So now it is official: Not only has Hillary Clinton secured the Democratic nomination at last, but even her fierce rival Bernie Sanders has publicly endorsed her. The fighting among Democrats is over.

However, some diehard Bernie supporters refuse to vote for Clinton and may instead vote for the Green Party, which is indeed more progressive than most Democrats are.

I like most of what the Greens stand for, but there is one point that I strongly disagree with them on.

http://www.gp.org/social_justice/#sjHealthCare

Greens support a wide range of health care services, not just traditional medicine, which too often emphasizes “a medical arms race” that relies upon high-tech intervention, surgical techniques and costly pharmaceuticals. Chronic conditions are often best cured by alternative medicine. We support the teaching, funding and practice of holistic health approaches and, as appropriate, the use of complementary and alternative therapies such as herbal medicines, homeopathy, naturopathy, traditional Chinese medicine and other healing approaches.

Unfortunately, most forms of “alternative” medicine are called that precisely because they have not been fully tested and confirmed to work via scientific methods. To illustrate the danger of being willing to uncritically trust such things, read this:

An Explanation About Science

One of the things people need to understand about science is that it is not like a buffet restaurant where you can pick and choose what scientific ideas and products you can accept or reject. You either accept it all or you are not thinking scientifically.

Here’s another questionable part of the Greens’ platform:

http://www.gp.org/ecological_sustainability/#esAgriculture

We urge the banning of sewage sludge or hazardous wastes as fertilizer, and of irradiation and the use of genetic engineering in all food production. (Emphasis mine)

Genetic engineering itself is neither good nor bad, so banning the procedure completely is nonsense. We need to judge all such issues on a case by case basis.

The Greens need to modify their platform by removing these controversial and inappropriate statements if they expect to keep my support. Otherwise, I will just return to voting a straight Democratic ticket this November.