This site has now been retired. I've moved to my new site Silverknife, where you'll find new blog posts and all my latest projects and photos. These pages will remain for at least a while, as I know some of you are still looking through the archives, but I'm reposting my travel journals and many other articles on the new site. Come and check it out.
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Further SAEL planning news: Today I've finally put in a serious amount of time researching my visa needs, and I've found out the following:
Conclusion: World travel is unnecessarily complicated. Oh, and many nations have a cunning plan (which I have seen through with my mighty brain) to make you give them all your foreign money without taking away any of theirs.
On to other, less irritating matters. First, another link for the box on the left. Dr Ben Goldacre's "Bad Science" site started out as a column in the UK "Guardian" newspaper, and has become a cult site among science fans and anyone who values intelligence, reason and ethics over commercial interests, bias and authority control.
Week after week Ben deconstructs deceptive corporate-funded studies, brutally mocks sensationalistic science stories and highlights miscarriages of media "justice" in every sphere. He's a very smart, funny and honest guy with a genuine passion for promoting good scientific enquiry over hype, commercialism and sloppy New Age crap, and for protecting the (less qualified) general public from the shysters who will try to sell them snake (or fish) oil and magic magnetic bracelets. He's also very good at making basic scientific principles accessible to those without training. I like him a lot as a person, not just for his concern for real people (and helping keep the pool I grudgingly swim in clear of charlatans and ignorant hippies) but also for being very very entertaining.
On a (I like to think) related note, today I finally started on a project I've been meaning to get down to for some time. As I've previously stated, as a shaman I believe that mind, body and spirit are all equally important in good and bad health, and all three should be treated together. However, I also believe that medical science is the best method developed so far to treat the physical part of the equation.
Nonetheless, where possible (mainly in the case of illness that is not well-treated by medicine, and always after a doctor has checked, diagnosed and been unable to help with the physical condition, or in harmony with a doctor's treatment) I think it is good for the same person (the shaman) to treat all three aspects. That's the situation where I want to be able to treat the body myself, and herbalism is potentially a really useful tool for that purpose.
Unfortunately, while many herbal treatments have very real positive effects (based on well-tested biochemical reactions), there is a lot of fuzzy hippy crap in this area, and a hostility to scientific practice (ie good rigorous testing rather than "well, I saw it work so I don't need any supporting evidence"). When it comes right down to it, as Ben Goldacre would tell you, scientific testing isn't some weird alien process for categorising and validating effects. It consists purely of testing the effect carefully, in as real a situation as possible, and recording the results. That's the minimum level of proof I want before I start feeding my clients something I dug out of my shrubbery and telling them it'll treat their symptoms.
In this light, I recently obtained Simon Mills' book "The Dictionary of Modern Herbalism", with the intention of using it as a base text for a scientific investigation of herbalism. My idea was that I would take each listed herb, find any good peer-reviewed controlled studies supporting (or refuting) its effectiveness, and list them on an index page, thereby creating a real, scientifically tested index of herbal treatments.
The problem is...Simon Mills isn't the guy I expected. I admit it, I was cynical, I expected his statements to be mostly fluff and surmise from personal observations. But on the whole his listed effects for each herb are well supported by multiple peer-reviewed studies (to be fair about 1 in 10 is speculative and unsupported by studies, but that's a pretty good ratio).
If I had the time (ie less than 5 weeks) I'd still build the index, because he doesn't actually reference the supporting evidence so the reader can check his conclusions. That's bad practice, and adding references would make his book a really valuable document for this area. But given my limited time, I've decided to make a more pragmatic solution. Simply put I'm working my way through the book, taking each listed herb and digging up related studies in Medline, Ovid and other journal databases either supporting or refuting the use of that plant in various conditions. On the basis of those studies (at least four for each herb) I'm marking each one "Supported", "Refuted" or "Untested". It's proving to be a really interesting exercise, and a good way of remembering herbal treatments as well as ensuring that my chosen herbal solutions are well-tested.
Stop Press: Bollocks. You know why you should always do a really serious search of new page ideas before you spend time on them? Because they usually already exist. Looks like this one got past me. HerbMed does exactly what I'm talking about, providing an index of supporting evidence for all kinds of herbal treatments. My bitterness at having my idea pre-empted is completely diffused by the fact that it's an awesomely cool site, and very valuable indeed. Now I just have to copy all the best stuff down before I detach myself from regular internet access!
In honour of this really cool project, I'm creating another link box on the left for "Shamanic resources". We shall see if it proves practical in the long run. It is, of course, going to depend on finding sufficient sites which live up to my ridiculously high standards. It might be a small box.Have a nice weekend, folks.
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