While I love my relatives to bits and I know they are trying to help, I could do without the magic cures. Worst thing is I don't know how to tell them it is all a crock without offending them particularly since they got the information from a doctor that used these doohickies to cure her own FM. While I don't doubt her feeling better I have serious doubts about the scientific basis of the patches she used. There is a list of papers on the website but they are all self published, i.e. not peer reviewed, and some don't look like they were published at all just formatted in the style of science papers. To top it off, the trials are not double blind with a control group receiving a placebo, which is the gold standard. The thing is I know the doctor is a nice person but there is no way to tell if the patches actually did something, the doc had a placebo reaction to them or it was the doc's time to get better. But crap, companies passing on pseudoscience to sick people just frosts my onions.
According to this web site if I just spend $300 I can get rid of all that pesky electromagnetic radiation (EMF) that is making me sick. Now, prior to getting sick I played with lasers, used optical modeling software and generally know more about EMF fields than the average human walking this planet. When some company declares that if you plug their $300 widget into the wall to negate all that EMF floating around trust me it is a crock. Tidbit from physics class: all light even that from the sun is EMF even light from a candle so if their little widget worked your house would turn into a blackhole and none of your appliances would work. Of course they don't actually explain the circuitry or the science behind why it works, but you will have a magic cure.
They also claim it is all the pesky wireless devices that we have in the home are the culprits while ignoring the fact that the sunshine streaming in through the window has a stronger field than your phone. Don't believe me? Just wait until the solar flares start up again over the next few years. I'm betting it is going to wreck havoc on all wireless devices. I do understand being concerned if I had a cell phone stuck to my ear all day. There have been some valid studies done on brain tumors vs cellphone use but I think it has been well over two weeks since the last time I even turned my cell phone on and I haven't spoken on one since loosing my Mom at the airport last month. I'm not a chatty Kathy and I'm not particularly fond of cellphones in general so I don't think wireless EMF has made me sick. I also like the claim that it was exposure to wireless during my childhood that made me sick as an adult. Um, let me think I was born in 1962, yup they had AM radios and wireless telegraph back then. I grew up on Cape Cod back when it was fairly bucolic and phones still had cords attached. We did have FM radios by then but computers were still the size of a small house. What a crock!
Stuff like this makes me so angry. It is a company taking advantage of people with very little science background who are desperate and very very sick. It just makes my blood boil. I wish these guys would put this much effort and money into solving the real problem of XMRV.
"A fool and his money are soon parted." -Thomas Tusser
"Let the buyer beware." -Latin Proverb
http://www.quackwatch.com/
being bedbound or housebound is no picnic - but being preyed on by heartless money grubbers is the end - especially when the money is so hard to come by. thanks for adding your howl to the unheard chorus of sane people living in an insane world, where doctors tell you you're not sick and family tells you to "suck it up"
ReplyDeleteThis seems to be a subject floating around the blogosphere at the moment. I agree. I get tired of these 'crock' products.
ReplyDeleteHow to tell the relatives. I tried with my dad and his discovery of "Fatigued to Fantastic" when I informed him I tried it and it failed me horrible. Nasty product. Yuck. Anyway, his response was, "Don't you want to get well?"
I realized HE really wants to see me well and didn't mean that the way it came out. He just doesn't understand why I don't recover after all this time. Especially since I look so well.
So now, I just say no thank you. That product will interfere with the current program I am on and leave it at that!
I know my relatives want me to get better as badly as I want to that is what makes it hard to tell them the 'cure' they are offering is a crock. They mean well. I like the idea of telling them that it would interfear with your current program.
ReplyDeleteAll of the junk like this floating out there makes me want to vomit! And of course whenever someone sees something of the sort, I always get some type of email or message letting me know that there is now a "cure" that I should try! Let's just concentrate on the fact that they care about us, what do you say and ignore the rubbish? :)
ReplyDelete