You know, there are days when you end-up four clicks away from something that you were interested in and you stop half way through reading the article to say "how the hell did I end-up here?" Today was one of those days. I had never heard of urine therapy until this evening. After the initial laughter at the absurdity of it all you soon realise that these people are serious.
Look, I'm not afraid of urine. It is well known that urine is sterile and cannot contain disease-causing bacteria or viruses (except minute traces in the chronically ill) so I'm not saying that it is going to harm you but I have to ask why you would want to endure (what I imagine to be) that vile taste for no discernible benefit?
I doubt that we will find any South Africans defending this woo as it is mostly practised in Southern~ and Eastern Asia (although Manto may be interested to learn that it has been demonstrated as a cure for AIDS - see below). It has made some inroads into Western culture via eastern teachings like Taoism.
The Universal Tao webpage on urine therapy is quite long and badly written, but contains serious challenges to modern medicine such as the following ...
I have seen many instances in which people completely cure them-selves of even 'incurable' diseases through urine therapy and natural healing and remain well far a number of years, only to completely undo all the good they've accomplished by overconfidently pushing themselves to extremes in their work or recreation. One of the saddest examples of this error that I know of was the case of a young, bright, determined AIDS patient who had completely cured himself of all visible and clinical evidence of the disease, but subse-quently consistently and relentlessly overworked at his demanding corporate job. Eventually, he fell ill, relapsed and was not able to recover.
Okay, we all know this is anecdotal evidence and also demonstrates everything wrong with alternative healing; when the patient does eventually die, blame the patient's adherence to the protocol as the cause. Oh! And this Tao teacher has found the first AIDS patient to
relapse! The rest of us know that HIV/AIDS is a managed disease (i.e. you never "get better" but you live in a way to prevent secondary infections from killing you). He probably has Cancer and AIDS confused, but this is a general problem again because they have no concept of mutated cells and viral infections - to them it's all "unbalanced chi" anyway. There are also numerous claims of curing Cancer on this same page.
There are times when the advice is bordering on the dangerous...
Urine Therapy and Drugs: In the past I have recommended that you do not use urine therapy if you are taking any type of drugs [...] However, new research has come to my attention that shows that urine therapy can be beneficial under all of these conditions.
Where is this "new research"? I must disagree that this should even be considered because most medication has an effect on the urine that you expel. It may range from the harmless million-to-one shot of reinfecting yourself (if you are already taking medication you are probably treating an illness so it is possible, if this is a severe or chronic condition, that some unsterilised disease-causing agents may be passed in the urine) to the very real danger of post-activation drug remnants.
But, luckily for me, I can start urine therapy immediately without thinking twice. How you ask? Quite simply be preparing a
homoeopathic preparation from my own urine! What excellent news, I don't have to drink any of it to gain the benefits!! This wonderful discovery by
Dr. Nancy Dunne indicates that the homoeopathic preparation takes nothing away from the auto-urine therapy process.
Dr. Nancy Dunne, the allergy researcher, reported that her colleague, Dr. Fife, used urine in the form of a homeopathic dilution with excellent results. Homeopathic urine is excellent for children and may be helpful to those with extreme sensitivities.
Yeah, it certainly will help with my extreme sensitivity to
awful tastes! But this is contrary to the "like cures like" mantra of homoeopathy, surely I should be taking the opposite of urine? Anybody have any suggestions of what that might be? Water maybe? If so, what do I dilute it in?
I did find a rather tenuous link to South African in all this ... a rather old IOL article on the subject
here. This article highlights another trick of the Alternative Medicine crowd ...
[Martha] Christy [the author of "Your Own Perfect Medicine"] says doctors have deliberately not highlighted the benefits of auto-urine therapy because there are no profits in it for them.
It just goes to show that much like the
six degrees of Kevin Bacon, woo-woo and flummery is only six clicks away on the Internet.
