Talking Past Each Other Is One Thing--Interfering With Our Rights Is Another
Thursday, May 22, 2008 at 10:20AM I was listening to a segment on NPR yesterday afternoon about preparations already well under way for next winter’s flu vaccine. (Unfortunately, I can’t find the link on the NPR site.) A scientist from Princeton, I believe, was explaining how the flu virus mutates slightly each year into several variations, and how scientists have developed advanced models to anticipate the changes so they can come up with a flu vaccine that is likely to be effective against next year’s crop of strains.
Of course, there was no mention in the discussion about the role of our immune systems in reducing the odds of being hit by the flu bug. No consideration of the role of nutrition in helping strengthen the immune system.
Both the interviewer and the interviewee were totally consumed by the wonders—no, the miracle--of medical technology in protecting us.
What Miguel, Gary Cox, and others are saying in the lengthy dialogue following my May 17 post, it seems to me, is that the problem of pathogens and food safety need to be viewed holistically.
But our medical and public health systems are based on specialization, which is at the other end of the analytic and diagnostic spectrum from any kind of holistic approach. We have professionals who specialize in controlling the flu bug, just like we have professionals who each specialize in controlling parasites and E.coli and asthma, and so on down the line.
Among public health and agriculture professionals, there are those who deal with E.coli 0157:H7 in vegetables and those who deal with it in farm animals, and those who deal with it in processing plants and others in restaurants.
It’s very difficult to have any kind of discussion about holistic systems with these people, because they have been taught to think about problems within their area of specialization. I think that’s why it’s so difficult for individuals like cp2 and concerned to really relate to the arguments being offered, even as they attempt to demonstrate sensitivity. Miguel’s wonderful illustration about flies and garbage doesn’t make any sense if you’ve been conditioned through umpteen years of schooling and professional work to obsess about the germs the flies might carry around.
To these people, raw milk is like the flies—it is a carrier of pathogens, and thus must be eliminated. They can’t take seriously an approach that views raw milk as part of a larger holistic system that helps build immunity and reduces the risks associated with pathogens and viruses, not to mention the risks of various chronic diseases. There can be no question of “choice” because enforced “protection” from any and all pathogens takes precedence.
NAIS raises the same issues. The animals must be tagged and followed because if there’s disease, we need to be able to track down the source of the pathogens, the flies, as it were, that started the whole thing. The idea that animals left to graze on healthy pasture fed by nutrient-rich soil are much less susceptible to disease in the first place sounds to them like gibberish.
What’s most bothersome, though, isn’t the difference of opinion. There’s always been room in this country for people with divergent opinions on issues large and small. What’s bothersome is that the germ/safety-obsessed want to impose their obsession on everyone. They can’t stand it that some of us aren’t terrified because a few people became ill from Dee Creek raw milk or someone in Missouri may have become ill from raw milk, or wherever. It’s very difficult with such mindsets to see the forest for the trees.
View Printer Friendly Version
Email Article to Friend
Reader Comments (36)
"Specialization is for insects."
Bucky Fuller said,
"If we were meant to be specialists, we would have been born with a jeweler's lens attached to one eye."
And by the way, this is not only about infectious disease, but also the gradual degradation of human physiologic systems resulting from depleted soils, unnatural foods, and toxin exposures, and expressing itself as new epidemics of chronic metabolic diseases. We'll call that Metabolic Neglect Syndrome.
Once INS and MNS are established diagnoses then assessing and treating them would become reimbursable, and the experts will be tripping over each other to get involved.
"It would be interesting to here your resonse to Miguel’s post on vaccinations. Perhaps now would be a good time."
I moved this up to the new journal entry because it seems to fit the response. In honesty, discussing the immunological aspects of vaccination is outside my comfort zone.
That is a byproduct of being a specialist. I could share opinions on population/herd health, but that is not likely to be useful since the assumption by some is that vaccines are bad to begin with. I trust the experts/specialists on the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) to make the most appropriate recommendations on vaccines based on current science, and, if asked, would refer people to their documents for further information.
http://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/recs/ACIP/default.htm
There are options for choice with vaccines--adults can decline and most jurisdictions allow exemptions for parents who don't "trust" ACIP or the vaccine companies.
Question--if smallpox came back by a bioterrorist event, would folks here trust their immune systems or get in line for vaccination? Before eradication, about 1 in 3 people with smallpox died and survivors were left disfigured from scars or blind.
There is a point at which trying to prevent things which "could" happen turns your one, irreplacable life into a nightmare. Every individual uses their own judgment to determine the location of that point. Too many individuals, however, claim the authority to determine that point in everyone else's, far past a reasonable point of concern for their own safety and well-being.
This article is too long to post the whole thing but it is well worth reading and thinking about.I know someone personally who tried this treatment and had great results.
http://www.tldp.com/New%20Articles/Universal%20oral%20vaccine%20Part%203.htm
Universal Oral Vaccine: The Immune Milk Saga
by Anthony di Fabio
"Lida Mattman, Ph.D., Professor Emeritus, Department of Biology, Wayne State University, Detroit, Michigan, and author of Cell Wall Deficient Forms: Stealth Pathogens,42 says of ticks: “No state wants to admit they have any Lyme disease. It is bad for tourist trade and therapy is expensive. It is better to let the patient disintegrate into a wheel chair or a mental institution. Actually, this spirochete disease, like the syphillis spirochete disease of the 13th century, has invaded every block of every city in the civilized world. However, unlike syphillis, this [disease] is spread by mosquito, tick, mite, probably household contact, as well as trans-placentally. Like syphilis this disease is the great imitator, attacking joints, heart, brain, etc. We looked at spinal fluid, blood, and synovial fluid of over 500 cases who had symptoms of Lyme [arthritis disease], and found the spirochete of the same genus, in most patients.”43
About 10% of Lyme Arthritis victims do not get well by conventional medical treatments, and Congressman Bedell was one of those. Bedell,2 testifying before Congress, said, "I left Congress because I came down with Lyme [Arthritis] Disease which I contracted while fishing at Quantico Marine Base, and which conventional treatment failed to relieve. After three series of heavy antibiotics infused into my veins over a period of two years, I finally turned to unconventional treatment. My symptoms disappeared and today I am clearly free of Lyme Disease.
"Let me tell you about that treatment. There is a company in our own state of Iowa, Mr. Chairman, that produces a product for livestock by injecting killed germs into the udder of a cow prior to the time the cow has a calf. When the cow has the calf they then take the first milk that the cow gives, which is called colostrum, and process it into whey so that it will keep.
"The theory is that the cow will communicate the disease to the unborn calf, and will develop the antibodies, or whatever, in the colostrum to protect the newly-born calf from that disease.
"After I took a teaspoon of this whey every 1-1/2 hours for a few weeks, my symptoms of Lyme [Arthritis Disease] disappeared, and I no longer suffer from that disease. Because of the publicity of my case, I get frequent phone calls from desperate people who have been unable to get relief from Lyme [Arthritis Disease] with conventional treatment. It breaks my heart that I cannot tell them about my treatment, because no one has been willing to spend the millions and millions of dollars necessary to get FDA approval to market this special whey. I can tell you it cured what appeared to be arthritis in my knee in 15 minutes.
"I have talked to a doctor in Wisconsin who was using this material. He claims 80-90% success in treating patients like me for whom conventional treatments have not been effective. He has now been advised by the Iowa producer that the material will no longer be available because the producer is afraid of the FDA."
It could have been added that the US Department of Agriculture can also act as a strong deterrent, preventing crossing the line from animals to humans.
We hope and pray for a much more mature Department of Agriculture and FDA who will grant permission to renew studies on the use of this already well-developed technology. These products especially prepared for maintaining the health of farm mammals should be easily available for us, too. After all, we’re also mammals, and deserve equal consideration!"
******
"Herb Saunders, the dairy farmer who cured Congressman Bedell when no licensed physician had been able to do so, was prosecuted on the report of the FDA in St. James, Minnesota by the state prosecuting attorney for practicing medicine without a license.
Saunders had been treating – and curing – humans of a wide variety of diseases for many years, including cancer. For the most part, he used standard products prepared for treatment of cattle, and, when necessary, he used (dead) microorganisms (such as Borrelia burgdorfi bacteria) passed through the cow’s cistern prior to collecting the colostrum.
When all else failed, he’d pass human blood from the sick person through the cow’s cistern. Each person’s blood contains a wide variety of microorganisms – especially when sick – that are unknown, or unacknowledged by most physicians, but are recognized and acknowledged by the cow.
The colostrum thus obtained for the next 10 days was fed back to the sick person just as would be the standardized products made for the use and health of cattle.
According to immune milk pioneer, Herb Struss, Ph.D., colostrum obtained by injecting whole human blood into the cow’s cistern does not produce auto-immune reactions to one’s own blood. “It’s one of the first things we checked,” Struss says.
Saunders was selling bovine colostrum ("first milk") as a potential cure for cancer. "Saunders would sell each patient a cow for $2,500, but keep the cow on his farm. He would inject a sample of each patient's blood into the cow's udder [cistern], and then sell the colostrum to the cow's owner for $35 a bottle. Saunders told an undercover state agent who posed as a cancer patient that he would 'cough out' his cancer within months if he would take colostrum, [and to] refrain from chemotherapy.
"After two weeks of [court] trial – the longest this small community had ever seen – the result was a hung jury. The 6-person jury voted 5-1 to convict, but the last holdout, a part-time social studies teacher, apparently couldn't decide whether Saunders was practicing medicine without a license or offering an alternative type of care that is not medical practice."5
Former Congressman Berkley Bedell provided $21,000 for Saunders' expenses. Attorney Calvin Johnson’s services were free.
Reported by attorney Calvin Johnson, Herb Saunders' second trial once again resulted in a hung jury, reportedly more hung than the first one, with 3 jurors resisting indictment. The district attorney dismissed the case on May 30, 1996, and will not retry Saunders again! (Herb Saunders, now deceased, hiked his price up for blood-injected cistern colostrum to $10,000!)
Saunders approach seems to be well substantiated by the work of many scientists over a period of more than 40 years."
Could dairy farmer Herb Saunders be a modern day Edward Jenner? Is the answer to the threat of smallpox to be found in milk straight from the cow?
History Learning Site > Scientific Inventions 1900 > Antibiotics > Alexander Fleming and Penicillin > Edward Jenner
Edward Jenner is alongside the likes of Joseph Lister, Robert Koch and Louis Pasteur in medical history. Edward Jenner was born in 1749 and died in 1823. Edward Jenner’s great gift to the world was his vaccination for smallpox. This disease was greatly feared at the time as it killed one in three of those who caught it and badly disfigured those who were lucky enough to survive catching it.
Edward Jenner
Edward Jenner was a country doctor who had studied nature and his natural surroundings since childhood. He had always been fascinated by the rural old wives tale that milkmaids could not get smallpox. He believed that there was a connection between the fact that milkmaids only got a weak version of smallpox – the non-life threatening cowpox – but did not get smallpox itself. A milkmaid who caught cowpox got blisters on her hands and Jenner concluded that it must be the pus in the blisters that somehow protected the milkmaids.
Jenner decided to try out a theory he had developed. A young boy called James Phipps would be his guinea pig. He took some pus from cowpox blisters found on the hand of a milkmaid called Sarah. She had milked a cow called Blossom and had developed the tell-tale blisters. Jenner ‘injected’ some of the pus into James. This process he repeated over a number of days gradually increasing the amount of pus he put into the boy. He then deliberately injected Phipps with smallpox. James became ill but after a few days made a full recovery with no side effects. It seemed that Jenner had made a brilliant discovery.
He then encountered the prejudices and conservatism of the medical world that dominated London. They could not accept that a country doctor had made such an important discovery and Jenner was publicly humiliated when he brought his findings to London. However, what he had discovered could not be denied and eventually his discovery had to be accepted – a discovery that was to change the world.
So successful was Jenner's discovery, that in 1840 the government of the day banned any other treatment for smallpox other than Jenner's.
Jenner did not patent his discovery as it would have made the vaccination more expensive and out of the reach of many. It was his gift to the world. A small museum now exists in his home town. It was felt that this was appropriate for a man who shunned the limelight and London. In the museum are the horns of Blossom the cow. The word vaccination comes from the Latin ‘vacca’ which means cow – in honour of the part played by Blossom and Sarah in Jenner’s research. A more formal statue of Jenner is tucked away in one of the more quiet areas of Hyde Park in London.
As a mom, the last thing I want is for my family to fall prey to contaminated food. Commercial (pasteurized) milk is an easy target. Central processing leaves it vulnerable to both deliberate and unintentional contamination. (The nation’s worst Salmonella outbreak was due to pasteurized milk, over 200,000 made ill, 18 deaths. It took five months to locate the source of antibiotic resistant Salmonella in the processing plant.)
It is disturbing that, according to the article, children would be the “canaries” in such an attack. “Children could be hit first and hardest, because milk goes directly from processing plants to schools, avoiding the grocery-distribution system.” Suddenly, Coke and Pepsi look like safer options.
The raw milk movement is one way to de-centralize our food supply and is a much safer, less vulnerable option than mass-produced factory food. Who knows? Those advocating commercial milk might need raw milk (or food) from a local farmer one day. I want to protect my options.
http://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/recs/ACIP/members.htm
ACIP Members --- A long list of MD's and regulatory officials among them the following....
Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA)
BRAGA, Damian A.
President, Sanofi Pasteur
Swiftwater, Pennsylvania
PARADISO, Peter, Ph.D.
Vice President, New Business/Scientific Affairs
Wyeth Vaccines
Collegeville, Pennsylvania
Does anyone want these people to advise us on what vaccine we should have or our children should have? Isn't taking the advice of experts who stand to profit from vaccine programs a bit foolish?
But without defined syndromes, there would be no lawsuits!
I have no problem understanding to the arguments being offered or understanding the concept of holistic systems. Everyone might be quite surprised to learn that I use the services of a naturopathic doctor for myself and my family. I actually balance the two worlds of medicine—allopathic and alternative/complimentary. I pay a lot of money out of pocket to do this, but I believe it is the best money spent for my family.
I believe the best way to prevent becoming ill is to boost your immune system through the use of many natural substances. Throughout the year, my family takes a daily dose of probiotics, lemon flavored cod liver oil and drinks a dehydrated mix of fruits and vegetables. In the winter (October-March) my children drink a concoction of liquid herbs, echinacia and Sambucol to help fight off viruses. The kids rarely get sick and when the do, they recover quickly.
My children’s pediatrician is pro flu shot, but has respected my right not to choose this option for my children.
I try to purchase as much organic food as possible for my family and limit the amount of pasteurized dairy products they consume. In regards to the overall picture of health enhancing products, the only area I differ is promoting raw milk for children to drink.
Can anyone else name a health enhancing product that has caused an outbreak of illnesses, involving mostly children, which can kill or leave a child with life long medical challenges (not counting packaged fruits and vegetables, contaminated meat or fish with mercury)? There are alternatives to boosting the immune system. Raw milk is not the only option available.
The topic of vaccinations is complicated. There is a difference between a vaccine for small pox or polio versus chicken pox, mumps and measles. There are many vaccinations we can just do without, the flu shot being the first to eliminate. Heb B at birth is insane. Many parents with autistic children have very strong opinions on this topic. It’s a crime what’s happened to these children.
However, 150 years ago, we only had raw milk and organic fruits and vegetables to eat and all women breast fed their babies. With all of these immune boosting foods, why was the infant mortality rate so high? Most women lost at least one child during their childbearing years. Why couldn’t their immune systems fight off all of these illnesses?
"Edward Jenner’s great gift to the world was his vaccination for smallpox."
Edward Jenner is a hero in public health, and like many of the other great ones, was a maverick in his time. But, I am confused...and this could be important to understanding our differences and the idea of a holistic approach, which I support alongside with specialized expertise....
Do you think Dr. Jenner would be a member of ACIP if alive today? Are you saying his work including the smallpox vaccine helped humankind? If so, how is vaccination against diptheria, measles, whooping cough, etc. different today?
Finally, a comment about having industry representation on ACIP. There needs to be checks and balances between government, academia, and industry. I would always vote to have industry at the table and know their intentions through face-to-face communication (including answering tough questions when deciding vaccine policy) versus just trusting their written reports that could be biased by business interests.
Thanks for sharing all of the interesting information.
C2
Question: "However, 150 years ago, we only had raw milk and organic fruits and vegetables to eat and all women breast fed their babies. With all of these immune boosting foods, why was the infant mortality rate so high?"
In the top ten: cholera
Did you notice David has merged us into "cp2" (cp and C2) a couple of times. Not intentionally I'd guess, but it is a funny observation. "concerned2" was derived from a previous poster named "concerned person," that I think morphed into cp. Is that correct?
C2
This gets to something I have wondered. Why did native populations, who ate WAPF type diets, succumb in great numbers to viruses introduced by white man? I understand that they had never been exposed to these viruses before, but why were their immune systems not up to the task?
Jerry Brunetti discusses his use of immune milk to treat his cancer in a 2 part video on youtube titled "Food as Medicine". The 2 videos together are something like 3 hours long, but fascinating. He also sells a similarly titled CD, but that goes into his use of who foods and supplements, and does not mention the immune milk.
I've wondered why there is no book on the topic. I'd like to learn more about it.
Yes. I originally posted as concerned person and then shortened it to cp. Until now, I didn’t realize that your name used on this blog was generated from mine. Thanks for pointing that out.
The people that blog here have some fantastic information to share. I’m sure you’ve learned a lot. If nothing else, the conversation is thought provoking.
Poor sanitation,questionable medical care (by todays standards), poor nutrition; the majority did not have a big variety of foods to eat. Vitamin deficiencies were common until around WWII. Pellegra, Ricketts, Scurvy were common (among others). People also did not have the means to obtain new knowledge to educate themselves. If you don't know what's broken, you cannot fix it. If the mother who is nursing is depleted in nutrition, then that nursing baby will be affected too.
We tend to be on similar sides of the raw milk issue including concern about the "few people became ill from Dee Creek raw milk." Big difference though, my family lives primarily on donuts and coke. LOL (not really, but far from your description). My significant other asked tonight "what are probiotics" after listening to another incessant commercial for them--someone is making a buck and edging in on the drug company's non-stop ads.
An interesting coincidence...working on an email response to a friend that is employed by a company developing vaccines. He is irrate about an auditor from FDA that showed up without any knowledge or background on the disease or vaccines, in general (turned out to be a "trainee," but is still doing the audit). He went on to describe the situation as government harassment against their research. Speaking of broken systems...
"The people that blog here have some fantastic information to share. I’m sure you’ve learned a lot. If nothing else, the conversation is thought provoking."
Definitely.
C2
Page 44 gives a brief discription of the possible reasons the Native Americans were susceptable to European illnesses