Lourdes

Lourdes is a small market town lying in the foothills of the Pyrenees, famous for the Marian apparitions of Our Lady of Lourdes that are reported to have occurred in 1858 to Bernadette Soubirous.
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At that time, the most prominent feature of the town was the fortified castle that rises up from a rocky escarpment at its centre.Lourdes today is a commune in the Hautes-Pyrénées department in the Midi-Pyrénées region in south-western France.Following the reports that Our Lady of Lourdes had appeared to Bernadette Soubirous on a total of eighteen occasions, Lourdes has developed into a major place of Roman Catholic pilgrimage and of alleged miraculous healings.
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The 150th Jubilee of the first apparition took place on 11 February 2008 with an outdoor mass attended by approximately 45,000 pilgrims.
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Today Lourdes has a population of around 15,000 but is able to take in some 5,000,000 pilgrims and tourists every season.
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With about 270 hotels, Lourdes has the second greatest number of hotels per square kilometre in France after Paris.
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It is the joint seat of the Diocese of Tarbes-et-Lourdes and is the largest pilgrimage site in France, the second site being the Basilica of St. Thérèse (Lisieux), in Normandie.

And then we see the industry built around this
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"Cancer cured after visiting Lourdes in France" says a headline

For many years Lourdes in France has been a place of pilgrimage for Catholics
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A place where 'holy waters', waters named as such by the same Catholic Church are taken by the visitor
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Where people are cured by simple contact with the so called holy waters
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Where up to five million pilgrims and tourists go every year
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Research though says of the total cancer patients who visited Lourdes the cure rate was if anything lower than the statistical one for spontaneous remissions
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This was the finding of the late astronomer Carl Sagan a devoted thinker of scientific thinking
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It was lower than the average for those who did not go to Lourdes
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Should a statistician infer that cancer patients odds of surviving deteriorates after visiting Lourdes?
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Possibly not but it does point out how people will do things that are not predicated on logic
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Not based on reality but a living breathing myth
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Perpetuated and promoted by the organisations that gain the most from it
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Looked at from a Catholic Church business perspective it is an extremely important asset
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It brings in a healthy cash flow.
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It is easy to market
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It has so many physical and psychological benefits for the church
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The fact that there is no proof that it cures anything, the placebo effect is very powerful
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Maybe that is good if it brings comfort to people
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And maybe it is time we examined some of these myths
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Maybe time to let go magic cures
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Time to take responsibility for our own health
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We ourselves are our most potent cure
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We ourselves can heal ourselves