"We have gone terribly astray in the last 30 years. What went wrong?"

The title of this post is from Jan Bellamy, noting that 30 years ago Claude Pepper's subcommittee on health and long-term care published a report trashing the then-$30 billion a year health quackery industry. That's everything from naturopathy to acupuncture to homeopathy -- all fraudulent, then as now. And yet, instead of getting itself stamped out, this fraudulent enterprise has only grown, not only in size but also in acceptance. Quackery has wormed its way into medical schools and prominent clinics, from Harvard to the Cleveland Clinic. It even has its own institute within NIH.But it isn't just health care fraud. The prestige of science has been demolished in this country. One of our two major political parties has denial of climate science as a central plank in its platform. Measles cases in the U.S. are now at the highest rate in 20 years because parents refuse to vaccinate their children. Creationism is an open and influential political movement. And now we have this outrageous and moronic behavior by politicians from Maine to New Jersey, plus the loathesome Andrew Cuomo in between, over ebola virus.Let me give you the 4-1-1. Upon initially infecting people, the ebola virus is at such a low level in the blood that it is undetectable. Rather, it infects internal organs. It produces no symptoms, and it is not shed in urine, feces, sweat, saliva or for that matter in blood. People without symptoms are not infectious -- we aren't just talking low risk, we are tal...
Source: Stayin' Alive - Category: American Health Source Type: blogs