It is the belief in the supremacy of scientific rationalism and private corporate governance, that is the placebo we've been given, and swallowed hook, line, and sinker as a society.

We desperately need to restore some balance, which includes acceptance of philosphy and poetry and faith and belief and knowledge and awareness of ourselves, which isn't driven and dictated by imposed "conventional" theologies, ideologies, scientific studies, or academic doctrines.

There are a lot of alternative therapies being used without any scientific basis rooted in studies, or approved by the FDA. I have much less problem with those which use physical touch being used by people who are making a free choice (even if their decision to make that choice is ill-informed), than with drugs being used without any scientific basis rooted in studies, like thalidomide, which was prescribed by many doctors and given to pregnant women to treat morning sickness, without any scientific basis and without any approval by the FDA.

That article's disingenuousness really pissed me off, because it made the following statement:

"In 1993, however, with the Supreme Court's landmark decision in Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals, Inc. the situation began to change. The case involved Bendectin, the only morning-sickness medication ever approved by the Food and Drug Administration. It had been used by millions of women, and more than 30 published studies had found no evidence that it caused birth defects. Yet eight so-called experts were willing to testify, in exchange for a fee from the Daubert family, that Bendectin might indeed cause birth defects."

Thalidomide isn't even mentioned. Now, given the context of what resulted from the widespread prescribing of a much-heralded, yet untested drug to pregnant women by doctors who bought the pharmaceutical industry's claims the way poor country folk once bought snake oil from the medicine show doctors, is shameful. This article makes it sound as if there is no rational, reasonable reason for people to be skeptical about the prescribing of a medication to pregnant women, which claims to treat morning sickness with no negative side effects. That is morally indefensible "scientific" manipulativeness in the extreme, IMO.