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Dr. Steven Griffiths Monthly Column, published in the Times & Transcript
Cyber warriors, to your stations
Tuesday October 21, 2008
IMPORTANT!!!
This is an article that should be sent to anyone important in your life.
FORWARD THIS TO SOMEONE YOU LOVE
Send this apocalyptically crucial message to at least 7 people or else, lo, it will come to pass, that a plague of mutant be-toqued crayfish, all named Nigel, will emerge from the Peticodiac and subsume your foundation. Trust me: it’s more painful than it sounds.
On the other hand, DO Send this to anyone you don’t like and tell them NOT to forward it. Ha! Then they’ll watch in horror as vengeful crustaceans dance on the ruins of the new kitchen extension (by the way the Virginia Creepers were a nice touch).
Oh alright the crayfish thing might be too harsh. Let’s go with this: if this message is not forwarded within the next moons, here ye that that your carriageway will be blocked by the wintry leavings of humongous cruel and yellow demons, waking your kids with the grinding of metallic fangs and the shaking of windows with their monstrous girth.
What do you mean: “Ooo, big surprise”?
OK, Seriously. After you’ve forwarded this message, never, ever, never-ever-ever forward something concerning miracle cures or alarmist conspiracies labelled “Forward this to someone you love.” or similar idiotic entreaty. Ever.
I guarantee that such communications will be as pertinent to medicine as Frenchy’s Toupee bin is to haute couture (I think that’s something to do with hair isn’t it? I don’t have any you see). Plus, forget about the claw waving Nigels. Opening that message will unleash a plague of electronic ticks engineered to suck your laptop dry faster than you can say “blue screen of death”.
My wife got one of these e-mails last month with supposed revelations from the eminent research institute, John Hopkins University. This is a place with the sort of reverence for me that in other lifestyles might result in a pilgrimage or the odd panicked stampede. The e-mail was obviously a hoax, but then not everyone knows my scriptures. But then this is what the sick bloated infidel relies upon.
The memo essentially lambasted cancer therapy as something to be avoided (see link below). Normally I find these “please forwards” completely harmless. Fatuous, moronic, corybantic; perhaps so monumentally cretinous I don’t give them more than a reflexive “Hmmppphhh!”. But this one went too far. If someone is on the verge of seeking consultation on therapy and, based on this drivel, is prevented from seeking counsel or preventing a loved one from seeking counsel, then it is my duty to use whatever forum I might have to say that the person responsible for this is criminally negligent. A scabrous bagbiter if you will.
Why do we get these? Who is sending them? Some people out there create vacuum. And not in that nice way you remember fondly in college. There are three categories of evil in such authors, driven by forces that frequently blend at the edges: belief in spiritual reward, money, and of course sheer sociopathic malice.
By and large though, the ones that send you fiddlestickery that identifies well established medical practices as the spawn of dragons and black helicopters are the ones trying to get you to buy some herbal remedy. One of those “don’t trust your Doctor Bub, But hey! Take these convincingly over priced capsules of beaverscrotum oil with a pinch of St Ignats wortleberry! Everything that was possibly ever wrong with you will float away like those annoying blue fluff flies you see this time of year” (what the heck are those things anyway?).
That’s not to say that some traditional medicine isn’t hot: Poindexters like me are applying the scientific method to glean the molecular secrets behind spices, soy, green tea and those funny leaves that Uncle Bob dries in the shed.
On a scale of one to 10 where 10 is pure evil, 5 is reality TV, and 1 is a Puffles the kitty, nutritionists are generally in the upper quartile. They sell hope and stoke fear generally under the guise of false credentials and certainly false science.
Oh the media will make a big fuss about poor old Marilyn Manson, but nutritional mumbo-jumbo with real damage potential circulates with gay abandon and impunity. Not that’s anything wrong with gay abandon. But there really should be an official office that clamps down on charlatans and intellectual terrorists. The e-mail that Vicky received had been out there for 18 months. It had been forwarded with different editorializing headers being added here and there among its massive pyramid of recipients: “Powerful Stuff!” was at the head of this push-along. People were obviously taking this literary dung at face value. I made some attempt to back fill, but I doubt that it got very far.
But if there’s a free expression sucker born every minute, now more than ever there’s an opportunity for cyber warriors to fight back. There’s nothing to stop me or anyone with considerably more grace to commit to a few minutes of fact checking and a “reply to all” with an “Oi! Quack! NO!”. (If it’s not immediately clear, I’m not scaring ducks out of Victoria Park but admonishing charlatans). But DO NOT FORWARD THAT E-MAIL unadorned. Find out the truth. It’s usually only a click or two away. “Reply to all” with a new header: something like “This is Total Bollocks!” or “ Snake Oil Alert!”. Tell people what you’ve found out. Use the power of the internet to shut these wankers down.
Is there anything you want to know about cancer? Two words. Cancer.gov and Cancer.ca. Type either of those into Google or your browser box and you’ve got all you need. Heck, write me if you have to. But trust me, if you think Oil of Beaverscrotum works, it will only because you think its going to work. More on the power of the placebo soon.
Note: Offer may be void in provinces and territories where Oil of Beaverscrotum is regarded as a controlled substance; Oil of Beaverscrotum may cause feelings of gullibility, naïveté and vertigo; Oil of Beaverscrotum may lead to irrational dam building and uncontrollable urges to bite furniture; Do not take Oil of Beaverscrotum while bleeding Maples due to risk of badger mauling (badgers are the mortal enemy of the beaver).
Stay Frosty
* That e-mail debunked
* Read about a valiant crusader Dr Ben Goldacre winning against a nutrionista.
Article as published:
http://timestranscript.canadaeast.com/news/article/454923
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