I have been concerned about the recent advertising on WBKO for Laser Solutions in Bowling Green. I understand that they are a customer of WBKO for commercial time, but I feel that WBKO as a responsibility to not promote poor services and products. Laser Solutions provides a poor service that is only out to take money away from your viewers in the Bowling Green area.
Laser Solutions promotes a service which uses Lasers to “stimulate” Acupuncture points on the body in an effort to help patients stop smoking. There are several problems with this. The first and most obvious problem is that Acupuncture has never been shown to help anyone with any problem, including stopping smoking. The American Medical Association has been quoted as saying the following about acupuncture and its ilk,
“There is little evidence to confirm the safety or efficacy of most alternative therapies. Much of the information currently known about these therapies makes it clear that many have not been shown to be efficacious. Well-designed, stringently controlled research should be done to evaluate the efficacy of alternative therapies.”
So even if it was just an Acupuncture it would still be of poor value to your viewers. To then add the use of Lasers to stimulate these points on the body is adding poor science fiction on to the top of poor medicine.
The web is full of information about this shoddy and incorrect service. A simple search for information on it reveals that the only people who are out promoting it are the people that are selling it. There is no scientific community that backs it and there is no evidence of its usefulness.
Please remove this scam from your advertising and from your news broadcasts, because there is nothing valid or news worthy about it. Your viewers in the Bowling Green area look to your station as a validation for things like this and I am sure that because of the segment on Midday Live today there will be several customers show up to Laser Solutions. It is unfortunate that when they leave Laser Solutions the only thing they will have gotten from them is a lighter wallet.
Thank You for your time,
Brent Norris
WBKO Viewer and Concerned Citizen
P.S. The content of this email and any replies will also be posted on my journal at http://www.brentnorris.net
There is an old saying, “A Fool And His Money Are Easily Parted.”
Stupid people should lose their money, that’s just one of the reasons they’re considered stupid.
How come you let these things bother you so much? Are you trying to become the “B.S. Buster”, you know, like “Myth Busters” on TV?
Also, Laser Solutions probably can’t find honest work, what do you want them to do? It’s the ‘American Way’, screw the people anyway possible. It’s capitalism at it’s best! Money for nothing!
I am not trying to become anything more than someone who doesn’t shut up when they see stupid. If everyone that thought these things were wrong and stealing from people stood up and said so, perhaps there would be fewer of them around. Instead we get a society that thinks you can buy things like this and homeopathic medicine and that you are actually getting something besides the shaft.
Right now there are products on the market that are 100% water, that are being sold as real cures to real problems. It is causing people to avoid going to actual medical professionals, because they think they are fixing themselves with these “Alternative Treatments”. People have died because of this crap.
Noneofus said …
“Stupid people should lose their money, that’s just one of the reasons they’re considered stupid.”
It is wrong to blame the victims. People scamming others out of money is wrong. When people need help for something, whether it’s trying to quit smoking or dealing with the death of someone close, there are people that are taking advantage those who are emotionally fragile.
There is no such thing as ‘victims’. People routinely place a value on their time – for example Doctors, Lawyers, Mechanics, etc. – and they charge people for it. You accept this charge even though the reality is their time isn’t worth 100 times your time, since at the end of the day we’re all human and whether we live or die is irrelevant. So I could argue that either EVERYONE is a victim EVERY DAY, or no one is a victim ever. I’m a fan of the latter approach. People should take responsibility for themselves. If they don’t do their research (like Brent), then they deserve to get bilked. Stupidity should be painful, thats the only way for us to evolve.
I really agree with maxx when he says “People should take responsibility for themselves.” I think that lack resposibility is the problem nearly 100% of the time, i.e. alcohol abuse. People can use alcohol in moderation; it’s the abuse that is the problem. It’s the same with many other issues like abortion (the less potential people we have to kill the better, but it can be necessary),
As far as “no such things as ‘victims,’ I don’t understand how someone who is taken advantage of is not a victim. Whether it is a child that is molested and told it is natural, or someone using “HEAD ON” and told it is a remedy, there is harm done, and therefore you have a victim right? What about someone shot by an armed burglar?
We can totally agree that people should do their research, but as powerful a tool the internet may be, I’m afraid many people surf it for pr0n and less educational purposes.
The problem is that things like “HEAD ON” are sold as medicine. They are sold in drug stores right next to real medicine. There isn’t anything on the box that says it is fake new age bullshit and there isn’t anything on the shelves around it that says it only works if you believe it works.
Someone walking through the store looking for something to get rid of their headache can’t tell that it is based on bunk from looking at it. Things like this should have to say HOMEOPATHIC is big huge letters on the box. Then at least people would see that word and maybe look it up. Then it is up to them to be intelligent or not.
Just for reference here are the ingredents to “HEAD ON”
Active Ingredients: Blue Flag 12X H.P.U.S. 0.1% (Iris Versicolor – Pain Reliever**), Potassium Dichromate (6X H.P.U.S. 0.03% – Pain Reliever**), White Bryony (12X H.P.U.S. 0.04% – Pain Reliever**)
This is where we need P to sort out if it is even possible for there to be enough molecules of these “Drugs” to even effect someone. Oh yeah and from what I have read online two of those “Drugs” are just common flowers.
I also found this gem on a site where you can order it:
“# A new headache treatment applied directly to the forehead! Face your pain HeadOn Safe to use with other medications
# Invisible & Non-Greasy
# No unwanted side effects
# Can be used as often as needed”
You know why you can do all of that? Because there is nothing in there. You are applying wax to your head, with no drugs or medicine at all. Thus you can use it as many times as you want and you don’t have to worry about side effects. Hell you don’t even have to worry about effects.
“# A new headache treatment applied directly to the forehead! Face your pain HeadOn Safe to use with other medications
# Invisible & Non-Greasy
# No unwanted side effects
# Can be used as often as neededâ€
With the exception of the ‘invisible’ part, I’ve produced a similar substance for years with the same … benefits, but clearly I’m not good enough at marketing to have sold it as such.
🙂
Sorry, I couldn’t resist… I laughed my ass off when I read these lines! I apologize for being crass… sometimes the opportunity is too good to pass up.
No need to be worried about being crass. I am sure almost everyone thought of similar things when they read that the first time. 🙂 You wouldn’t believe how many jokes on the net there are along those lines.
Aparantly your comments on Laser Solutions has not been tried. My Brotherinlaw smoked 4 packs of cigerates a day and with 3 treatments quit and that was 3 years ago. While visiting in Buffalo NY I also went and had it done I quit but also had another benefit that I did not expect. my index finger which had been stiff for years from artheritis quit hurting and now I can bend it with out pain and I’m no spring chicken.and that was 2 years ago. The cost was not any more than the hypotist I went to which cost me 3 times as much
You quit because you wanted to. It didn’t have anything to do with what they did to you. All they did was wave a dead chicken around you and that caused you to have the confidence to quit smoking.
There is no evidence in a personal account talking about it working. There have been several doubleblind test on it where people have had “lasers” aimed at no acupunture points and it work. There are people that didn’t even have the light turned on and they quit.
It is all about the confidence to quit, not any mumbo jumbo BS science that they did.
Brent, the reason you can’t get traction behind your common sense debunking of these popular myths is that you’re calling people fools – directly to their faces. And for people to agree with you, they’d have to accept that they’ve allowed themselves to be made fools of. This approach *never* works – it is the quintessential dichotomy of the irresistible force vs the immovable object.
Instead, you might want to give them an out – give them a reason to believe that even though your logic is sound, they themselves are not fools. Hopefully that will get them thinking the next time around before making decisions that are more likely to be ill-researched than outright stupid.
In Marie’s case, she believes the treatment helped her quit. Fine, maybe it did. Maybe she is one of those rare people who have some special mutated gene or DNA fragment that causes her to be more susceptible to smoking, and maybe the light rays caused an electrochemical reaction that made her quit. Science tolerates anomalies, and accepts them as a fundamental part of evolution – like people with sickle-cell anemia being invulnerable to malaria, for example.
Isn’t it better for Marie (and your argument) if she concludes this rather than assuming that she must be delusional or weak-willed? Isn’t she more likely to come back and read your musings as a voice of reason as opposed to concluding that you do not represent the views of common sense? Isn’t she more likely to vote for something that you espouse as being common sense at some later date?
I bring this up not because I want you to be less honest – I personally admire you for your straight talk. But I do believe that you’re a forceful writer, and could very well be a beacon for other people in your area who might be more timid and less likely to see the bigger picture. It does them no good to have you become marginalized. Think on it before responding in kind to people like Marie.
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Just wanted to say, “Keep up the good work.” It’s good to run into another skeptical website, and I’m glad to hear about the start of SKYSkeptics.