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From: christensen@apollo.uucp (Wendy Christensen)
Newsgroups: net.med
Subject: Arthritis: bunkum vs. reality
Message-ID: <273f14ef.95c@apollo.uucp>
Date: Thu, 20-Jun-85 14:33:47 EDT
Article-I.D.: apollo.273f14ef.95c
Posted: Thu Jun 20 14:33:47 1985
Date-Received: Sat, 22-Jun-85 23:49:52 EDT
Organization: Apollo Computer, Chelmsford, Mass.
Lines: 60

from E. Michael Smith:
> ...Is there an arthritis specialist on the net who
> can take the time to read The Arthritics Cookbook and comment?

and from Tom Stanions:
> Funny, in the real life instances I have seen of people being cured using
> only nutritional (and the obvious mental changes required to use natural
> methods) the cases that are most successful are those involving heart and
> circulatory problems, with arthritis a close second.  And let us not forget
> "The Anatomy of an Illness", in which Norman Cousins shows us how attitude
> helped in his disease...
> Please stop grabbing at straws to try and defend modern medicine.

I am not an "arthritis specialist" per se. However, I have lived with 
arthritis for almost twenty years now, and I am certainly qualified to
speak to these issues.

All this "nutritional" hoohah works just fine IF THERE'S NOTHING WRONG WITH
YOU TO BEGIN WITH. I have had to put up with an awful lot of people 
recommending the most insane and inane "cures." Some of these people were
well-meaning, but most took the attitude that if I didn't spend all of my
time chasing various quack cures around the country (and the world) then 
it was my own damn fault that I suffered. (You know, "My aunt had a friend
who went to Florida for the snake venom, and she was cured... I knew someone
who took took cod liver oil and axle grease and her "arthritis" disappeared,
the DMSO magic paint thinner craze, etc., ad nauseam.)

Those of us who are really afflicted (come over and see my x-rays some time),
and don't just have a few vague and random complaints and a large capacity
for self-delusion, know that for arthritis, there is nothing like the good
old pharmacy. I have two choices: 
  1) Take a relatively large amount of "unnatural" drugs, and be a useful,
     working, taxpaying, productive, active person.
  2) Take no drugs, waste all my time (and my or, more likely, someone else's,
     money) chasing naturopaths, quacks, snake-venom vendors, and other
     such riffraff, and be a totally unproductive (and very sore) basket case,
     dependent on government handouts and a burden to my familiy. 

And don't get me started on Norman Cousins. Although he had a few good 
common-sense suggestions for standing up for your rights in a hospital, any
good he did with that $%^$%#^% book was more than overshadowed by the 
innacuracies, misinformation, and just plain bunk in the book. For example
he did not (I repeat NOT) have ankylosing spondylitis; I suspect he thumbed
through a medical dictionary and found the name of a disease at once so obscure
and terrible-sounding (yet conveniently non-fatal) that he figured no one
would call his bluff. I can't tell you how many times people have accused
me of WANTING to suffer with my anklyosing spondilitis because I refused to
take massive doses of vitamin C or because I don't laugh enough. (And BTW,
Norman, not all of us can afford to live in a hotel suite for several months
spend our days watching old "Candid Camera" clips, and take leisurely month-
long vacations at the beach. Some of us actually WORK for a living.)

As for "grabbing at straws" to defend modern medicine: I have probably walked
out on more doctors than most people will see in a lifetime. It is the 
deplorable attitude of many doctors, NOT modern medicine itself, that 
properly deserves censure. Both I and my titanium hips are quite happy with
modern medical technology.

w. christensen
Apollo Computer (standard comprehensive disclaimer)