File spoon-archives/deleuze-guattari.archive/deleuze-guattari_1998/deleuze-guattari.9812, message 117


From: f1221-AT-cc.nagasaki-u.ac.jp
Date: Thu, 10 Dec 1998 12:23:52 +0900
Subject: Re: Deleuze and redemption..flowers of flight


At 8:24 PM 98.12.9, Daniel Haines wrote:

[...]

> and I wasn't suggesting that there was no scientific documentation, only
> that criticisms of homeopathy didn't necessarily follow from such
> research, but rather from what people with particular ideas about "how
> things work" make of such research...

But that is not the case, at least I cannot say so from my experience. When I
studied medicine (in Germany), homeopathy classes/courses/lectures were
offered and -though not obligatory- attended by about 50% of the students.
Also, (again in Germany, I cannot say how this is in America) many doctors
practise allopathy AND homeopathy and see no contradiction there. Homeopathy
is not criticized by >people with particular ideas< (I shall assume the medical
profession ?), because they are a priori against it, but because of two
reasons :

- many (but not all) studies on homeopathy are methodically flawed and
- there is no serious disease where a homeopathic therapy has ever been proven
to be more effective than waiting and doing nothing.

> [...] also, as on the one hand,there are plenty of substances that have been
> around much longer than 200 years that are rejected out of prejudice for
> medical use - despite having been proved conclusively to be effective -

For example ?

> and, on the othe hand, most of the substances used by medical
> science/pharmaceutical companies have been in medical use for rather
> less than 200 years - on what exactly are you basing the idea that 200
> years is "long enough to have proven what it is worth"?

Well, during the last 200 years
surgery under anestesia,
vaccination,
antibiotics,
minimally invasive surgery,
transplantation,
beta blockers,
X-ray,
to name a few -the list is hardly exhaustive- have been introduced into
medicine from various fields of expertise. But none of them from homeopathy.

Maybe the assumption at its foundation, the >similia similibus curentur<,
is no particularly fertile hypothesis. Medicine probably just is not that
simple.

[...]

And finally, as I recently turned from medicine to economy, I want to make
a comparison that may seem far-fetched: For similar reasons, I believe that
Keynesianism is much more effective than going by the Monetarist rule.
Economy probably is not that simple either.


sY
-Yamazaki



   

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