{"id":2612,"date":"2008-05-16T14:05:45","date_gmt":"2008-05-16T14:05:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/scienceblogs.com\/principles\/2008\/05\/16\/the-road-to-woo-is-paved-with\/"},"modified":"2008-05-16T14:05:45","modified_gmt":"2008-05-16T14:05:45","slug":"the-road-to-woo-is-paved-with","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/2008\/05\/16\/the-road-to-woo-is-paved-with\/","title":{"rendered":"The Road to Woo is Paved with Chronic Idiopathic Urticaria"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve had recurring problems with <a href=\"http:\/\/www.emedicine.com\/med\/TOPIC3014.HTM\">hives<\/a> for a couple of years now. I have, at times, jokingly attributed this to an allergic reaction to George W. Bush continuing to be President, but I really have no idea what, exactly, is causing the problem. My allergist says that it&#8217;s most likely an autoimmune thing, and thus there isn&#8217;t any cause to find, and I&#8217;ll just drive myself crazy chasing false correlations.<\/p>\n<p>I can tell you, though, that the whole thing has given me some sympathy for people who seek solutions for their health problems in &#8220;alternative medicine.&#8221; Because, really, if somebody told me confidently that magnets would stop me from itching, I would load myself up with so many that I&#8217;d erase every hard drive in the department just by walking down the hall. Plausible mechanism be damned, I want relief&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Of course, I don&#8217;t really believe that &#8220;alternative&#8221; woo does anything, so I can&#8217;t rely on the placebo effect to save me. I guess I just have to put my hopes in Barack Obama&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve had recurring problems with hives for a couple of years now. I have, at times, jokingly attributed this to an allergic reaction to George W. Bush continuing to be President, but I really have no idea what, exactly, is causing the problem. My allergist says that it&#8217;s most likely an autoimmune thing, and thus&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/2008\/05\/16\/the-road-to-woo-is-paved-with\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">The Road to Woo is Paved with Chronic Idiopathic Urticaria<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"1","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[45],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2612","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-medicine","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2612","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2612"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2612\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2612"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2612"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2612"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}