science debate thread

Microwaves use dielectric heating in which (electromagnetic) radiation is used to heat food by inducing molecular movement (usually in water), so there is radiation involved, but of course, Dakryn is being a sensationalist idiot; the radiation doesn't actually go into the food per se. In addition, Dakryn, if you are so concerned about radiation so as to avoid microwaving food (you fucking hippie), perhaps you might also want to try related activities like NOT GOING OUTSIDE.

Why would I avoid going outside? the body needs the sun to keep optimum levels of Vitamin D. Completely different types of radiation, not to mention there is a huge difference between soaking up some sun (which I imagine most people who use this forum get very little of) and radiating food.

@ Savern: Will get back to you on that when I have the time.
 
"Studies have found absorbing both the external radiation of the sun and internal digestion of radiated food to be a perfect counter balance to the negative effects of both, yeilding a body that will develop no forms of cancer either externally or internally"

"more at 11"
 
Why would I avoid going outside? the body needs the sun to keep optimum levels of Vitamin D. Completely different types of radiation, not to mention there is a huge difference between soaking up some sun (which I imagine most people who use this forum get very little of) and radiating food.

There is electromagnetic radiation everywhere, caused by all sorts of things such as mobile phones, mobile phone towers, wireless networks, power lines etc with roughly the same levels as you would find in any given microwave oven. I think what VVVVV was trying to say is that if you're worried about microwaved food, you should also be worried about getting about anywhere in public.
 
Um, maybe because staying inside doesn't offer any protection from wireless signals, and in fact may concentrate them through the conductivity of various power and communication lines inside a building. So then the only "radiation threat" exclusive to being outside would be the sun. That is the reason for my misunderstanding :p .
 
Relevant to the psychiatry stuff:

New psychiatric disorders flag normal human behaviors as "diseases"
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor

(NaturalNews) The Disease Mongering Engine, which I invented a couple of years ago and posted on NaturalNews, was initially created as a joke to demonstrate the ridiculousness of the fictitious diseases that are constantly created by the psychiatric industry. This hilarious online disease generator ( http://www.naturalnews.com/disease-mongering-engine.asp )allows you to instantly create your own fictitious diseases and disorders such as:

• Repetitive Dysmorphic Nose Picking Disorder With Itching (RDNPDWI)
• Oppositional Disorganized Speaking Disorder With Indigestion (ODSDWI)
• Chronic Bipolar Anticipation Dysfunction With Smelly Feet (CBADWSF)

... and so on.

Here's the bizarre part: All of a sudden, the new psychiatric diagnostic manual (DSM-V) appears to have adopted as medical fact many of the disorders that were created by the Disease Mongering Engine!

This new manual, for example, now says that spending a lot of time thinking about sex is a disorder. (That immediately paints every teenage boy as "diseased.")

Another new disease is "Oppositional Defiant Disorder" (ODD), which includes anyone who disagrees with authority. All those who are skeptical about the safety of vaccines, for example, are about to be diagnosed with ODD.

Now, people who are antisocial aren't merely antisocial. They're suffering from "Antisocial Personality Disorder" and require pharmacological treatment. So the prick neighbor isn't merely a prick anymore; he's a "sufferer" of a "disorder" who needs "treatment."

Children are no longer unhappy or throwing a temper tantrum, they are suffering from "Temper Dysregulation Disorder with Dysphoria." (I'm not making this up...)

Are you cracking up yet? If George Carlin were still alive today, he'd go berserk over this... Carlin, of course, would have been diagnosed with countless psychiatric disorders just for being different in his own genius way.


Federal law protects jackasses
The examples of ridiculous disorders seems endless. But here's the real kicker in all this: Thanks to federal laws that were designed to protect people who are physically disabled, people who now "suffer" from these fictitious disorders are now protected under federal law. So the antisocial prick jackass working at your office can't be fired now because he's actually suffering from a diagnosed "mental disorder" and he's being "treated" by psychiatrists.

As columnist George Will described it in a Washington Post article, "If every character blemish or emotional turbulence is a "disorder" akin to a physical disability, legal accommodations are mandatory. Under federal law, "disabilities" include any "mental impairment that substantially limits one or more major life activities"; "mental impairments" include "emotional or mental illness." So there might be a legal entitlement to be a jerk."

There might even be legal protections for people who are sexual predators. So the creepy pervert at the office who feels you up in the snack room can't be fired either -- he's only suffering from "Hypersexual Disorder", a new disorder now defined as a "mental illness" by the psychiatric manual which describes it, in part, as: "A great deal of time is consumed by sexual fantasies and urges and by planning for and engaging in sexual behavior." (Well gee, there goes half the population...)


Let's make all the children "normal"
There's another danger in all this psych-tagging of human behavior: What about all the creative, genius children who operate far beyond the intellectual norms of regular, average kids? As George Will explains:

"Childhood eccentricities, sometimes inextricable from creativity, might be labeled "disorders" to be "cured." If 7-year-old Mozart tried composing his concertos today, he might be diagnosed with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder and medicated into barren normality."

Based on the new DSM-V, children who don't fit in as dumbed-down, average kids will be flagged as diseased and could be cognitively castrated by whatever psychiatric drugs are necessary to bring them down to the level of all the other kids. Why have exceptional children when they can fit in better as "average!"


It's all just pure disease mongering
The point in all this is that psychiatry has gone completely loony. Now even the mainstream media is seeing the stupidity in naming every human emotion or eccentricity a "disorder." When the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post (among other mainstream papers) start questioning the validity of modern psychiatry, you know a line has been crossed.

As the Wall Street Journal reported just yesterday, "Patients who seek psychiatric help today for mood disorders stand a good chance of being diagnosed with a disease that doesn't exist and treated with a medication little more effective than a placebo." ( http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704188104575083700227601116.html?mod=WSJ_hpp_sections_lifestyle )

Three years ago, such a sentence only would have appeared on websites like NaturalNews.com, but now these words are appearing in the mainstream media. Amazing.

It just goes to show you that psychiatry has now lost credibility with even the mainstream media that has long support the industry's disease mongering schemes. Psychiatry's greatest achievement over the last decade appears to have been destroying its own integrity, much to the benefit of the world population which would be far better off without psychiatry.

That's my opinion, at least. Or maybe I'm just suffering from Oppositional Defiance Disorder like everyone else who thinks for themselves.

Don't forget to generate your own fictitious psychiatric disorders by playing with the Disease Mongering Engine:

http://www.naturalnews.com/disease-mongering-engine.asp

And while you're at it, check out www.CCHR.org where you can watch full-length documentary exposing the fraud of the psychiatric industry.
 
I laughed, but not because the article you posted. I remember in the 60's when the APA considered homosexuality a disease that ravaged the mind. They actually didn't let anyone who was a homosexual treat anybody because.. well, why would you let someone afflicted with a disease help someone with a disease. Later on the board of the APA filled out with liberals who realized that the study groups that had been conducted on homosexuality consisted of nothing but gays that had either serious psychological problems (along with being gay) or they came from disturbed backgrounds. When a test was done between gays who had a normal (if not privileged) upbringing was compared to hetero's with normal (but really, it was more of a privileged) upbringing, the older board members who ran the APA before the "liberal" overtaking couldn't tell sample apart. As soon as the next DSM came out at the time, homosexuality was removed from the list of mental disease's.

I can't help though but look at this article in a biased light though. Sure, I admit that there seems to be a trend to label normal human tendencies and conditions as some sort of problem (especially when it is compared to a "statistical norm" or "cultural norm"), but the next DSM from my understanding still has a year to go in the editing process before it will be released.

Legal implications are always large in these instances, and I really don't want to get into them so I will abstain.


In another topic, what does everybody think about the second amendment arguments going on right now with the supreme court?

So yeah, cool story.
 
Relationship to Citizens Commission on Human Rights

In 1969, Szasz and the Church of Scientology co-founded the Citizens Commission on Human Rights (CCHR) with the aim of helping to "clean up"[citation needed] the field of human rights abuses. Szasz remains on CCHR's Board of Advisors as Founding Commissioner,[11] and continues to provide content for the CCHR.[12] In the keynote address at the 25th anniversary of CCHR, Szasz stated: "We should all honor CCHR because it is really the organization that for the first time in human history has organized a politically, socially, internationally significant voice to combat psychiatry. This has never been done in human history before."[13] Szasz, himself, claims to not have any membership or involvement in Scientology. In 2003, the following statement, authorized by Szasz, was posted to the official Szasz web site by its owner, Jeffrey Schaler, explaining Szasz's relationship to CCHR:

"Dr. Szasz co-founded CCHR in the same spirit as he had co-founded — with sociologist Erving Goffman and law professor George Alexander — The American Association for the Abolition for Involuntary Mental Hospitalization...
Scientologists have joined Szasz's battle against institutional psychiatry. Dr. Szasz welcomes the support of Jews, Christians, Muslims, and any other religious or atheist group committed to the struggle against the Therapeutic State. Sharing this battle does not mean that Dr. Szasz supports the unrelated principles and causes of any religious or non-religious organization. This is explicit and implicit in Dr. Szasz's work. Everyone and anyone is welcome to join in the struggle for individual liberty and personal responsibility — especially as these values are threatened by psychiatric ideas and interventions."[14]

[edit] Criticism

Szasz's critics maintain that, contrary to his views, such illnesses are now regularly "approached, measured, or tested in scientific fashion."[15] The list of groups that reject his opinion that mental illness is a myth include the American Medical Association (AMA), American Psychiatric Association (APA) and the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH).

The effectiveness of medication has been used as an argument against Szasz’s idea that depression is a myth. In a debate with Szasz, Donald F. Klein, M.D explained:

“It is that elementary fact, that the antidepressants do little to normals, and are tremendously effective in the clinically depressed person, that shows us that this is an illness” [16]

But as the New England Journal of Medicine reported on January 17, 2008, in published trials, about 60 percent of people taking the drugs report significant relief from depression, compared with roughly 40 percent of those on placebo pills. But when the less positive, unpublished trials are included, the advantage shrinks: the drugs outperform placebos, but perhaps only by a modest margin.[17] In the same debate Frederick K. Goodwin, M.D asserts :

"The concept of disease in medicine really means a cluster of symptoms that people can agree about, and in the case of depression we agree 80% of the time. It is a cluster of symptoms that predicts something.” [16]

Szasz argues that only mental illnesses are defined based on consensus and symptom clusters. This is not the case. Physical illnesses such as Kawasaki syndrome (a disorder of the heart and blood vessels)[18] and Ménière's disease (a disorder of the inner ear)[19] are similarly defined.

There is also the criticism that many physical diseases were identified and even treated with at least some success decades, centuries, or millennia before their etiology was accurately identified. Diabetes is one notable example. In the eyes of Szasz's critics, such historical facts tend to undermine his contention that mental illnesses must be "fake diseases" because their etiology in the brain is not well understood.
 
Of course, the people/organizations disagreeing are those who make more money the more "diseases" exist. Can't be a conflict of interest :rolleyes:
 
I'm starting to think that you're beginning to channel Fox News through those tin foil hats now.
 
What does FOXnews have to do with this? Other than people like Beck, O Reilly and Hannity being examples for mental "illness".