Stephen “Barefoot Doctor” Russell has done a piece for the Guardian today, dissing Richard Dawkins’ C4 documentary The Enemies of Reason.
It’s pretty thin fare. Basically, Dawkins is “so last century” and if alternative medicine can be put down the the Placebo effect, so what? It works, doesn’t it?
If this is the best the alternative medicine community can come up with, good luck to them. Of course, it turns out that Barefoot has a particular unique take on “Placebo effect“:
The ‘Barefoot Doctor’ – known to millions from his TV career, his range of products stocked by high-street chemists and a form of healing based on Tao philosophy – has been forced to issue an extraordinary statement admitting to having sex with ex-patients in the past.
But it’s okay, ‘cos he’s a celebrity, apparently. So long as you have sex with ex-patients “like a pop star” and not like a doctor, where’s the beef?
Where on Earth did Dawkins get the idea that these people somehow prey on vulnerable people?