Blood sucking parasites

Warning: alternative medicine can be very bad for your health.

Ozon magazine reports that, every year, an estimated five thousand Poles die from cancer after refusing conventional medical help.

Instead of going to see the doctor, these people put their faith in quacks, frauds and charlatans, who dish out potions and remedies which, of course, don’t work.

In a related story, Radio Polonia reports about the rising popularity of using leeches to cure a host of different diseases. 'I do find them incredibly helpful and hope that one day leeches will be accepted as just another medical drug, says Zygmunt Dynowski of Biogen, one of only two leech farms in the whole of Europe.

The practice for using leeches alongside blood letting peaked in Europe, apparently, in the mid-nineteenth century, when it was thought they could cure all sorts of things, from obesity to madness. But a shortage of the parasites led to the decline in the practice, and the belief that they were of any use.

But now leeches, alongside the other pre-scientific remedies, are making a comeback in Poland. Though there does appear to be some uses for the leech in medicine, individuals are also prescribing the use of ‘hirudotherapy’ for themselves, or via 'altervative healers'.

Are we slowly creeping back into the dark ages?

Ozon magazine writes that oncologists blame the media – particularly women’s magazines and tabloid newspapers - for the early deaths of what amounts to millions of cancer sufferers who reject science for the fad of naturopathy, homeopathy, and all the other quack exotica that passes off for ‘alternative’ or ‘complimentary’ ‘medicine’.

But simply blaming the media ignores the fact that people do believe in this stuff, and who hope against hope for some sort of miracle to make them better.

It’s not surprising that this sort of thing goes on in the Polish rural, peasant districts where ‘alternative medicines’ have been part of the culture for generations. What’s stranger is that the quacks are now moving in, and with some success, on the liberal, middle classes.

Alterative medicine has brought together the rural conservative and the hip urbanite, the pre-modern with the post modern.

Which is quite an achievement, when you think about it. So why is it making me feel a little sick?

Related story on the beatroot: Stroking toads

Frank Furedi writes about this stuff and why it is becoming popular here