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There's a museum in Minneapolis dedicated
to good ideas gone bad. It's called the
Museum of Questionable Medical Devices. It's
founder, Robert McCoy, a professional skeptic, has collected 150 examples of medical
devices that do absolutely nothing. Let's take a quick tour with McCoy as our guide.
"The
first thing you'd see would be a Phrenology Machine. You would sit in a chair that's part
of the machine, and it would come down over your head with a lot of little switches and
measure the bumps on your head and translate that information to a printer that has 160
statements on a rubber belt that prints out what your personality's like.
"Another thing you'd see was Wilhelm's Reich's original Orgone Energy
Accumulator. So you sat in this place that looks like a fish house or an outhouse, close the door, and after 15 minutes, after you came out,
you would have a healthy normal orgasm, which would be appropriate for integrated living.
Before you wonder how anyone could get away with promoting such hocus pocus,
consider McCoy's list of current scams. "Right now are diet patches. Things in which
you take a band-aid and put it on your wrist and put a drop of chemical on it, it's
supposed to make you lose weight. Things such as copper bracelets or crystals that cure
cancer or AIDS. Such things as magnetic belts with magnets that are supposed to make you
lose weight and strengthen your heart."
How do we tell the difference between a medical scam and
a legitimate medical wonder? How do we keep from letting your own ideas to get out of
hand? Click here. |