There was a story on alternative/complementary/integral medicine on the 7:30 Report last night that entered into the vexed debate about the status and validity of complementary medicine, and how it should be treated by the government with respect to funding and regulation. It was prompted by a UK case in which a pop-science journalist, Simon Singh, had been sued by the British Chiropractic Association for defamation after he alleged that the BCA “happily promotes bogus treatments.”
Western science in various fields has been wrought by paradigm shift after paradigm shift incessantly over the past 100 years. Among these are the painful revocation of the Cartesian mind-body split and the overthrow of Newtonian mechanics as the ultimate truth in physics.
Candace Pert’s Molecules of Emotion and Marcia Angell’s The Truth About the Drug Companies are two excellent books including accounts of how 20th and 21st century “science” has been distorted, retarded and even falsified by political, personal and economic imperatives. Neither Pert nor Angell are outsiders. Pert should have won the Nobel Prize for her discovery of the opiate receptor and Angell is former editor-in-chief of The New England Journal of Medicine.
Singh sticks to the “if it aint documented in peer-reviewed publications then it aint true” line. It’s discouraging that people purporting to be media between “hard science” and public awareness are trying to stifle the still-nascent progress in some Western scientific circles to document the relationship between the mind (which materialists consider a mere epiphenomenon of brain circuitry) and the body. “Science” wasn’t invented in the 17th or 20th centuries - 5000 years of empiricism is the basis of Ayurvedic medicine. Just because something hasn’t been published in a 20th century peer-reviewed journal doesn’t mean it isn’t true. People like John Dwyer from UNSW should understand this.
Singh has been defeated in a lower court ruling but is appealing with the support of this list of public identities.
Defamation laws in general are a hindrance to free speech and should be dispensed with. It seems odd that a scientific debate will be decided by a court. This puts into relief the situation that there is no Science God that we can defer to. If it is the Establishment then we’d all still think the Sun revolved around the Earth. Almost all worthy revolutions in science have come from people with deep spiritual beliefs and from people most definitely dismissed initially by the Establishment. This fact puts favourable light on the fact that legal cases arising from “science” are decided by 12 common folk on a jury. Common folk with common sense, or at least you’d hope.
Pert says “The argument that [alternative therapies] are untested , and therefore can’t be taken seriously, is not valid. So much of mainstream medicine itself is totally unproven - yet we do it anyway.” She also points out that understanding the exact mechanism behind a given medicinal treatment isn’t a prerequisite for its use.
So how to deal with medicinal treatments outside the purview of materialist science? There is an obvious danger of quack treatments. Perhaps each branch of complementary medicine should establish a self-regulating guild. Operators outside of each guild should still be allowed to practice but with patients being informed that they are not endorsed by the guild. Banning such operators would be another example of deferring to authority, which may be tainted by internal politics, etc. But in no circumstances should a governmental authority be permitted to stop people from obtaining the effective - or ineffective - treatments they desire.
One remaining issue would be how to deal with parents of children who die after receiving alternative but not mainstream medical treatment. Again, a vexed issue.
From personal experience evaluating different forms of yoga, I have realised that I need to be on my toes, research and pay attention to my personal experiences. There are many branches of yoga with many gurus - how do you know that you’re not entering a school devised by someone with subconscious megalomaniac tendencies? And that is the lesson for everyone: trust your own intuition.
15 July 2009
8 July 2009
Fair Pay Commission Minimum Wage Freeze
The Fair Pay Commission’s decision to freeze the minimum wage for the first time since 1982 is economically irresponsible and morally wrong.
First, the CPI went up only 0.1% in the March quarter, leaving inflation low and falling from a 12 month rate of 2.5% to the end of this quarter. There is no great need for wage restraint.
Second, as pointed out in this article, the decision will run counter to the fiscally expansionary stance of the Federal Government, eating up the latest cash bonus. People at the lower end of the income scale spend rather than squirrel (not through irresponsibility but through necessity) and money diverted to them presents a larger stimulus to the economy than money diverted to, eg, people who derive their income from profit. As Peter Kriesler says in the Brisbane Times article, “…one [person]'s pay increase increases the likelihood of someone else getting a job” and low income earners are more likely to spend locally.
Third, the proportion of total outlays that businesses spend on low income wages is probably overstated. I have no evidence for this, just a strong hunch - can’t be bothered researching. And keeping workers happy with a decent pay packet is almost always a cost-benefit analysis winner.
Fourth, the incentive for people on welfare to go back to work has been diminished. This is especially the case with the pension due to increase by over $30 per week in September.
Now a moral issue. Successive Australian governments have ideologically pushed for income and economic growth through upskilling of the workforce while simultaneously maintaining very high levels of immigration. Sometimes the developed world can outsource low paid jobs to the Third World such as in the call centre industry. Sometimes the rich cannot outsource to the Third World. Australia doesn’t have a ready supply of millions of illegal immigrants such as that which helps power the US agricultural industry. Someone needs to clean our toilets. We should have some respect and maintain decent income levels, especially in global cities with exorbitant rents such as Sydney.
John Howard‘s Ian Harper and his Fair Pay Commission will be happily farewelled by many Australians.
First, the CPI went up only 0.1% in the March quarter, leaving inflation low and falling from a 12 month rate of 2.5% to the end of this quarter. There is no great need for wage restraint.
Second, as pointed out in this article, the decision will run counter to the fiscally expansionary stance of the Federal Government, eating up the latest cash bonus. People at the lower end of the income scale spend rather than squirrel (not through irresponsibility but through necessity) and money diverted to them presents a larger stimulus to the economy than money diverted to, eg, people who derive their income from profit. As Peter Kriesler says in the Brisbane Times article, “…one [person]'s pay increase increases the likelihood of someone else getting a job” and low income earners are more likely to spend locally.
Third, the proportion of total outlays that businesses spend on low income wages is probably overstated. I have no evidence for this, just a strong hunch - can’t be bothered researching. And keeping workers happy with a decent pay packet is almost always a cost-benefit analysis winner.
Fourth, the incentive for people on welfare to go back to work has been diminished. This is especially the case with the pension due to increase by over $30 per week in September.
Now a moral issue. Successive Australian governments have ideologically pushed for income and economic growth through upskilling of the workforce while simultaneously maintaining very high levels of immigration. Sometimes the developed world can outsource low paid jobs to the Third World such as in the call centre industry. Sometimes the rich cannot outsource to the Third World. Australia doesn’t have a ready supply of millions of illegal immigrants such as that which helps power the US agricultural industry. Someone needs to clean our toilets. We should have some respect and maintain decent income levels, especially in global cities with exorbitant rents such as Sydney.
John Howard‘s Ian Harper and his Fair Pay Commission will be happily farewelled by many Australians.
1 July 2009
Moron of the Day: Jessica Irvine
Jessica Irvine has written little diatribes that have irked me for some time with her lack of economic literacy and simultaneous employment at one of the most venerable media institutions in the country (the SMH).
Here she conflates the class of underemployed, possibly mentally ill pensioners with the “non-lodger… [people] who couldn’t be bothered” and with “tax cheats looking to avoid liabilities”. I’ve explained before why a lot of the 200,000 people, including myself, have missed out on the $900 tax refund. Irvine should pull herself out of her cloistered inner-city mindset and take a look at reality. Further infractions on her part will possibly be postered here if not worthy of separate blog posts. And her infractions have been building up for a while. Fairfax should spend some money on someone who actually understands economics.
Here she conflates the class of underemployed, possibly mentally ill pensioners with the “non-lodger… [people] who couldn’t be bothered” and with “tax cheats looking to avoid liabilities”. I’ve explained before why a lot of the 200,000 people, including myself, have missed out on the $900 tax refund. Irvine should pull herself out of her cloistered inner-city mindset and take a look at reality. Further infractions on her part will possibly be postered here if not worthy of separate blog posts. And her infractions have been building up for a while. Fairfax should spend some money on someone who actually understands economics.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
