On Wednesday 01 August 2007, gimpymommi wrote:
...
> I'm always astounded at the more insane claims I've heard for other
> products - that they cure cancer/MS/asthma/heart disease, etc. Does
> it never occur to these people that the LAST place the "cure for
> cancer" will be found is in some goofball's backyard lab - that only
> the Founder of the Snake Oil himself knows the cure??????????????
That comes from the faith in the human intuition and the need to believe
in the underdog (no relation to the movie coming out this week!). We
somehow believe that bigger companies get bogged down with organization
details and profit motives so they don't focus on actually helping
people. We also like to believe in the country doctor idea: it's the
simple country doctor with strong common sense that has the answers the
big guys don't.
I remember hearing a line in "All in the Family" from Edith, when she
was watching "Marcus Welby." She said, "The world's greatest surgeon
thinks it's a bad heart and Marcus Welby thinks it's a tummy ache."
Another example would be the movie "Doc Hollywood," where Michael J.
Fox's character calls an ambulance and thinks a patient is in serious
trouble and the old doctor just goes into the hallway and gets a soda
from the machine and gives it to the patient who drinks some and is
okay. It turns out it was some kind of gas.
I don't know if it's only an American attitude or not, but when I took
some folklore classes I did find out this is part of at least the
American culture. It's the idea that the human heart will always
triumph over the head.
There are also just enough examples of someone working out of their
garage and blowing away the big companies that reinforce this. Walt
Disney started in his garage, so did Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs with
Apple and so did two brothers who made bicycles in Ohio named Orville
and Wilbur.
With those few examples and the need or willingness to believe, it's a
perfect setup for a company to say, "The big companies don't want this
to be known because they won't make money on an actual cure." After
having watched my Father fight leukemia for 2-3 years and see a
dedicated doctor do everything he could for him and having looked into
the medications as well, when people come up with lines like that, I
just want to forget I'm a pacifist and haul off and give them a hard
one in the gut.
It does play into the American underdog mythos that a smaller company
would find the answer others can't, but overall, it's a load of crap
and those who perpetuate it should be taken away, tied down, and forced
to watch endless reruns of "My Mother the Car" and "The Gong Show" for
the rest of their lives.
Hal
