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Tributes to Althea Hayton

Althea Hayton, founder of Womb Twin, passed away peacefully on August 13 (sorry for the delay in posting this news on the blog). We are all ...

Tuesday, May 01, 2012

The Dream of the Womb : a false memory?

Well, it seems that I am engaged in quackery, according to the False Memory Association. (FMA)

I wrote to them, after a particularly fascinating run-in a year or two ago with a group of sceptics, who when they could not catch me out tried a little character assassination on me, ( charlatan, dangerous etc etc) but I knew all about their little narcissistic game....

I emailed the FMA and asked them if I was "planting false ideas into people's heads", as this was the accusation that had been made.  Here is their reply. (Note that there were no references to any of their statements.)
Evidence points to the fact that science does not support the notion of a 'womb memory'.  Thus anyone who has not been told officially that they are a surviving twin but later comes to belief that this is the situation because they 'feel' it is the case, is most likely to be experiencing a false memory.
Sadly building upon the foundation of such a belief would be like building upon sand.  It may or may not be detrimental for an individual to hold such a belief.  Building life on a falsehood must surely be ultimately unsatisfactory but so long as it doesn't harm anyone people are entitled to hold their chosen beliefs.  Where a false memory is particularly damaging is when someone is encouraged to, or through self-help, comes to believe that they have been subjected to criminal harm following which they go on to accuse a person or persons quite wrongly and in the process destroy lives.  Since the concept of infantile amnesia is indisputed within the scientific community it places the idea of past-lives, womb and birthing memories and early infant memories into the category of quackery.
From Wikipedia:
Quackery is a derogatory term used to describe the promotion[1] of unproven or fraudulent medical practices. Random House Dictionary describes a "quack" as a "fraudulent or ignorant pretender to medical skill" or "a person who pretends, professionally or publicly, to have skill, knowledge, or qualifications he or she does not possess; a charlatan."[2]

The word "quack" derives from the archaic word "quacksalver," of Dutch origin (spelled kwakzalver in contemporary Dutch), literally meaning "hawker of salve".[3] In the Middle Ages the word quack meant "shouting". The quacksalvers sold their wares on the market shouting in a loud voice.[4]

"Health fraud" is often used as a synonym for quackery, but quackery's salient characteristic is aggressive promotion ("quacks quack!") rather than fraud, greed or misinformation.[1] "Pseudo-medicine" is a term for treatments known to be ineffective, regardless of whether their advocates themselves believe in their effectiveness.

You have been warned........




3 comments:

  1. "Kwakzalver" is someone who makes unauthorised medicine (no research, testing and dr's approval). "Kwak" means a splash of some sort of substance and "zalver" means someone who makes a salve. So "kwakzalver" literally means someone who makes a salve out of a splash of some sort of substance, and this is ofcourse unauthorised by the medical world.

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  2. I think FMA are talking "Quack", I was never aware of the womb twin survivor condition, and no false ideas were ever planted in my brain, yet everything I have learnt in the past couple of months I can identify with completely and have experienced many of the symptoms. My life has never been built on falsehood, as I was totally ignorant of the reasons for whom I am, and why. Now so much makes sense and is explained that it has been mind boggling, but not totally destructive, but constructive, and from a medical background feel it is about time that the medical world started taking things a bit more seriously about all the research that has been put into the subject, then maybe there will be less "disjointed, lonely, confused, depressed people" around who are womb twin survivors, suffering from many of the symptoms mentioned in your research.

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