The excellent Ben Goldacre reports in the UK Guardian that charlatan and fraud Matthias Rath has withdrawn his libel action against the paper.
The paper reports elsewhere
Matthias Rath, the vitamin campaigner accused of endangering thousands of lives in South Africa by promoting his pills while denouncing conventional medicines as toxic and dangerous, has dropped a year-long libel action against the Guardian and been ordered to pay costs.
Rath sued over three Guardian articles that condemned his promotional activities among Aids sufferers in South African townships.
Good.
Rath is free, of course, to peddle his nonsense. What he isn't entitled to do is put the lives of thousands of people at risk.
It’s simple people, there is no such thing as “alternative medicine”; if something works, it’s medicine, if it doesn’t then it isn’t medicine.
Intelligent design, homeopathy, anti-fluoride, herbalism; it’s all bunkum, hogwash, nonsense.
I recall a conversation I had with an “alternative medicine” type. She was banging on and on about how her remedies were “”natural”. I pointed out that syphilis and typhoid were natural as well but I didn’t see her volunteering to take them. I then requested that she go away or I would stab her.
Dr Goldacre has a blog, Bad Science. Read it.
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Ahhh yes, the 'natural' argument. Like Atropa Belladonna, a plant which with make you very sick, or dead, if you cook it up and consume it, but extracts of which can be used to make useful medicines.
Of course, Atropa Belladonna is also very poisonous to horses, so in that respect isn't so bad - any plant that can take those snooty whinnying bastards down a peg or two can't be all bad.
As I recall, Boogey, Atropa Belladonna is also a mild hailucinogen.
So it can get you high and kills horses. Cool!
Yeah, odd how getting poisoned and nearly dying can be somewhat hallucinogenic.
Of course, you'd get high, think the horse was some sort of spirit guide, follow it deep into an alternate reality, then be abandoned to your grisly fate by the heartless bastard.
Not that I'd be fooled. I see through their demonic pretences even without the herb.
Atropa Belladonna was traditionally used by witches in their flying potions.
Witches, sorry, "wiccans" can get fucked as well.
Horses are the owls of the land-based mammal world, Boogey.
Atropa Belladonna was traditionally used by witches in their flying potions.
Heh heh, and we all know how those potions were applied too.
I like owls more than I like horses. Owls can carry your mail and conduct covert nighttime ops. What can horses do? Stand in a paddock and eat alfalfa all day.
What's wrong with horses you cunts? Magnificent beasts!
**
I got into an argument with a practitioner of alternative medicine at a wedding. He combined massage with herbs and aromas or something and he owned the joint and it was the 'X Healing Centre'. So I says to him, "What do you heal?" and he says, "We have many cancer patients and our methods have prolonged their lives in many cases," so I says to him, "Then you should be the 'X Prolonging Centre'" and then he got all defensive and shit and I got a bit vociferous myself and anyways, he started to get this really bad stutter.
Turns out he had a stutter as a kid, had spent years in courses and treatment to get rid of his stutter, and I was the first in years to make him stutter again.
I only felt a little bad.
Owls can carry your mail
That explains why my mail is so erratic.
I didn't know you could have horsey goths.
My ex, Andromeda 3.0, was a horse-rider, and I acquired an appreciation for these wonderful creatures; especially when hot chicks are riding them.
I never actually got on one of them... I'm not stupid... but gee I like looking at them. She'd go off riding, and I'd sit under a tree smoking cigarettes and reading books for hours, waiting for her to return.
In hindsight, it was the only time we got along. We should've lived in a paddock.
Well, I have been on a horse.
I found it profoundly dull, edged through with a tinge of terror, given you're sitting on a beast several tonnes heavier than you with bitey, bitey teeth.
Horses and I have a relationship of mutual distrust. Every horse I have been on has tried to throw me.
I think they can read my mind as I approach. I'm all smiles, but my mind is saying, "You're nothing but clag, horsey."
Perseus, you might think that horse looked good, but he was probably undermining you all the time to Andromeda. You know, playing the sympathetic friend, whispering advice in her ear, secretly planning to push you into the hay-baler when she wasn't looking.
I'm not surprised, WitchOne. With all that rum in your diet, your bub's getting a swig of Malibu with every breastfeed.
Sorry Witchie, but colds and flus are both caused by nasty little beasties called rhinoviruses.
Your remedy of rum, lemon juice and honey in hot water is completely useless.
Fun but useless.
Glad to hear you're getting better though.
I don't know what causes death disease.
Horses are big, nothing cunts. The amount of fights I got into with Horsey Loving Girls growing up... but I always won because I had the 'Well, at least I still had my hymen when I was 12' retort.
The best cure for rhinoviruses is a homeopathic injection of big game hunters, to hunt the viruses down and sell the horns for ivory.
Desci, I've never understood teen girls spending so much money on horses. Surely a vibrator would be cheaper?
Wasn't there a vibrating Harry Potter broomstick that proved rather popular with the older girls?
The horsey set make me stabby.
It takes all my self control not to run any cunt cunt with "Thoroughbred" number plates off the road.
Probably best you keep restraining yourself, SBMX-er. I can't see a little BMX coming off well against a car towing a horse float.
Ha-ha.
The BMX may not have a shot, but any of the prime movers I drive on a daily basis should do the job quite easily....Or, for that matter, any of my cars.
a beast several tonnes heavier than you with bitey, bitey teeth
don't forget those kicky, kicky feet.
I went on a couple of horse riding holiday things when in primary school. The first one, I shared the biggest, most cantankerous horse at the school with another girl. One evening she went into the paddock to put him away, the horse went nuts, I raced in to save her and got a massive bruise on my thigh for my efforts.
I'm not totally sure how I was convinced to go on the second camp, apart from that it was at a different place (and turned out to be a happy clappy christian affair...)
It is a place, an abstract state of existence, a measurement of teenage female boganism lying somewhere between Southern Comfort and Passion Pop.
The Evidence for Equine Intellegence #1:
Scene: EXT Daylight.
Location: Ballarat.
Time: Sunday Afternoon.
A group of Yuppies reluctantly agree to a day of trail riding in the bush outside Ballarat. Woth Redwood* invites a friend to join the group.Chantal* arrives wearing an outfit purchased for the occasion, looking as very much as you'd expect Roy Rogers to look "in the flesh" (if he were an aging, over weight, jewish drag queen.)
Twenty minutes into the ride, Chantal** asked. "What are all these holes in the ground?"
"Gold mining shafts."
"You mean they actually dig in the ground for it?"
"Yeah...."
"Seriously? When I want gold, I just go out and buy it!"
Within seconds the horse turns around and bites her mid calf, with suffient force to tear her jeans and draw blood.
HI ho, Silver! Proof Positive.
*Not his real name.
** Not her real name.
I hate horses. So big, and so many teeth, and nasty kicking legs. One actually bit me on the chest once. It was not a pleasant experience. Plus, horses = outdoors = bugs and sun and dirt and other unpleasant things.
And they smell funny.
But what with the smoking whilst pregnant and drinking whilst breastfeeding, you've more than lived up to it now, Witchie. Congrats!
And I've just decided that anyone who I want to be patronising towards shan't address me at all, Witchie.
Look! We're all making rules up and it's fun!
Oh and the letter from the Palace has finally arrived (damn those slack owls).
You many now address me as Lord Insertnamehere.
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