Pastor Rich Vera of The Center for Revival and Healing in Orlando, Florida, has been mouthing off, much of it the usual “praise Trump” crap and “oh prosperity is a comin'”, but that wasn’t quite good enough, no. Let’s mention a couple of diseases, too, because that’s always good for getting the rubes attention, yeah?
Asked by Roth about his prophecy that the cures for breast cancer* and Alzheimer’s would soon be discovered, Vera asserted that Trump’s decision to move the embassy will be directly responsible for those discoveries.
“This is the most amazing thing,” Vera said. “What happened in Israel with President Trump proclaiming Jerusalem to be the eternal capital of the Jewish people, it is a significant thing in the spirit world because for him to be the man that spoke boldly to the nations of the world, he released a spirit that opened a portal for blessings to be released from Israel to the rest of the world.”
“When the president went—and I saw this in a vision—and proclaimed that on television,” he added, “there was literally a portal that opened up and it began to flush like a waterfall to America and we are about to experience prosperity like we have never experienced before.”
AAUUUUUGGGGGGHH, NO. NO, NO, NO. Today, I was reading a post of Jen Gunter’s, about her attendance at a goop conference. The rapacious predators were loose there, too. I already have a good amount of anger over having cancer, and treatment, and the way people are, and so much fucking more, but today? Oh, the word anger is not sufficient. Not even fucking close. This shit is unconscionable, telling people that “hey, god’s gonna show with that cure, just hold on and pray now” or “ooh, love cures cancer!” Fuck every godsdamn fucking one of you nasty assholes who says or preaches such utter shit. Treatment for any disease is not fun; turning people away from it? How much more depraved could you get? Getting a kick out of stuffing your pockets as you play Death and prey on vulnerable people. Not enough fuck you. Not enough fuck off.
Of course, the two diseases singled out by Vera are common, and come pre-laced with a great deal of fear and horror, but that’s christianity all over for you, preaching fear, it’s the basis of their whole twisted religion. Fear, fear, fear. Bow down in fear, and Jehovah might cure you. Maybe. Probably not, but ya know…Of course, when you die, the preaching will be about “god’s” will and calling you home or whatthefuckever.
This sort of shit makes me beyond furious, all those who think it’s okely dokely to further burden people who already carry a massive burden on their shoulders; to blame people for having a fucking disease; to pick their pocket while telling them to have faith in whatever: god, nature, Goture, supplements, love, prayer, whatthefuckever. If you’re one of those hideous, evil people, shut your fucking mouth, and go sit in the damn corner. You’re a dealer in death, a carrion crow who can’t wait to start pecking eyes out. (No insult towards crows, they perform valuable services, unlike Vera or Goopers.) You deserve hate and loathing from every person on this damn planet, and if there were a god, I’d be cursing you with every bloody breath.
The whole thing is at RWW.
*And for those who don’t know, even breast cancer is not one specific cancer. Cancer is crazy complex, and it’s hundreds of diseases under one heading. If you want to help yourself or someone you know with cancer, get information from reputable, evidence based sources.
People have tried to pray diseasa away for thousands of years, to no avail. How anybody still believes in that crap is beyond my understanding. My ability to empathise with other people ends here, full stop.
When I was reading the article about GOOP conference, I was reminded about your last cancer article and I thought it will ad to your anger.
I will never be able to watch a movie with GP again without thinking what an idiot and asshole she is. Somebody with her wealth has no excuse whatsoever for being ignorant and promoting vultures who stuff their pockets on human suffering.
I was dismayed by Stephen Colbert who gave her a goop spot in his show. I did not watch that piece and never will, because whatever he was doing with her or talking about, he has given to her nonsense publicity that can be spun for her benefit. The only sort of publicity these charlatans deserve is either scientific scorn or merciless mockery without giving them any platform.
Goture is a good word. It sums up the newage spirit of the whole schtick perfectly.
Oh Caine, if only righteous anger could scour the world. I would have awoken to a bright shiny planet with a healthy future.
At a certain point, when “skeptics” make fun of the suckers who fall for scams, they’re victim-blaming. Penn and Teller’s bullshit series veered in that direction. Some people are desperate, hopeful, in denial. It sucks when people pray on them.
I had a friend who when down the woo route after her breast cancer metastised into her liver. She rejected further treatment because of how awful it made her feel. It meant she spent a month of her last four months alone, away from her beloved dogs and the people who loved and supported her, in countries where she didn’t know the language, undergoing ”treatment” that also made her feel awful, but gave her no benefit at all. I despise people who encourage the sick to try these “cures” -- and that includes ignorant friends who spout crap like ‘we don’t know everything’, ‘it might work’, ‘it can’t hurt to try’ as if that is an reason to try things with no plausible scientific basis. I hate the people who actually sell this stuff. And I still miss her.
Someone should tell the religiosi that we wouldn’t need to keep finding cures if their god would stop giving people medical problems.
Marcus:
Oh fuck yes, and I’ve been ranting about that today to Rick. Especially when it comes to cancer, it’s victim blaming all the way around. You even do it to yourself, and there are a fucktonne of people out there, happy to join in. As for the ‘skeptics’, yeah, they can talk to me when they’re in treatment for cancer. Until then, they can all shut up. I don’t mind people who educate, but if you’re going to point a finger and laugh at how stupid you think people are, then you need to realize what a toxic ass you are.
Cancer is scary, and it resides in a deep well of silence. Of course people get desperate, and there isn’t a single person who isn’t discomfited by the fact they are going to be poisoned and bombarded with radiation. That’s bad, ffs, and we all know it. All kinds of weird shit starts looking good in comparison. Another thing is trying to find a space to talk. As David Warman said, he needed to talk where there was a reality-based audience. I think those kind of spaces are hard to find. Oh, there’s a ton of “perky positivity” places, and places where the predators are allowed to roam, but reality based spaces which simply let people talk about cancer? Not so much.
Jazzlet:
I am so sorry, Jazzlet. That had to compound your grief so very much. It’s a very important point, the enabling of such garbage, because while the intent is not to harm, that’s the result of saying such crap, and encouraging it. No one likes being the bad news messenger, but I would rather say to someone “that will not work” than “it can’t hurt”.
I never liked much Pen & Tellers “Bullshit”, I watched it once, never finished it and never felt the need to watch it again. Now that I think about it, It was a smug superiority grin hidden behind thin veil of education. Good points interspersed with completely pointless insults spouted just for the hell of it.
With religious cults and newage and GOOP and similar the problem are not the desperate sick people looking for solution, any solution, which is understandable. The problem are the healthy people -- like GP and most of such “gurus” -- who create a whole web of lies and misinformations as well as overt and covert social pressures to entrap other healthy people to maintain and propagate such webs to suck people out of their money. From the article about GOOP it seemed to me that most of the marks were financially well-off middle aged women of reasonably good health who are merely trying to “prevent” cancer etc. Not sick people desperate for cure. Not uneducated people who do not know better. These are people who could, and should know better, who deliberately look at woo and science side by side and decide for woo. Inevitably some desperate people get caught by such woo and tragedies happen.
Of course there are also some who prey mostly on the truly sick and their loved ones, like Burzynski. Burzynski belongs in jail and his audience deserves universal and accesible healthcare.
GP and her audience of wealthy middle-aged well educated wealthy americans are not at a level of deserving jail, but they deserve ridicule.
My brother in law is the most gentle and soft-spoken person. Unless the subject is “naturopath psychological child therapist” or “alternative treatments for cancer patients.”
Charly:
Oh yes, that’s true. It’s these same people though, who, the moment they know someone who has a cancer diagnosis, they start trying to get someone to use “alternative” medicine. And for every rich woman involved, there are at least four not rich people who still follow the website, and spread the poison from there. The idea that cancer is something which can be prevented is an evil one, and it is very pervasive, and causes a great deal of harm. That idea is more of a gospel aggressively preached at every opportunity when it comes to Goopers and those like them. The “positive thinking” parasite is alive in well in such environs too, and that’s a horrible exercise in blaming the victim, all the way down. Having a shit day in treatment? Oh, well, your attitude is making it worse!
Predators can be on different levels, but they all cause harm, they all promote death, and they all place blame on the victims. It’s tempting, to look at the Gooper type as mostly harmless, but they are far from harmless, and this shit spreads so damn fast because people are desperate, because they are tired of feeling bad, because they need something to blame, because they need hope, because they need social contact, and on it goes. And you know, we haven’t even covered the core of it: lies. It’s all fucking lies, all the way down. And to a person, they are all okay with lying, and they practically make lying to themselves a profession.
As for “Bullshit”, I think I made it through two episodes way back when. I wasn’t impressed.
Giliell:
Good for him, makes my heart glad to hear it.
If ‘alternative medicine’ worked, it would simply be called medicine. No need for a descriptor.
GOOP is far from harmless. The crap they sell can, in actuality, harm you. And people are harmed, but they almost never speak out. “It can’t hurt?” Those are wrong and vile words. “It” can and does hurt. Clinical data show that patients using “alt-medicine” in lieu of conventional treatment die at much higher rates than those who receive conventional treatment. When Caine calls my specialty barbaric, I try not to let it rankle. Because it’s true that modern cancer care is still a young field. But if what I do is barbaric; then “alt-med” is neolithic.
Raucous Indignation:
It shouldn’t rankle, because it’s the truth that treatment sucks, not your specialty. Cancer Treatment is effective, but that does not make it less barbaric -- poisoning and radiation, remember? I appreciate my oncologist beyond measure, because he’s quite clear about how barbaric it is, and like most oncologists, wishes there were a better way. But you work with what you have. It’s not meant to rankle or insult; it’s just fact. There’s little point pretending treatment doesn’t suck, it does, and how!
All that said, the problem with “alternative” crap is that it’s wishful thinking, and while it doesn’t come with all the side effects of chemo/radiation, it does come with death. It’s easy enough to understand why people would turn to it, and that has everything to do with the state of treatment, and no good comes from denying that. Who wouldn’t rather pop a few pills and drink up some flower water? This is one reason why I think all medical people who deal with cancer need to be very honest and upfront about just how much treatment fucking sucks, and how the side effects fucking suck, too. Cancer patients need to be listened to by medical, and you’ll always get a chorus of “cancer sucks, treatment sucks more.” I know that’s hard to take for medical, but it is what it is, and when there’s a refusal to deal with it, you lose people to the flower water and wishes.
Yeah, 45 is definitely flushing this country, but I don’t think prosperity is where we are headed (unless you are already extremely wealthy).
Thank you Caine. She was one of the people I knew/know who also got hit with the ‘stay positive’ crap by “well-meaning” people on her original diagnosis. One of my small consolations was that I was able to refer her to studies that showed positive thinking made no difference to outcome and that she believed them; she had been very distressed by an inconsiderate slug upbrading her for her lack of positivity at a point when she was feeling nauseous, in pain and exhausted, their intervention tipped her over into despair and self-recrimination. I just wish I had been able to be more convincing about the clinic in Mexico and the other clinic in Germany.
RI what you do is vital, and you aren’t going to stick with the treatments you first learnt, you are going to keep learning, to adopt new proven treatments as your career continues and treatments improve, so you are doing the best that can be done for your patients. Who can do more?
Caine, it doesn’t usually rankle. I am not insulted. (Not usually; I am only human.) But yeah, am I aware that I use poisons and high energy radiation? Yeah, I remember. I am aware. I asked Dr Z, my program director, that very thing when I was a young fellow in training. How do you care for people when your tools are dangerous and harmful and inherently risky? He assured me that I would to more good and less harm than he had during his very long career. And I believe that’s been true. But it doesn’t change what I put my patients go through. Treatment still sucks, and cancer really sucks. I was thinking about all this after reading your 9th post. Cancer descends on people without consent. No one asks for it. It’s a violation of body and personhood. It strips one of autonomy and health, and then the options you’re given to make it back to good health are cold steel knives and poisons and bombardment with radiation. Isn’t that just fucking great? Well, yeah, I guess it is in a way if it keeps the disease at bay and you’re intact after treatment? But there is an awful lot of important context packed into that little word if, isn’t there?
Jazzlet, those are very kind words. Thank you.
Raucous Indignation:
Yeah, for everyone. Cancer fucking sucks for oncologists too, as it does for all caregivers. It’s a rotten state of affairs, but when you’re in cancerland, you have to deal with it. And as awful as it is, I want that chance to survive, to live. So, I stay with it. We can only use the tools we have, and keep working on better tools.
Don’t think I’m unappreciative that there is a treatment rather than a straight death sentence, it’s just difficult to sing any praise to chemo and radiation.
I’m feeling you, Caine. I’m feeling you. I’d been thinking about my work lately, before your diagnosis. Your posts have given me another lens through which to focus. I’m grateful for your blogging. I’ll tell you more about my craniectomy sometime.
Another thing about participating in the admittedly barbaric and crude main-stream medical practice is that every bit of information about ones treatment and results goes into a common database, which contributes to ongoing improvements in treatment and practice.
Is this true for the Alternatives?
BTW, Jen Gunther confronted one of those shitheads on Twitter asking him what they and their son had done wrong so he died three minutes after his birth?
Of course he denied that he ever even suggested anything as vile as the idea that a mother could course her child in the womb when she did not love it enough or so, but she shot right back.
Those people never think their shit through, do they?
Today I had my regular checkup with pulmonologist and for lack of anything better to do I perused the magazines in waiting room. Most of them were woman’s magazines. I noticed a few things that reminded me of this topic:
1) Absolute obsession with physical beauty with various receipts about “anti-aging”. Words like “natural” and “detox” get thrown around a lot.
2) Big obsession with fitness and sports. Words like “natural” and “positive energy” get thrown around a lot.
3) Wooganism and other food related woo. Words like “natural”, “detox” and “harmony” get thrown around a lot.
4) Pure “think pink” and “alternative medicine” woo on occasion as well.
About the only article that was completely woo -- free was one about masturbation. Which could be summed up as “it is fun -- go for it!” with short and reasonable info about hormones and dopamine.
Now I wonder what Men’s magazines look like.
The magazines were not total woo garbage, but the newage stuff did rear its ugly head ever so often, either directly in the articles or in form of advertisements for our local GOOP aeqivalents.This being mostly irreligious country there was no mention of God or god anywhere. Neither did I see any quantum.