Excerpt ....At the Festival of Ideas a Cambridge scientist, author and broadcaster called Simon Singh said chiropractors probably didn’t cure back pain, or there was no clear evidence they did. But something called “the placebo effect” did, he hypothesised. It wasn’t a real cure, it was a perceived one. A bit like magic, really. Nobody knew how it worked.
And I got up and said, “I’ve been going to chiropractors for 37 years, and it seems to me they’ve cured not only back pain but energy loss, memory loss and, lately, impotence. And I need to know what the difference is between a real cure of impotence and a perceived cure of impotence”.
I also noted my dog Oompa was cured by the same chiropractor, Anton, of back pain and limping, and asked how a dog could suffer “a placebo effect”.
His response was to say he didn’t know much about chiropractic but that most homeopathic medicines were phony, according to his research, and he suspected chiropractors’ profits were based on a similar delusion.
I came away very angry at him and his kind. They have added immeasurably to needless human suffering on the planet, and needless animal suffering too.
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