Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/18/84; site gatech.UUCP
Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!gatech!carter
From: carter@gatech.UUCP (Carter Bullard)
Newsgroups: net.med
Subject: Re: Re: Unconventional Cancer Therapy
Message-ID: <12450@gatech.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 10-Mar-85 18:29:18 EST
Article-I.D.: gatech.12450
Posted: Sun Mar 10 18:29:18 1985
Date-Received: Mon, 11-Mar-85 04:58:45 EST
References: <3012@cbneb.UUCP>
Organization: School of ICS, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta
Lines: 70

> 
> 			YES! MACROBIOTICS
> 
> 	I have one point in favour of Macrobiotics, and it is that
> 	IT WORKS! 
> 
> 	To appreciate the beauty of a flower, I don't need to 
> 	squish it into a slide and then put it under Auger
> 	Electron Spectroscope to find its chemical constitution
> 	so that I can see its beauty. It is easier than that,
> 	you just look at it.
> 
> 	Similarly with food, you just eat it, it will tell you
> 	all you wanted to know about it.
> 
> 	By the way, its all in the attitude.............

Well, well, well.  The Rev. Moon said the exact same thing 7 years ago.
Except he did not seriously push his stuff into medicine.  There appears
to be a strong desire to push the idea that what one thinks 
is truth in the universe is actually the reality of the universe.  
There is nothing wrong with this philosophy.  And there is nothing in
the universe to say that it is wrong either.

But now that yin and yang have gotten into the picture, I just have to say
something.  Many of the ideas that come out of these california discussions
on health find there final roots in religious practices of several thousands
of years ago.  It is amazing that some of them haven't seriously proprosed
human sacrifice as a means of curing the gout, but the one thing that
one has to consider, is that none of the people that followed these religious
practices even 200 years ago are still alive, and damned if any of them did
not have some form of physical suffering before they died.  

The romantic notion that some previous generation really knew what was going 
on, I believe, predominates because of some morbid sense of nostalgia.
Also a lack of faith in the current generation and also a general
lack of understanding, period.  It was a popular idea in the Dark Ages,
that epilepsy was caused by diet.  Bad bad poisons were the culprit and
starvation was one of the popular therapies of the time.  Well, after
a couple of thousand years of interest, it now is not the popular idea
that diet contributes predominately to the generation of epileptic seizures.
However, I saw a pamphlet in a health food store that presented a detailed
discussion of this Dark Ages concept as scientific fact (proved by some
unknown institute in northern california).  Now the reason that this concept
was popular in the Dark Ages is the same reason that this concept is plausible
today, and that is there are many people who are still living the personalities
or attitudes of the Dark Ages around who are willing to accept this idea.
It just happens to be a resonable explaination for them, it is easy to accept.
And as a result it becomes their way of life, their religion so to speak.

Hippocrates, the father of modern medicine, tried to show that there
can be no place for religion when trying to understand physiological
processes well enough to predict and manipulate them for
the benefit of man/woman.  It was his contention that disease is not
of divine origin, but results from physical mechanisms.  He warned
extensively against the reliance on folklore and mythology.  His techniques
have proved extremely successful over the last 2-3 thousand years.

Lets keep religion out of the discussion. Yin/yang or ping/pong or
whatever just aren't tangable enough to use as arguements during a
discussion like this.

Maybe the discussion should be whether society should leave the
development of new therapies to the "scientists" or the "clergy"
or the "Californians".
-- 
Carter Bullard
ICS, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta GA 30332
CSNet:Carter @ Gatech	ARPA:Carter.Gatech @ CSNet-relay.arpa
uucp:...!{akgua,allegra,amd,ihnp4,hplabs,seismo,ut-ngp}!gatech!carter