chemicals!
I had a laugh today thanks to a friend who hoped that if he is ever in the hospital, he will be able to legally ask for frequent doses of (and lots of) otherwise controlled drugs!
I'm as different as can be from your typical fan of pharmaceuticals. I kinda think, as I have described here before, that an isolated chemical or compound of active ingredients, removed from let's say the whole plant source, has lost many of the beneficial potentiating/buffering ingredients of that plant.
I also think that way too many people involved in health care, (which should actually be called ill-care), are more interested in protecting and enlarging their professional powers, and try to denigrate or even make illegal other areas of expertise or knowledge; or try to bully people, through techno-babble and jargon, to believe that self-help and simple old-fashioned remedies are at best stupid and at worst dangerous!
I encountered just such attitudes today in doing research for my upcoming soap-making classes. I really feel I do have to comment on the contrast between the generosity and respect of handmade soapmakers and the snobby warnings of the soap/detergent manufacturing & marketing industry. Where the down-to-earth handmade soap community seems to respect the intelligence and care of anybody looking for information, safe handling practices, sources and recipes, the industry seems to assume you are 'just a kid' doing a homework assignment or a 'lowly' housewife/hobbiest looking for a way to make "pin money" and gives condescending warnings about bad recipes and dangerous soapmaking processes and disastrous results.
That attitude seems to appear mysteriously in way too many people who ascend to/climb to/win/are born to/are appointed to/are self-appointed to any status or position of power. I believe that understanding and wisdom are not the narrow domain of professionals or administrators or any other varietal of "elite" you prefer. This world is in serious trouble because too many people have swallowed that line. (eg #1 the industrial age, in its death throes, is destroying us, causing most of the diseases it claims to be able to cure; eg#2 George W. Bush dropping bombs on innocents in the name of democracy? going after terrorists?)
I'll refer again to Michael Moore, who in the introduction to one of his Clinical Herb Manuals, says:
Also read the great article "THIS IS ANARCHO-HERBALISM, Thoughts On Health and Healing For the Revolution", by Laurel Luddite, found from the same site above.
I'm as different as can be from your typical fan of pharmaceuticals. I kinda think, as I have described here before, that an isolated chemical or compound of active ingredients, removed from let's say the whole plant source, has lost many of the beneficial potentiating/buffering ingredients of that plant.
I also think that way too many people involved in health care, (which should actually be called ill-care), are more interested in protecting and enlarging their professional powers, and try to denigrate or even make illegal other areas of expertise or knowledge; or try to bully people, through techno-babble and jargon, to believe that self-help and simple old-fashioned remedies are at best stupid and at worst dangerous!
I encountered just such attitudes today in doing research for my upcoming soap-making classes. I really feel I do have to comment on the contrast between the generosity and respect of handmade soapmakers and the snobby warnings of the soap/detergent manufacturing & marketing industry. Where the down-to-earth handmade soap community seems to respect the intelligence and care of anybody looking for information, safe handling practices, sources and recipes, the industry seems to assume you are 'just a kid' doing a homework assignment or a 'lowly' housewife/hobbiest looking for a way to make "pin money" and gives condescending warnings about bad recipes and dangerous soapmaking processes and disastrous results.
That attitude seems to appear mysteriously in way too many people who ascend to/climb to/win/are born to/are appointed to/are self-appointed to any status or position of power. I believe that understanding and wisdom are not the narrow domain of professionals or administrators or any other varietal of "elite" you prefer. This world is in serious trouble because too many people have swallowed that line. (eg #1 the industrial age, in its death throes, is destroying us, causing most of the diseases it claims to be able to cure; eg#2 George W. Bush dropping bombs on innocents in the name of democracy? going after terrorists?)
I'll refer again to Michael Moore, who in the introduction to one of his Clinical Herb Manuals, says:
I have developed the libertarian attitude that permeated 19th and early 20th
century pharmacy: "Let them take what they want to...it's a Free Country.
If they don't know any better, let's thin the herd!". We, however, have a
generation or two of people that EXPECT a warning label on everything, and that
have come to doubt common sense.
Also read the great article "THIS IS ANARCHO-HERBALISM, Thoughts On Health and Healing For the Revolution", by Laurel Luddite, found from the same site above.
posted by Kati at 7:14 p.m.
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