Ignoring the red-and-white danger sign, Sri Mulyati walks slowly to the train tracks outside Indonesia’s bustling capital, lies down and stretches her body across the rails.
Like the nearly dozen others lined up along the track, the 50-year-old diabetes patient has all but given up on doctors and can’t afford the expensive medicines they prescribe. In her mind, she has only one option left: electric therapy.
“I’ll keep doing this until I’m completely cured,” said Mulyati, twitching visibly as an oncoming passenger train sends an extra rush of current racing through her body.
She leaps from tracks as it approaches and then, after the last carriage rattles slowly by, climbs back into position…
She turned to train track therapy last year after hearing a rumor about an ethnic Chinese man who was partially paralyzed by a stroke going to the tracks to kill himself, but instead finding himself cured…
No one has been arrested yet, and none of the participants in train track therapy has died.
Yet.
#19–speter==nice review and quite accurate as well==except for the cure part. Alignment does have its role and purpose that in the main traditional medicine overlooks. My own mother got hit by a truck as a young girl and was told she would never walk. Chiropracter gave her her life back. It has a very limited, narrow scope, applicability. The unknown benefits of alignment? I’m sure there are a few. Cancer? Well, if you think the body can heal itself, then that possibility is there.
As a side shot to Tanya: when the alternative approaches reach a success level above 1%, they will achieve a credibility worthy of a second look. As to railtrack therapy, I wouldn’t be surprised if the mere exercise of walking down to the tracks and stretching the body was the best thing that could be done. The smell may lessen their appetite. Hey!!!!==one cure for some diabetes is increased exercise and reduced calories. Ha, ha.
#17 Bonno – I thought you might be applying hyperbole so I didn’t take you too far to task.
Re: Chiropractors. IMHO a quack profession. What other medical profession defines a problem no one else can see or demonstrate (subluxations) and then pulls off enough political clout to get the “cure”, only they can deliver, covered by insurance? Alignment therapy? When was the last time you had to unkink an electrical cable to get the current to flow? Seriously, if your spine is so crooked it is interfering with the nerve impulses, you probably need more therapy than a chiropractor can manage.
Then I back off. Because I know people including my own father who improved dramatically from a “whiplash” injury after visiting a DCM. My own opinion is that he (and most others) would be helped equally well by a good massage therapist or physical therapist. Not a pseudo doctor.
#22–Animby==like I said, they can’t cure all kinds of cancer.
you say: “My own opinion is that he (and most others) would be helped equally well by a good massage therapist or physical therapist. Not a pseudo doctor.? //// Yes, a BJ or happy ending makes “the medicine go down”/the symptoms go away, or what were we talking about?
BUT—let’s be fair. What healthcare provider doesn’t “over promise” or over estimate their skills? Some will argue its even better for the patients. Imagine that?
I almost choked to death on my hot dog last night: consumer show on tv advising the public to “know” their doctor better: “ask him what his infection rate is.”
I wonder just how stupid “everyone” is? THAT stupid? Tell me it ain’t so.
#23 Bobbo – I, too, nearly choked when I heard a PSA advising people to make an appointment with a doctor to interview them, see if you want to be their patient. Not sure what a routine office visit costs these days but I doubt your insurance will cover an interview! An argument could be made that you are about to hire the doctor so maybe he should waive the fee in anticipation of future income. HAH! I don’t know any doctors right now who are that much in need of new patients. Besides, most doctors (guilty!) have egos too big to submit to such interrogations – uhh – interviews.
Seems like nobody likes Diet and Exercise, not even Indonesians.