Stephanie Wrote:
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> I can understand you're reasoning based on your
> own experience with your father but for me to have
> hope and belief that there will be something that
> corrects my illness "just around the corner" is
> not a false hope.
You have misunderstood me. I am not commenting on your hope. I am commenting on the news media which promotes false hope. False, in the sense that many medical miracles they report on will never come to be. Many will never be more than pipe dreams. Some may pan out, but not for years, and even then, they may carry risks we don't know yet. Americans are being sold a dream, a view of the future marketed by devotees of scientism. Those devotees are praying on the fears of many.
You forget, I have two friends
> who have already received stem cell transplants
> and are, to this day, disease free. In my mind,
> it is only a matter of time that such treatments
> become more widely available for myself as well as
> other autoimmune disease patients that don't fit
> the current criteria for stem cell transplant.
> Science may not have been able to save your father
> along with billions of others over time but that
> does not mean that there still isn't the distinct
> possibility that it will.
Again, you miss my point. I don't fault science for failing to save my father; I fault the news media, which is still doing today exactly what it did as he lay dying 25 years ago -- holding out unrealistic "cures" to the desperate as if they were real possibilities, real in the sense that a viewer could realistically expect to be offered the treatment at a doctor's office.
I have had friends
> that have died from AIDS because the treatments
> weren't that great. I have a friend that is still
> alive with AIDS because new treatments have been
> found. Science does benefit us.
I have no problem with science at all. I have a huge problem with scientism, as I've said repeatedly on this board. If you are not clear on the difference, check the article on Scientism on CSICOP's site. And I have an even bigger problem with the infotainment industry, aka the news media...
Another point is that effective treatments and cures are not within the jurisdiction of science; they are controlled by money, politics, and big business. It's a fact that many people in the world today die as children of treatable diseases and health conditions because they live in poverty. Science will never save them; only human compassion can.