The politicized sponsors of this pseudoscientific nonsense should be ashamed to live, let alone die. If you want to take part in the “war” against cancer, and other terrible maladies, too, then join the battle against their lethal stupidity.
Interpretation
Hitchens criticizes the misuse of science for political gain and urges the public to combat misinformation in health matters.
In this quote, Christopher Hitchens expresses his disdain for those who promote pseudoscience, particularly in the context of serious issues like cancer. He emphasizes the importance of fighting against ignorance and misinformation that can hinder the fight against real diseases, urging individuals to take a stand against harmful political influences that distort scientific understanding.
In practice
During a health conference, one might say this quote to emphasize the importance of relying on scientific evidence rather than political claims.
In a public dialogue with Salman in London he [Edward Said] had once described the Palestinian plight as one where his people, expelled and dispossessed by Jewish victors, were in the unique historical position of being 'the victims of the victims': there was something quasi-Christian, I thought, in the apparent humility of that statement.
What can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.
Never ask while you are doing it if what you are doing is fun. Don't introduce even your most reliably witty acquaintance as someone who will set the table on a roar.
[E]xceptional claims demand exceptional evidence.
The worst days are when you feel foggy in the head - chemo-brain they call it. It's awful because you feel boring. As well as bored. And stupid. And resigned.
Let me tell you something: for hundreds of thousands of years, this kind of discussion would have been impossible to have, or those like us would have been having it at the risk of our lives. Religion now comes to us in this smiley-face, ingratiating way — because it’s had to give so much more ground and because we know so much more. But you’ve got no right to forget the way it behaved when it was strong, and when it really did believe that it had God on its side.
At its heart, engineering is about using science to find creative, practical solutions. It is a noble profession.
Scientists tend to build a reputation on refuting the theories of those who have gone before. Yet, whatever we hypothesize, observe, measure or record about the natural world, it leaves more unanswered questions.
We carry stores of DNA in our nuclei that may have come in, at one time or another, from the fusion of ancestral cells and the linking of ancestral organisms in symbiosis. Our genomes are catalogues of instructions from all kinds of sources in nature, filed for all kinds of contingencies.
A physicist is just an atom's way of looking at itself.
Every great advance in natural knowledge has involved the absolute rejection of authority.
It seems to be a general rule that sciences begin their development with the unusual. They have to develop considerable sophistication before they interest themselves in the commonplace.
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