Now then. Can I interest you in five gallons of lukewarm water, pumped
into your rectum? No? How about if we make it... ...coffee flavoured? If you
think I'm joking, check out "Jos-hua Medicine man" at the Ultimate
Resource for Colon Care Online. This site certainly tells you more
than you ever needed to know about the joys of deep bowel cleansing. On the
other hand, you can get a real doctor's opinion at Quack Watch. Whatever you do, just please,
please, don't try this at home.
Fortunately, not all bodily secretions are bad for you. In fact, if you
believe Shirley Lipschutz-Robinson, you can cure ALL diseases
with nothing more than your own urine. Sometimes, you just splash it all over,
and sometimes you need to quaff a few jars, but if you do you will be free from
cancer, rabies, polio, AIDS and anything else you may care to name. Wow. I
shall never think of a "beaker of the warm south" in quite the same
way ever again. Just one question: if urine-drinking cures all ills, does that
mean eternal life? If so, pass me a flagon of my finest Aqua
Vita, post haste.
Shirley, no doubt, would suggest Urine Therapy as an ideal remedy for
chronic or acute ear infections, hearing loss, sinus congestion, ear pain,
itching, allergies, ringing (tinnitus), or vertigo. However, since you may find
it difficult to piss into your own ear (don't take my word for it, feel free to
try) you may prefer to look at Roberta Cruz's Ear Candling pages. Candling, we
are told, will cure all the ailments mentioned above. This truly mind-boggling
"therapy" involves shoving a candle into the ear, lighting it, and
letting the smoke draw all the nasty "toxins" out from deep within.
The true devotee then gets all excited, believing that the ash remaining is in
fact a pile of impurities extracted from their very brain. What can you say? If
that weren't enough, Roberta even claims that having clean ears improves the
supply of oxygen to the brain! Marvellous.
Here's an easier way to live forever. No kidding! Jusy by putting
magnets on your pinkies, or across your toes, you can align your cells and make
them denser and better able to fight off germs. Says who? Alex Chui,
that's who! Alex's "Eternal Life Devices" will make you physically
younger, and remove wrinkles, fat and scars. Even better, if you don't want to
buy them, he provides instructions on how to make your own. For me, however,
the best things on the site are the little snippets of personal information.
Alex wants China to invade Taiwan! Alex's favourite celebrity is Alicia
Silverstone!
The biggest problem with pseudoscientific therapies is that they can be
very dangerous, either directly (people have died from infections caused by
poorly-sterilised colonic equipment, for example) or because people who believe
the quacks do not seek proper medical help for their problems. This site,
however, contains probably the most dangerous pseudoscientific claptrap I have
ever seen. Check out "Jasmuheen" of the Cosmic
Internet Academy. Jasmuheen is a "breatharian", which
means that she never eats or drinks anything (she claims), but subsists instead
on a diet of "Prana", or light, which comes from "the Divine One
Within". The breatharians claim to be "Knights of Camelot" who
can cure all famine and hunger (and even anorexia) by teaching people to live
on Prana. Unfortunately, press reports suggest that several of Jasmuheen's
followers have already died from starvation and dehydration. How, then, can she
have survived since 1993 without sustenance? Perhaps she gives the game away
when she reveals that although technically she never eats, she does have
occasional meals purely for the "pleasures of taste and social
interaction". Sheesh.
Sadly, some quackeries have become almost respectable. Homeopathy, for example, sounds almost plausible
if you think (as I did) that it involves administering very small doses of
various irritants in order to cure the very problems that would be caused by
larger doses. After all, you might say, isn't that how vaccination works? Well,
no, actually. And it turns out that the doses used in homeopathy are so small
that the "medicine" contains NONE of the supposedly active
ingredient! How then does it work? The answer is that of course it doesn't
work. Homeopaths and homeopathic techniques always fail double-blind tests (a
good example is the study performed by BBC Horizon in 2002). Like all pseudoscientists,
the homeopaths love to dress their quackery in scientific clothes. Here's a
terrific example, from a site maintained by Joseph
Mercola, who believes that the molecules of water can be physically
changed by positive or negative thoughts! This research so inspired me that I
wrote an article with no words for Homeopathy, one of the discipline's
most prestigious "scientific" journals. Sadly, they will not be
printing it any time soon.
Now here's a wonderful site, which includes everything I love about
pseudoscience on the internet. Trepanation is the ancient practice of drilling a
10mm hole in the skull, either to release demons (ancient justification) or to
reduce pressure and improve blood flow (modern pseudoscientific justification).
This site includes a number of truly stomach-churning trepanation pictures.
Please do not try this at home!
Let's now turn, with some relief, to some less dangerous idiocies. For
example, why do so many people insist on paranormal explanations for simple
phenomena like crop circles? Enthusiasts
for this art form have been forced to accept that many (even most) circles are
made by humans. They still insist, however, that at least some cannot be
explained. How can they tell the difference? By dowsing,
another load of pseudoscientific nonsense! Sadly, most dowsers really believe
in their powers, and they are always dismayed when (inevitably) they fail in
controlled tests.
Have you got a few more minutes to spare? How about visiting Donna
Ciaciarella, devotee of Past Life Reading. For just eighty dollars she
will tell you all about your previous incarnations. Or try the Alien Abduction
Experience Research site, with its self-test questionnaire. Could
YOU have been abducted, and not even realise it? Well obviously, since the
aliens are bound to have some kind of memory-erasing mind beam. Maybe they come
and probe you every night, then wipe your brain before morning? This is the
place to find out.
