Doctors orders should be questioned, of course, since they're also trying to reduce their own liability should anything go wrong. But this cynicism is being diverted into desperate alternatives, into the inklings of what is looking like outright superstition.
I understand it to some degree, of course; when a doctor recommends a treatment to slightly prolong your life, vs an expert who promises to completely heal your ailment -- you're likely to go with the so called expert.
Nobody was blaming RFK for this particular case, reading it you can see the reason RFK was called out is because he's the main health 'professional' representative who, himself, spout debunked lies. Again giving confirming biases to other people who believe this nonsense.
Where he should know better with the access to the best professionals in the world, he still spreads misinformation, of course people will call him out.
It's only hard to make the leap if you're too biased toward rational faculties. Your irrational faculties can make the leap fairly trivially.
The theory is loosely based on the Protcols of the Elders of Zion, only with lizards instead of Jews. It's complete nonsense, but Icke was fairly well-known in the UK at the time so his association with it gained it more attention than it would have got otherwise.
He had a pancreatic cancer. It was detected early and it was one of the rare cases that had a good prognosis. He changed his mind only after it was too later and regretted his bad decision.
At what point does someone step in and call this child abuse, at the very least these parents are not capable of raising their children in a safe manner.
> Kate Shemirani styles herself as "the Natural Nurse" on social media
And therein lies our main issue. People on social media who are amplified and given confirmation biases from the algorithm with basically zero moderation now.
Maybe it's callous to say but seems like Darwins law should settle these things.
This was my thinking as well.
It's genuinely why I view HN as one of the last bastions of good discussion.
Imagine a family brings up their children worshipping the “Sun god” Ra, believing he will guide them in the afterlife, performing rituals and observances of his teachings speaking of always seeking his favor and following his guidance.
Absurd, silly, and dangerous Right? Ra is of course made up bullshit invented by some priests in Egypt thousands of years ago. But knock one word off that description (re-read it with “sun” struck through) and people think it’s entirely reasonable to indoctrinate their kids into that system.
Indoctrination into the approved made up system of belief is fine. “What is the approved system of belief?” Any sane person will run screaming rather than go on record answering that question.
at the same time when you tell the children that santa is not real. /s
this is what school is for. teaching children to be critical and investigate claims no matter where they come from.
incidentally, this is the reason why homeschooling is outlawed in germany. to prevent parents indoctrinating their children without the children getting a chance to learn about alternatives.
This is a really nice idea. If only teachers were paid enough to be able to give their care. In any part of the world.
School is for creating the next generation of obedient workers - the entire modern model of schooling emerged from the Industrial Revolution in order to produce better factory workers.
Claims are handed to you at school as truth. Questioning them will get you detention.
Ironically, I am homeschooling my daughter because I want her to be a critical thinker who demands hard evidence for anything presented to her - not someone who doesn’t know which century the Second World War happened in, and that it was maybe the Chinese or the Australians who started it, not sure, but they were 100% bad and we were 100% good. Sounds ridiculous, I know, but these are the educational outcomes where we live, where most kids finish school at 13. I could barely pick my jaw up from the floor when witnessing this debate.
I had a handful of teachers who encouraged independent thought - the majority however couldn’t explain or justify what they taught except with a meter ruler or a dunce’s cap.
most kids finish school at 13
whereabouts are you, if you don't mind sharing? (feel free to send to my email in my profile if you want to keep it private)
It's also an extremely stupid and authoritarian law. The number of parents that would homeschool their children is rather low (as long as school is free) and even if they wanted, they probably couldn't because both parents need to work nowadays. Homeschooling is largely a rich people or alternative people affair, pretending that significant indoctrination can happen there is just a nice excuse to better subject children to the state indoctrination.
Also, this article is largely proof that public schooling is largely irrelevant when it comes to made up belief. But I guess we are still stuck in the (very wrong) blank state idea around human behavior/learning/growth. It's not going well.
homeschooling can be done by groups of friends. you don't need one parent to stay at home for every family. also many immigrant families in germany only have one parent working. so it's absolutely not just a rich peoples affair. and alternative people are exactly the type that do home schooling to isolate themselves from society. unless i don't understand what you mean by alternative people.
I didn't say it was only about rich people and we seem to agree on what alternative people mean. The disagreement is that you think it's bad that those people have their freedom and come up with choices that may be sub-optimal (at least in the short run). Yet diversity of behavior and opinions is not only desirable, it is necessary to challenge the status quo and allow an evolution.
Germany in general has a big problem with liberty and this is just one more example of it. Then people get shocked when authoritarian ideals take over in Germany (currently happening by the way).
This is clearly a culture problem, something that needs to be changed, yet when I describe the problem, you act as if you are in the right and it's everyone else that wants freedom that are in the wrong...
the problem with alternative people is when they isolate themselves from the rest of society. people should have freedom to believe what they want, but they should not get the freedom to completely lock out outside influences. our society lives from the input of different cultures and viewpoints. if you are isolating yourself from everyone, that may be ok for you, as an adult, but it is not ok for your children. they should make their own choice on whether they want to follow you or not. and it's our responsibility as a society to offer those choices.
take the amish in the US for example. they have their own way, but they are not completely isolated. and as i understand it in youth at one point each youth gets to live one year outside and potentially make a choice. for german expectations that's probably not enough. we want full integration, so your different beliefs need to be strong enough that they can hold their own against the rest of society. if they aren't, and if you feel the need to protect your children from general society, then i would wager there is something wrong.
also from a parenting perspective, if your children don't want to follow you then you are doing parenting wrong. as the adage goes, it is pointless to raise your children in a certain way, they end up copying you anyways. meaning, if they don't copy you you must have messed up badly.
However, I do think the blaming the patient is a distraction. I see more anti-science from industrialists and politicians when their industries receive scientific recommendations for regulation.
There was more anti-science in the decades of poor policy decisions that lead up to a young woman getting non-Hodkings lymphoma than anti-science displayed by her in the moments when she had to choose how to respond to it.
Your comment sounds like it refers to the front line contacts with the patient.
It has been a while, but my own experience was that (1) the studies I wanted to see did not exist; (2) the doctor was not forthcoming about their own statistics / outcomes; (3) outcomes were not tracked by anyone past (very small N) year; (4) no access to prior complaints against doctor.
I’ll stop the list there, but when things go wrong it is evident that science is not being done.
The best related published account I know of is of the best cystic fibrosis treatment centers in the country. (Sorry, no reference.)
She had melanoma and the thing to do with that is to cut it out immediately. She delayed, considered alt health options for a month or three and by the time she got around to it the cancer had metastasized and there was nothing to be done.
brightmood•7mo ago
That article is no shocker. It exposes the same weakness in openly questioning things and using your brain.
Related: People argue like this:
- "All people who make stairs hating on wheelchair users"
- "Men who don't like other men crying or showing emotions are hating all women"
The problem isn't just conspiracy theories - it's this broader pattern of binary thinking that refuses to acknowledge nuance or complexity. When we jump to these extreme conclusions, we lose the ability to have real discussions about difficult topics.
These, or similar quick conclusions are flawed to the core and hurt those around.