far too much Stupid that isn’t currently complaining about the neologism derived from its surname. One such Stupid goes by the name of isopathy. From the site What is Isopathy and How Does it Work?:

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