Wednesday, June 03, 2009

Green Party manifesto endorses alternative medicine quackery

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I voted Green (postally). However, there are aspects of Green Party policy which make my blood boil with rational rage- specifically that bit of it which has been written by Councillor Phillip Booth. This is the guy who advocates policy that demonstrably threatens the lives of tens, hundreds or even thousands of children.

This guy has an exemplary post up showing why such fluffy, anti-scientific badger-spiff puts people off voting Green. George has also spent time detailing why fucking stupid people who consider environmentalism to be synonymous with alternative medicine should be beaten about the head with copies of Campbell-Reece (an enormous and stout biology textbook) until they renounce their fuckwittism.
"Environmentalism is, or should be, a movement led by scientific findings. I see the role of environmentalists as being to explore and explain the implications of what the science – whether on climate change, habitat loss, biodiversity, fisheries, pollution or resource depletion — is saying, and how this should translate into public policy. We should try at all times to be rigorous. And we should kill our darlings – our enthusiasm for solar panels, for example, or our rigid opposition to nuclear power — if the facts demand it."

I still implore people to vote Green because no political manifesto is perfect. As I wrote earlier on John Band's post about the same issue:

I voted Green even though their healthcare policies are straight of of Postmdernism 101. If there was a punkscience party or if I could be arsed to start it, clearly I’d vote for that as all the policies would be perfect and utopian. However, there isn’t so I’m not. Who to vote for is a pragmatic decision. All political parties are run by humans and so their manifestos are Curate’s Eggs. The party you end up voting for is the one which, on balance, you feel most confident of doing the right thing.

Word.


Addition 09/06/09:

This post is garnering quite a few hits so I want to link to some more articles on the anti-scientific nature of the Green Party's Manifesto for A Sustainable Society. Firstly this one from The Times and then this one from the Graun.

Just to reiterate, I strongly believe that the Green Party is the best party to rule the UK. The Green philosophies of the institution of real democracy, social justice and- above all- long-term policy planning and sustainability are the right way ones under which to govern. From this perspective their opposition to GM and nuclear power are sensible and pragmatic. Their bizarrely backward approach to animal testing and their embrace of CAM are ridiculous throwbacks to a previous age, however, which have no place in a modern manifesto. Anyone who knows anything about science knows that animal testing is utterly indispensible to the progress of both human and environmental science and anyone involved in the practice (like me) can tell you that there are complex layers of regulation and oversight of such practices which ensure they are conducted as ethically as possible. The GP's opposition to embryonic research is similarly fluffy and unscientific and is a barrier to progress and the development of new therapies which can be proven to work- unlike CAM.

5 comments:

  1. Nooooooooo!!!!!!!

    don't tell me that cunt Booth actually has some say in things? I didn't think fuckwits like him actually get to have a say at policy level. I find it rather worrying. And he's such a smug cunt with it.

    As an 'old' labour voter, there's a lot about the Greens that appeals but also a lot of post-modern, middle-class, self-styled intelligentsia wankery that freaks me out.

    Best of the lot though, I guess.

    Nice widget, Keep up the punk spirit!

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  2. TBH I don't think Booth does write their health policy, I was just deploying my usually imprecise and libellous hyperbole to try to make a point. But there's certainly a powerful cuntish faction in the executive that pushes such codswallop through. I know for a fact that the GP have a large number of real doctors amongst their membership, not to say a few eminent scientists (I'm not blowing my own trumpet- I would never describe myself as 'eminent'). How they let this drivel get into the manifesto I don't know. I might have a look at the GPEX pages and see how they draft their policy and which characters are likely to be responsible for it. Probly should have done this BEFORE the election but so many cockweasels and only so much time . . . .

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  3. I had noticed that the Green Party does have rather a lot of "Doctors" but do you know how many of those are academic PHDs in wankology and how many are proper Medical Doctors?

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  4. I honestly couldn't say. Its probably not something that they want to draw attention as it would open the party up to accusations of elitism from the more cuntish political factions. Being somewhat of a wankologist myself I have to defend most academic PhDs as being just as informed and insightful as MDs. Even the more fluffy human sciences have to discard their fluffy, unscientific guise once you get to postraduate level as the days of publishing unreplicated, observational studies are long gone. Scientific rigour is now recognised to be the only way of producing credible research. A good example is the subtleties of survey design. SOmething the government should have understood before opening their consultation on nuclear power, which a the High Court subsequently concluded was a "sham" due to the leading nature of the consultation questions.

    http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/pms-nuclear-power-consultation-was-a-sham-court-rules-436570.html

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  5. Thank you for this post. I've been considering leaving the Greens for a while now, mainly because they have they (we) have proven themselves unpragmatic in terms of a political strategy. All the resources spend on the Nader campaign could have gone toward getting a green in the house of reps. But this is the last straw.

    4. We support the teaching of holistic health
    approaches and, as appropriate, the use of
    complementary and alternative therapies such as
    herbal medicines, homeopathy, acupuncture, and
    other healing approaches.

    Homeopathy (for most) = the idea that water has memory of what was in it.

    Acupuncture = a slight chance that it possibly does slightly better than a placebo ONLY in the case of pain releif but as studies get better the gap between placebo and acupunture (sham acupuncture at that) decreases. But you know this already. Gonna go back to Democrat and try to pull it left yet support agendas of science and reason. Greens have lost me until they remove this bit from their platform.

    4. We support the teaching of holistic health
    approaches and, as appropriate, the use of
    complementary and alternative therapies such as
    herbal medicines, homeopathy, acupuncture, and
    other healing approaches.

    ReplyDelete

Feel free to share your opinions of my opinions. Oh- and cocking fuckmouse.