Tag: Medicine

From January to July of 2009, Dr. Matthew L. Goodwin lived and worked at an HIV/AIDS clinic in Port-au-Prince, Haiti.  Here is a short piece he wrote detailing some of the struggles of the Haitian people, and more importantly, how religion can get in the way of reason. Thinking based on superstition or ritual might seem silly in everyday life, but when it infiltrates how patients view medicine (prayer instead of medicine), then patients pay with their health, their lives.

Scientists have developed a revolutionary surgical treatment that could allow women with cancer to regrow their breasts after a mastectomy. Human trials for the procedure, which scientists hope could replace breast reconstructions and implants, will start within three to six months, it was revealed in Melbourne, Australia. It is likely to be three years before the technique is fully developed, researchers said.

Scientifically validated treatments (aka “medicine”) are required to be demonstrably effective, and carry pages of warnings of possible side effects. Even for the most temperate drugs, it must be as clear as vodka that they may cause all manner of hell ranging from vomiting, diarrhea and cramps, to coughing up your pancreas, genital self-mutation and in the most adverse reactions, the irrepressible desire to shave a wolf. However, none of these is very likely. Homeopathic products, conversely, are not obliged to warn of anything. In almost all cases, that is adequate, as most homeopathic products are water. The problem arises in the rare cases when people are so blind to the inefficacy of these so-called treatments that they needlessly put health and lives at risk.

Many people in the secular community are troubled by Bill Maher’s opinions about medicine. Michael Shermer has written him an open letter.

Two Pennsylvania parents now face criminal charges due to the death of their infant, as a result of bacterial pneumonia. This death could have been prevented by consulting a physician and the use of Tylenol or an antibiotic, however the parents elected to try and combat the illness with prayer, rather than medicine.

Religious fanatics exist everywhere in the world and Kenya is no exception. The extent they go to vary from digging underground chambers as escape from nuclear gases to using prayers in place of medicine.