Habj wrote:
"Quackery and alternative medicine is not the same. In Great Britain, healers etc. are often welcomed to work in the hospitals. That is alternative medicine/complementary medicin, choose what term you like best. The German ex-med-doctor (forgot his name) who claim that cancer is pure psychological and cancer patients should leave the normal health care and go to him for some kind of therapy, is a definity quack."
By my definition quack medicine is a remedy falsely presented as having curative powers. In this sense the overwhelming majority of "alternative medicine" is quackery. Homeopaths, for example, sell people water and tell them that it will cure their illness.
If you want to make a distinction between alternative medicine and quackery would you object if I moved [[homeopathy]] to the quackery category?
Regards, Haukur Þorgeirsson
Your definition, I'd say, is unusual. As far as I can see, quackery really have two meanings. One is stated in the beginning of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quackery It is a disputed article needing improvement, but it starts
"Quackery is the practice of producing fraudulent medicine"
and thus, if someone believes in what they are doing they are not quacks. The second definition is a legal one. I do not know to what extent the laws differ here in different countries but in Sweden it is forbidden to treat children, cancer patients and a few other types of patients with alternative methods. If you do that, you are doing quackery. I think - but i am not sure - that treating people and pretending to have a medical exam that you do not have, also is quackery according to Swedish law.
If you can show good reasons to believe that homeopathy is a deliberate fraud, that it is illegal in at least a few countries, _or_ a definition of the word "quackery" from a good source where the main meaning of the word supports you then please go ahead. English is not my native language, and sometimes the meanings of words is not exactly the same in different languages. Be prepared for debate though, as you probably are trying to change what the category is used for. Currently, this is all the articles in the category Quackery: Quackery, Chalybeate, Chelation therapy, Electrical quackery, HGH quackery, Jomanda, Magnet therapy, Oberon (device), Pinhole glasses, Quackwatch, Radioactive quackery, Snake oil, Violet wand.
/Habj
On 6/28/05, Haukur Þorgeirsson haukurth@hi.is wrote:
Habj wrote:
"Quackery and alternative medicine is not the same. In Great Britain, healers etc. are often welcomed to work in the hospitals. That is alternative medicine/complementary medicin, choose what term you like best. The German ex-med-doctor (forgot his name) who claim that cancer is pure psychological and cancer patients should leave the normal health care and go to him for some kind of therapy, is a definity quack."
By my definition quack medicine is a remedy falsely presented as having curative powers. In this sense the overwhelming majority of "alternative medicine" is quackery. Homeopaths, for example, sell people water and tell them that it will cure their illness.
If you want to make a distinction between alternative medicine and quackery would you object if I moved [[homeopathy]] to the quackery category?
Regards, Haukur Þorgeirsson
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Haukur Þorgeirsson wrote:
Habj wrote:
"Quackery and alternative medicine is not the same. In Great Britain, healers etc. are often welcomed to work in the hospitals. That is alternative medicine/complementary medicin, choose what term you like best. The German ex-med-doctor (forgot his name) who claim that cancer is pure psychological and cancer patients should leave the normal health care and go to him for some kind of therapy, is a definity quack."
By my definition quack medicine is a remedy falsely presented as having curative powers. In this sense the overwhelming majority of "alternative medicine" is quackery. Homeopaths, for example, sell people water and tell them that it will cure their illness.
"Falsely presented" is a point that would need to be proven. Do you have evidence that homeopathic medicines are not curative, or that they are just water? That may very well be the case, but I would not be prepared to jump to that conclusion. Making definitive statements about these practices requires more than parroting the opinions of their opponents.
If you want to make a distinction between alternative medicine and quackery would you object if I moved [[homeopathy]] to the quackery category?
I would.
Ec
Ray Saintonge (saintonge@telus.net) [050629 05:01]:
"Falsely presented" is a point that would need to be proven. Do you have evidence that homeopathic medicines are not curative, or that they are just water?
Er, yes. To both. The stuff consistently fails as medicine in double-blind tests, and it tests as just water.
I do think the sincerity of the practitioners (or difficulty with joined-up thinking) makes them different to knowing quacks.
(But it still REALLY pisses me off when I see a shelf full of £4 jars of water in Boots whose labels imply they have any healing effects whatsoever. Even if the stuff isn't actually harmful other than to the wallet.)
That may very well be the case, but I would not be prepared to jump to that conclusion. Making definitive statements about these practices requires more than parroting the opinions of their opponents.
The 10,000-foot view of NPOV shouldn't preclude calling this stuff pseudoscience.
If you want to make a distinction between alternative medicine and quackery would you object if I moved [[homeopathy]] to the quackery category?
I would.
Me too. That's a really hard-to-defend category except for proven frauds.
- d.