Hiccups Guy's Remarkable Story Helps fight "Mickey Mouse" Alternative Medicine
- That remarkable documentary about Chris Sands the guy who has had chronic hiccups for 2.5 years was very good for reason, science and the skeptic movement. It could have been terrible as after trying everything the final thing was a tenacious Traditional Chinese medicine practitioner from Japan. Since there is always a distinct possibility of "time" or some unseen element curing a condition if it had happened at the same time all the credit would have gone to him and it would have been a massive boost to the "alternative medicine" industry and encouraged others to go down this dangerous path. As it was nothing he tried worked and Chris declined to take his final solution of having a 6 inch needle pushed into his diaphragm as there was a high risk of it passing through his heart (surely such dangerous practices by overseas doctors are illegal ?).
- Fortunately for him a Japanese TV programme threw up another lifeline they flew him to Japan to seek other solutions and the first thing was a visit a conventional medicine doctor who is an expert on chronic hiccups. He knows that chronic hiccups is associated with brain tumours so he ordered an MRI. Sure enough the next day he phoned to say he'd detected a 12mm tumour at the base of the cortex.
- 2.5 years ago The NHS let him down - The strange thing for Chris was that 2.5 years ago after only 4 days of hiccups Chris had looked it on the internet and also found that chronic hiccups is associated with brain tumours, but when he told his doctors they'd appeared not to take this too seriously they'd first given him heartburn medicine and then eventually gave a CT scan which didn't detect a tumour. The Japanese expert explained that MRI is a much better tool for this job.
- Chris elected to have surgery in Sheffield. the surgeon didn't want to damage the cortex so cut the tumour away to the last 3mm. The operation was a success. After a week or so the hiccups came back due to the swelling as the scarring around tumour healed, but it seemed after 6 weeks he has made an almost 100% recovery.
-The moral is stick with modern medicine, but go back and get a second opinion if necessary.
- (BBC1 Tuesday 12th January),
news story :
iplayer prog
| Spinoza Lectures on Radio 3
- all religions are politically motivated delusions : Spinoza
- He's saying that they are created used by the political elite for their own means
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proof Our Local Newspaper Makes News Up.
- We have a local evening paper, but 10 years ago they started to print it in another town so instead of it being upto the minute they started to prepare it overnight and truck it over for the morning.
- Sunday morning cos the winds came up the snow clouds coming from the Artic in the Nort East blew straight over out area the temperature rose above zero and the snow started to melt. In the afternoon it rained and the passing of traffic cleared snow from main roads.
- The local paper bought at lunchtime on Monday had the second headline
"No sign of End to the Big Freeze" , which was completely ridiculous cos by that time it was 36 hours after it ended. I can only think that the journalists don't work on Sunday so had prepared the story for Monday on saturday night. Actually most of the story was about stuff that had already happened, but they had certainly written the headline in anticipation . So to seem upto date they'd made it up. Actually it wouldn't surprise me with all the cost cutting, that half the journalism for our paper is being done in another town i.e. they write a generic story for all their regional newspapers then add local photos later. So that where the journalist works there probably is no thaw.
- Tuesdays headline was "traffic chaos in the big thaw" : rubbish aswell of course.
- Tuesday the headline
Telegraph making news up
" Big Thaw causes transport chaos"
| Should Have Won A Nobel Prize but Didn't cos she was Jewish and a Woman|
- From BBC Radio4 Great Lives
- Lise Meitner was a woman who managed to become a physist and in the time of the Nazis worked in a program trying to make heavier elements out of uranium. Eventually some jealous nazi party member in her office grassed her to the authorities. She had to flee to Sweden. There she worked out that they were getting barium, because rather than adding to the atom they had split it. She explained that this process should also yield a lot of energy and if they could control the reaction they'd have a winner. - The Americans invited her to Los Alamos, but she didn't want to have anything to do with the atomic bomb. Later she emigrated to live in Cambridge.
- She should have won a Nobel Prize but didn't cos she was Jewish and a woman. Actually the Nobel prize is a bit ridiculous cos it can only be given to individuals so rather than give it to a team they usually give it to the head of the lab.
| Altered Perspective Day :60s Idea
- The BBC WS Forum 60s Idea was quite good this week
- "there should be a annual altered perspective day to help us see things from another point of view"
- Newspapers would print the weather maps upside down etc and focus on other places rather than home
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a Stew Green Opinion
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