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RE: Plants vs. Pharmaceuticals

in #science7 years ago

"What do you call alternative medicine that actually works?"

"Medicine!"

Sorry, had to add a joke... though the source of where I heard it has some debatable "science", the joke itself is funny when taken as a joke.

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I freaking love Tim Minchin. Everything of his is brilliant, but I especially like Storm.

If you don't know what @reggaemuffin is on about, I implore you to watch this video:

I have watched it before, though I have no problem with watching it again. The joke though has been said by many people and has similar phrasing to many famous quotes which is why I didn't state an origin.

And I agree, Tim Minchin is amazing!

Yeah... I mean slight modification but still.

Oh, my. I wish I could give that more than 100%. Bloody fucking awesome, and not just because of the uncomfortable resemblance to my grad-school mullet-and-skinny-tie look.

While it is actually a funny joke, its notion actually false. It is only a very recent phenomenon in the entire history of humanity that our society became so reliant on pharmaceuticals. For many millennia , everything that is now considered 'alternative medicine' today was considered the standard medicinal protocol. Although many of these traditional treatments are still effective, and in some cases better than our 'conventional' medications, they are not considered 'medicine' by the pharmaceutical industrial complex. In fact, they may not be covered by insurance plans.

For many hundreds of thousands of years our average life expectancy was half (at most) to what it is now and infant mortality rates (and child birth mortality rates) were astonishingly high compared to now.

I actually can't think of a single alt-medicine that is more effective than a conventional alternative (and before someone brings up colloidal silver, its not effective.) but I am happy to be enlightened