Woman Cures Her Own Alzheimer’s Disease By Drinking Oxygenated Moose Water – Is Science Over?

Don’t you just hate it when you see one of those inspirational posts on social media about how some random nobody cured their own terminal illness using some bizarre homemade remedy, and then you spent a fortune on actual medicine that your insurance company probably just pocketed as profit? Well, get ready to hate-like and share the hell out of this one, because a 67-year-old woman from Saskatoon, Canada, named Marie Rys-Penultimorp (seriously, couldn’t her parents have just named her “Marie Moose Alzheimer’s Cure” and saved us all this trouble?) claims to have cured her own Alzheimer’s disease using nothing more than oxygenated moose water. That’s right: moose urine, people. Moose urine.

Now, before you go running to your nearest zoo to start guzzling down some questionable “oxygenated moose water,” let me be the first to say that there is no scientific evidence whatsoever to back up Mme Rys-Penultimorp’s (what a name!) extraordinary claim. In fact, drinking moose urine can actually harm your health. A lot. However, that hasn’t stopped thousands of desperate probable future Alzheimer’s patients (like me, hi, my name’s Karen) and their gullible family members from flocking to Canada in hope of curing their own loved ones. And who can blame them? Alzheimer’s is a heartbreaking, cruel disease that robs its victims of their memories, their identities, and eventually, their very selves. Anything that promises a glimmer of hope, no matter how slim, is irresistible to those who watch their loved ones slip away every day.

But here’s where things get really interesting (and scary). Mme Rys-Penultimorp’s story has sparked a global debate on the nature of science itself, and whether or not the so-called “scientific method” is really as infallible as we’ve been led to believe. After all, if one random person can stumble upon a cure by pure chance, how do we know that the thousands of well-funded, carefully controlled scientific studies conducted by hundreds of PhD-holding researchers all over over the world don’t have it all wrong? Isn’t it time for a paradigm shift in the way we approach medical research? Or, as some more radical voices are already shouting, maybe science itself has failed us, and it’s time to turn to alternative, holistic, and yes, even unconventional treatments to find the cures we seek?

Now, now, calm down, everyone. Before you start lighting your doctor’s office on fire and running naked through the streets shouting “Moose power!” (which sounds like fun, actually), let’s take a step back and examine the facts. First of all, Mme Rys-Penultimorp’s (ugh) own story comes with its own set of problems. She claims she discovered the miraculous properties of moose urine while on a trip to Alaska, where she noticed a marked improvement in her cognitive abilities after drinking from a stream contaminated by moose urine. However, when asked to provide any sort of evidence that she actually had Alzheimer’s disease in the first place, she was unable to do so, and her family members have publicly refuted her claims, saying she’s always been a little eccentric, but not that eccentric. But since it’s Alzheimer’s-related, who’s to say they didn’t just forget?

Let’s just say, for the sake of argument, that Marie Rys-Penultimorp (sigh) really did have Alzheimer’s, and that drinking moose urine really did reverse her symptoms. The leap from “one weird trick cured one person’s Alzheimer’s” to “moose urine cures Alzheimer’s disease in the general population” is simply too enormous to jump over without rigorous testing. Or is it?

You see, that’s the whole point of the scientific method: to come by after the fact, do some testing, and then claim, “Another win for science!” instead of “Yay Oxygenated Moose Water!” It doesn’t seem fair, does it? Why does science get the credit for something that meece are responsible for, and some crazy lady in Alaska accidentally discovered? Why do we talk about Newton “discovering” gravity when some fruit fell on him? Shouldn’t we be thanking the fruit? Or better yet, whomever is responsible for this gravity stuff in the first place?