--- mitchelcohen at mindspring.com wrote:
> Although I am critical of Gary Null in a number of
> areas, Barrett's
> statement is devious and, in fact, it exemplifies
> all that is wrong with
> the medical establishment that Gary critiques.
>
http://www.quackwatch.org/04ConsumerEducation/null.html
I dont know who Gary Null is, but I agree with the thrust of Mitchelcohen's argument here. Certainly there are a lot of quacks out there; however, there are those in the medical community who would deride all of the so-called alternative medicines without investigating them. For years they did this to chiropractics, though it is hard for them to do that now. They continue to do it against acupuncture. I personally have benefitted from both of these.
It's hard for some of these alternative therapies to get the funding to do proper research studies and lumping them all into the quack basket, which the medical community is prepared to do, guarantees that all alternative therapies, whether or not they merit it, remain at the margin.
I do not have an opinion about "urine therapy" but Gary Null did not invent it It is more prevalently used by some homeopathic doctors in Europe and has been for a long time. I dont know enough about it to endorse or criticize it. However, just because it sounds "weird" or "disgusting" does not discredit it. Just think how weird it must have seemed not so long ago that some diseases were caused by germs or that the human race descended from apes. Think about how weird some of quantum mechanics still seems to us "moderns". If ideas were to be thrown out because of "weirdness" or "strangeness" then I suspect much of contemporary physics would need to be shucked...a lot of it is much "weirder" than drinking piss.
I know it all seems like "common sense" to deride these things, but I am sure that all prejudices are guided by "common sense". "Common sense" is not compatible with science.
-Thomas
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