science vs. lies & illusions

(1) Medicine
I went to the pharmacy today to get something for my eyes (hay fever). Now, we know for many decades that this is an autoimmunity, and we understand the majority of the underlying mechanisms.

Without going into the medical details here, the women offered me two choices. First, a drug which would do something against the hay fever, but I’d have to take it a couple of days regularly until it would work. She was correct there (if you’re interested in the details, google “anti-histamines”). The second choice she offered me, a compound I forgot the name of, worked, as she said, directly against the problems and would solve my issues within 10 minutes of taking it, and recommended me to take this over the first offer.

I inspected the package of the second choice, and found it to be a homeopathic drug (“antroposophic drug” it said on the package). I told her she should inform herself about the roots of antroposophy, about Rudolf Steiner and his famous work “The Philosophy of Freedom”, in which he tells people that after the death the soul wonders through the different planets in our solar system (there are also dwarves and elves in the book, high fantasy at its best!).

I also informed her that I would never come back to the pharmacy, because they had repeatedly (that was not the first time) offered me compounds that do not have any significant medical effect above placebo level, for money. I do not go to the pharmacy for high fantasy, I go there to solve a medical issue that decreases my quality of life. Offering me non-working compounds for money should in my opinion considered to be a crime.

Now you might say: Come on, aren’t you overreacting a little bit there? I think my reaction is important and the only way to change anything. This has happened repeatedly, not only in pharmacies. I have had plenty of doctors prescribing homeopathic “medicine” without informing me about that in the last 5-6 years, and before that I probably didn’t realize what they were doing. And I consider this to be a big issue, actually. How come people are actually making their living with selling non-functional medicine? This makes me frustrated, and the only way to change this is by showing these people the consequences for that behavior.
(If you have the desire at this point to start a discussion about the effectiveness of homeopathics, you have not read up with the scientific evidence that has been collected during the last 10 years. Please read the papers properly, change your opinion about homeopathics, and then come back in case you did.)

(2) Politics
A couple of days ago, elections were being held in the German county Sachsen-Anhalt. A day later, leading politicians of six parties came to a discussion on television. And after watching for about 15 minutes, I had to close the stream.

(a) First of all, some of the politicians were cold-bloodedly lying on purpose. Yes, we know that people do that, but sometimes it makes me very angry – probably more angry at people believing these lies than at the politicians themselves. If people would not swallow that so easily, politicians would have to change their behavior. And they were not lying about the weather – the discussion was about the incident in Japan, which is quite serious really.

(b) Secondly, people kept asking the wrong questions, and ignoring the important facts. In Germany it was decided a couple of years ago that we would stop the whole nuclear energy thing by 2020. And it is a fact that this can easily be done without worrying for energy shortage. It is a fact that this decision brought many jobs in the alternative energy sector, made Germany #1 export nation for alternative energy solutions, and also made it possible for scientists to have much more funding for alternative energy research. This is not up for discussion. These are facts. Now, this government not only took this decision back and prolonged nuclear energy in Germany (depending on the plant by up to 20 years), they lowered (exclamation mark) security standards for nuclear power plants. And after the incident in Japan happened, these guys stand in front of the camera and say “Japan changes everything”. Why does noone have the courage to tell these people on television that Japan doesn’t change anything? We knew all the risks before the incident. We know that the Japanese knew the risks before the incident. We know that the people who say today that “Japan changes everything” know today and knew back then that these risks existed. Why would it possibly change anything?

(c) The woman from the Green Party tried to make a very valid point twice, in an interval of about 5 minutes. Both times she wanted to get to her point, the three male conservative politicians simply started interrupting her so loudly that she could not get her point through to the viewers. When you close your eyes and say “LALALA”, that’s quite sad really, but it’s your choice. But when you close other people’s ears by yelling “LALALA” when someone has something to say, and you are an important politician on television, that’s such an incredibly poor behavior.

(d) We know for a fact that an important factor of the whole nuclear energy decision was made for lobbying reasons. We know for a fact that most people in the environment-committee of the government are lobbyists for the nuclear energy sector (google these people, they are not even bothering to try to hide it). We know for a fact that nuclear power plants produce gigantic amounts of waste we have no solutions of getting rid of (there are none at all), that the companies are making horrendous amounts of money with producing that nuclear waste, and that the state (!) is paying for the disposal. Everybody knows this. These are facts nobody can deny, but are never brought up in the discussions.
Sometimes I honestly would like to give the people the power to force a politician to answer questions properly. And if he wouldn’t answer them properly, the people would ask again. And this would go on until he would admit that he was lying just before, or admit that he is doing something for lobbying reasons. Noone sane with an intact memory can say today that they didn’t know the risks of nuclear energy, nor the risk of tsunamis.

(3) Conclusion
People talk about revolutions. I don’t like the ideas they talk about, solutions they offer. But you just have to realize that the system we live in is incredibly rotten, and any reasonably realistic appraisal of the situation comes to the conclusion that it is a systematically corrupt system that will be very hard to change.

I do think there is only one solution, and that is being reasonable. Applying reason to these problems. In a nutshell, that what science is all about. Using empirical evidence, and not make-belief as the foundation of decisions, and combine them with the principals of logic.

Organizations are exploiting the people for profit – and there are far more examples than nuclear power and homeopathics. We know that pharmaceutical companies are doing this for decades (if you’re interested, check on the big debate about anti-depressents that started 2006, showing that the majority of drugs do not have an effect above placebo level), just to give another example.

And that is why I am convinced that not going to the pharmacy which tried to sell me homeopathics is the right decision, and not an overreaction. And that is why I decided some years ago to stand up against other forms of un-reason, like other forms of esoteric beliefs and religion. Because it is not a matter of belief only – these systematical reason-errors have consequences, and they make our world a place less enjoyable to live in.