Comments on: Quack quack quack.

Question: Quack quack quack.

JonnyRotten — Mon, 30 Jul 2007 05:58:47 -0800

Have any of you had any experience with biorhythm readings, or any other such quackery where you were hooked up to a "computer" and completely diagnosed?

My wife's family is big into alternative medicine. About two years ago they jumped onto the Nikken bandwagon, and now someone in the family has obtained a "biorhythm computer" (thats supposedly illegal in the US) that can tell you everything about yourself, from depression, "allergic to dairy", stress, and cancer. Being a man of science, this bothers me, because every argument I put to it, my wife waves off as "So if you don't believe in it, it can't possible work", or "So if it doesn't come from a Dr. in a office, it can't possibly work".
I will admit, some of the stuff that they have told her, or her family is kind of weird. She knew that my wife had a iron deficiency, but they also told her alot of generic stuff like she has a "stress problem" and hasn't been sleeping properly. Shes a stay at home mom, of course she has stress. They also told her that she could not get cancer, because cancer is a acid and her system is very basey. That last claim is what really upset me.

Should I just let her keep believing this quackery?

By: Pollomacho

Pollomacho — Mon, 30 Jul 2007 06:13:44 -0800

I'm going to use my psychic powers here... oh, yes, it's coming to me:

Your wife is a libra. She takes echinacea and vitamin C daily to ward off colds. She used to think she was a spring, but now it seems she is a summer. Her entron levels are through the roof. She once won $400 playing the lottery. She wears a St. Christopher's around her neck. She found a nickel using a divining rod.

Really, none of these may be true, but you can clearly see that quackery can lead to a loss of money. That is just the beginning though. The "biorhythm" machine is harmless until your wife uses it to actually base medical decisions on its "readings." If she fails to get a mammogram or pap smear because she's convinced that she's immune to cancer, then you need to get worried.

By: gene_machine

gene_machine — Mon, 30 Jul 2007 06:14:53 -0800

Absolutely not. May I recommend John Diamond's Snake Oil as a scathing attack on alternative "medicine"? The author later died of the cancer he wrote about, but firmly resisted the approaches of quacks (however well-intentioned) until the very end.

By: Emperor SnooKloze

Emperor SnooKloze — Mon, 30 Jul 2007 06:16:28 -0800

Most altie woo is pretty harmless nonsense. My dad & his wife (she works for a "supplement" company) are into a combo of sound dietary practices and quacky nonsensical junk science. Since it's not doing them any harm, and since a healthy amount of attention to one's health is, well, healthy, I try to keep my mouth mostly shut. My threshold for disabusing them is pretty simple, and a modification of the Hippocratic Oath: First, (let them) do no harm (to themselves).

To your point about "generic stuff"-- one in five women are at least slightly anemic, so yeah: not a bad guess. Even if it's galling, just keep your mouth shut so long as she isn't endangering her health.

By: box

box — Mon, 30 Jul 2007 06:22:34 -0800

If you want to prove your wife's family wrong, find somebody with a set of known conditions, hook 'em up to the illegal biorhythm computer (heehee), and watch as the machine fails to diagnose them.

If you'd like to have a happy relationship, I think it's important to pick your battles.

(When I was a kid, in, say, the mid-'80s, the local Chuck E. Cheese had a biorhythm machine. If I recall correctly, you'd drop in a token, put your thumb on a metal pad, hear some clanking and whirring, and finally be presented with a dot-matrix printout which heavily featured a bunch of curves. Oh, and it was right next to a fortune-telling machine. Wow--I must be at the peak of my reminiscing cycle.)

By: Lentrohamsanin

Lentrohamsanin — Mon, 30 Jul 2007 07:57:27 -0800

If you want to prove your wife's family wrong, find somebody with a set of known conditions, hook 'em up to the illegal biorhythm computer (heehee), and watch as the machine fails to diagnose them.

Won't work. the response will be something like: "Those doctors were lying to you! You're problem isn't psoriasis, it's that you're allergic to the color red, which our machine correctly diagnosed. It just looks like psoriasis!"

By: anaelith

anaelith — Mon, 30 Jul 2007 08:22:10 -0800

Re: Your wife's family: Grit your teeth, change the conversation. Don't argue.

Re: Your wife: "Honey, you know I'm skeptical, but I want to respect your beliefs. For my peace of mind, can we make a deal that you keep seeing your doctor and listening to what they say, in addition to everything that your family believes in, and otherwise we let the matter rest?"

By: Miko

Miko — Mon, 30 Jul 2007 10:00:25 -0800

You might point out that traditional medicine does not depend on the placebo effect in order to work ("So if you don't believe in it, it can't possibly work"). So, for instance, antibiotics will cure strep throat even if you don't believe in them. Belief in a given treatment system may confer a psychological benefit, but traditional treatments are largely effective without requiring the patient to have faith.

By: klangklangston

klangklangston — Mon, 30 Jul 2007 10:24:25 -0800

Oh, yeah, my gramma's old 386 had a program that did these. Illegal? According to whom? That'd be my first line of attack, then I'd go for making specific claims (the "rhythms" of my gramma's machine showed ascendent and descendent health curves, as well as intelligence curves. It was easy to take a similar test, like crosswords or number puzzles, on different days and chart the speed results against the curves and see that they were independent), then debunking them.

By: ikkyu2

ikkyu2 — Mon, 30 Jul 2007 10:47:08 -0800

Should I just let her keep believing this quackery?

Why not? Placebo is strong medicine. If you're going to go so far as to marry someone like this, why would you then even think of depriving them of their cherished irrational beliefs?