[conspire] 45's treatment oddities and why men are dying at much higher rates

[Nick Moffitt]

On 06Oct2020 02:18am (-0700), Rick Moen wrote:
> Quoting Nick Moffitt (nick at zork.net):
> > So I'm not sure it's quite the same "cure the infection in your hand
> > by cracking your knuckles" poppycock Still was promoting in the 1890s,
> > is it?
> 
> I'll readily admit I'm holding the credential's crank-theoretical
> history against it -- but also I'm holding onto my view that this
> remains a rational response.  If a Doctor of Phrenology credential
> existed, and its proponents said 'Sure, we used to believe in actual
> phrenology, but that was 100 years ago, and we're basically
> indistinguishable from regular medical doctors except just a tinge more
> holistic', I'd be looking askance at them for the same reason.  
> 
> Like, if you really aren't cranks, then why are you still carrying
> around and giving lip service to a lot of crank baggage, still?

Yeah, I think the situation is that they reformed a lot of institutions, and wanted to keep them running.  Someone explained it to me as "You know how there are all of these Orthodox Reformed Modern Messianic Baptist Methodist University of Medicine type institutions around the US?  And how basically nobody on the faculty or staff except for maybe like two octogenarian trustees is actually part of that religion?  That's *kind of* what modern Osteopathic Medicine is like now...maybe?"

I don't have any facts on this situation, but I remember thinking that it was a pity that patient communication is so poor in most practices, and physicians' "bedside manner" is a bad joke to go along with handwriting.  What if all the people who went to the more "woo" services simply because they *felt better taken-care of and listened to* found themselves in the hands of people who listened *and* Actually Knew Medicine?  Perhaps that was the goal, and maybe it even worked for a short time?

I keep thinking of how Carl Sagan's Cosmos spent a lot of time appealing to New Age types with his spacey dandelion-seed ganja-dreams and critical analysis of horoscopes, and Neil DeGrasse Tyson aimed at Gamer Types with slick 3D graphics and aimed squarely at climate change denialism.  Sometimes you have to work out what people think they want.

> However, my real point was not to allege that being an osteopath is a
> bad thing, but rather that the Toddler and his Administration had their
> choice of _all_ US military physicians, and for that matter could have,
> just for asking, gotten top experts from Johns Hopkins and elsewhere, 
> world-class immunologists, virologists, pathologists, etc. -- but they
> ignored those top picks and instead got... some random _osteopath_?

Oh, absolutely.

Also, are we *sure* he's not actually Dr. Leo Spaceman from 30 Rock?  The resemblance is *uncanny*!

	https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jlBQqJh46_M