Haukur Þorgeirsson wrote:
For the
record... at my last medical check-up, we discussed several
pain-relief methods for birth, and one of the proposal made by the
medical team was 100% homeopathy based ...
You can certainly give birth with 100% placebo based
pain-relief or no pain-relief of all. Most women
throughout time have done so. Even as effective pain-
relief became available some religious people were
against its use on the grounds that God, in his mercy,
had intended woman to give birth with pain as punishment
for Eve's transgression. That seems pretty clear from
Genesis 3.16:
To the woman he said, "I will greatly increase your
pains in childbearing; with pain you will give birth
to children. Your desire will be for your husband,
and he will rule over you."
Wow! The choice is between accepting the indignities of modern
medicine, or accepting that childbirth is God's punishment for being a
woman. There are no alternatives because you don't believe in them.
That sounds like pretty fucked-up thinking.
Homeopathy is based on an 18th century theory which
later discoveries have shown does not hold up. Yet,
its adherents often defend it by using a scientific
vocabulary. Thus it is pseudo-science.
We all know about your obsession against homeopathy. Even if
homeopathic medicines turn out to be inert placebos, placebos still have
a level of effectiveness that exceeds doing nothing. It is far too easy
to dismiss the powers of the mind in our attempts to build a purely
rationalistic model of medical practice.
Ec