quackery

I am fairly open minded, or at least I like to think so. I mean, I live in British Columbia for god's sake. Even if I appear fairly lame straight here, that still means I'm ridiculously liberal in the rest of the country - dare I say, the continent.

I have a chiropractor, I love the meditations at the end of my yoga classes, my husband has a naturopath, our doctor recommends natural supplements, and our dog once accidentally got stoned off our houseguest's therapeutic baking.

But, when my sister enlightens me to the fact that her massage therapist attributed my sister's bladder infection to her cold taking hold in the kidneys as the result of using over the counter cold medication, well, my stodgy old science degree rears its ugly head and I have to respond.

1. Cold medication moderates symptoms and does not attack the virus, nor drive it into other organs in the body. damn, man, the Sudafed's onto us! we gotta give it the slip...let's hit the nephrons - we can lay low there for a while and then we can take the first flight out of the bladder when he's not looking...
2. Colds are caused by viruses. Her bladder infection was by far most likely caused by bacteria - especially considering it cleared up when she was taking antibiotics.
3. My mother's medical-journal-serious assertion that 'in the old days' a urinary tract infection was called a cold in the bladder does not confer an advanced degree in microbiology to the local massage parlour girl. And finally,
4. Mr.Q went to see our doctor today with a complaint of either the early beginnings of a bladder infection or prostatitis. He returned with a diagnosis of neither a cold in the bladder nor a flu in the prostate - despite being in the same house as two flu-ridden inhabitants! Surely, under such conditions, a flu in his prostate is imminent!
   

Gah. Seriously. I can't disprove auras or healing touch or even ionic foot baths, [though my skepticism of the latter is a little more pronounced] so I leave a tiny little bit of me open to the thought that there might be a smallish something to them. But, please, for the love of god, do not come at me with blood letting, phrenology and theories on how viruses hide from anithistamines and ask me to take it as, not only fact, but proof of how modern medicine is a mockery of all that ails us.