A slap up cure

Much as I hate linking to the Daily Mail I did see this story today about some woo woo pseudo medical treatment called "Chinese slapping therapy". Apparently it involves being slapped until your skin turns purple from bruising (WTF?) it begs the question, who in their right mind would pay money for this nonsense? The Chinese huckster who seems to be the leading advocate of this BS is currently being investigated over the recent death of a 7 year old diabetic boy who died after receiving a beating from him.

People really need to wise up generally about pseudo-science therapies like this, just because you stick the word "Chinese" or "Natural" in front of something it has no bearing on it's efficacy or validity. The likelihood is that if someone feels it necessary to put such a word in front of product name then they are almost certainly trying to hide something. There's this persistent and harmful myth in the West that all things oriental and ancient must somehow be true or inexplicably effective, acupuncture, traditional medicine, rhino horns, tigers penises, fire needles, hot cups; it's all been tested and the things that actually work we adopt and call "medicine" and the things that don't work we call "medical scams designed to extract money from the gullible" it's not rocket science. For those people that bleat on with statements like "but you can't prove it doesn't work" or "my Aunty flow drank bleach every day and lived to 96" all that can be said is "so what!"; We can't "prove" that leprechauns don't exist or that gypsy heather doesn't cure cancer; reality is not about absolute proof it's about the balance of probability and science is about working out what's most probable.

So, don't be fooled by things that are labelled "Chinese", it's meaningless, either it's double-blind tested, peer-reviewed "medicine" or it's not. There is no such thing as Chinese quantum theory or Lithuanian wood-fairy Chemistry we all live in the same universe governed by the same physical laws and that applies to medicine as much as it applies to gravity.

I think I'm going to start a movement that advocates "Traditional Chinese jumping out of moving train windows therapy" (it's fully natural, organic and homoeopathic of course), we can start with the politicians, might simplify our election somewhat.