Jon Rappoport

May 24th 2017

Warning: don’t use common sense in judging medical pronouncements. You’ll lapse from 'The Holy Order of Mystical Research'.

Medical public-relations people keep a steady stream of stories flowing to the press, day after day.

Aside from filling space, their main function is to assure the public that “advances are always being made” and “good things are right around the corner.” It’s much better, for example, than, “Well, this month we didn’t discover a single important datum. Here’s hoping for better luck in June.”

A brief examination of medical-story headlines reveals that these stories are lacking in a little thing called reality; or they announce something so obvious it hardly merits mention, much less a full-blown study to establish what any person with a few working brain cells already knows.

Here are a few such headlines from a popular medical site (medicalnewstoday). They represent a mere few days’ worth of vital…baloney:

HOW DOES POOR SLEEP AFFECT OUR ABILITY TO LEARN? A STUDY INVESTIGATES.

Well, poor sleep makes it harder to concentrate the next day. End of study. Thanks. We’re newly enlightened. Where’s my check?

LONELINESS MAY HARM SLEEP QUALITY FOR YOUNG ADULTS.

Another stunning revelation. The boy is lonely. He doesn’t sleep well. We never would have imagined such a connection without a meticulous study.

CHRONIC PAIN AMPLIFIES THE BRAIN’S REACTION TO NEW INJURIES.

The insights keep coming. A person already in a state of chronic pain reacts more severely to new pain than a person who isn’t suffering from chronic pain. Give the researchers a Nobel and a trip to Disneyland.

RESEARCHERS PINPOINT HOW DIESEL FUMES COULD CAUSE ‘FLARE-UP’ OF RESPIRATORY SYMPTOMS.

Someone with respiratory disease could experience trouble when breathing diesel fumes. Wow. A mind-bending correlation. And we need to know the exact mechanism of the flare-up because…? Researchers are going to develop a drug that will eliminate the problem? “Do you have TB? Now you can walk through diesel fumes without a reaction.” Sure. The drug is called Thorazine. You’ll still have a severe reaction, but you won’t know it. Or anything else.

Here are two related headlines: LARGE META-ANALYSIS IDENTIFIES NEW GENES ASSOCIATED WITH INTELLIGENCE. GENES RESPONSIBLE FOR SEVERE CONGENITAL HEART DISEASE IDENTIFIED BY RESEARCHERS.

I love stories about “breakthroughs” in gene research. First of all, try to find one version of gene therapy for any disease that works across the board. Good luck. But you can find thousands of articles about “advances” in the research. They hint at glorious innovations coming to your neighborhood soon. So let me know when this genetic discovery about heart disease results in a treatment that actually reverses the condition. And as for genes associated with intelligence, it’s easy as pie to make claims, as long as you don’t have to try to increase IQ with an injection. Getting the point? Researchers can obtain all sorts of money to do studies that then posit some correlation between a condition and various gaggles of genes—as long as they don’t have to come up with an actual gene therapy that works. It’s a great con. Nice work if they can get it, and they can.

THE SECRET TO COMBATING PANCREATIC CANCER MAY LIE IN SUPPRESSION OF A COMMON PROTEIN.

Yes, it may. Or it may not. Who can say? We’ll have to wait and see. Give the researchers another decade. Meanwhile, read about lots of “maybes.” It’s possible that a steady diet of “maybe” articles will increase your intelligence, help you sleep better at night, reverse heart disease, and decrease your reaction to diesel fumes.

It’s also possible the articles will turn you into a creature with the IQ of a tree-dwelling sloth.