How do we get Chinese and Vietnamese cretins to stop treating their ailments with pseudoscience that is causing the decimation of whole populations of animals like rhinos and pangolins?
And let’s get one thing straight right from the start: We know that rhinos aren’t dying to make dicks hard in Beijing and Hong Kong. That’s a western media myth that will never die, but instead of an aphrodisiac, rhino horn powder is actually prescribed for reducing fever and for, sadly, hangovers.
Can you imagine? A magnificent animal like the African rhino, slaughtered for its keratin horn — yes, made of the same stuff that’s in your hair and nails, and with nothing else magical or medicinal about it — so that businessmen who tied one on with the boss can soothe their aching heads in the morning. And of course, like everything else in Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM), there isn’t a shred of evidence that it’s actually effective.
We cringe at nonsense like Chemtrails and flat earth, but no one is dying for those beliefs. TCM, on the other hand, is probably the most lethal bogus belief on earth, causing the death of countless animals around the world, and probably not a few human beings who turn to it instead of medicine based on actual science.
But how do we do it? How do we shame Chinese and Vietnamese businessmen out of giving each other gifts made of rhino horn as status symbols? Or stop women from believing that some ground up pangolin scales in their tea will improve their lactation?
Last year, a study was published that offered some glimmer of hope. It found that in Hong Kong, 88 percent of people who had sought some sort of treatment over the last month had gone to a western medical doctor, and only 16 percent had sought Traditional Chinese Medicine. So it’s good to know that TCM relies on that same group of fringe-belief morons that we have over here, too. And among the TCM practitioners who were interviewed, most of them agreed that government bans were effective, and caused them to look for alternatives to rhino horn and pangolin scales. So maybe there is some reason to be optimistic.
But still, the demand is still far too great. We’d like to hear some bright ideas that might make us hopeful that something could be done to stem the tide of ignorance that is killing so many precious creatures.
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Posted by Tony Ortega on April 9, 2019 at 20:00
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Tony Ortega is a journalist who was formerly the editor of The Village Voice. He’s written about Scientology since 1995, and in May 2015 released a book about Scientology’s harassment of Paulette Cooper titled ‘The Unbreakable Miss Lovely,’ and more recently a compilation of his stories, ‘Battlefield Scientology.’ He continues to monitor breaking developments in the Scientology world, as well as other subjects at The Underground Bunker. You can reach him by sending him a message at tonyo94 AT gmail.com (Drop him a line if you’d like to get an e-mail whenever a new story is posted.)
