Public Money to Promote Woo

The CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) newssite and CBC radio has been treating the canonisation of Kateri Tekakwitha as a hard news story, as if praying to this woman were a more reliable way to cure cancer than taking chemotherapy or radiation. Equal Time! Equal Time!

What about Peter Popoff, Benny Hinn, Ernest Angley, Sylvia Browne (Montel William’s house psychic), James Van Praagh, Don Stewart and his green prosperity handkerchiefs, Philippine psychic surgery, homeopathy, astrology, samples of gabardine falsely claimed to be cut from Brother André’s coat provided by James Randi’s father, Lourdes water, snake oil… You can find dozens of people who will swear it worked for them.

And guess what, even atheists like me sometimes survive after medicine pronounces No hope. It is pigeon superstition to attribute good fortune to whatever wacko thing you last tried before your good fortune. You have to check out how it works/does not work for hundreds of others before you pronounce its efficacy.

It is irresponsible of the CBC to promote this quackery. It is like airing a financial advisor who promotes lottery tickets as the best way to save for retirement. He can easily find a dozen lottery winners to attest to the method’s success, but that means nothing about its general reliability. The CBC is tricking people into relying on useless therapy and avoiding unpleasant therapy that has some hope of working. It is not only stupid, it is irresponsible and malicious. It should be as illegal as marketing a fake cancer drug and all similar cons.

~ Roedy (born:1948-02-04 age:68)