I agree with this entirely. I had a condition for which I went to multiple different doctors. Most couldn't give me advice on what to do at all. The one who did give me advice said, "don't drink, don't smoke and don't have sex." I finally found an orgy throwing, pot smoking nutritionist who solved my problem. Thanks, doc.

It is easy to buy small plaster models of what you think life is like.

Medical science as it already exists is already highly politicized and it is simply too late to change that. We can shout "We're #1" all day but the obvious fact of the matter is that (many) other countries in the world are healthier than us. They are less fat than us, they live longer and now they grow taller, too. A large reason for that is the corporatization and attendant politicization of medical "science."

If it doesn't make money, it doesn't get a study to fund it. If it doesn't get a study to "prove" it "works" then it isn't accepted into the "medical science" gospel. This is a perversion of the scientific method in the extreme and has led to the creation of an sphere of alternative reality in which the pharma-medical establishment now exists. Easy to implement, cost effective ways of maintaining health and well are eschewed and ignored for not fitting into the studied and "proven" methods.

Ways of medicine like those used in Indian, Russia, Europe and east asia that competed with allopathic medicine in America during the 19th century were politically beaten away by the money making machine that allopathic medicine lent itself to be. There is no greater, more shameful example of this than the cancer industry and its slavish attachment to the biggest money making scam of them all, chemotherapy. If you have cancer, know someone who has cancer, or have bought into the cancer fear machine, I would urge you to check out a scientifically solid and well written book called The China Study.

make it rain you nappy headed ho's

I realize that the above quotes are only small blocks out of a lot of testimony...

Put in context Holsinger's response is not only appropriate, but shows that Senator Murray has less interest in evaluating the nominee's qualifications than in playing up to the cameras for political gain:

PM: Well let me ask you a specific one. For the past decade, the federal government has spent more than a billion dollars on unproven, dangerous, abstinence-only programs -- it's been the most dramatic funding increase during the last six years -- and a 2004 report by the House committee on government reform revealed that many of the most common abstinence-only curricula contained errors, contained distortions, contained stereotypes. If you had that scientific report in front of you, what would you say to the administration?

JH: Well, if it was one that I was supposed to sign off on, then I wouldn't be able to. I mean, if there were distortions...

PM: Tell me what you think of the abstinence-only study.

JH: Well, I don't -- I have not had an opportunity to study them, or the science surrounding abstinence education, so until I was able to do that, I could not give you an informed opinion.

PM: You don't have an opinion on abstinence-only curricula at all?

JH: Oh, I think abstinence is one of the mechanisms that we can use around unplanned pregnancies.

PM: What about STDs?

JH: And STDs as well, but I'm just saying that I have not studied the literature to be able to give you an informed answer. That's all I'm saying

In other words, Holsinger didn't bother to study an obscure congressional report that had little or nothing to do with the core functions of the office of the Surgeon General. He was pressed to answer a bullshit question ("If you had that scientific report in front of you...") and I think he responded correctly.

Senator Kennedy noted that Holsinger opposed a bill in the Kentucky legislature that would have made stem cell research illegal. But the introduction of that bill (and Holsinger's opposition, voiced during testimony before the legislature) occurred five years ago. In the intervening time Holsinger was busy doing other things, so it is not at all surprising that he didn't keep up on the minutiae of the topic.  Furthermore, it is not universally acknowledged by the medical community that stem cell research is likely to yield the host of miracle therapies that its supporters often claim.