h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

...about your comments about heavy metal poisoning. Are you skeptical about it, period, or just about it being a factor for an adult? I'm just asking, because it sort of bugged me. You see, my family has been profoundly affected by heavy metal poisoning. Manganese, to be exact. I'll not go into complete detail, because I'm typing one handed in the dark (waiting for Grace to fall deeply asleep), but the short version is that I have a half brother who was born with atrophied frontal lobes (one detached) thanks to undisclosed high levels of manganese in the water where we were living when Mom was pregnant with him (parents were told that the black chunks were bark dust). Of course, a developing fetus whose mom drinks lots of water that later turns out to be highly contaminated is slightly different than an adult breathing stuff in... Then again, I'm willing to bet that the brain cancer that killed Mom a couple decades later was related.

Not that it matters, but that one bit in your post about alternative medicine just jumped out at me *shrug*

Hi Amy

Thanks for dropping by.

What I am skeptical of is alternative practitioners who take money off people who aren't really to diagnose made up diseases and supposedly cure them. The whole 'detox' fad is a perfect example. I had the money and I wasn't really ill and I liked the attention and the whalesong and so I didn't really mind being ripped off, but it takes on a different hue when money that *could* be used for effective medical treatment is spent on diagnosing and 'treating' made up conditions, and when the people paying the money over are poor, vulnerable and frightened.

There are two riders I want to add to that:

1) Some substances are poisonous, and some of them are metals. Stupid to deny that. However, toxicologists are the best people to deal with them not chiropractors.

2) Western medics are frequently very bad at taking psychological pressures in to account. Thus they say that fibro-myalgia (for example) is 'imaginary' (with the concommitant moral judgementalism) when it seems to me to be a perfectly sensible nocebo reaction to shitty domestic circumstances. Some conditions - particularly chronic ones - are useful. I like the fact that my bad back means I can avoid heavy lifting.

So - do I disbelieve the idea that metals can poison people? Not at all - poisons poison people and some metals and metalic salts are poisonous, stupid to think otherwise.

Do I think that a chiropractic is an obvious source of toxicological advice? Um. No. But I wouldn't go to a toxicologist with a neck that was in spasm.

Sorry if I upset or distressed you, but sincerity is no excuse for preying on vulnerable and frightened people.

I didn't know I felt this strongly on the subject.

B

... take money to diagnose made up diseases... etc

B

OK, fair enough. Not exactly fully awake, so totally missed the fact that it wasn't a toxicologist that suggested the poisoning

No worries - that wasn't clear from my post, only from Lil's.

B