Primrose Road

According to Oprahdoctor Michael Roizen (an MD who, like Mehmet Oz, seems a bit too friendly towards alternative medicine), my "RealAge" is 24.9, younger than my real age, because I take my medications as directed, wear my seatbelt, don't talk on my cell phone while driving, eat fruit, and ... because my parents are still married. While Roizen's test can be a useful tool for encouraging people to start exercising, eat better, and quit smoking, I am not pleased with the implications that the children of divorce, those who do not attend a place of worship at least once a week, and those who don't buy into the vitamin supplement business are somehow in worse health than others. The site recommends that I manage my allergies better, get a larger car (!!!!!), take vitamin E and omega-3 supplements, and get a dog. In the test-prep classes I teach during the summer, we advise students to avoid the "1/2 right, 1/2 wrong" answer trap ... I think we may also need to advise Internetters and TV-watchers against the "1/2 good medical advice, 1/2 woo" answer trap as well.

Oprah terrifies me. The other day she had a psychiatrist on her show who "hypnotized" the audience so that they could "remember" past lives. Oprah and Dr. Mehmet Oz ("America's Doctor" and actual surgeon) looked on excitedly and gullibly. The psychiatrist then hypnotized Dr. Oz, who said, "We don't have to advocate [the therapy], but we do have to evaluate it" and compared it to the once-new idea of doctors washing their hands before delivering babies. This obviously isn't a fair analogy because while bacteria were invisible to the naked eye, they could be perceived via the already-invented microscope. And finally,

"Dr. Oz says he does feel like there is a collective unconsciousness out there. "I actually in my heart think that all of our minds are connected and all of these minds in history are then reflected, and we're feeding into this energy system that we can tap into. It's like karma. You can bounce into it. It bounces you back," he says. "So what I really think we want to do is challenge people to the belief and understanding that life is not as real as it seems. There's other stuff out there."

Though Homeopathy Awareness Week has now come to a close, I couldn't help further investigating the homeopathic claim that gunpowder cures the bone infection osteomyelitis. I contacted a couple of local homeopaths (they're in the phone book? what?) using the pseudonym Vittoria Corombona (naturally) and described to them the jaw infection I had at twenty-one years old, as though I were still 21 and still had the infection. I'd share direct quotes, but I'm a grad student and don't have the $$$ to defend myself in case of lawsuit. And from what we're learned here on the ol' In-tar-webz, scammers and generally drippy people who believe in their own scams tend to be rather litigious. First, several noted my condition was unusual, a fact that is easily Googlable. (Bette Davis and I are pretty much the only healthy women in the Western world to have had it. ;)) I was also told that homeopathy is excellent for inflammations and infections because it'll strengthen your immune system. One homeopath even said that by strengthening my immune system, I'd kill the infection without antibiotics. Now, I haven't taken a science class since 1999 -- my only memories of the last science class I took are singing the periodic table and pretending to "be" the Big Bang while shouting "Boron, boron, release the boron!" -- and even I know that you want a normal immune system because a strong immune system can kill you.

So it's Homeopathy Awareness Week (check out the series over on the Skepchick blog), and I am disappointed to learn that when I had osteomyelitis of the jaw a few years ago, I could have avoided multiple surgeries and months of antibiotics by simply swallowing some gunpowder. That's right, gunpowder. Or rather, highly diluted gunpowder that's really just water. Which reminds me: thank you doctors who did biopsies and culture and sensitivity tests to determine exactly what antibiotics I needed, and thank you doctors and nurses who operated to remove infected bone and tissue. I know it would have been much easier to just give me a glass of magic water. ;)

I developed an assignment for my College Writing students that will (I hope) teach them to start separating the crap from the non-crap on the Internet. Internet sources are, in my view, just fine if you're writing about a current issue, as long as you've got some lit review skills in your utility belt and are armed with several peer-reviewed journal articles as well. Sorting out the Hyper-Crappy from the Slightly-Less-Crappy on the Internet: Students will work in groups (3-5 students each) and present their findings during class. Go to the Learning Annex (http://www.learningannex.com) page and select “Online Classes.” (You may need to select a city, and then go back to the “Online Classes” link a second time.) Choose an instructor with the title “Dr” before his or her name or the letters “Ph.D.” after his or her name (i.e. the teacher of the Past Life Regression course). Be prepared to present your answers to and discuss your thoughts on the questions that follow. Also, please tell us to what degree you believe the instructor you chose can be considered a reliable source of information. 1. Use Dissertation Abstracts Online to search for the instructor you’ve chosen. Is (s)he listed there? If so, on what did (s)he write his or her dissertation? If not, what are some possible reasons why (s)he is not listed there? 2. Check Lexis-Nexis and other relevant databases for articles by the instructor published in peer-reviewed journals. Were you able to find any articles? If so, what did the instructor research/write about? 3. Find the instructor’s personal homepage (most of them have one). Is the instructor forthcoming about where (s)he got his or her degree? (How) does the instructor describe his or her educational background? 4. If the instructor does not tell visitors to his or her website where (s)he got his or her degree, search the web to see if you can discover where the degree is from. Then visit the school's website: is the school legitimate or a "diploma mill"? How can you tell? 5. Search for web pages that reference the instructor. Is there a shared theme to these pages? How reliable do pages that reference the instructor tend to be? A comment from one of my students: "So it's legal to put the letters 'Ph.D.' after your name even though you don't have a legitimate degree? That's incredibly unfair to people who've worked hard to earn a real doctorate." Well said.

I went to Barnes and Noble yesterday to order a comp book that The Strand (awesomest bookstore ever) hadn't been able to get for me. While waiting for the woman at the desk to find my book, I spotted this spectacular literary masterpiece: Secrets of the Monarch: What the Dead Can Teach Us About Living a Better Life, by Allison DuBois, the "communicator" who inspired the TV show Medium. Here is what you'll learn from Ms. DuBois' book:

Like the monarch butterfly, whose survival as a species depends on its predecessors' actions several generations before, everyone is influenced by their ancestors. But it is up to individuals, Allison says, to create their own legacies and pass the fire and passion in their lives to their children, their children's children, and the generations beyond. In Secrets of the Monarch, Allison passes on important life lessons she's learned through communicating with the dead.