David J Patrick wrote:

...

Anybody interested in a new and "unproven" effective treatment for bacterial and viral disease?

-Hugh

I used to humbug anything that didn't immediately make sense to me. but I have had too many things like that "explained" after a long period of disbelief. I'm now quite agnostic but open. Our human understanding of the workings of life are puny, at best. We laugh at the ancient Romans for dining on lead plates, while sipping water from clear plastic, which has been demonstrated to leach surprising amounts of estrogen. Surviving humans, in the distant future, will be slapping their knees recounting our follies. They will simultaneously be doing something equally stupid.

There certainly are things that are beyond our current knowledge, some of which may always be. However, to advance our knowledge, proper studies must be made, to verify the various theories. Just making an assumption and declaring it as fact, as some of the ancient Greeks did, accomplishes little. As for the alternative medicines, a study, just as all conventional medicines must go through would tell if they work or are "old wives tales". Undoubtably some natural remedies work, but many others don't. Only a proper trial can tell. Quoting someone's Aunt Martha, whose 2nd cousins neighbour doesn't do it. You cannot take any medication, including a flu shot and tell me next year that it prevented you getting the flu, because you simply don't know if you would have otherwise been afflicted. On the other hand, if you give those shots to 1000 people and compare the results with 1000 others who didn't get the shot, you can say with some confidence that the flu shot was or was not effective or hazardous. That is how to advance knowledge. You prove it. -- The Toronto Linux Users Group. Meetings: http://tlug.ss.org TLUG requests: Linux topics, No HTML, wrap text below 80 columns How to UNSUBSCRIBE: http://tlug.ss.org/subscribe.shtml