(August 17, 2017 at 10:46 am)Clueless Morgan Wrote: The other day I posted the article below:
Alternative medicine kills cancer patients
https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/alterna...-patients/
With the comment of "Science-based, evidence-based medicine for me, thanks!"
The same day, a girl I've known my whole educational life (we went to every school together K-12) posted this:
"I didn't want to intervene but my mom was diagnosed with cll leukemia about three years ago and she did some research. Please look into seeing Dr. Charmin in Springfield he's a cutting edge doctor with a new treatment called goziva. He tells his patients to avoid chemo at all costs because it often causes the cancer to come back worse years later after remission. Please look into getting this treatment if possible."
[Note that I did google this doctor to check how quacking he was and she spelled his name wrong]
To this, I responded:
"I appreciate that you're heart is in the right place and I'm very sorry to hear about your mom's diagnosis, but I trust the research out of OHSU way more than I trust the "research" of a single cancer patient, no matter how miraculous they claim the cure they found is.
I am 100,000,000,000,000% going to continue with my chemotherapy; It works. No one can give me certainty that I won't ever get cancer again after I beat this, but since it's my life that's on the life, I'll go where the best odds are."
She responded:
"I understand and respect your choice. I meant no offense and I hope you heal soon. It sounds like you have a great support team of family and friends!"
The thing is, though, I am 100% not convinced that she "understands and respects" my choice because she decided to advocate for me stopping chemotherapy and doing some quack treatment after I posted an article about how "alternative" medicine kills cancer patients and explicitly stated that I'm going the evidence-based route for treatment.
So the question is:
Do I unfriend her now and ignore her response?
OR
Do I respond that I think she's disrespecting my choices and then unfriend her?
PS I opened facebook this morning with the intention of simply unfriending her until I saw her response.
A couple of other options, actually, would probably be better.
You could point out how rampant quackery is and how easily people in desperate situations are preyed upon by the unscrupulous who are looking to turn a profit on others' pain, misery, and deaths. If this experimental treatment is affordable and accessible to many, that's proof it doesn't work, it just means the charlatans behind it are counting on lots of business that won't live long enough to come after them and make a decent profit on volume, not large returns from a smaller number of consumers.
You could also ask them a sincere question. How would they feel if they were solely responsible for directing someone to such a snake oil salesman, and that person thanked them for being the primary influence on them going that route so that there is no doubt that they were chiefly involved, and then that person dying because it didn't work? They would literally have committed murder or manslaughter at least. Could they live with themselves for doing something like that, best intentions in the world or not?
Religions were invented to impress and dupe illiterate, superstitious stone-age peasants. So in this modern, enlightened age of information, what's your excuse? Or are you saying with all your advantages, you were still tricked as easily as those early humans?
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There is no better way to convey the least amount of information in the greatest amount of words than to try explaining your religious views.
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There is no better way to convey the least amount of information in the greatest amount of words than to try explaining your religious views.