(Categories: Wzzup)
The Volkskrant (dutch newspaper) has recently been host to a raging discussion about probiotics clinical trials in Utrecht. I think the discussion was not about the research itself but about something else. The discussion shows two important things. First we are fundamentally uneasy with something very close to our body that we don’t understand. If it is medicine we believe the authority, the doctor. And second we don’t want to give up control to someone (or something) else related to our self. The image of little creatures let loose to ‘fix’ our malfunctions does not make us happy.
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4 Comments
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The fact that millions of people use pro-biotic products makes your assumptions more or less false (or incomplete) :-) It is even so that when you explain what pro-biotics really is people instantly think something else went wrong with the research. It’s death that we are more scared of, I think, in this case…
i tend to agree with what you say, at first glance. but i don’t find evidence for that. can you give an example where people are comfortable with ‘creatures’ in their body doing ‘things’ for them they don’t understand? when, as you say, they really understand what it is they are being administered?
i think no one even realizes what exactly a probiotic desert does and what probiotic medical treatment means. why do you think the discussion over what happened in utrecht was so ‘passionately’?
Just remind yourself that Yakult is probiotic, that substance what you had in your own refrigerator ;-) And are you dead? :-)
bjorn, what i don’t understand is why are we (or de volkskrant newspaper, at least) so scared and confused of this yakult phenomenon. you have any idea why we are so ‘happilly’ consuming probiotic yakult and scared of probiotic medical treatment?