..is invisible because it's another mystical fabrication of "capitalists" who aren't interested in doing any more work than it takes to sell us the illusion of a useful product instead of creating something of real value.
There's no such thing as Alternative Medicine. Anything that's been studied and tested and peer-reviewed and proven beyond the 95% Certainty Threshold is called Medicine - because that's what it is. Everything else comes under the general heading of Quackery. However, there are new things that come along all the time, and some of them could lead to (or actually be) the next great discovery. So the point is - as always - to be skeptical and to demand evidence.
By the 1920s, a huge fad had grown up around Radium (eg), which was being touted as a miracle substance - "liquid sunshine" is how some companies described it. They sold people on drinking water that had been infused with radon gas, and never mind that a good buncha these suckers died of various cancers and leukemia - Marie Curie died in 1934 of aplastic anemia believed to have been contracted from her long-term exposure to radiation - and her original lab notes are still too radioactive to be handled safely.
Science finds something interesting, and almost immediately, the sharpsters gather to figure out how to use this new stuff to separate the marks from their paychecks.
Commerce must be regulated. We have to be careful not to let regulation be used as a political weapon to gain an unfair advantage just to beat down competition, but every time we've allowed "the free market" to run wild, we've paid a heavy price. A little of that good ol' American Common Sense is in order here.
There's no such thing as Alternative Medicine. Anything that's been studied and tested and peer-reviewed and proven beyond the 95% Certainty Threshold is called Medicine - because that's what it is. Everything else comes under the general heading of Quackery. However, there are new things that come along all the time, and some of them could lead to (or actually be) the next great discovery. So the point is - as always - to be skeptical and to demand evidence.
By the 1920s, a huge fad had grown up around Radium (eg), which was being touted as a miracle substance - "liquid sunshine" is how some companies described it. They sold people on drinking water that had been infused with radon gas, and never mind that a good buncha these suckers died of various cancers and leukemia - Marie Curie died in 1934 of aplastic anemia believed to have been contracted from her long-term exposure to radiation - and her original lab notes are still too radioactive to be handled safely.
Science finds something interesting, and almost immediately, the sharpsters gather to figure out how to use this new stuff to separate the marks from their paychecks.
Commerce must be regulated. We have to be careful not to let regulation be used as a political weapon to gain an unfair advantage just to beat down competition, but every time we've allowed "the free market" to run wild, we've paid a heavy price. A little of that good ol' American Common Sense is in order here.
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