I may write this up in drips and drabs so look out for the Q-Link pendant and Boyd’s Batteries.

..I find that it is already part of the Alt Health-iverse.

Of course, once you start thinking about it, you can see why this is so. The argument goes like this:

1. In the Alt-Healthi-verse. nothing can ever be disproved, as “what scientist call “trials” are not appropriate tests”.

So 2. No belief, no matter how deluded, will ever die – at least as long as it has at least one advocate to keep the website live

Plus:

3. People are desperate for hope and eternally gullible, hence 1. and also their susceptibility to 2.

Ergo:

4. ANY Alt.Health belief that has EVER been held will still be percolating around somewhere, no matter how insane it is.

Thus in order to dream up “New Woo”, you have to come up with something that absolutely no-one, anywhere, has ever though of before. As any scientist real scientist will tell you, this is a tall order.

I suspect that many alt health pioneers – who do come up with, and market, genuinely new idiocies – may lack the competence to realise how stupid their ideas are, and lack the self-awareness to recognise their incompetence. In today’s society, a lack of competence and self-awareness can be extremely valuable: after all, there is a demand for new products in the alt health market.

So many of these alt. beliefs seem to have their roots in very dodgy history and folklores.

What would be an exciting and wholly original health idiocy?

Carole Caplin is Persuad.

(sic)

Talking of Persauds, I don’t know Carole has ever crossed paths with Dr Raj of that ilk. I rather suspect not, although I could imagine them both attending one of Cherie Blair’s garden parties.

However, would it be too snide to imagine that our Carole’s bonnes pensees about all things natural health-ish are likely to be, erm, heavily derivative, at least in the sense of being standard boiler-plate nutri-idiot isms?

Of course, I would be delighted to find that Carole has dreamed up some new and completely original natural health idiocies. But somehow I doubt it.

CAROLE Caplin has done us all a favour. Indeed, she has performed a general public service. In a single volume, she has presented a superb bouquet of the latest alternative health follies – saving us the trouble of gathering these blossoms one by one.

Lifesmart: Get the Facts, Follow the Steps, Feel the Difference (Weidenfeld and Nicolson) will be of real value to social historians for years as a representative anthology of current fads.

Almost nothing, save conventional medicine, is excluded.

Caplin believes anything goes…

Caplin is strangely undeterred when her alternative approaches do not work. “The journey is just as important as the result,” she avers.

“Authors, practitioners and workers in all fields of health and fitness need to encourage the importance of the journey far more than the result itself.”

Just pray that your dentist or orthopaedic surgeon doesn’t think the same, eh?…

In a crisis she “would always choose homeopathic medication rather than pharmaceutical drugs as they are powerful, effective and non-addictive, with no side effects”…

She recites the moving story of a wee lad cured of his eczema. First, his liver was calmed with emeralds and sapphires, then his spleen was activated-with diamonds and carnelians…

In one singularly ill-informed and irresponsible sentence, she asserts: “Contrary to what you may believe, colds and flu are the body’s way of getting rid of the toxins that build up from an overdose of yeast, sugar, antibiotics, lack of sleep or other negative behaviour that clogs up your system.” And there we were thinking they were viruses. A doctor she is not.

WHAT she is more like is Swiss Toni from The Fast Show.

I remember Carole Caplin taking the Teaching Challenge. I thought that she gained a lot of credibility from that exercise because one of the other participants was John Humphreys.

there are about 220 million strict vegetarians in India, according to the Anthropological Survey of India

I hoped that somebody would quantify the observation about vegetarians – this is the especially good aspect of blogging, the knowledgeable comments, feedback and additional relevant references.

I must acknowledge however that many sensible people seem to find her charismatic and plausible (WI meeting apparently) so I am a little concerned to find her promoting supplement use in such a credulous manner.