Like many of you, I was saddened to read the news of Patrick Swayze’s untimely death – Roadhouse will forever be one of my most favorite movies. Unfortunately, there are those who will look to take advantage of any opportunity to push their pseudoscientific nonsense, just as the douchebags over at NaturalNews.com have done regarding Swayze’s death.

Swayze died of pancreatic cancer, and he fought the disease as best he could using science-based medicine. But in an article apparently based in an alternate reality, these anti-science-based medicine folks state that it is precisely because he relied on science-based medicine that he died. You’ve that right, folks: according to these deluded people, science killed Patrick Swayze! *facepalm*

Patrick Swayze dead at 57 after chemotherapy for pancreatic cancer

Beloved actor Patrick Swayze died yesterday evening after a 20-month battle with pancreatic cancer. Having put his faith in conventional chemotherapy, he largely dismissed ideas that nutrition, superfoods or “alternative medicine” might save him, instead betting his life on the chemotherapy approach which seeks to poison the body into a state of remission instead of nourishing it into a state of health.

Okay, so these morons start pushing the “chemotherapy = poison” line right off the bat. This is nothing more than a blatant attempt to scare people about a useful & serious method for combating cancer. By equating it with poison, they try to leave the reader with the impression that nothing good comes out of chemotherapy, despite the fact that it is one of the most reliable methods of treating cancer available. Which leads to the next part of the article…

Peter Jennings died following chemotherapy for lung cancer. Heath Ledger died following an accidental overdose of prescription medications (http://www.naturalnews.com/022602.html). Michael Jackson was killed by a doctor-administered injection of lethal painkillers. Famed newscaster Tim Russert most likely died from the fatal side effects of cholesterol medications (http://www.naturalnews.com/023434_T…). Former White House Press Secretary Tony Snow died after receiving chemotherapy for colon cancer (http://www.naturalnews.com/023626_c…), and Bernie Mac was most likely killed by pharmaceutical side effects (http://www.naturalnews.com/023817_B…).

In this screed of pure stupid, the NaturalNews.com goofs are displaying that time honored pseudoscientific trick of cherry picking: they are pointing out only high profile deaths associated with science-based medicine. The one, and monumentally important, fact they’re leaving out – intentionally, I think – is that there are vastly higher numbers of people who are treated & cured of their diseases & ailments using these methods than those who are killed.

And another thing to note is the slippery rhetoric used above… notice how in the cases of Peter Jennings & Tony Snow the article states that they “died after receiving chemotherapy”. They didn’t die because of the chemotherapy, they died from cancer – but the article gives the impression (again tying into the “chemotherapy = poison” nonsense) that it was the chemotherapy that killed Jennings & Snow! This is a common logical fallacy called post hoc ergo propter hoc, or “after this, therefore because (on account) of this” – implying that because these people died after they had chemotherapy that it must have been the chemo that killed them. It’s also a completely douchebaggy move to make, for reasons I’ll outline below after I vent my spleen some more.

And this next section of the article is perhaps the most reprehensible…

Western medicine offers no hope, no solutions Of course, the cancer industry takes no responsibility for his death. Drug companies and cancer docs never accept responsibility for the way their poisonous treatments harm (and often kill) many fine people. Had Patrick Swayze’s pancreatic cancer gone away, doctors would have hailed chemotherapy as the genius treatment that saved Swayze’s life. But chemotherapy has never healed anyone of cancer. Not once in the history of medicine. And when people die after being poisoned by chemotherapy, the oncologists and conventional medical doctors just shrug and say ridiculous things like, “The cancer was too far along” or “He didn’t fight it hard enough.” No one fought cancer more diligently and optimistically than Patrick Swayze. Even after being diagnosed with an admittedly scary disease — pancreatic cancer — he remained upbeat and enthusiastic about beating the condition. He put more faith in conventional medicine and chemotherapy than perhaps anyone, and yet that medicine failed him just the same. No one can fault Swayze himself for a lack of optimism. “I want to last until they find a cure, which means I’d better get a fire under it,” Swayze said in a highly-publicized interview with ABC’s Barbara Walters. No one apparently told Swayze the cancer industry isn’t looking for a cure. They’re looking for more business from more patients, and a genuine “cure” for cancer is flatly incompatible with the industry’s business interests.

I don’t even know where to begin with this steaming pile of crap. Essentially, this last bit is one big, long conspiracy-mongering rant against all forms of science-based medicine. They even say it in the section title “Western medicine offers no hope, no solutions”, by which when they say Western they mean scientific. This is, again, meant to reinforce the too-widely held belief that science-based medicine cannot be trusted because all it is is a vehicle for the pharmaceutical industry to make money, also known as the Big Pharma conspiracy. By painting any and all science-based medicine with such a brush, these “natural cures” woo-meisters hope to force people into believing a false dichotomy: that if science-based medicine is bad & useless, then by default the “natural cures” stuff must be good (despite the lack of evidence that such “natural cures” are useful at all)!

Folks, this is the same kind of argumentation employed by pseudoscientists of numerous stripes, from creationists to global warming deniers to all manner of medical quackery such as the “natural cures” crowd. Note that these folks do not offer any actual science-based evidence that their supposed cures will actually cure people’s cancer, they merely talk trash and attempt to make the medical & scientific communities out to be the bad guys. They are offering no solutions that can be scientifically tested & verified, they are merely feeding into people’s most base & nasty emotions in an attempt to pawn off upon them completely useless and un-regulated snake-oil “cures” which will do nothing but lighten your wallet while making you suspicious of actual medicine which works.

You know, now that I think about it, calling these people douchebags is kind of an insult… to douchebags.