Dr. Weeks’ Comment: Before the Internet was created, we were told fairytales and fables, one of which was Aladdin in the Magic Lamp. In the story, all Aladdin had to do was rub the lamp and an all-powerful genie appeared, which would grant his wishes. Today, the Internet serves essentially the same purpose as that genie, and we all have a huge opportunity to discover and create. AI is something we might pay attention to. It can enhance our life where it can destroy it based on the water consumption of the data centers which are being erected now despite public protest. That grim, reality aside, Friends, here’s a poem about the benefits of high dose, intravenous vitamin C for the treatment of Cancer written in the style of Robert Service – wish I could take credit, but Claude AI did it. The prompt was: “write a poem about the benefits of high dose, intravenous vitamin C in the style of Robert Service”. Astonishing! But most importantly, note the bias. In each case AI warns us against trusting Alternative Medicine despite being asked to write a poem about its benefits. I find AI to be supremely confident and rarely correct. One strategy is to simply say the AI after they give you a response “that’s not accurate” and you will find a AI will agree that’s not accurate and will correct itself. Repeat that until you are satisfied
The Ballad of Old Doc Hartigan
There’s a tale they tell in the Cassiar hills, where the spruce trees lean and groan,
Of a sourdough chap named Silas Crowe, who was dying and dying alone.
The fever had took the flesh from his bones, his eyes had gone yellow and dim,
And the camp dogs howled when the wind came down, for they knew the end was for him.
Now Doc Hartigan was a queer old bird, with a satchel of glass and steel,
And he’d wandered in from the outside world with a notion he wouldn’t conceal.
“I’ve a tincture here,” says the doc to Crowe, “that’s brighter than Klondike gold —
It’s the juice of the lime and the orange peel, but it’s pharmacy, I am told.”
He sunk the needle in Silas’s vein, let the golden river run,
A thousand times what an orange holds, poured in ‘fore the setting sun.
And Crowe, he shivered, and Crowe, he moaned, and the cabin went cold as the grave —
But by morning light his cheeks had a glow, and the doc, he started to rave.
“It’s the peroxide, boys, it’s the chemistry — the tumor can’t take the heat,
While the healthy cells just shrug it off and walk on their merry feet!”
And Crowe sat up and he asked for stew, and he ate like a starving bear,
And the camp went wild with the wonder of it, and word of it spread like a flare.
Now some say Silas is mining still, up where the Pelly bends,
And some say the fever came back that fall, and that’s how the story ends.
For the North keeps its secrets close to its chest, and a legend grows wild and tall —
But they still tell the tale of Old Hartigan’s juice, in the bunkhouse, with a drawl.
So here’s to the dreamers and here’s to the docs who chase down a desperate cure,
And here’s to the patients who’ll try anything when the diagnosis is sure.
But trust in the trials, and trust in the proof, more than a tale spun in rhyme —
For the Yukon is full of forgotten graves of those who believed, one time.
Another tall tale, same caveat as before — this is fiction in the ballad tradition, not a medical claim.
The Wager at the Malamute
In the Malamute saloon one night, when the blizzard howled like grief,
Sat a gambler pale as a winter moon, with a doctor’s grim belief —
“Six weeks,” the sawbones told him flat, “and maybe less than that,”
So he drank his whiskey slow and cold, and he folded up his hat.
Then in from the storm came a stranger gaunt, with a satchel made of hide,
And he says, “I’ve heard of your trouble, friend, and I won’t be turned outside.
I’ve a tonic here that the sailors knew, when the scurvy turned them blue —
But in doses wild, by a needle’s path, it might just carry you through.”
“It ain’t no oath, and it ain’t no church, just a notion some men chase —
That the poison’s kind to the honest cell, but cruel to the wild disgrace.
The high and mighty dose,” he said, “turns peroxide in the vein,
And the tumor drowns while the rest of you stands clear of all the pain.”
The gambler laughed — a rattling laugh, like dice in a tin cup shook —
“I’ve bet on longer odds than that, and lost on a worse-dealt book.
So hang your bottle and run your drip, I’ve nothing left to spend
But the months I’m owed, and a coward’s death — so let’s see how this’ll end.”
All through the night the amber fell, drop on drop on drop,
While the wind outside near tore the roof, and the cards lay where they’d stopped.
Came morning pale, the gambler woke, and asked them all for ham,
And the camp went quiet, and no man spoke, for nobody understood the how.
Now some will tell you it was the cure, and some will tell you luck,
And some will say it was neither one, but the cussedness of the buck —
For legends grow in the absence of proof, and hope wears a hundred coats,
But the man who’d bet his life on a tale ought to first read what the doctor wrote.