the red cross administering a treatment to malaria to african children
No, it's not showing that. It's showing a dude doing something in Africa, who may or may not be with the Red Cross (they were very quick to disclaim him) doing something which may or may not be a malaria treatment (which was sold to them as a purification agent, hm...) which may or may not have had the results claimed by someone who presents no hard documentation and which my link offers a much more likely explanation for (regression to the mean due to quick first-pass testing with a high false positive rate).
Maybe. If even that. Each cut is a chance to shift film entirely: seeing is not believing. Documentarians know this very well, that it's easy to lie. See propaganda films like Triumph of the Will, modern polemicists like Michael Moore, or heck any of the examples in TvTropes. Just simple juxtaposition of shots can lead to starkly different interpretation of the same exact material by the viewers - the famous Kuleshov Effect. (Why do you think they give an Oscar for best film editing?)
Sadly, 'seeing is believing' for a lot of people...
I see your point. Watching a video or picture, or whatever, for that reason, is no proof of anything. Those are easy to manipulate, I think we can agree on that. But what I want to hint to here, is the fact that we have vested interests on one side and virtually no profit on the other side. So which one do you belive? You post some link with 'exposing material', which is asserting in its third sentence, that the stuff is dangerous etc. and that that's an established fact... reading is believing, too. I've heard of some people (acquaintences) in africa witn...
We can always use more case studies of insanity that aren't religion, right?
Well, Miracle Mineral Supplement is my new go-to example for Bad Things happening to people with low epistemic standards. "MMS" is a supposed cure for everything ranging from the common cold to HIV to cancer. I just saw it recommended in another Facebook thread to someone who was worried about malaria symptoms.
It's industrial-strength bleach. Literally just bleach. Usually drunk, sometimes injected, and yes, it often kills you. It is every bit as bad as it sounds if not worse.
This is beyond Poe's Law. Medieval blood draining via leeches was far more of an excusable error than this, they had far less evidence it was a bad idea. I think if I was trying to guess what was the dumbest alternative medicine on the planet, I still would not have guessed this low. My brain is still not pessimistic enough about human stupidity.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miracle_Mineral_Supplement