parents give their children bleach enemas to cure Autism

[dragon]

Despite all the scientific against this these idiots still put their children in danger. Whats worse is on the CaAutism.org website they share tips on how to avoid child protective services, tips on how to give the enemas to a resisting child and other sickening advice. And it's not just the US there a case were a dentist in Ireland tried to convince her patients of it.

Whether you have AIDS, malaria, cancer, or autism, there is a product sold on the internet that claims it can cure you. That product, called Miracle Mineral Solution (MMS), sounds a lot like other pseudoscientific remedies—but unlike many suspect forms of new age medicine that are scientifically unproven but benign, MMS can actively harm you in serious ways. That's because it's a solution of 28 percent sodium chlorite which, when mixed with citric acid as instructed, forms chlorine dioxide (ClO2), a potent form of bleach used in industrial pulp and textile bleaching.

Obviously, this is not exactly something you want to put in your body. And yet some parents are giving this dangerous substance to their children, both orally and through enemas, in the belief that it will cure their child of autism.

The FDA has been aware of MMS for some time; in 2010 it issued a warning that the product turns into "a potent bleach" that "can cause nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, and symptoms of severe dehydration" if ingested. There are reports of at least one possible death from MMS use, and in January children were removed from a home in Arkansas on the suspicion that parents were giving them the solution in some form. Media investigations have shown that the substance will quickly bleach cloth, leading one scientist to tell North Carolina's WFMY News that she would only use it to clean her shower.

Nevertheless, there are a number of people who are convinced that using Miracle Mineral Solution—also known as following the "CD Protocol" (CD stands for chlorine dioxide)—will cure whatever ails them. They believe that it works by clearing the body of mystery parasites known as "rope worms" and other pathogens that they believe cause autism (this theory, to be clear, is wholly unsupported by medical science). And it's not just autism. MMS is marketed as a classic cure-all, purported to treat everything from diabetes to malaria to Ebola to AIDS. There's even a pseudo-Wikipedia where you can look up which "protocol" to follow to cure any illness, whether the complaint is baldness or brain cancer.


If this all sounds a little cultish, that's because it is. MMS was "discovered" by a man named Jim Humble, a former Scientologist who started his own church, called Genesis II, of which he is now the self-styled Archbishop. The church appears to be little more than a marketing organ for his alleged miracle cure, though it's worth noting that the site doesn't sell the actual wonder product it extolls, but offers a host of supplementary materials like a $199 "MMS Home Video Course" and information on expensive MMS seminars.

LEAKED: Proof the Red Cross Cured 154 Malaria Cases with MMS — Genesis II Church (@GenesisIIChurch) November 4, 2014

If Humble is the pater familias of this wolfpack of chicanery, a woman named Kerri Rivera seems to be its den mother. A bishop in Humble's church, Rivera is the author of a book titled Healing the Symptoms Known as Autism, in which she recommends giving autistic children "hourly doses" of chlorine dioxide and advocates chlorine dioxide enemas as a way to "kill pathogens in the brain."

Her website, CDAustism.org, is—like Humble's website—careful to state that it does not actually sell MMS. Instead it promotes the idea that it will cure autism, sells supporting materials like her book, and offers expensive Skype consultations on administering the "treatment" that cost over $100 per hour.

In other words, while stopping short of selling MMS (likely for legal reasons), Humble and Rivera instead advocate it as a lifestyle, thereby promoting the damaging idea that the complex neurological condition known as autism is essentially a gut problem that you can somehow power-wash out of your body by pouring industrial bleach into both ends. And their followers believe them. (Questions sent to Ms. Rivera were unanswered at the time of publication.)

MMS enthusiasts talk casually, like they're swapping recipes, about how many inches to insert the catheter into their child's rectum.

There's no way to accurately estimate how many people are doing this to themselves or their children. One of Humble's websites outlandishly states 20 million people have been served by MMS, while Rivera claims a more modest (but chillingly specific) 164 children have been cured from autism, a number based on unverified testimonials.

As their behavior comes under increasing legal scrutiny, MMS enthusiasts have become an elusive bunch, recently abandoning a Facebook page that boasted over 7,000 members and moving to a more anonymous message board hosted on CDAutism.org where they say, with no apparent irony, that they feel more "safe," since making an account is required here.

Yet it's in these threads, where those who have bought into the miracle cure share their stories and discuss dosing strategies, that the evidence against MMS/CD is most damning and most clear.

Going through these posts is like wading through a witches' brew of misinformation, pseudoscience, and paranoia. Here you can find parents speaking openly about the merits of drinking ocean water and performing parasitic cleanses timed to the cycles of the moon. MMS enthusiasts talk casually, like they're swapping recipes, about how many inches to insert the catheter into their child's rectum, how to force them into a chlorine dioxide bath, and how to use "tactics and tricks" to overcome resistance from children as young as two to receiving a bleach enema.

Most horrifyingly, these "tactics and tricks" even include using the child's own autism—i.e. a "love of routine"—against them.

Guided by largely anonymous moderators, users trade anecdotes in place of science, all while making health decisions that will affect their children in intimate ways, with unknown physical and psychological side effects. Meanwhile, the mods issue reassuring comments not to worry about things like reduced bowel function or "hundreds of small red objects" in a child's stool after enemas. They are convinced it's all part of the healing process.

Many MMS fans believe that vaccines result in parasites, which in turn cause autism.

There's a strong strain of anti-vaxx sentiment that runs through this subculture, since vaccines are viewed by many chlorine dioxide users as the initial source of their child's autism. Much of this is the result of the ongoing ripple effect of a discredited 1998 study that posited a possible connection between the MMR (measles, mumps, and rubella) vaccine and autism. Despite being debunked, the study continues to infect the public debate around vaccines, contributing to recent outbreaks of long-beaten diseases like measles.

Unlike other strains of anti-vaxxers, though, many MMS fans believe that vaccines result in parasites, which in turn cause autism. I asked Emily Willingham, a science writer who's written about MMS for Forbes and Thinking Person's Guide to Autism, if she could explain this logic.

"One of the tenets of the vaccines-cause-autism movement is that the vaccines contain toxins, that a 'leaky gut' is somehow involved, and that these vulnerabilities lead to parasitic infections, yeast overload, and a host of other weird, unrelated things that 'need' to be treated," Willingham wrote in an email.

Indeed MMS/CD enthusiasts are downright obsessed with parasites. On CDAutism.org and elsewhere they post stomach-churning photos of what they believe to be "rope worms" or other parasites passed by their children after oral or rectal doses of chlorine dioxide. (The evidence that rope worms even exist is extremely limited.)

I corresponded with a doctor in South Africa, Louise Lindenberg, who has tested three such stool samples, given to her by a parent who admitted to using chlorine dioxide on herself and her children. She found no evidence of said parasites. "The microbiology did not reveal any parasites or even eggs," Lindenberg wrote in an email. "Histology confirmed that it was a combination of mucus, plant material, enterococci (probiotic flora), and gut cells."

What she did find, however, was "abdominal discomfort, aggravated behavior, weight loss, low sodium levels, [and] iron deficiency" in her patients. To be clear, I asked for her opinion on MMS/CD. Lindberg, who is herself an autism expert, replied: "I feel that it is potentially very harmful and does not 'cure autism' in any way."

When there are alarming side effects from the enemas the solution is... more enemas.

According to Fiona O'Leary, an autism advocate and activist based in Ireland and a leading opponent of MMS/chlorine dioxide use, the issue is clear: "We need to stop with these quack treatments because they're dangerous, they're not authorized, they're not proven, and if anything they're proven to cause real harm."

O'Leary—the mother of two autistic children, and who is on the spectrum herself—has been involved in activism against MMS in Ireland since 2014. She has catalogued numerous instances of apparent abuse on MMS message boards and Facebook groups. In a lengthy conversation, O'Leary discussed her ongoing campaign against MMS and compared chlorine dioxide use to other discredited treatments for autism like chelation and shock therapy.

"It's like something from a Stephen King horror film," she said. "They're guinea pigs. They don't have a life. From the minute that they wake up in the morning they're dosed with the [chlorine dioxide], and they're dosed throughout the day. Parents are removing them from school because they're not allowed to dose in school and they're hiding from child protection authorities because they know what they're doing is wrong."

O'Leary's claims seem as incredible as they are horrifying, but indeed, parents who frequent the CDAutism forums openly swap tips on how to duck Child Protective Services, which have become aware of chlorine dioxide's use on children in some areas.

"It's so unbelievable that you have to pinch yourself. But it is happening. It's happening where I live," said O'Leary, who says she's been offered MMS in Ireland—in one case by a dentist.

If it defies belief, it certainly defies logic. Chlorine dioxide's fanatics are so wedded to their method that its core truth cannot be questioned. In fact, in their warped view, negative effects on the child like the alarming stools above are proof that the therapy is working and that more chlorine dioxide is needed to further purge the body.

When children are hyperactive or anxious—which is taken as evidence of autistic behavior—both advice on the CDAutism.org forums and in Rivera's book suggest "double dosing." In addition to irregular stools, parents report symptoms in their children such as nausea, diarrhea, and "pink urine"—things that seem clear to be a result of ingesting bleach, but are again taken as evidence of autism. The validity of the protocol itself is sacrosanct. And in this twisted world, when there are alarming side effects from the enemas the solution is... more enemas.

Here a concerned parent wonders why his son "writhes around in pain after each dose" but explains that he had to "ramp up the dose pretty quickly" to avoid unwanted "behaviors."

O'Leary has no sympathy for anyone giving their children chlorine dioxide and painted a bleak portrait of life in an MMS household, one that sifting though the CDautism.org forums at length only reinforced: a life of tightly restricted diets, constant oral dosing with chlorine dioxide, and regular, invasive, chlorine dioxide enemas. A life of pain.

"They're so far removed from what they're doing sometimes that you think that they shouldn't even have a dog. They're not fit to have children," said O'Leary.

There is no cure for autism, which is increasingly being seen as an example of neurodiversity rather than as a disease, and Willingham believes it's the notion that autism is a "horrific tragedy, a disease that 'steals' the real child away" that's caused some people to buy into dangerous, quack "therapies."

"Autism is a neurodevelopmental condition that traces to early fetal development. You can't bleach it away, and autistic people deserve respect and attention to their personhood," said Willingham.

There are positive signs that the Department of Justice is cracking down on distributors in the United States—in 2013, a major MMS supplier named Louis Daniel Smith was arrested on charges related to smuggling and mislabeling the substance. (The trial starts this month, and Smith's supporters have been crowdfunding his defense fund.) But MMS remains technically legal.

O'Leary fears that without further regulation, phony treatments like chlorine dioxide will become worse and more widespread. Jim Humble regularly posts chilling photos of visits to impoverished countries where chlorine dioxide is given to already suffering people as a supposed cure for malaria and AIDS, and in February announced plans to build a Genesis II church in Sierra Leone.

Though several countries, including Canada and Ireland, have issued health warnings O'Leary says she hopes that increased media attention will move the powers that be to take more concrete action.

"I just hope to God that the government picks up on it and actually look at this as a human rights violation," said O'Leary. "It's nothing less than that."

Follow Stefan Sirucek on Twitter.
If this all sounds a little cultish, that's because it is. MMS was "discovered" by a man named Jim Humble, a former Scientologist who started his own church, called Genesis II, of which he is now the self-styled Archbishop. The church appears to be little more than a marketing organ for his alleged miracle cure, though it's worth noting that the site doesn't sell the actual wonder product it extolls, but offers a host of supplementary materials like a $199 "MMS Home Video Course" and information on expensive MMS seminars.

LEAKED: Proof the Red Cross Cured 154 Malaria Cases with MMS — Genesis II Church (@GenesisIIChurch) November 4, 2014

If Humble is the pater familias of this wolfpack of chicanery, a woman named Kerri Rivera seems to be its den mother. A bishop in Humble's church, Rivera is the author of a book titled Healing the Symptoms Known as Autism, in which she recommends giving autistic children "hourly doses" of chlorine dioxide and advocates chlorine dioxide enemas as a way to "kill pathogens in the brain."

Her website, CDAustism.org, is—like Humble's website—careful to state that it does not actually sell MMS. Instead it promotes the idea that it will cure autism, sells supporting materials like her book, and offers expensive Skype consultations on administering the "treatment" that cost over $100 per hour.

In other words, while stopping short of selling MMS (likely for legal reasons), Humble and Rivera instead advocate it as a lifestyle, thereby promoting the damaging idea that the complex neurological condition known as autism is essentially a gut problem that you can somehow power-wash out of your body by pouring industrial bleach into both ends. And their followers believe them. (Questions sent to Ms. Rivera were unanswered at the time of publication.)

MMS enthusiasts talk casually, like they're swapping recipes, about how many inches to insert the catheter into their child's rectum.

There's no way to accurately estimate how many people are doing this to themselves or their children. One of Humble's websites outlandishly states 20 million people have been served by MMS, while Rivera claims a more modest (but chillingly specific) 164 children have been cured from autism, a number based on unverified testimonials.

As their behavior comes under increasing legal scrutiny, MMS enthusiasts have become an elusive bunch, recently abandoning a Facebook page that boasted over 7,000 members and moving to a more anonymous message board hosted on CDAutism.org where they say, with no apparent irony, that they feel more "safe," since making an account is required here.

Yet it's in these threads, where those who have bought into the miracle cure share their stories and discuss dosing strategies, that the evidence against MMS/CD is most damning and most clear.

Going through these posts is like wading through a witches' brew of misinformation, pseudoscience, and paranoia. Here you can find parents speaking openly about the merits of drinking ocean water and performing parasitic cleanses timed to the cycles of the moon. MMS enthusiasts talk casually, like they're swapping recipes, about how many inches to insert the catheter into their child's rectum, how to force them into a chlorine dioxide bath, and how to use "tactics and tricks" to overcome resistance from children as young as two to receiving a bleach enema.

Most horrifyingly, these "tactics and tricks" even include using the child's own autism—i.e. a "love of routine"—against them.

Guided by largely anonymous moderators, users trade anecdotes in place of science, all while making health decisions that will affect their children in intimate ways, with unknown physical and psychological side effects. Meanwhile, the mods issue reassuring comments not to worry about things like reduced bowel function or "hundreds of small red objects" in a child's stool after enemas. They are convinced it's all part of the healing process.

Many MMS fans believe that vaccines result in parasites, which in turn cause autism.

There's a strong strain of anti-vaxx sentiment that runs through this subculture, since vaccines are viewed by many chlorine dioxide users as the initial source of their child's autism. Much of this is the result of the ongoing ripple effect of a discredited 1998 study that posited a possible connection between the MMR (measles, mumps, and rubella) vaccine and autism. Despite being debunked, the study continues to infect the public debate around vaccines, contributing to recent outbreaks of long-beaten diseases like measles.

Unlike other strains of anti-vaxxers, though, many MMS fans believe that vaccines result in parasites, which in turn cause autism. I asked Emily Willingham, a science writer who's written about MMS for Forbes and Thinking Person's Guide to Autism, if she could explain this logic.

"One of the tenets of the vaccines-cause-autism movement is that the vaccines contain toxins, that a 'leaky gut' is somehow involved, and that these vulnerabilities lead to parasitic infections, yeast overload, and a host of other weird, unrelated things that 'need' to be treated," Willingham wrote in an email.

Indeed MMS/CD enthusiasts are downright obsessed with parasites. On CDAutism.org and elsewhere they post stomach-churning photos of what they believe to be "rope worms" or other parasites passed by their children after oral or rectal doses of chlorine dioxide. (The evidence that rope worms even exist is extremely limited.)

I corresponded with a doctor in South Africa, Louise Lindenberg, who has tested three such stool samples, given to her by a parent who admitted to using chlorine dioxide on herself and her children. She found no evidence of said parasites. "The microbiology did not reveal any parasites or even eggs," Lindenberg wrote in an email. "Histology confirmed that it was a combination of mucus, plant material, enterococci (probiotic flora), and gut cells."

What she did find, however, was "abdominal discomfort, aggravated behavior, weight loss, low sodium levels, [and] iron deficiency" in her patients. To be clear, I asked for her opinion on MMS/CD. Lindberg, who is herself an autism expert, replied: "I feel that it is potentially very harmful and does not 'cure autism' in any way."

When there are alarming side effects from the enemas the solution is... more enemas.

According to Fiona O'Leary, an autism advocate and activist based in Ireland and a leading opponent of MMS/chlorine dioxide use, the issue is clear: "We need to stop with these quack treatments because they're dangerous, they're not authorized, they're not proven, and if anything they're proven to cause real harm."

O'Leary—the mother of two autistic children, and who is on the spectrum herself—has been involved in activism against MMS in Ireland since 2014. She has catalogued numerous instances of apparent abuse on MMS message boards and Facebook groups. In a lengthy conversation, O'Leary discussed her ongoing campaign against MMS and compared chlorine dioxide use to other discredited treatments for autism like chelation and shock therapy.

"It's like something from a Stephen King horror film," she said. "They're guinea pigs. They don't have a life. From the minute that they wake up in the morning they're dosed with the [chlorine dioxide], and they're dosed throughout the day. Parents are removing them from school because they're not allowed to dose in school and they're hiding from child protection authorities because they know what they're doing is wrong."

O'Leary's claims seem as incredible as they are horrifying, but indeed, parents who frequent the CDAutism forums openly swap tips on how to duck Child Protective Services, which have become aware of chlorine dioxide's use on children in some areas.

"It's so unbelievable that you have to pinch yourself. But it is happening. It's happening where I live," said O'Leary, who says she's been offered MMS in Ireland—in one case by a dentist.

If it defies belief, it certainly defies logic. Chlorine dioxide's fanatics are so wedded to their method that its core truth cannot be questioned. In fact, in their warped view, negative effects on the child like the alarming stools above are proof that the therapy is working and that more chlorine dioxide is needed to further purge the body.

When children are hyperactive or anxious—which is taken as evidence of autistic behavior—both advice on the CDAutism.org forums and in Rivera's book suggest "double dosing." In addition to irregular stools, parents report symptoms in their children such as nausea, diarrhea, and "pink urine"—things that seem clear to be a result of ingesting bleach, but are again taken as evidence of autism. The validity of the protocol itself is sacrosanct. And in this twisted world, when there are alarming side effects from the enemas the solution is... more enemas.

Here a concerned parent wonders why his son "writhes around in pain after each dose" but explains that he had to "ramp up the dose pretty quickly" to avoid unwanted "behaviors."

O'Leary has no sympathy for anyone giving their children chlorine dioxide and painted a bleak portrait of life in an MMS household, one that sifting though the CDautism.org forums at length only reinforced: a life of tightly restricted diets, constant oral dosing with chlorine dioxide, and regular, invasive, chlorine dioxide enemas. A life of pain.

"They're so far removed from what they're doing sometimes that you think that they shouldn't even have a dog. They're not fit to have children," said O'Leary.

There is no cure for autism, which is increasingly being seen as an example of neurodiversity rather than as a disease, and Willingham believes it's the notion that autism is a "horrific tragedy, a disease that 'steals' the real child away" that's caused some people to buy into dangerous, quack "therapies."

"Autism is a neurodevelopmental condition that traces to early fetal development. You can't bleach it away, and autistic people deserve respect and attention to their personhood," said Willingham.

There are positive signs that the Department of Justice is cracking down on distributors in the United States—in 2013, a major MMS supplier named Louis Daniel Smith was arrested on charges related to smuggling and mislabeling the substance. (The trial starts this month, and Smith's supporters have been crowdfunding his defense fund.) But MMS remains technically legal.

O'Leary fears that without further regulation, phony treatments like chlorine dioxide will become worse and more widespread. Jim Humble regularly posts chilling photos of visits to impoverished countries where chlorine dioxide is given to already suffering people as a supposed cure for malaria and AIDS, and in February announced plans to build a Genesis II church in Sierra Leone.

Though several countries, including Canada and Ireland, have issued health warnings O'Leary says she hopes that increased media attention will move the powers that be to take more concrete action.

"I just hope to God that the government picks up on it and actually look at this as a human rights violation," said O'Leary. "It's nothing less than that."

Follow Stefan Sirucek on Twitter.

link

[Broomstick]

I have to shake my head over a parent who gives a kid a bleach enema then wonders why the kid is in pain. Then decides to give more of the same.

Autism isn't cancer and it doesn't need destructive chemotherapy, which is basically what this comes down to.

[Iroscato]

Jesus fucking Christ.
Just...what...the...fuck. I can't even...fuck.

I have to shake my head over a parent who gives a kid a bleach enema then wonders why the kid is in pain. Then decides to give more of the same.

Autism isn't cancer and it doesn't need destructive chemotherapy, which is basically what this comes down to.

Even worse, seeing as chemotherapy has at least been shown to actually kill cancer cells, despite the often horrific side effects. This is just...
And people are making money hand over fist advocating this. Making money on the backs of poisoned, maltreated, vulnerable children.

[Broomstick]

There is a notion some people have acquired that autism is a fate worse than death, or that autism is not their child. It's an issue that comes up with other forms of disability but seems to take particularly nasty forms with some parents dealing with autism.

My personal theory is that some parents can't accept their darling is less than perfect, or can't accept this is a problem with brain "wiring" (you can't see this disability like you can a missing limb). It's like beating a deaf child for not listening to what you say - it doesn't fix anything, and it doesn't help the kid. Or maybe this is like trying to use bleach to cure Down's Syndrome, which is pretty fucking ridiculous. On top of that, autism, like a lot of brain problems, doesn't have a cure or even a reliable adaptive tech. Your kid is missing his feet? We got prostheses for that and he might potentially run in the Olympics despite the handicap. Your kid is autistic? Well.... we can't guarantee the kid will ever act normal in public (although the situation is much better than in the past, a lot of autism "therapy" seems more focused on making other people comfortable than what's in the best interest of the person living on the spectrum).

So, conventional medicine has very limited help, and parents are somehow convinced that autism is the Worst Thing Ever. Thus, in their mind, drastic, unconventional treatments are justified. If nearly killing a kid with cancer is justified then in their minds nearly killing a kid to cure autism is justified - except it escapes them that cancer therapy is done with a team of highly skilled, highly specialized medical personnel and not in the basement of a parents' home.

Also, while autism isn't wonderful it's not the Worst Thing Ever, either. It's not fatal, and most people on the spectrum will be able to leave a decent life if only given some compassion.

[Zaune]

Christ on a crutch. Even my dad's second wife, bunny-boiling demented harpy that she was, wasn't quite dumb enough to try and cure my Asperger's like this.

[Baffalo]

I feel sick after reading this. Just... sick.

I work with kids on a near-daily basis, and while I have bad days (mostly on the days when they're being intentionally difficult), there's not a single one I would EVER wish to see spanked, let alone forced to endure a horribly painful bleach enema. I mean, deep down these people must be thinking, either this will cure the autism, or it will kill the child. Either way, it's better than the alternative, which is having a child with autism. And unfortunately, because it won't cure the autism, it will result in death.

We've come a long, long way with how the public deals with mental issues over the years, but it's been the explosion of autism cases that shows us just how far we have to go. I guess in the back of their minds, some people think, "I can at least pretend to give a shit while it's someone else's kid, but it better not be mine!"

[Joun_Lord]

Good fucking god. I'm trying to put to words how I feel about this.

Disgust and hatred are two words that come to mind. Shock isn't however. People will buy into whatever lamebrained piece of bullshit people try to sell them (and I am a Nigerian prince so give me your bank account number so I can send you my inheritance). Reading up on shit like Dr Kellogg's yogurt enemas, acid to clits, and wires through penises, shit that was apparently quite popular back in the day, shows me that gullibility and harm of ones children in trying to "help" them is nothing new.

And I'm sure these fucking parents really do think they are helping their kids, just the same as the parents who mutilate the privates of their children or pray away sickness. Thats what makes this all the more worse. You can almost understand a sociopathic monster of a person harming their children. They are monsters wearing human flesh, it is in their nature to harm. For these other people they probably do love their children, probably do want to help them, but like the monsters they destroy them quite literally.

The anger I feel over the thought that autism is something so terrible one needs to shove poison up their kids asses is quite immense. If people don't think autism is a superpower that makes them Rainman they think its some terrible affliction. They think it makes the kids "empty" or worse. They think little Timmy is no longer a child but a monster or worse.

I know I fall on the autism spectrum and possibly have it (I suppose I'm a semi-high functioning one if I am, though I probably don't have autism, I can't do math worth shit) I am praising Jesus, Buddha, Satan, Stan, and Mega Monkey that my parents never tried anything like this on me. Going to therapy with quack head docs attributing every single disease on the book to me and pilling me up to my eyeballs to the point my crippling depression, terrible social anxiety, bouts of extreme anger, and trouble expressing or recognizing emotion (or when people are joking, though thats probably not a mental problem, I'm just really fucking clueless when it comes to people joking) seemed downright pleasant in comparison.

The really shitty thing about this (well atleast one the shitty things about this) is the fact that Humble and his ilk probably are going to do far, far more damage in impoverished nations without access to research or education to have a hope in hell of spotting this bullshit. If they can swindle so many relatively well educated motherfuckers here in 1st world nations with Google on everything including fridges, what chance do people in like Sierra Leone who already have a massive problem of misinformation and outright bullshit threatening public safety have?

[Korto]

No, they don't think autism makes their children monsters, they think it's a problem. Which it is. And they're trying to fix it. Which is understandable. Unfortunately, they're stupid.

I think a good many of them are at a point where they can't admit to themselves that what they're doing isn't working. It's working. It's got to be working, it's got to be right, or all the torture and torment they've put their poor kid through (who they probably love, or they wouldn't go to all this trouble), all that torture has been for nothing. That's a pretty horrible thought.

But we all engage in behavior that we hope to hell is actually helping, even though we don't know. Every morning and night, I run a brush up and down my son's arms, legs, and back. The OT said it's to train his sensory system to get used to touch sensations, to teach it context, kind of thing. Does it work, or is it voodoo? Fucked if I know, but I do it anyway on her authority.
But damned if I'll put bleach up the kid's arse.

[Simon_Jester]

My first thought was to say that the inability of people in developed nations to tell science from nonscience and antiscience is getting worse and worse.

Then I realized this kind of thing was normal medical care a few hundred years ago. People routinely used actively toxic substances, including things they knew were poisonous like arsenic and (I'm pretty sure) mercury, to treat diseases that were in no way going to get better because of the poison. It didn't even occur to people back then to hold intellectually honest trials of medicines; if it had, modern medicine as we know it would have started in classical times rather than in the 1800s.

Throughout all of history, most people have been completely, literally 100% in the dark about the basic underpinnings of how their world, their technologies, and even their own bodies work. They can't distinguish a true explanation from a bullshit explanation. They don't know how.

And this is the predictable, eternal result. People doing idiotic horrible things, rationalizing it with ignorant nonsense, and falling prey to charlatans

[Ahriman238]

I can't say I'm shocked, I first heard of this practice over two years ago. I am surprised that it still seems to be going on, after a bunch of actual doctors (and people with common sense) extensively debunked it and spread through the internet that this is a horrible procedure that does. Not. Help.

See, it's fairly common (though not universal) for kids with autism to progress normally to a certain point, then massively regress, almost to infancy. They lose speech. They become unable to deal with crowds, or noises and textures that were never a problem before. Perhaps they go back to soiling themselves. This is where the common cry of "Autism stole my child from me!" comes from. The belief that you had a normal, happy, healthy child, and that is your real child, unlike the one you have now that screams constantly and won't leave you alone. Silly of course, this is your child and no amount of regression will change that, as easily say that Alzheimer's stole your parent. Which is, sadly, a believable and common reaction.

It seems every year or two, someone announces a new treatment or cause for autism, and the gullible buy in. Right now "circumscision causes autism" seems popular, a couple years back we were hearing about these bleach enemas, before that, it was the lactose-free diet.

[Broomstick]

Then I realized this kind of thing was normal medical care a few hundred years ago. People routinely used actively toxic substances, including things they knew were poisonous like arsenic and (I'm pretty sure) mercury, to treat diseases that were in no way going to get better because of the poison.

[Nitpick] Some of those toxic cures actually did work to some degree - mercurial compounds WILL kill the syphilis spirochete, for example. Too bad it sort of fucks up the human being, too. Arsenic trioxide is a legitimate cancer chemotherapy agent for a particular form of leukemia - of course, it's also pretty damn toxic to normal cells as well. [/Nitpick]

The thing is, when less toxic, more effective pharmaceuticals are discovered and developed conventional medicine abandons those prior cures. Why? Because the modern stuff is better. Better at curing the problem, better for the patient.

In the 19th Century there was at least the justification that using mercury on syphilis was the best they had at the time, there wasn't a better option. Even so, toxic remedies that were actually effective weren't the majority. That's why homeopathy took off in the 19th Century - it really was better than "standard medicine" of the time for many conditions. Prior to the 20th Century you often were better off with a placebo (even better, one delivered in fluids!) than the bleeding and purging so beloved by the medical profession. Not to mention their poisonous nostrums.

So... some of it probably is a hang over from prior generations when X type of woo-woo was the only or the best course of action (or inaction). Not everyone keeps up with the times.

The fact this is often combined with slick advertising, tons of anecdotes, and carefully crafted wording just compounds the problems.

The third factor is that people want a CURE - they don't want to "manage" a condition or "adapt" to something, they want a CURE. And when modern medicine is honest enough to say it can't give them a cure some folks will go doctor-shopping among the woo-woo crowd until someone tells them what they want to hear, whether or not it has any basis in reality or not.

[Joun_Lord]

No, they don't think autism makes their children monsters,

Some people do. Some think being autist means you are a emotionless sociopath that can't empathize with others and is a future serial killer. Do a google search for "autists are monsters". Here's a article on the autism support network about a parent dealing with someone calling their kid a monster.

That line of thought got extra bad after Adam Lanza's bullshit. A bunch of parents were making articles about how their autistic kids were the next Adam or Uncle Fester Loughner.

I don't know how common this is but it does exist.

[Simon_Jester]

Then I realized this kind of thing was normal medical care a few hundred years ago. People routinely used actively toxic substances, including things they knew were poisonous like arsenic and (I'm pretty sure) mercury, to treat diseases that were in no way going to get better because of the poison.

[Nitpick] Some of those toxic cures actually did work to some degree - mercurial compounds WILL kill the syphilis spirochete, for example. Too bad it sort of fucks up the human being, too. Arsenic trioxide is a legitimate cancer chemotherapy agent for a particular form of leukemia - of course, it's also pretty damn toxic to normal cells as well. [/Nitpick]

Mercury was being used for things other than syphilis, and I'm not sure medieval doctors even knew what leukemia was.

The thing is, when less toxic, more effective pharmaceuticals are discovered and developed conventional medicine abandons those prior cures. Why? Because the modern stuff is better. Better at curing the problem, better for the patient.

In the 19th Century there was at least the justification that using mercury on syphilis was the best they had at the time, there wasn't a better option. Even so, toxic remedies that were actually effective weren't the majority. That's why homeopathy took off in the 19th Century - it really was better than "standard medicine" of the time for many conditions. Prior to the 20th Century you often were better off with a placebo (even better, one delivered in fluids!) than the bleeding and purging so beloved by the medical profession. Not to mention their poisonous nostrums.

Thing is, medicine didn't really adopt the scientific method until the mid-19th century. Prior to that time, there was no systematic investigation into the nature and causes of disease. There was minimal or no use of actual statistics to determine what medical treatments are appropriate. And there was no serious attempt to methodically perform experiments to work out whether certain basic theories about the body (such as the four humours).

Medicine was not a science.

I mean, it's not that the doctors of that era weren't trying. But they were by modern standards complete amateurs when it came to treating anything that couldn't be cured by diet and exercise alone. Sometimes they couldn't even handle the stuff that could be thus cured.

And this is pretty much the same place that the quacks are still sitting today. Their remedies range from harmless and irrelevant to actively dangerous, with an occasional side-order of "actually works for reasons thoroughly explicable by modern medicine."

So... some of it probably is a hang over from prior generations when X type of woo-woo was the only or the best course of action (or inaction). Not everyone keeps up with the times.

Now this part I am agreeable with. Doctors were actively dangerous amateurs (by modern standards) for long enough that the general public caught on.

The third factor is that people want a CURE - they don't want to "manage" a condition or "adapt" to something, they want a CURE. And when modern medicine is honest enough to say it can't give them a cure some folks will go doctor-shopping among the woo-woo crowd until someone tells them what they want to hear, whether or not it has any basis in reality or not.

Agreed.

I am reminded of a description by Marc MacYoung of a relative of an acquaintance of his:

In fact, the best way to describe this pattern goes back to the son of a friend, named Brett. Brett had the worst luck of anyone I'd ever met. Despite being surrounded by some extremely competent people via his father's connections, bad things just seemed to plague this kid. This is strange because he asked for advice all the time. At first it was difficult to understand why until I was finally able to closely observe how this kid operated. It turns out that he wasn't asking advice, he was looking for benediction for what he wanted to do. His mind was already made up, but he lacked the courage to act on his own. If he asked 100 people, 99 would say not to do something. He, however, would keep on asking until he found that one person who said "Great idea." Armed with the answer that he wanted, he would do what 99 people had told him was a bad idea. Quite naturally, it would blow up in his face.

---

The belief that you had a normal, happy, healthy child, and that is your real child, unlike the one you have now that screams constantly and won't leave you alone. Silly of course, this is your child and no amount of regression will change that, as easily say that Alzheimer's stole your parent. Which is, sadly, a believable and common reaction.

Alzheimer's stealing your parent is more credible, in my opinion, because you have a baseline for knowing what your parent is 'normally' like.

Since autism occurs during development, as a different process of maturation, you can't separate out the anomalous developmental process from what the child is 'really' like any more than you can talk meaningfully about what an elm tree would look like if only it was a pine tree.

[Broomstick]

Then I realized this kind of thing was normal medical care a few hundred years ago. People routinely used actively toxic substances, including things they knew were poisonous like arsenic and (I'm pretty sure) mercury, to treat diseases that were in no way going to get better because of the poison.

[Nitpick] Some of those toxic cures actually did work to some degree - mercurial compounds WILL kill the syphilis spirochete, for example. Too bad it sort of fucks up the human being, too. Arsenic trioxide is a legitimate cancer chemotherapy agent for a particular form of leukemia - of course, it's also pretty damn toxic to normal cells as well. [/Nitpick]

Mercury was being used for things other than syphilis, and I'm not sure medieval doctors even knew what leukemia was.

The first written description of the disease process we now know as cancer appears in a papyrus document from Ancient Egypt. The name "cancer" was given to us by a physician from Ancient Greece. Doctors have known about the collection of diseases called cancer, including the leukemias, for thousands of years. They just couldn't do jack about them. Well, sometimes they could remove a tumor, that's about it.

I'm currently reading a book about cancer called The Emporer of All Maladies, very educational. (My sister the doctor gave it to me for my birthday, no doubt also thinking it was appropriate given our dad is dying of cancer right now. She's actually right, I have been studying up on the subject lately). For those more amenable to a video presentation Ken Burns made a documentary based on the book which will air soon on US PBS, and no doubt other places shortly thereafter.

Really, until the 20th Century modern chemotherapy for cancer couldn't have been done because the required supportive care and technology to keep patients alive while undergoing it didn't exist, either.

Thing is, medicine didn't really adopt the scientific method until the mid-19th century. Prior to that time, there was no systematic investigation into the nature and causes of disease. There was minimal or no use of actual statistics to determine what medical treatments are appropriate.

Had modern analytic statistics even been developed yet?

Although the connection between chimney sweeping and scrotal cancer was picked up during the 1700's, it's not like no one way paying attention, but, again, it's not like the doctors could really do anything about it. Sometimes when they removed a solid tumor the patient got better and lived a long time. Usually they didn't. Not to mention all the screaming and struggling during such surgery prior to anesthesia.

And there was no serious attempt to methodically perform experiments to work out whether certain basic theories about the body (such as the four humours).

Medicine was not a science.

There are STILL a lot of routine medical things that have never been rigorously tested. For some types of medicine yes, there is much science but quite a bit of it isn't that far removed from earlier times.

I mean, it's not that the doctors of that era weren't trying. But they were by modern standards complete amateurs when it came to treating anything that couldn't be cured by diet and exercise alone. Sometimes they couldn't even handle the stuff that could be thus cured.

Well, there was always opium to ease the pain of dying... at least in the Old World. A few empirical treatments that actually worked were discovered over the millenia, but not many.

And this is pretty much the same place that the quacks are still sitting today. Their remedies range from harmless and irrelevant to actively dangerous, with an occasional side-order of "actually works for reasons thoroughly explicable by modern medicine."

Or else they're a return to earlier 19th Century methods that "worked" but often had terrible side effects or other problems. See "black salve" or "bloodroot" for skin cancer - there's a segment of the woo crowd that worships the stuff. Basically, it's chemically burning away skin lesions. Sure, if you have superficial skin cancer that can work.... and leave horrible scars since it's basically a third degree burn. In the 19th Century it was probably one of the more effective skin cancer treatments but that is, indeed, damning with faint praise. There's a semi-well-known series of forum posts about a woman who feared skin cancer but didn't want to "subject" herself to possibly maiming modern Mohs surgery - so she used black salve. And burned away a LOT of her nose. Which required extensive reconstructive surgery. But hey, she avoided Evul Kancer Therappie!

The third factor is that people want a CURE - they don't want to "manage" a condition or "adapt" to something, they want a CURE. And when modern medicine is honest enough to say it can't give them a cure some folks will go doctor-shopping among the woo-woo crowd until someone tells them what they want to hear, whether or not it has any basis in reality or not.

Agreed.

I am reminded of a description by Marc MacYoung of a relative of an acquaintance of his:

In fact, the best way to describe this pattern goes back to the son of a friend, named Brett. Brett had the worst luck of anyone I'd ever met. Despite being surrounded by some extremely competent people via his father's connections, bad things just seemed to plague this kid. This is strange because he asked for advice all the time. At first it was difficult to understand why until I was finally able to closely observe how this kid operated. It turns out that he wasn't asking advice, he was looking for benediction for what he wanted to do. His mind was already made up, but he lacked the courage to act on his own. If he asked 100 people, 99 would say not to do something. He, however, would keep on asking until he found that one person who said "Great idea." Armed with the answer that he wanted, he would do what 99 people had told him was a bad idea. Quite naturally, it would blow up in his face.

Oh, yes, this ^

[Simon_Jester]

The first written description of the disease process we now know as cancer appears in a papyrus document from Ancient Egypt. The name "cancer" was given to us by a physician from Ancient Greece. Doctors have known about the collection of diseases called cancer, including the leukemias, for thousands of years. They just couldn't do jack about them. Well, sometimes they could remove a tumor, that's about it.

It's not that 'cancer' was unknown, it's that leukemia specifically was unknown, or I hypothesize that it might be.

Please assume that I meant to say exactly what I said, not a generalized version of what I said, unless what I'm saying is obviously a metaphor or something...

Really, until the 20th Century modern chemotherapy for cancer couldn't have been done because the required supportive care and technology to keep patients alive while undergoing it didn't exist, either.

Well yes; this folds into my general point that pre-scientific medicine is horribly unreliable not only because many of the treatments are very dangerous, but because it is conducted by people who don't know how to not kill their patients with the side effects of their own treatments.

As a hypothetical example, it would be pointless quibbling to respond to "medieval doctors used bleeding which was really bad for the patient" by saying note that "bleeding can somehow be useful to treat some obscure disease" if the reality is that bleeding only works for that disease when used in company with, oh, antibiotics.

Thing is, medicine didn't really adopt the scientific method until the mid-19th century. Prior to that time, there was no systematic investigation into the nature and causes of disease. There was minimal or no use of actual statistics to determine what medical treatments are appropriate.

Had modern analytic statistics even been developed yet?

Although the connection between chimney sweeping and scrotal cancer was picked up during the 1700's, it's not like no one way paying attention, but, again, it's not like the doctors could really do anything about it. Sometimes when they removed a solid tumor the patient got better and lived a long time. Usually they didn't. Not to mention all the screaming and struggling during such surgery prior to anesthesia.

I would just like to point out that I'm not trying to judge the pre-modern physicians for, well, not having the tools to do their jobs effectively.

The reality, though, is they didn't do their jobs effectively. This happened for a huge complex of reasons. Some of them of the form "the tool we need hasn't been invented yet." Others of the form "we didn't think of a mathematical or logical method that would let us deduce this important fact." And still others of the form "we're too bloodyminded to change our opinions about a dangerously wrongheaded idea just because there's little or no real supporting evidence!"

And my sole point is that this is the state that modern pseudoscientific quack-medicine still occupies. For them, it's as if the invention of scientific medicine has never happened, so they're constantly exposing themselves and their children to bizarre Dr. Nick treatments. Because there is no methodical testing of hypotheses, no idea that all accepted medical 'facts' must fit together coherently, to willingness to take a statistical study for an answer...

It's the cognitive skills that made modern medicine effective, more than any single new technology. Once you've got the attitude of scientific medicine, a lot of low-hanging fruit can be picked up rather easily. Like, say, antiseptic surgery.

[Broomstick]

The first written description of the disease process we now know as cancer appears in a papyrus document from Ancient Egypt. The name "cancer" was given to us by a physician from Ancient Greece. Doctors have known about the collection of diseases called cancer, including the leukemias, for thousands of years. They just couldn't do jack about them. Well, sometimes they could remove a tumor, that's about it.

It's not that 'cancer' was unknown, it's that leukemia specifically was unknown, or I hypothesize that it might be.

Please assume that I meant to say exactly what I said, not a generalized version of what I said, unless what I'm saying is obviously a metaphor or something...

Leukemia was formerly known as "white blood" - overproduction of white cells, dontcha know. No record of the term as far back as Ancient Egypt, but the terminology does show up earlier than you might otherwise expect. Certainly, the phenomena/symptoms surrounding the disease were known, and it was likewise known that it was fatal. Even in medieval times it was recognized there was something wrong with the blood of certain people, which probably isn't too surprising due to the amount of blood-letting going on.

Just because people in the past didn't use the same terminology doesn't mean they were unable to recognize a disease or disorder. They couldn't diagnose it as early as we can, they couldn't describe it as precisely, and there wasn't shit they could do about it, but they were aware of it on some level.

[Simon_Jester]

This is not wrong, although because ancient and medieval doctors didn't use the same terminology, it's very hard to tell if they were talking about the disease we think they were.

We can't even tell, for example, whether syphilis as we know it today emerged in the New World or the Old because of the ambiguity in medieval descriptions of conditions that might be syphilis.

So when I say "I honestly don't know if medieval doctors knew what leukemia was," I mean that literally. They may have identified it. They may have identified something else we think is leukemia. They may have identified six different conditions all of which have the same symptoms, one of which was leukemia, and decided they were the same disease. There's no easy way to be sure.

One thing we can be sure of is that they really weren't in a good position to administer chemotherapy with arsenic compounds and get a favorable result, even if this is today done.

[Broomstick]

So when I say "I honestly don't know if medieval doctors knew what leukemia was," I mean that literally. They may have identified it. They may have identified something else we think is leukemia. They may have identified six different conditions all of which have the same symptoms, one of which was leukemia, and decided they were the same disease.

Actually, until somewhere between the 1950's and 1970's modern doctors didn't understand that "leukemia" wasn't one disease it was several.

Doctors of earlier eras lumped together separate diseases with similar symptoms, and in a few cases split one disease into two or more because of variable presentation (bubonic vs. pneumonic plague, for example, it wasn't all clear to them those two had the same cause and were different manifestations of the same infectious agent.)

Again, it wasn't because they were stupid, it's because their information was limited.

I expect 50 years from now our current medical science will be shown to be wrong-headed, backward, and mistaken about a lot of stuff, too.

Anyhow - in some cases it seems to me like the parents are almost trying to drive autism out of their child, as if the kid is possessed of demons and needs to be exorcised. Just perform the correct ritual, or the correct one often enough, and the evil thing goes away. It's a sort of magical thinking, and otherwise intelligent people can fall prey to it because when it comes to their kids people are often not logical or rational.

[Simon_Jester]

Ahem.

Broomstick, my original point was that pre-19th century medicine was on a non-scientific footing- in which magical thinking and theories which don't even vaguely correspond to the underlying reality invariably dominate. The doctors weren't drooling idiots because of this; as you yourself say even intelligent people can easily, naturally fall into such patters of pseudoscience and irrationality.

By contrast...

A lot of what we think we know about medicine today is likely wrong or at least subject to amendment. But that's not the same thing as "not even on a scientific footing."

It's like the difference between biology in 1515, biology in 1965, and biology today. Much of what we think we know is wrong, but that's not because there was something fundamentally wrong with how biology was practiced in the '60s. If anything, it's because the biologists did things right, and learned a lot in the intervening half-century.

Whereas if you go back to biology in 1515, you have completely fanciful animals' existence being taken as fact, spontaneous generation being accepted even though more or less nobody had ever actually tried to induce it under what we today would call "laboratory conditions," and so on. This is not because the people who made study of living organisms were stupid, it is because (for obvious reasons) they had no idea how to practice biology as a science.

The difference between quack and professional medicine is almost entirely the difference between pre-scientific and scientific medicine.

[Broomstick]

Well, when you put it like that what can I do but agree?

[Simon_Jester]

Heh. Just trying to explain myself.

One thing- I meant to say that much of what we thought we knew in 1965 has turned out to be wrong, or at least oversimplified. But, again, that is because we used the methods of science to develop new, accurate ideas to replace inaccurate ones.

And whereas that was common fifty years ago it was basically unheard of five hundred years ago.

But honestly, a lot of people are still a century or two behind the times, and don't grasp the enormous qualitative difference between ideas that are the product of a science and ideas that are the product of random people making stuff up.

[Irbis]

Broomstick, my original point was that pre-19th century medicine was on a non-scientific footing- in which magical thinking and theories which don't even vaguely correspond to the underlying reality invariably dominate. The doctors weren't drooling idiots because of this; as you yourself say even intelligent people can easily, naturally fall into such patters of pseudoscience and irrationality.

I disagree. I read the memoirs of Copernicus (yes, that Copernicus) study of medicine at University of Padua and it never stuck me as that unscientific. Yes, they were wandering in the dark, but if I were to point out causes, it wouldn't be magical thinking or stupidity. I'd point at A) only popular (and allowed by Church) medical texts were written millennium ago by a few Greeks who decided they were too good for observation and just made it all up; B) Church banning all sorts of procedures that would allow gathering of scientific data; C) medicine being really dangerous when it came to really contagious diseases, making people who could change the way of thinking die first.

If they were not interested in scientific process, you wouldn't have clandestine autopsies, seeking out Arabic and Indian treatises on diseases, experiments, and genuine want of furthering understanding and helping patients. Yes, it was all very immature, but I'd call a lot of these people far more adherent to science than even modern doctors who ape scientific process but do not understand it (see that imbecile in anti-vaccination thread for example). Frankly, I am sometimes amazed what our ancestors did with the tools they had, today they would be hailed as geniuses at least, IMHO.

Yes, you had charlatans and idiots believing in made up animals or magical ideas, but you heard of them because they were notable. Someone causing big damage or believing especially stupid stuff is bound to have more notoriety than 99 of his normal colleagues. Even today, best method of making it to the media and books is to say something really stupid. See Wakefield et al.

A lot of what we think we know about medicine today is likely wrong or at least subject to amendment. But that's not the same thing as "not even on a scientific footing."

[...]

Whereas if you go back to biology in 1515, you have completely fanciful animals' existence being taken as fact, spontaneous generation being accepted even though more or less nobody had ever actually tried to induce it under what we today would call "laboratory conditions," and so on. This is not because the people who made study of living organisms were stupid, it is because (for obvious reasons) they had no idea how to practice biology as a science.

I find it ironic you cite XIX century as on scientific footing, as opposed to spontaneous generation. Have you ever heard of Ignaz Semmelweis? He was middle of XIX century Jewish doctor studying puerperal fever. Back then, it caused 20-40% mortality during childbirth. After noticing that doctors touching dead or diseased tissues seem to have higher mortality in their patients, Semmelweis instituted unheard of and humiliating procedure - washing hands with disinfectant and cleaning of nails. This simple thing reduced mortality on his ward a hundredfold. Armed with his findings, Semmelweis went to medical conference and presented them to great applau--

Hahahahahaha, no He was laughed out of the room by elite of German/Austrian medicine, enraged that some dumb Jewish upstart tells them their holy touch can be anything but good to these sinful wimminz, accused of supporting homeopathy ("How such tiny amounts of dirt he proposed can be the cause of disease? Preposterous!"), of spreading nonsensical pseudo-scientific religious theories, and told to never show up again.

Semmelweis, seeing thousands of women die of preventable causes over next decade, developed severe stress, turned to drinking, was fired for denouncing spontaneous generation, then his ex-colleagues had him forcibly locked in mental hospital where he was promptly beaten to death by guards. Such science, much wow.

It took only 20 more years until another upstart who didn't know his place, certain Louis Pasteur (who was investigating same disease) decided there is something in dirt theory of diseases after all and begun defending it through carefully crafted experiments that allowed no doubt. Even then, it took rather long time for anyone to finally pull their heads out of their behinds and notice it.

[Broomstick]

We really aren't that much better.

Read up on the resistance to the notion that stomach ulcer were due to H. pylori rather than stress, or do you remember the days when impotence was believed almost entirely psychological so there was no point investing treatments for what is now called "erectile dysfunction"? There was the better part of a century when scientific doctors poo-poo'ed the notion that cancer had anything to do with cell biology, it had to have an external origin, and various other mis-steps and stumblings over the past century.

We have systematized research to a greater degree than in the past, but that's about it.

[Simon_Jester]

I disagree. I read the memoirs of Copernicus (yes, that Copernicus) study of medicine at University of Padua and it never stuck me as that unscientific. Yes, they were wandering in the dark, but if I were to point out causes, it wouldn't be magical thinking or stupidity. I'd point at A) only popular (and allowed by Church) medical texts were written millennium ago by a few Greeks who decided they were too good for observation and just made it all up; B) Church banning all sorts of procedures that would allow gathering of scientific data; C) medicine being really dangerous when it came to really contagious diseases, making people who could change the way of thinking die first.

The Church legally enforcing a nonscientific approach to medicine does not mean a nonscientific approach is not in force.

I'm not sure I understand why people keep feeling compelled to jump in and say "early doctors were NOT STUPID!"

Of course they weren't stupid. They had a lot of bad habits that really, really could have been broken earlier with the right techniques and experiments, but they weren't stupid.

Saying they did things badly and believed various untrue things that could be disproved by relatively straightforward experiments is not the same as saying they were stupid.

Now, a person who believes today what they believed then would be stupid- but that's different.

If they were not interested in scientific process, you wouldn't have clandestine autopsies, seeking out Arabic and Indian treatises on diseases, experiments, and genuine want of furthering understanding and helping patients. Yes, it was all very immature, but I'd call a lot of these people far more adherent to science than even modern doctors who ape scientific process but do not understand it (see that imbecile in anti-vaccination thread for example).

My precise criticism of such modern 'doctors' is that they are using the non-science and anti-science methods that resulted in massive amounts of nonsense cluttering up the practice of medicine in ages past.

And my entire point is that scientific medicine is fundamentally better than non-scientific medicine, and that virtually all quackery in modern health care comes from people who are still practicing non-scientific medicine roughly 150 years after it became obsolete.

I find it ironic you cite XIX century as on scientific footing, as opposed to spontaneous generation. Have you ever heard of Ignaz Semmelweis? He was middle of XIX century Jewish doctor studying puerperal fever. Back then, it caused 20-40% mortality during childbirth...

At the beginnings of the 19th century medicine was grossly non-scientific. At the end, it was becoming scientific. Semmelweis lived during the transition and was arguably the poster boy for how frustratingly, stupidly long it took.

So if you would please read my writing more closely, I think you will find support for the idea that I already knew this and worded my sentences accordingly. If I failed to do so, I must plead fatigue, and I apologize for slighting Semmelweis' memory by not dealing at length with the absurd tribulations he was forced to go through.