Friday, April 4, 2008
Technology has changed in the 400 years since Cervantes first told the
story of Don Quixote. Windmills are now particle accelerators and the
knight's lance is a federal court injunction, but the plot is the same.
It begins with a befuddled lawyer in Hawaii named Walter Wagner. Having
read far too much science fiction as a youth, Wagner fantasizes that he is
a physicist by virtue of an undergraduate biology degree with a minor in
physics. Accompanied by Sancho, his loyal TA, Wagner embarks on an
adventure to slay the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), a doomsday machine that
he believes is posed to destroy the world by creating a black hole. He
seems to have forgotten the last time he tried this. In 1999 Wagner
warned that RHIC, the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider at Brookhaven
National Laboratory, must be slain lest it create a black hole
(WN 23 Jul 99) . The then BNL
director, Jack Marburger, named a distinguished panel of physicists to
investigate. Their report noted that nature has been conducting the
relevant safety test for billions of years by colliding heavy-ion cosmic
rays with the moon. It concluded that creation of a black hole
is "effectively ruled out by the persistence of the Moon."
A couple of weeks ago the Metro Section the Washington Post ran a front
page story about a pilot program in a Washington suburb to incorporate
acupuncture into the treatment of drug addiction. There is something
called the National Acupuncture Detoxification Association that certifies
people to administer acupuncture for drug addiction. As I read this I
paused to watch a chiropractor on Good Morning America wrenching some poor
women's neck to lower her blood pressure. It raised mine. But back to
acupuncture: this morning I was sent a notice from the University of
Maryland Health Center about it's acupuncture services. "Originating in
China about 5,000 years ago," it began, "acupuncture is the oldest
continuously practiced medical system in the world." You might prefer
something a little more up-to-date. If my health is involved I want to
know what was learned yesterday. It goes on to explain that acupuncture
is based on the circulation of qi, "the life-giving energy that circulates
along channels to all organs and enables them to function." My own
university put this out? There is no qi. It‘s superstitious nonsense.
After you stop laughing, check out the health service at your
institution. The American health system has completely sold out to this
crap.
America's addiction to acupuncture began with New York Times correspondent
James Reston's 1971 trip to China, during which he was operated on for
acute appendicitis. Contrary to widespread accounts, he was injected with
a standard local anesthetic, not acupuncture. It was two days later that
he experienced indigestion with only a traditional Chinese physician on
duty. He was treated with moxibustion, a form of acupuncture, and needles
were used to "get the qi flowing." An Alka-Seltzer might have been
better. Reston's own words can be found on the web.
|
