From: sbharris@ix.netcom.com(Steven B. Harris)
Newsgroups: uk.environment,alt.support.chronic-pain,alt.support.arthritis,
	uk.misc,soc.culture.british,misc.health.alternative,sci.med.cardiology,
	misc.health.arthritis
Subject: Re: Homeopathy is "bullshit" (was: Aspartame (diet drinks) good for
Date: 10 Feb 1999 09:03:53 GMT

In <36C0FF8A.5C103044@interlog.com> Happy Dog <happydog@interlog.com>
writes:
>
>Bran wrote:
>
>> >> I was way anti-MD long before this happened.  The Communists used to
>> >> put people in mental hospitals for disagreeing with communism. The
>> >> similarities are striking.
>>
>> >Some Communist governments did this.  It was never a practice condoned
>> >by their medical establishment.
>>
>> They must have condoned/collaborated for it to happen idiot.
>
>Nope.  And some lost their lives fighting it.  Read some Russian history.
>It was a constant battle by academics to have this practice stopped.
>There were certainly some evil doctors.  Like Mengele.  But such people
>exist everywhere.



   The doctors were always giving Stalin political grief.  Toward the
end of his life he was planning to wipe out a lot of them in pogrom,
but didn't get the chance, because he had a stroke.  Nobody dared
disturb him.  Certainly not to call a doctor, until it was way too late
(not that it might have done any good had they been called earlier, the
state of medical science being what it had been reduced to in the USSR
by that time).

    I suppose more doctors in the USSR could have martyred themselves,
but it's always easier to suggest it than do it.  There's the wonderful
story of Khruschev denouncing Stalin in a speech one day, and somebody
from the audience pipes up and says "And where were YOU when all this
was going on, Commrade Khruschev?"   Khruschev stops, looks out, says
"Who said that!?"  Silence.   "Well, THAT'S where I was."