The costs of medical conspiracy theories and baseless fear-mongering are immense and ghastly. Millions upon millions of people are hurt and killed because them every year. It is a veritable holocaust of ignorance. But it is a holocaust that is still happening, year after year, extinguishing countless of lives that could have been saved by good science, free markets, and sound policy.
Those that profit from “I know better than evidence-based science” (including Mr Williams), stand firmly on the shoulders of the work, words, and contexts of scientific institutions that have led the charge against our ignorance of disease and biology. Science and markets, and global health campaigns utilizing both, have helped eradicate smallpox, feed 7 billion people, and batter infectious disease to the edges of civilization.
Rich white folks live comfortably on the benefits of scientific and economic progress they do not understand–no one insists you comprehend the technology that moves your voice around the globe and daily saves your life in innumerable, unnoticed ways–but preying on the human desire for a dietary ‘miracle’, a ‘holy grail’ in a vegetable is reprehensible. It offers false hope, and potential avoidance of proven medical interventions in chronic disease. It may be harmless to wealthy, well folk, but its darker side is not to be ignored.
As Carl Sagan once wrote in The Demon-Haunted World, “I worry that … pseudoscience and superstition will seem year by year more tempting, the siren song of unreason more sonorous and attractive. …Habits of thought familiar from ages past reach for the controls. The candle flame gutters. Its little pool of light trembles. Darkness gathers. The demons begin to stir.”
That may seem overly dramatic, but please, PLEASE –get into the habit of demanding evidence before you hand over your money and your health. ‘Evidence’ is not now –nor ever has been “a spirit told me so”. Celery does NOT starve pathogens or viruses. Celery does not kill Streptococcus. Do you know why? Chemistry. Physiology. Microbiology. Pharmacology. Streptococci are gram-positive bacteria that can be killed by antibiotic mechanisms https://bit.ly/2W66ZND, or bacteriophage platform technologies https://bit.ly/2WbX1e0. I’ll let you guess whether celery contains either. But hey, if you want to believe that “undiscovered clustered salts” are a thing, and that some guy knows their precise mechanism because a spirit told him so and he sells a lot of books –you can confidently consider yourself a big part of the problem. Yes, I’m looking at you celebrity-endorsers.
Catherine Lockley is a University-qualified Nutritionist (B.Sc [Food & Nutrition]) and post-graduate Nutrition Researcher at The Australian National University (MScomm [Nutrition]).
