At least one scientist says that the “Activator Method” is bunk.

http://www.chirobase.org/06DD/activator.html

Luke 11:46 And he said, Woe unto you also, ye lawyers! for ye lade men with burdens grievous to be borne, and ye yourselves touch not the burdens with one of your fingers.

Luke 11:47 Woe unto you! for ye build the sepulchres of the prophets, and your fathers killed them.

“ccpetersen : The only “magic” cure for excess weight I know of is,,,starvation,,,works like a champ,,,until the famine ends,,,”

Amputation? The more weight you want to lose the more body parts you lop off? Kinda drastic cure though!

“Kill all the lawyers!”

A funny list of weird and sometimes plain dumb cases – mostly anyway.

OTOH I can’t help wishing that legal action had prevented, say the A-Bomb ever coming into existence … to name one example.

Seems sometimes science’s job is to come up with more and more horrible ways of killing more people ..

(Eg. depleted uranmium shells, landmines, aerial bombardment, specialised stronger-sharper swords, seige towers, napalm, H-Bombs, neutron bombs, trebuchets, grenades, ad nauseam ..)

While the law & politics is there to protect us from these scientific inventions. (Eg. SALT treaty, anti-landmine treaty, United Nations -hasn’t that worked well – not!, anti-nuclear weapons treaty,anti-biological & chemical weapons treaty, ad nauseam ..)

Moreover, if something threatens to destroy the *entire* planet like say hypothetically the LHC or maybe one of its successor atom-smashers (Yeah I know we keep hearing that it won’t & yes, odds are 99.999 % likely that it won’t too – but some folks still fear it will ..) then why should legal action to prevent it be restricted to only one nation?

If some mad experiment thingy (not specifically saying the LHC just in general) hypothetically threatens to kill everyone on Earth .. Then I reckon anyone, anywhere – in fact *every*body , *everywhere*, ought tobe able to take whatever action is needed (pref. non-violent but) incl. legal action to stop the mad experiment.

Coz Planet Earth is kinda in *all* our jurisdictions!

Yes, science is fantastic and, yes, we all benefit from it – but I would also have to say it is a double-edged sword witha downside too and needs careful handling as well.

So while these cases are dumb examples of suing science & worth laughing at – legal action against certain types of science is perhaps justifiable under some circumstances.

I do know that there’s NO magic bullet for weight loss, just as there is no royal road to geometry…

ccpetersen: The only “magic” cure for excess weight I know of is,,,starvation,,,works like a champ,,,until the famine ends,,,

Until we develop the knowledge and techniques to precisly modulate hormonal and neurological interactions, I guess we’re stuck with doing things the old fashioned way, you know, the way evolution impelled us,,,by exercising.

Dad gummed obnoxious evolution,,,it obviously never heard of happy couch potatoes.

Gary 7

I’m not going to get into the whole “what doctors do and don’t know” about dieting thing here; that wasn’t where I was going with that discussion — and I agree that fitness is a moving target for a definition these days. I was more into the whole “think before you believe the outrageous claims made by people who want to sell you diet stuff” thing.

Part of being a rational and skeptical thinker also means that you get to be rational and skeptical about things that cost you money…

oh and @ James Panozzi:
“outright innuendo”? do you even know what those two words mean, or do you just like oxymorons?

I’m just going to assume that expression means something different in your neighborhood than it means in mine….

HAving had to deal with the usual mediocre medical practitioner advising me to “loose weight”(w/out specifying what KIND of weight and never doing a floatation determination of actual body mass index)
I think I can fairly say they’re as confused as the rest of us about why some folks bodies stubbornly refuse to toe the line. Recent research seems to be showing a much higher survival correlation with physical conditioning that with total body fat levels,ie, we can be fat, just as long as we can also DO STUFF, like walk a few miles, or play 52 pick up with trucks,,,

Gary 7

Bah! Humbug!!!

Knurl:
I don’t know about your particular problem, but after slinging a rock across the lake, I had a rotator cup problem in my right shoulder that went on for 2.5 years. No amount of PT could heal it,,,then I started taking testosterone supplements and within less than a month the pain had diminished 90%. W/in another month it was completely healed. Note that a deficiency of systemic androgens
slows healing, especially of tendons and ligaments. Injuries to tendons, etc, typically take longer to heal than a broken bone, because their blood supply is much more limited.
How unfortunate that the nasty medical industry requires a prescription for these drugs,,,(snark),,,

It would be so much easier if we could just blow $ 25.00 for a magical healer to lay their mysterious hands upon us,,,,

,,,what? It doesn’t work? Oh well, never mind,,,

Gary 7

So, a clearly thinking person of ANY weight should deconstruct this message as follows:

“Overweight? click on this ad to learn about stuff that will help you lose an outrageously high (and unhealthy) amount of wseight in a very short period of time. Why? It has been endorsed by major tv news organizations and a cook. ”

All this before you can even click on the ad that will you to a blog that is purportedly written by a woman who claims to have tested many diet products and can now act as an expert on them for you.

So, I looked over her pages and she’s shilling for a number of products and procedures that are questionable at best and downright dangerous at worst, and claims to have lost an average of 4.2 pounds a week using these things.

This is a pretty high rate of loss to achieve (unless you’re ill (or starving yourself)) — and most reputable diets do NOT guarantee that you’ll maintain that sort of loss over the long term, even coupled with exercise. So, right off the bat, I’m skeptical — mostly because fad weight loss diets and pill and procedure fads are sort of a sore point with me (having seen way too many people fail on them).

So, then I turn my attention to how these are noted to have been “seen on CBS, ABC, and Rachel Ray.” I don’t think I need to comment much on what passes for “in depth journalism” these days, but I can only imagine what the “news” coverage was on whatever it is this woman’s selling.

As for an endorsement on Rachel Ray: if you don’t watch her, her show is often responsible for some of the most fat-laden recipes I’ve ever seen. Some of her recipes are quite good, but others are just heart attack on a plate. I didn’t find where on her show or web page this woman’s blog and diet advise were mentioned… but if it’s there, it does seem to be a sort of two-headed hydra of a message: eat this fatty stuff and then do what this woman says to lose all the fat from the weight you’ll gain.

Yea, I know that’s a lot of thinking to do early in the morning, and as an overweight person myself, I can certainly understand the allure of such mixed-up messaging… all the more reason to deconstruct the messages one is “fed” about diet, weight loss, official “news” organizations, and people making a buck off of other people’s concerns.

Goldacre regularly spouts, in my opinion, misinformation, distortions, omitted facts and outright inuendo against Homeopathy. For a good refutation of some of his comments, search for the blog of “laughingmysocksoff”.

There is indeed plenty of bad science out there but using that fact to block valid research by real scientists in a field of medicine which MIGHT prove to threaten the profits of big pharma, that is just plain bad journalism.

Last time I looked, the experiments of M. Ennis demonstrating biological activity stimulated by high dilution solutions with no atoms left of the stimulant were still being verified by St. Laudy, and the “Amazing” Randi had become “ill” a while ago and was unavailable to continue negotiations with Dr. Vithoulkas, a world famous Homeopath who was left holding the bag after spending months setting up
a challenge experiment at an Athens hospital.

Well it is as far as I am concerned (my name is supplied). Complete and utter destruction by fire from one of a vast array of unknowns not factored into the equations. Scientists are arrogant and people are stupid, too stupid to recognize a group of insane people are hell bent on destroying their world.

… & the Apollo 8 athiest one by that crazy athiest lady (yeah, sadly we[‘ve got ‘em too) who tried to sue the Apollo 8 astronauts – Jim Lovell, Borman & Anders for reading from the book of ‘Genesis’ claiming it violated church-state division ..

Okay I’d have rather they read something else but sheesh of all the non-issues to fight ..

Yeah I know that’s not strictly science but space exploration which is “rocket science” which is ..close enough in my book.

Those folks (along with the Intelligent Designers) are my current favorite idiots.

Anyway, the woman whose child got measles gave it to 11 other kids plus a lot of other children were quarantined for three weeks and that in turn gave their parents fits trying to figure out how to manage work schedules, etc.

Of course, the anti-vaxxers reign undeterred by the facts of science or the wisdom of doctors. THEY know best. But when their kid gets the measles, they of course take them to a hospital, which had to bend over backwards to accommodate a child with such a virulent disease. I hope they charged those parents blind and I hope that their insurance company gave them a go-to-hell on their claim. If they are so smart and know more than anyone else, they should be willing to take care of that too.

Wonder what they will say when one of their precious snowflakes actually dies from a disease they refused to have them immunized for?