From YNetNews via The Telegraph

My guess is that the next Jesus (or whatever he would be called) was unlucky enough to be carried by a woman who decided that the miraculous pregnancy she suddenly found herself with was unwanted and took matters into her own hands.

The most recent figure I can find (it was only a brief search) for the percentage of pregnancies that end in abortion comes from 2003 and suggests that it is around 22% or roughly 1 in 5. So, if the all-mighty tries once statistically speaking he’ll have a 1 in 5 chance of failing. Twice, it becomes 1 in 25. Three times and your around 1 in 125. For an all powerful being to not have succeeded yet that seems incredibly unlucky. It also suggests that his all knowing is switched off (or he’d know to rape a different woman).

Or maybe Yahweh is less powerful than some random unfortunate woman and her doctor who has decided to take control of her own life (just as we are supposedly promised – you know that pesky thing called free will).

Or maybe, just maybe, he doesn’t actually exist, and there is no Messiah on the way?

Some practitioners claim it is a cure-all, but the research suggests chiropractic therapy has mixed results – and can even be lethal, says Simon Singh.

You might be surprised to know that the founder of chiropractic therapy, Daniel David Palmer, wrote that “99% of all diseases are caused by displaced vertebrae”. In the 1860s, Palmer began to develop his theory that the spine was involved in almost every illness because the spinal cord connects the brain to the rest of the body. Therefore any misalignment could cause a problem in distant parts of the body.

In fact, Palmer’s first chiropractic intervention supposedly cured a man who had been profoundly deaf for 17 years. His second treatment was equally strange, because he claimed that he treated a patient with heart trouble by correcting a displaced vertebra.

You might think that modern chiropractors restrict themselves to treating back problems, but in fact some still possess quite wacky ideas. The fundamentalists argue that they can cure anything, including helping treat children with colic, sleeping and feeding problems, frequent ear infections, asthma and prolonged crying – even though there is not a jot of evidence.

I can confidently label these assertions as utter nonsense because I have co-authored a book about alternative medicine with the world’s first professor of complementary medicine, Edzard Ernst. He learned chiropractic techniques himself and used them as a doctor. This is when he began to see the need for some critical evaluation. Among other projects, he examined the evidence from 70 trials exploring the benefits of chiropractic therapy in conditions unrelated to the back. He found no evidence to suggest that chiropractors could treat any such conditions.

But what about chiropractic in the context of treating back problems? Manipulating the spine can cure some problems, but results are mixed. To be fair, conventional approaches, such as physiotherapy, also struggle to treat back problems with any consistency. Nevertheless, conventional therapy is still preferable because of the serious dangers associated with chiropractic.

In 2001, a systematic review of five studies revealed that roughly half of all chiropractic patients experience temporary adverse effects, such as pain, numbness, stiffness, dizziness and headaches. These are relatively minor effects, but the frequency is very high, and this has to be weighed against the limited benefit offered by chiropractors.

More worryingly, the hallmark technique of the chiropractor, known as high-velocity, low-amplitude thrust, carries much more significant risks. This involves pushing joints beyond their natural range of motion by applying a short, sharp force. Although this is a safe procedure for most patients, others can suffer dislocations and fractures.

Worse still, manipulation of the neck can damage the vertebral arteries, which supply blood to the brain. So-called vertebral dissection can ultimately cut off the blood supply, which in turn can lead to a stroke and even death. Because there is usually a delay between the vertebral dissection and the blockage of blood to the brain, the link between chiropractic and strokes went unnoticed for many years. Recently, however, it has been possible to identify cases where spinal manipulation has certainly been the cause of vertebral dissection.

Laurie Mathiason was a 20-year-old Canadian waitress who visited a chiropractor 21 times between 1997 and 1998 to relieve her low-back pain. On her penultimate visit she complained of stiffness in her neck. That evening she began dropping plates at the restaurant, so she returned to the chiropractor. As the chiropractor manipulated her neck, Mathiason began to cry, her eyes started to roll, she foamed at the mouth and her body began to convulse. She was rushed to hospital, slipped into a coma and died three days later. At the inquest, the coroner declared: “Laurie died of a ruptured vertebral artery, which occurred in association with a chiropractic manipulation of the neck.”

This case is not unique. In Canada alone there have been several other women who have died after receiving chiropractic therapy, and Edzard Ernst has identified about 700 cases of serious complications among the medical literature. This should be a major concern for health officials, particularly as under-reporting will mean that the actual number of cases is much higher.

If spinal manipulation were a drug with such serious adverse effects and so little demonstrable benefit, then it would almost certainly have been taken off the market.

OK, this just makes me sick. Some religious wacko parents have a daughter who is obviously very ill. Their religion dictates that they don’t seek medical help, but instead they must pray, lay on hands, and fast etc. Funnily enough (although funny is the last thing that it actually is), their daughter died as a result of their mistreatment.

Now for many minor ailments, not seeking medical help won’t kill you. Having a bit of a cough, a head-ache, or an upset stomach aren’t serious conditions. Left untreated the bodies natural defences will kick in and you’ll get better. If someone happens to be doing some ‘faith healing’ at the same time it won’t change anything, the person will still get better.

However, when the illness is more serious, you must get proper medical attention! This is especially necessary in the case of the young, elderly, or generally unhealthy. For them, their natural bodily healing mechanisms aren’t always as strong. But for even the most healthy and fittest there are many diseases and ailments that must be treated by a trained medical professional.

But it’s things like this that really get my goat:

When the detectives told Worthington that the law requires a parent to provide adequate medical care, he said he had provided care.

“I did everything I could do for her,” Worthington said. “What I was doing was working,” he said. “She was getting relief.”

WHAT? F*CK *FF! How can he say that shit? Your daughter DIED, so how much more evidence do you need that your so called treatment wasn’t working? It is my profound hope that these child abusers (and it was without doubt abuse) get prosecuted to the full extent of the law and have a very long time to contemplate the paucity of their actions. Hopefully they will come to realise that their religious beliefs are not only utterly fallacious, but also down-right dangerous.

There are two main scenarios that I think are relevant.

The average human-being has something like 10,000,000 bacteria with representatives of maybe as much as 1,000 different species between their hands and elbows alone. Now, before you go off and panic scrub yourself with Domestos, the vast majority of that bacteria is perfectly normal, and even required by our bodies, so calm down.

Anyway, back to the ‘kills 99.999%’ claim. What exactly does that mean? Does it mean 99.999% of any and all bacteria that come into contact with this stuff dies, or just that it kills 99.999% of the species of bacteria it comes into contact with? If it’s the former, than that means 100 of the little blighters will survive. OK, you’ve wiped out the huge vast majority, but the ones that are left, oh boy are they gonna party, and have little bacteria babies like there is no tomorrow. If it’s the latter, then what if the species they leave behind are in the majority population wise and also the nasty ones? Furthermore, what of the good little bacteria that our bodies rely on to get much of its work done? Do we really want to go around indiscriminately killing them off?

Let me just be clear here, I’m not claiming that the hand sanitisers are a bad thing, nor that basic personal hygiene should be ignored. What I am saying however is that we shouldn’t always just take claims at face value, we should take it upon ourselves to actually understand what they mean, and possibly investigate how they were derived. The better educated you are, the better equipped you become to make important decisions.

Stay safe, and skeptical!

via Gizmodo – Stem Cell Contact Lenses Cure Blindness in Less Than a Month – Stem Cells.

This is why Stem Cell research is important and needs to be funded. The results of this test are impressive, even if the research team are still guarded about the long term effectiveness.

There seem to be a number of current campaigns here in the UK trying to get us to be concerned with the dangers of this or that, and promising that if we all do something about it we can cut out ‘x’ number of deaths a week. The thing is, it’s BS.

We’re all going to die. End of story. By convincing us all to quit smoking (which I did about 3 years ago) then yes, the number of deaths caused by lung cancer for instance will drop off. But the number of deaths won’t change, only the cause of death.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m not suggesting that we shouldn’t be made aware that certain activities can increase the incidence of certain diseases that will likely kill you. Certainly, give us the facts, and allow us to make out own informed decisions, but don’t pretend that it’s going to stop us from dieing.

As a side note, there is also another side effect of delaying all these deaths that the campaigners most likely don’t think about, but most western governments most certainly do. Aging populations. The UK government is already in a bit of a panic because it’s grown to realise in the past few years that people are living longer and longer after they retire, and the cost of paying all those pensions is just going to go up and up, with no easy way to fund them. Again, don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying we should just let the ‘oldies’ just die off, just be more mindful of the consequences of what we’re doing.

Sorry, I rambled a bit there. This was my third attempt to post this, the last two disappeared when I suffered connection problems.

BBC News Article

Obviously, as an atheist, I’m reluctant to let any of my tax (or National Insurance in this case) pounds be used for any theistic purposes. So to that extent I do support the calls of the NSS. I have no problem with chaplains per se, and I’m quiet happy for them to visit hospital patients and their families if called upon to do so. I just don’t want to be paying for it.

There is one other point however that I’d like to touch on, and my views may be slightly surprising. In the radio interview, the chaplain (whose name I didn’t catch) mentioned that their services do form part of a ‘whole body healing’ service. He claimed that patients who were subject to the services of a chaplain had a much better recover rate. I did cough slightly at that statement, but then I thought on a bit. Obviously, such a claim should be subjected to a properly controlled scientific study, and anything that can aid the healing/recovery process needs to be encouraged. The thing is however, there is already some data that may support this position – sort of. Investigations into the efficacy of ‘Complementary and Alternative Medicines’ (CAM) seem to indicate that there is a small improvement above and beyond what can be explained from the placebo effect. This improvement isn’t down to the actual medicines themselves, but is due to the fact that CAM practitioners are often more able to spend time just being with the patient. The human body does have amazing powers to heal itself, and anything that makes the patient feel happier and cared for can assist the overall healing process. Because of this it’s just possible that chaplains can be beneficial. But so could doctors and nurses if they were able to spend more ‘bedside’ time. So could anyone whose job was just to go round the wards, and be a friend to the patients.

I wonder, can we have atheist/humanist chaplains?