Andrew Wakefield: Recognized as the Great Science Fraud that he is

In the meantime, we are reminded of the power of vaccination by this story, which points out that it’s been a year since the last case of polio was recorded in India. Although it has been delayed by antivaccine sentiments based on religion and paranoid conspiracy theories, the eradication of polio is now–finally!–potentially achievable.

Ahh as usual Orac loves reading the tabloid. Let’s take a look shall we?

India’s victory, if it’s validated by careful vetting over next few months, comes at a time when the possibility of global eradication has never never looked so close. When all the numbers for 2011 are in, WHO expects to count about 700 cases of polio — about half the total in 2010.

Really?

Orac, don’t look now, but there’s a company in the US selling a cure for skin cancer, their share price just quadrupled, is it for real? Ticker CBIS.

Even if Polio is eradicated, sugar cubes should still be given to kids when visiting the nurse or doctor. That’s the best part.

Well, Wakefield is getting publicity all right, just not the kind this “brave maverick doctor” would want, unless he’s just going for notoriety.

I don’t know either what Thingy is about – but since Thingy is not really understandable, that is nothing new.

Thing is so delusional that she’d rather wait until someone shows symptoms before they’re excluded from social activities in light of a measles cluster. We’ve tried telling her time and time again that measles doesn’t show symptoms until after the person is infectious. And now we know that measles may not show symptoms at all, yet still kill someone:

http://bit.ly/w85GwS

And that is the hallmark of a Wakefielder, someone who is told the facts over and over but will not listen. I’m sure a flurry of posts is forthcoming to attack TIME, and that the cub scout reporter will find a number of degrees of separation between TIME editors and Big Bad Voodoo Pharma. Shall we say, by next Tuesday at the latest?

Geez, Thingy’s latest entry in the comments is even dumber than its usual entries. I mean, seriously. No cases of polio recorded in India for a year and only 700 worldwide in 2011, only half the number recorded the year before? And Thingy thinks that’s evidence that my saying that the eradication of polio and is now “potentially achievable” is off-base? Geez, up is down and down really is up in Thing-world!

“Thousands of cases of measles in the U.K. and Europe, largely thanks to the fear of the MMR stoked largely by Wakefield’s fraudulent research”

Orac are you referring to the 1998 article? Can you link to any studies showing that that article is the sole or primary contributing cause? As opposed to other possible causes for fear of the MMR vaccine? Eg. reports of post vaccination “adverse events”? You have been writing daily for years on this subject. Are people not taking what you say seriously? Or are the attacks on Wakefield and vaccine safety questioners counterproductive by keeping the controversy in the public mind?

I think Wakefield did a great job destroying his career – he didn’t need any help….commit fraud & you pay the price.

What he is also guilty of is creating a false sense of fear in the minds of parents, which directly contributed to what we are seeing in Europe today – a reemergence of childhood diseases.

At least here, in the United States, we don’t have a country next door with low vaccination rates (like Switzerland, for example) to readily export the diease across national borders. Of course, no small favor, since a majority of current outbreaks here can be linked to families coming back from overseas.

Autism in the family? Developmental disorder in a loved one? Struggling to make ends meet?

I WANT YOUR MONEY

Hi, I’m Andy…

Here is a chart of parental confidence in MMR and relation to Wakefield publishing.

http://briandeer.com/mmr/uptake-stats.htm

And here:

http://briandeer.com/wakefield/measles-graphs-2008.htm

Lawrence@13

At least here, in the United States, we don’t have a country next door with low vaccination rates (like Switzerland, for example) to readily export the diease across national borders.

The problem is we don’t need a whole different country – we already have our own areas of low vaccination rates. I live in SD county, where we’ve already imported measles from overseas. I don’t want to think about what’s going to happen when the same kind of thing happens in Marin County (worse rates than ours). And, yeah, I did say when, not if.

@ #19 Chemmomo: And don’t forget that each Waldof school in the US is its own little unvaccinated “country.” Rudolph Steiner, a clairvoyant who knew all, started this school movement/cult. He saw that bad karma caused you to get diseases, and you needed to fight off these diseases in order to clear your karma. If you get vaccinated you never get to fight the disease, so it dogs you into your next life and your next, and the vaccination itself can destroy your soul. Something like that. Waldorf schools are all over the US and they’re full of unvaccinated kids.

LAB@21
Oh, I haven’t forgotten: Blue Mountain School, Virginia http://www.roanoke.com/news/roanoke/wb/282419

Like I said before, poliomyelitis cannot be eradicated for as long as OPV is being used.

Well, it certainly can’t be eradicated by your preferred fantasy, so scurry along now.

That’s funny because in 2000, there were only 719 polio cases worldwide. Yeah keep bragging Orac.

Reading comprehension, Thingy, try it for once! See what Orac wrote in his last paragraph?

“In the meantime, we are reminded of the power of vaccination by this story, which points out that it’s been a year since the last case of polio was recorded in India. Although it has been delayed by antivaccine sentiments based on religion and paranoid conspiracy theories, the eradication of polio is now–finally!–potentially achievable.”

(My emphasis.)

Of course the illness comes back when part of the affected population stops taking the vaccine. The OPV was working in Africa, until religious integrists in Nigeria started claiming that vaccines were against the will of God. It created a situation where part of the population had got the live vaccine, while another part was left totally unprotected. This enabled the attenuated virus strain used in the vaccine to find new hosts and become more dangerous, an unfortunate example of microbe evolving when a new ecological niche opens, thanks to natural selection.

And then, because people travel, the virus got out of Nigeria and the eradication of polio was delayed. What got the program back on track? New and better campaigns for vaccination and health education!

Correction: 719 confirmed wildtype polio cases. It wasn’t until 2001 that the infrastructure to differentiate between wildtype, OPV, and cVDPV cases was completed. Total polio cases that year was nearly 3,000.

That “correction” is definitely a realization among infection promoters. It only means one thing, the majority of polio cases were actually caused by the OPV and its derivative (VDPV).

BTW Orac, in 2001, there were only 483 confirmed cases of polio. What gives? Are they doing a piss-poor job promoting the vaccine?

There were 665 total confirmed polio cases last year, of which 45 were due to vaccine derived polio virus, though the numbers will likely be updated in time. Thingy is 99,798 cases off, unless you believe there is an international conspiracy involving countless people intent on deceiving the world about the polio vaccine with the evil aim of crippling thousands for no apparent reason. If you do believe that, you might feel more at home at Prison Planet or whale.to, instead of a science blog that deals with facts and evidence.

BMJ is evidently confident of its position. Editor Fiona Godleee quoted on writ:

http://doc2doc.bmj.com/forums/off-duty_general_bmj-editor-served-writ-andrew-wakefield

Looks pretty bad news for Wakefield.

IreneD,

Of course the illness comes back when part of the affected population stops taking the vaccine. The OPV was working in Africa, until religious integrists in Nigeria started claiming that vaccines were against the will of God. It created a situation where part of the population had got the live vaccine, while another part was left totally unprotected. This enabled the attenuated virus strain used in the vaccine to find new hosts and become more dangerous, an unfortunate example of microbe evolving when a new ecological niche opens, thanks to natural selection.

That is exactly what you would expect of the “advantages” and “benefits” of using OPV; by promoting the disease through secondary spread to close contacts hence “passive” immunity. You’re not complaining are you?

Let the truth be known. Vaccinations had very little, if anything, to do with the decline in infectious diseases over the past 100 years. The rate of mortality & morbidity declined because of improved social conditions, which occurred well before the introduction of vaccines or anti-biotiocs.This is well known. Read the Role of Medicine by Professor Thomas McKeown, or How to Raise a Healthy Child by Professor Robert Mendelsohn or Medicine Out of Control by Dr Richard Taylor.

Emily that’s true, these diseases declined because of sewerage, better food, housing improvements, open windows, & other hygienic measures.

Vaccinations have become the sacred cow of modern medicine & in a more enlightened age, will be looked on as nothing more than bad medicine. Fevers were regarded as harmful for 80 years by most of the medical profession, until March 2011 when the American Academy of Pediatricians (AAP) woke up to the truth & reversed its stance, despite this knowledge being known for over 50 years (Drs Tilden, Trall etc). Better late than never, although sadly it cost thousands of people’s lives.

Vaccinations will one day become another medical reversal, but not for many years. There is too much power & money at stake.

Lawrence, just read Professor McKeown’s book The Role of Medicine. Not only does he state that vaccines had almost nothing to do with the decline in so-called “killer” infectious diseases, but he also quotes the WHO in stating that vaccination programs are indeed questionable in helping third word countries.

“Orac are you referring to the 1998 article? Can you link to any studies showing that that article is the sole or primary contributing cause?”

Mr. Doherty, have you read the MMWR recently, about outbreaks of measles? I especially recommend for your perusal “Notes From The Field: Measles Outbreak—Hennepin County, Minnesota, February–March 2011” (MMWR, April 8, 2011). You do know, don’t you, that Wakefield with his new “theory of increased risk for autism in Somali children after vaccination with MMR vaccine”, had targeted and met with Somali parents during three visits just prior to outbreak? You do know, don’t you, that the “index case” was an unvaccinated Somali child, infected in Africa who was responsible for secondary and terciary transmission of measles?

“As opposed to other possible causes for fear of the MMR vaccine? Eg. reports of post vaccination “adverse events”? You have been writing daily for years on this subject. Are people not taking what you say seriously?”

Mr. Doherty possible “adverse events” do not include autism onset…no matter what Wakefield states, no matter what notorious anti-vax website’s “science journalists” state and no matter what credulous parents “sense” or “intuit”.
Orac and posters here do not deny the exceeding, practically infinitesimal rare “adverse event” associated with the MMR vaccine…or any other vaccine.

“Or are the attacks on Wakefield and vaccine safety questioners counterproductive by keeping the controversy in the public mind?”

Mr. Doherty…see my comment about Wakefield’s forays into the Somali community in Minneapolis. Perhaps you are unaware that I am retired from public health. I worked in the Division of Communicable Disease Control and in public health clinics. I saw first hand the impact that Wakefield, had and continues to have on the public health system in the United States. He and his “minions” at anti-vax websites continue to stir up the sh** with their bogus theories about autism and vaccines.

Wakefield’s latest gambit is the lawsuit he instituted against the BMJ, Fiona Godlee and Brian Deer. Isn’t about time that this disgraced public health menace fade from the picture and take the NVIC, AoA, SaneVax and their gullible sycophants with them?

Too much money and power in vaccines. Oh, my God, I laughed so hard on that one. Yeah, vaccine manufacturers are just swimming in money from vaccines. I mean, why create and market Viagra when you can just stop polio or prevent meningitis? Let’s make a business decision: instead of selling antibiotics and extended stays in hospitals from infections, let’s prevent the friggin’ things. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.

I am yet to hear ONE anti-vaccine talking point that is either scientifically verifiable or passes the test of common sense. I’m waiting, though. You know where to find me when you do.

“Fevers were regarded as harmful for 80 years by most of the medical profession, until March 2011 when the American Academy of Pediatricians (AAP) woke up to the truth & reversed its stance, despite this knowledge being known for over 50 years (Drs Tilden, Trall etc). Better late than never, although sadly it cost thousands of people’s lives.”

I don’t think “Gardener” interpreted the “Pediatrics” article correctly. Gardener where does it say in the article that the AAP are reversing “its stance, despite this knowledge being known for over 50 years”? Here is the substance of the Pediatrics article…instead of “Gardener’s interpretation”.:

Fever in a child is one of the most common clinical symptoms managed by pediatricians and other health care providers and a frequent cause of parental concern. Many parents administer antipyretics even when there is minimal or no fever, because they are concerned that the child must maintain a “normal” temperature. Fever, however, is not the primary illness but is a physiologic mechanism that has beneficial effects in fighting infection. There is no evidence that fever itself worsens the course of an illness or that it causes long-term neurologic complications. Thus, the primary goal of treating the febrile child should be to improve the child’s overall comfort rather than focus on the normalization of body temperature. When counseling the parents or caregivers of a febrile child, the general well-being of the child, the importance of monitoring activity, observing for signs of serious illness, encouraging appropriate fluid intake, and the safe storage of antipyretics should be emphasized.

(Source: Pediatrics: Clinical Report: Fever and Antipyretic Use Use In Children-Janice E. Sullivan, M.D., etal)

(hint to “Gardiner”-Phrases such as “X were regarded as harmful by most of the medical profession”, “It is well-known fact that Y…” and “I think or believe that Z…” raise red flags with people who actually know the science behind medicine and vaccines.)

Emily and Gardener,

It’s probably true that 90% of the reduction in morbidity and mortality from (some) infectious diseases over the past 100 years was due to improved hygiene and other improvements in social conditions. However, that last 10% due to vaccination and other improvements in medical care, such as antibiotics, is very important.

For example, the reduction in mortality from TB from 500 per 100,000 in 1850, to 46 per 100,000 in 1940 was probably mostly due to improved social conditions. But the reduction from the 1940 level to essentially zero as it is today is mostly due to vaccinations and improved medical care. Can you imagine if 46 per 100,000 people died of TB in the USA every year? That would be more than 130,000 people every year, 10 times the current homicide rate and more than twice the number of people killed in automobile accidents. I could quote similar figures for several other infectious diseases. As I say, that last 10% is very important.

Anyway, if vaccination doesn’t prevent infectious diseases, and they were entirely reduced or eradicated by improved social conditions, why is it that every time vaccination uptake falls it is followed by outbreaks of the disease. Look at the fall in pertussis vaccinations in the UK in the late 70s and 80s due to a false vaccine scare that resulted in huge outbreaks of whooping cough and dozens of deaths. Look at the current situation in Europe, especially France, where thousands of cases of measles, hundreds of cases of pneumonia and encephaliitis and several deaths are the result of a fall in vaccination rates. Pertussis and measles in the USA is following a similar pattern though it is not yet as serious.

Or look at the UK where there is no vaccination for chicken pox, and almost everyone gets chicken pox as a child. In the USA where chicken pox vaccination is routine, chicken pox is rare. Are Brits just much less hygienic than Americans, and that is why there is such a huge difference?

Really, it is silly to suggest that vaccines don’t work. There are hundreds of controlled studies from around the world that demonstrate very clearly that they do.

@ Emily: This is your statement:

Professor McKeown’s book The Role of Medicine. Not only does he state that vaccines had almost nothing to do with the decline in so-called “killer” infectious diseases, but he also quotes the WHO in stating that vaccination programs are indeed questionable in helping third word countries.

Gee Emily, I haven’t read McKeown’s book…for most of my career in public health, I was investigating “killer” infectious diseases that really do kill and maim the innocent.

Gee Emily, I also read extensively about the activities of the WHO and haven’t come across any such statement that questions vaccination programs…anywhere in the world. Could you possibly provide, some more information, like a citation, maybe…from that (unknown entity) at the WHO?

Should anyone care where Gardener is coming from, Russell Thacker Trall and John H. Tilden were run-of-the-mill 19th- and early 20th-century “natural hygiene” types.

@ #47 Chris:

The answer is “sewerage, better food, housing improvements, open windows, & other hygienic measures” learned from Leave it to Beaver. This program began in late 1957, ran until 1963, and continued in syndication to 1970 and beyond. June Cleaver kept a spotless, aired-out house and was a super cook. Americans learned how to wash their hands, teeth, and dishes by watching Wally and the Beav do these things. I was a kid in the 60s and 70s, I watched Leave it to Beaver, and I never got measles. If it wasn’t for Tony Dow (and Florence Bush for that matter), we’d all be dead. I don’t think I need PubMed to make this obvious point.

Lawrence,

Emily is also denying that antibiotics had any effect either! I have a comment in moderation about this. It is easy to forget that in 1900 the biggest killers were pneumonia, TB, diphtheria and diarrhea, and up to a third of children died in infancy. Improvements in social conditions reduced morbidity and mortality from horrendous to simply awful. It was modern medicine in general and antibiotics and vaccines in particular that reduced them from simply awful to relatively rare in the developed world.

Vaccine and modern scientific medicine opponents seem to want us to go back to the days of “simply awful”.

Just noticed LAB above.

I watched Leave it to Beaver, and I never got measles.

How did you learn to avoid getting a disease that is spread by coughing and inhalation of viruses in aerosols by watching a TV show? Did it teach you to hold your breath for the entire school day? Would sending a subtitled version of Leave it to Beaver to France halt the epidemic of measles there? Or are you joking?

Krebiozen, he is joking. Anyway, the program was only produced between 1957 and 1963.

@lilady #50 re Emily’s Thomas McKeown book recommendation:
I haven’t read it either, but I was able to dig up some Amazon reviews (no mean trick for a book that old). One of the two reviewers commented that one of McKeown’s points is that he’d prefer the money spent on vaccination be used to provide free meals for poor school children. The reviewer, even though she gave the book 4 stars, was not sold on that particular point.

And I think it’s worth noting again that the book was published in 1980.

Didn’t the good Dr. Jay Gordon, MD, FAAP, also say that mumps wasn’t that bad since the Brady Bunch kids got through it fine or something like that?

Measles.

The answer is “sewerage, better food, housing improvements, open windows, & other hygienic measures” learned from Leave it to Beaver. This program began in late 1957, ran until 1963, and continued in syndication to 1970 and beyond. June Cleaver kept a spotless, aired-out house and was a super cook. Americans learned how to wash their hands, teeth, and dishes by watching Wally and the Beav do these things. I was a kid in the 60s and 70s, I watched Leave it to Beaver, and I never got measles. If it wasn’t for Tony Dow (and Florence Bush for that matter), we’d all be dead. I don’t think I need PubMed to make this obvious point.

You might want to learn something about measles, because it is one of the diseases that sanitation doesn’t protect you from. Measles is one of the most contagious viruses known, and it primarily spread through the air. Indeed, people have caught measles simply by being in the same room that a person with measles was in previously. So if you didn’t catch measles, you were probably just lucky. But that good luck could turn bad, because with unfounded fears of measles vaccination that are have continued to circulate even years after Wakefield was discredited, herd immunity is broken in many parts of the country, so you could easily be exposed just by walking by somebody who has it. And measles is more severe in adults. Perhaps you should get vaccinated.

Emily…I too have time constraints. Just a quickie comment about your hero Dr. Mendelsohn; he has an entire page on the whale.to website.

I suggest you educate yourself in science-based medicine, not the deluded ramblings of this quack doctor…then come back to post here.

Emily, any reason why you did not answer my fairly simple question? Why did the measles morbidity drop by 90% in the USA between 1960 and 1970?

Emily:

To Chemmomo: If McKeown in 1980 to you is outdated, then what do we call Edward Jenner in 1798?

A historical figure, and whose vaccine was modified over the years. Plus there have been no smallpox outbreaks in decades.

Please answer my question.

Emily, please tell us why measles morbidity in 1970 was only 10% of what is was in 1960 in the USA.

Support your answer with the title, journal and dates of the papers that explain how the rate of measles plunged so dramatically. Thank you.

Thomas, why doesn’t the government pull PSA testing off the honor roll? Why are GSK still allowed to do business with the US Government despite being found flagrantly guilty of fraud, when its contract states that fraudulent companies can not do business with the gov’t? And by the way, 3 billion is simply the “cost of doing business” (WAll Street). And Chris, there are many anomalies in life as there are in medicine. I will do my due diligence, but give me a while.

Meanwhile, I will raise my 4 unvaccinated children as naturally as possible & use modern medicine if & when there is a need, thus becoming a discerning consumer.

As far as antibiotics not decreasing mortality, Emily, do you know what TB was nicknamed until antibiotics helped us fight back? It was called “the captain of the horsemen of death”. It wasn’t until antibiotics gave most of us a fighting chance that people stopped viewing TB (called consumption back in the day) as anything more than a painful and extended death sentence. This was especially true among patients getting secondary infections from viral infections like the flu.

Why are GSK still allowed to do business with the US Government despite being found flagrantly guilty of fraud, when its contract states that fraudulent companies can not do business with the gov’t?

Emily, it might simplify the discussion if you would identify what you’re talking about rather than putting a bunch of sense impressions in a jar, shaking them up, and pouring them out.

First you’re referring to Avandia marketing, which is not a fraud case, then divert through “one third of ALL medicine was a complete waste” to PSA testing and then fraud again (Cidra?) and on to some random assertion about “its contract” and back to Avandia. It’s rather difficult to follow.

One more try:
I now have a comment in moderation addressing Emily. And a second comment complaining about the moderation. Perhaps a bit too specifically. Hopefully this one will go through.

@ Emily:

Pharmaceutical company employees, doctors, and government officials can all commit fraud because they are *people*- who can be corrupt regardless of their profession. It is simply human nature: because our minds utilise linguistic representations we can easily- and duplicitously- know one thing and say another. We can plan, manipulate, and disguise our motives in order to benefit ourselves. Some people are very good at this: lying becomes second nature- perhaps they even fool themselves.

If you condemn an entire industry or the medical establishment ( let’s not forget the media and government while we’re at it: fraud is everywhere!) you’ll need to apply that mechanism – “an example of fraud means- don’t trust the whole sector”- to alt med as well. Fraud has been perpetrated by natural health providers ( see Quackwatch); there is a less oversight because there are no standards for education, training, and review. I survey these proselytisers and believe that their constant finger pointing at medical and pharma fraud is merely a way to recruit new customers while distracting their clients from their own deceitful advertisement, unsubstantiated claims, and foolhardy untested treatments.

I have spent a bit too much time reading articles on McKeown. Most of what I got out of it was that he was big on ignoring major portions public health policies and their relationship with population growth. He also did not notice that populations started to stabilize and not grow in some industrial countries (Japan, most of Europe, portions of the USA). It would be interesting to see him interact with Dr. Hans Rosling of the Gapminder, whose videos exquisitely show that reducing child mortality and increasing maternal education cuts down on population growth. Which is also noted in a National Geographic article on population.

This article, Rethinking McKeown, is very interesting. He seem to support McKeown by starting out saying:

In my view each of the authors of the May 2002 Health Policy and Ethics Forum on McKeown1–3 misses his essential message, namely that “health has advanced significantly only since the late eighteenth century and until recently owed little to medical advances.”4

But then describes his experience in a developing country:

During the early 1960s, accompanied by my pregnant new wife, I traveled to Papua New Guinea to work as a children’s medical officer. At that time village social life was very traditional and was supported by a subsistence agricultural economy. Patterns of health and disease were also traditional, with endemic malaria, malnutrition, tuberculosis, diarrheal and respiratory diseases, neonatal tetanus, polio, intestinal worms, yaws, and high maternal mortality due to hemorrhage and infection. Infant mortality was more than 50% in some isolated settlements.

But his last paragraph totally goes counters to his opinion (emphasis added):

Although we lived literally in the middle of this village, neither my wife, our new baby, nor I succumbed to any of these lethal conditions. Neither did any of my White colonial expatriate colleagues. Why? Because we could afford good food, clean water, mosquito screens, shoes that prevented hookworms from entering our feet, and antenatal care, and of course we had been vaccinated against polio, tetanus, and mumps We also had health-related knowledge and technology—we knew the importance of handwashing and avoiding mosquito bites at dusk, and we had safe water supplies and safe systems for disposal of sewage. In other words, we had inherited the economic advantages, social behavior, and medical technology that combined to radically reduce the risk of malnutrition and communicable disease. This inheritance was not, of course, available to traditional Papua New Guineans.

I don’t think vaccines are just an economic benefit. There is a reason that measles in declining in Africa and increasing in Europe. I also noticed that McKeown as in the UK when there was no vaccine for mumps, and no MMR (he died in 1988).

Oh, rats, this got so long it is going into moderation. So I’ll just list the other articles (not bothering with html):
http://ije.oxfordjournals.org/content/30/6/1260.full
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1447153/
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1447152/
http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736%2808%2960292-5/fulltext

Happy reading. And I really hope Emily answers my question, I have been so disappointed with others previous attempts (though they have been somewhat amusing).

Emily…The PSA test and its validity as a screening test is being debated right now in the United States. The USPSTF (United States Preventive Services Task Force) recently recommended that it should not be used for “routine screening of any man”. Prior to this the USPSTF had recommended that the test should not be used for “routine screening of men age 75 and older”. The American Urological Association has raised some strong objections as have other physicians…and the general public. The debate is ongoing.

Emily, that is how Science works. Researchers, doctors and epidemiologists are constantly evaluating the value of screening blood tests and other screening modalities (mammograms and Pap smears) for low risk patients.

As Krebiozen stated “I’ve been responsible for issuing thousands of PSA reports. It’s a very useful test when used properly. When used for monitoring the progress of a man with confirmed prostate cancer it is invaluable. As an indiscriminate screening test, not so much – too many false positives.”

(anecdotal and coincidental): Yesterday, a close friend contacted me…a wee bit hysterical…about her husband’s PSA blood test. The physician who ordered the test and who had done a prostate biopsy a year ago..diagnosed BPH (benign prostatic hypertrophy)…and was “monitoring” this benign condition. My friend had to be talked off the precipice (she tends to get that “way”). I emailed her some articles written about PSA tests from the Science Based Medicine website…she is now at ease and will not ask the doctor to immediately repeat the test.

Chris…I got stuck in moderation too…commenting on the PSA test.

Ren’s linked article at #7 is very interesting and sad. A 29 year old woman who had NEVER received the MMR immunizations died from a measles complication-Adult Respiratory Distress Syndrome. She received every medical intervention available, yet died from the ARDS. I wonder how her parents feel, that the decision they made to not vaccinate her when she was a child, caused the premature death of their daughter?

@ Questioner: The measles virus is a single serotype. I believe you are referring to measles genotypes. Testing for the genotype prevalence (there are at least 23 measles genotypes) during an outbreak or epidemic, assists epidemiologists to trace the likely source country or region where the unknown “index” case(s) became infected.

How dumb do you really think people are?

I dunno, how? You tell me, Orac bans anyone who’s too clever for him.

There’s proof!

Dear Emily, the moderator wakes up after comment 97 has been deleted 😉

Emily – since you’re concerned about the minute amount of aluminium in a dose of vaccine, you are presumably even more concerned about the quantities found in food, drink – & breast milk?

That Emily denies germ theory is proof enough that she’s a complete nutter…..

That I’ve noticed, Orac has banned at least half dozen separate people out of his fear that they could be a certain troll. I can’t link to posts that have been removed.

He’s like the chef in that cartoon, Ratatouille, seeing the rat behind every dissenting voice…

Given all the “-ella” handles that have appeared in the past 48 hours or so, I suspect it’s more a virulent case of inability to spell one’s handle consistently. Does my mass spectrometer detect outlier levels of THC? 🙂

quoth Emily: “I have never believed in the germ theory, let alone the superstition of herd immunity. ”

Well, that’s that. As Churchill said, “Against such opinions it is vain to argue.”

Emily @92: “[In 1999] the Journal of the American Medical Association editorial …. stated that the fourth leading cause of death in the world, after CHD, cancer & strokes, was modern medical drugs, prescibed properly & according to professional standards of care. When factoring in medical mistakes, including improperly prescribed drugs, it becomes the third leading cause of death.It stated that each year over 100,000 patients are killed by such drugs, properly prescribed!”

Emily needs to work on her reading comprehension.  Here is a report on the top ten causes of death in 2008. Note that medical drugs didn’t make the top ten in any grouping, particularly not the whole world. Note also the numbers of death in each category: the smallest of them, breast cancer in high income countries, is 0.17 million, or 170,000, which is considerably greater than 100,000. 

Even someone who disbelieves the germ theory of disease and thinks herd immunity is a superstition ought to be able to do some simple computations like, there are more than six billion people in the world; at least one percent must die per year; that means at least 60,000,000 die per year; that means something that kills 100,000 per year cannot possibly be the fourth leading cause of death.

In fact, Emily, the JAMA editorial, that you didn’t name, quote, or link to, must be referring to deaths in the United States which, as many of us are aware, is not the whole world.

Emily,

Over 1.2 million dead through medical drugs since that editorial. Great science!

Even assuming that figure is correct, could you tell me how many of those people would have been dead long before without medical treatment? How many of those people were seriously ill, very elderly or both and in a hospital? The drugs that cause the largest number of adverse events, including death, are also those that provide the greatest benefits. Anticoagulant drugs are a good example, they kill more people than any other prescription drugs, probably thousands of people every year in the USA alone, mainly due to their narrow window of therapeutic safety, but they also save hundreds of thousands of lives. You have to balance the benefits against the risks. Just looking at the risks and ignoring or denying the benefits, as you are doing, leads an intelligent person to foolish conclusions.

modern medicine kills infinitely more people, & covers it up better

How would you treat someone with a clotting disorder? You clearly wouldn’t use anticoagulants like warfarin or heparin as they kill “infinitely more people”. In the USA about 2 million people a year have a deep vein thrombosis, and 600,000 die from blood clots? Would you stop prescribing anticoagulants to these people? That’s 2-3 million people on warfarin alone you would be putting at a serious risk of a DVT or a pulmonary embolism. I think the best solution to this problem is to develop safer and more effective drugs, and that is exactly what is happening.

I have never believed in the germ theory, let alone the superstition of herd immunity. Herd mentality is needed for that!

I have never understood how anyone can deny germ theory or herd immunity. There is so much evidence of many different kinds for both that anyone denying them must be either ignorant of that evidence or delusional. I can’t see any other explanation.

“I have never believed in the germ theory”

Oh yuk. I just hope I never accidentally meet you without knowing who you are in advance. I really don’t want to shake hands with people who don’t wash after using the toilet facilities.

Though I suppose I should recognise you because noone in your family bothers to cover their faces when they sneeze or cough.

Yuukk!!

I was once asked to help some kids in high school with their science fair project, and I chose germ theory. I chose it because I had found out that one of the town councilmen did not believe in germ theory and he was going to judge the fair. So we were going to embarrass him.

We took two petri dishes, sterilized them one more time out of the bag with UV light, and left one open to the air and another one closed. The closed one grew nothing. The open one grew mold. We then took a third plate and grew beta-hemolytic strep. The student wrote up a paper about Pasteur and about Koch’s postulates. I was nearby when the judges came around.

One section in the poster board was dedicated to germ theory denialism. It asked those who doubted to take a look a the plate with beta-hemolytic strep. If they truly did not believe in germ theory, in the fact that germs grow out of something and cause disease, then they were welcome to take a lick of the strep plate.

There were no takers, and my student did not win. But, then again, he did. He learned that science opens eyes and makes minds think critically… And that bacteria do cause disease and do not come out of nowhere. He is now a medical technologist back in Texas, and I am very proud of him.

So, Emily, why does food spoil once you open the can, and would you eat it?

With regard to the PSA part of the discussion, I have to say I dissent from the current recommendations. At age 55, a routine PSA led to the discovery that I had prostate cancer, Gleason score 7, with disease right up to and on the verge of going through the prostate capsule. I was totally asymptomatic and there was no suspicious finding on digital rectal exam. After surgery, my 15-year risk of recurrence is 22%. I believe, and I think Orac will confirm, that had I waited until I had definite symptoms that couldn’t be waved off as due to something else, that I would have certainly had regional and most likely distant metastases requiring more, and more systemically disruptive, forms of therapy and my odds of cure and survival would have been seriously diminished, not to mention the impact on my quality of life.
I strongly dissent from the new recommendations. Men, get your PSA checked early and often.

Chemmomo, well isn’t that funny because because a while ago, Chris referred to some “vacc VS unvacc studies from around 1980 (when there were very few mandatory vaccines on the schedule. Just pointing out the inconsistency in your thinking here.

Old Rockin’ Dave,
Re PSA I’d say you were lucky, in a sense. For every man like you there are two or three whose elevated PSA is due to BPH, or whose prostate cancer would never have grown enough to cause them any problems. They get a biopsy and possibly treatment that they didn’t really need at all, not to mention the anxiety and cost. Screening tests and their risks and benefits are a fascinating area, I think. Their effects on individuals and on large numbers of people can be very different, if you see what I mean.

Is Wakefield better characterized as a Great Fraud or as The Great Pretender?

Oh-oh, yes I’m the great pretender
Pretending that vaccines make you unwell
My cash needs were such I pretended too much
Exposed so my colleagues could tell

(the original song lyrics actually fit nicely without any alterations)

I always get a kick out of insane troll advocating the slaughter of the infected & potentially infected as a means to control the spread of infections….

@ Dangerous Bacon:

Exactly- and another ripe fruit for plucking – in the song parody dept-
it might almost work “as is” but oh wow, consider Mr Dylan’s refrain as:

“You might think that it’s very rude
but EVERYBODY must get sued…”

Fortunately, I have “paperwork” or I might have to look up the real lyrics and have a go at it. I hereby absolve my claim.

Man, there’s nothing like a germ theory denialist troll to brighten up your morning. I’m sorta wondering what she does think causes disease, though. Miasmas, maybe? Acid body environment? Vague, extremely generalized, “poor sanitation”? Not being as perfect and enlightened as her?

In fact, Emily, the JAMA editorial, that you didn’t name, quote, or link to, must be referring to deaths in the United States which, as many of us are aware, is not the whole world.

In addition to what it was asserting, she also got wrong the year of publication and failed to note that it wasn’t an editorial. But, hey, whatever, citations are just a myth created to control people. It’s here.

@129

You are aware that it is illegal to impersonate someone over the internet, aren’t you?

Oh shit you guys, watch out. He’s gonna call the internet police on us.

It would appear as if Mr Deer is unfamiliar with the concept of “Correlation does not equal causation.” I believe the very first Harry Potter book came out in the previous year; perhaps that is the cause for lower vaccine uptake? But, since Mr Deer agrees with your confirmation bias, then it must mean that, in this case, Correlation DOES equal causation.

So you’re saying that it is purely coincidence that, following the publication of a highly publicized paper about a supposed major side effect of the MMR vaccine, MMR vaccination rates went down.
You’re either incredibly intellectually dishonest, or incredibly stupid.

You’re an infection promoter. You don’t have to agree with Lancisi.

You really don’t understand how erbärmlich these attempts to do the same thing over and over with people who have already handily embarrassed you are, do you? Look, if you’ve only got one record, you could at least put on the other side once in a while. The whole “surfactants are always adjuvants” routine was a hoot. Try that.

If anyone is curious, I found the 1999 editorial article in JAMA that Emily was talking about (It’s actually from 2000):

JAMA. 2000 Jul 26;284(4):483-5.
Is US health really the best in the world?
Starfield B.

@OracIsAQuack:
are there other plausible reasons for a sudden drop in MMR vaccinations after the publication of the paper? Correlation can be useful in pinning down the cause of something in the absence of other credible explanations.

If I recall, insane troll was in complete support of Lancisi’s methods, since they didn’t involve vaccinations – again, freaking hilarious!

First.

1. Giovanni Maria Lancisi (26 October 1654-20 January 1720)
2. First rinderpest vaccine, 1897 by Robert Koch

Yeah you’re freaking hilarious!

Second, your utter ignorance of Lancisi’s methods is highly amusing.

Rinderpest and peste des petits ruminants: virus plagues of large and small ruminants, p.89
By William P. Taylor

Lancisi’s recommendations and their success were underpinned by two thrusts (see also Chapter 9):

– zoo-sanitary measures, including stamping-out
– strong legal enforcement of control measures

Thus Lancisi’s technical recommendations included: slaughter to reduce spread, restricted movement of cattle, burial of whole animals in lime, and inspection of meat. Their implementation was enforced rigorously by the papal edicts by which Draconian penalties, including even hanging of guilty laymen and condemning of clergy to the galleys, were enforced. This led to the first effective control of rinderpest within a country, the state then known as Romagna.

Bad news for infection promoters indeed.

Thingy is actually advocating the slaughter of children to reduce spread of measles? Lost for words…

@Emily-
Follow your “intuition” and run from Orac and his intellectual lynch mob and
witch hunters.
They call Dr. Sears and Gordon quacks, also Dr. Oz and Dr. Blaylock who have more skill in surgery than ORAC.
Their pyschological underpinnings are as fanatical as the “creationists” in their
belief of vaccines as the “Holy Communion”.
Knowing many people with few vaccinations and excellent health and all the reading I’ve done has convinced me that the current vaccine schedule for children has no real scientific support.

@anna:
knowing many people without vaccination is not proof that vaccines do not work. Many will have been infected and survived or not shown symptoms. You don’t know the people that have died, as they are dead. Has anyone claimed that without vaccination we would all get sick, or die? People lived without vaccination long ago,but that does not indicate vaccines do not work.

Individual stories do not prove anything, you need a proper controlled study with ample statistics.

anna @146: “Dr. Oz and Dr. Blaylock who have more skill in surgery than ORAC.”

Evidence needed.

@You are really showing your ignorance by asking that question. Do the research
yourself. You will dispute anything I write anyway.

@anna:
Isn’t that a bit lazy? you are trying to make a point but refuse t give relevant proof, just accusations.

I think I see the problem, you would rather not have anything you say questioned, but only listened to and agreed to. Disputing something is healthy, not something bad … if something is found incorrect then try to understand what is wrong with your idea, modify it, or if you have to reject it. If something cannot be discussed or disputed is it really worth talking about?

It is refreshing (and again, terrifying) to see insane troll advocate for the slaughter of infected individuals animals or suspected individuals animals as part of its toolbox for removing disease from a population.

Ahh the herd mentality.

Continued p. 91

These measures remain valid today and now form the core of the stamping-out policy for the control of highly contagious animal diseases, also referred to as transboundary animal diseases, i.e. those that are of significant economic trade and/or food security importance for a considerable number of countries; which can easily spread to other countries and reach epidemic proportions; and where control/management, including exclusion, requires cooperation between several countries (FAO, 1996).

You are really showing your ignorance by asking that question. Do the research yourself. You will dispute anything I write anyway.

I have done the research. I’ve gone to the CDC website. I’ve read the studies that they’ve based the vaccine schedule off of, and I’ve found their methods and conclusions satisfactory. You, clearly, did not. So again, I’m asking you, what parts of the vaccine schedule do you feel are unscientific?

Actually insane troll, you are the advocate of disease control without vaccinations – so by that thought process (if you actually have one), you are in favor of the methods used to originally attempt to control the spread of Rinderpest – so thank you again for admitting your whole-hearted support for the slaughter of innocent individuals, just because they might have come in contact with an infected host.

It is refreshing (and again, terrifying) to see you come out and state such a black and white opinion on the matter.

anna, you can start here:
http://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/pubs/pinkbook/index.html

Then you might want to go to the main CDC Vaccine page which is the link near the top that says “Vaccines Home.”

Actually insane troll, you are the advocate of disease control without vaccinations

Rinderpest had been eradicated more than once without vaccination. What are you complaining about?

so by that thought process (if you actually have one), you are in favor of the methods used to originally attempt to control the spread of Rinderpest

>

Read #156 re: FAO, moron! (apology to the cattle)

so thank you again for admitting your whole-hearted support for the slaughter of innocent individuals, infected animals, just because they might have come in contact with an infected host.

I don’t know but did Lancisi slaughter innocent individuals?

I say mooooo!!!

Germs exist & play an associative role in many illnesses, but they do not represent THE cause. They need a lot of help from us. If antibiotics are essential, how is it that my 4 kids, myself, my husband & many of my colleagues have NEVER taken antibibiotics, or any drugs, for over 20 years? Have my kids been sick? Of course, but they have been educated to know the power of their body’s self healing capacity, IF they provide the right conditions.

And those conditions do not mean herbal pills, homeopathy, vitamins, antibiotics, anti-emetics, anti-pyrretics, tamiflu or any other voodoo!

Let me bring you up to speed on a little secret! But please don’t say this aloud as it might cause hysteria amongst the medical sycophants: the human body is self-developing, self repairing & self-defending! Wow! My kids have been taught that. Does it mean they (we) reject modern medicine outright? How churlish that would be, & stupid. Modern medicine is awesome in some areas, but in most areas in engages, it is unnecessary & harmful.

How does someone with RA, on methotrexate for 19 years, make a remarkable recovery when she comes OFF ALL medication, AND doesn’t take any “alternative” supplements, as advocated by the Mercolas, Sears, etc? How could that be? Are any of you really intersted in the truth? Do any of you good people suffer yourselves with chronic disease that modern medicine is virtually useless (read dangerous) in treating? What about family members? If you are in that position, ask me to explain!! I sell NOTHING, no pills, no concoctions, no remedies- THERE IS NO PROFIT!!! Hello, is anybody out there with an inquirng mind for the truth?

Intellectual lynch mob? Weren’t they a band in the UK c.1978?

The relationship between the alt med proselytiser ( usually male) and his target audience (mostly female) can best be approached by metaphor: he is well-spoken and knows what makes her “tick”- he details how she has been sorely mis-used by her current beau ( read mainstream medicine) which is truly unjust because she is indeed a fine person far above average, intelligent, loving, and worthy. She deserves better- someone like him, a true genius also unfairly punished by heartless corruption. It’s a match made in heaven!

His flattery and attentions are designed to convince her that what benefits *him* is really in her best interest, not his. In this dance of financial and ideological seduction she is controlled although she doesn’t realise it- symbiotically, both egos getfed- he adds another to his stable while she is “choosen” by the glorious one himself.

“You are really showing your ignorance by asking that question. Do the research
yourself. You will dispute anything I write anyway.”

Asking a question is requesting that one’s ignorance be reduced. Refusing to answer a question is an obvious attempt to hide one’s ignorance. Hope that helps.

@Denice-
You really are enamored with your verbal abilities. I actually adored my SBM
orthopedist when I tore my rotator cuff. Maybe surgeons should just stick to doing what they were qualifed to do as SBM doctors. I am very open-minded- ie usually correlated with “creative thinkers”.
I think I have enough psych savy to recognonize “transference” reactions.
No- people turn to alt med because they get no answers from SBM- they really just
might want to feel better.
Of course there are rip-off artists in alt med-like Medicare and Medicaid abuses don’t exist?

@Denice-
Are you sure you are not “projecting”?
That might be your “modus operandi”.

You really are enamored with your verbal abilities.

I’m enamoured with Denice’s verbal abilities, so what?

I actually adored my SBM orthopedist when I tore my rotator cuff.

Oh and why is that? Is it because you were aware that you were out of your depth about how to repair your own rotator cuff? You see that’s the problem with you self-proclaimed “open-minded” types, your brains fall out while you are frantically acquiring your Google U degrees with alt-med morons as instructors so you think you can DIY medicine.

Maybe surgeons should just stick to doing what they were qualifed to do as SBM doctors.

Yes they should so you mind telling me why you invoked Dr. Oz as some kind of authority? Or Dr. Sears and Gordon since they haven’t done a single bit of research? Or Blaylock a retired surgeon who shills supplements? By the way, our host is a PhD/MD who conducts research as well as surgery and practises what he preaches, i.e. science-based medicine. How do your “experts” measure up in this regard?

I am very open-minded- ie usually correlated with “creative thinkers”. I think I have enough psych savy to recognonize “transference” reactions.

Of course you are “open-minded”, you’d have to have had your brains flop out to believe the swill you believe and in turn are peddling. I don’t think you really know what “open-minded” is or you wouldn’t be embarrassing yourself by proclaiming to be. I would also suggest you learn what confirmation bias is and repetition confirmation because I don’t think you are particularly self-aware as far as those go.

No- people turn to alt med because they get no answers from SBM- they really just might want to feel better.

And how does one achieve that?

Of course there are rip-off artists in alt med-like Medicare and Medicaid abuses don’t exist?

A silly Tu quoque argument. There is oversight in medicine so that scammers do get caught and punished. There is little to no oversight for your altie snake-oil salesmen and can literally get away with murder, in large part because people like you who get sucked into their world are too embarrassed to do anything about them when you realise you’ve been had; you just slink away.

Stuartg,

You forgot to include the not insignificant morbidity and mortality associated with investigation of “elevated” PSAs that are later found to be normal for that individual!

True. You remind me of an old colleague of mine who years ago had his creatine kinase level measured to establish a reference range – lab staff are often used for this. His CK was markedly elevated and he endured a series of investigations, including a muscle biopsy, to try to find the cause. In the end it was realized that people of African origin, he is Nigerian, simply have higher CK levels than Caucasians or Asians, and his CK was perfectly normal.

Old Rockin’ Dave,

I am sure that if I were undergoing debulking surgery, multiple sessions of irradiation to the pelvic region,and skeletal metastases, and lifelong androgen-blocking therapy, or perhaps dying of untreatable metastatic disease, I would be comforted by the thought that I was contributing to the fiscal health of society.

It’s not just fiscal health. What about the many men who have unnecessary investigations and treatment, both of which carry risks, as a result of an elevated PSA? It may be that routine screening with PSA actually increases morbidity and mortality overall. For you, getting a PSA was undoubtedly the right thing and may have saved your life, for many other men it makes things worse.
http://www.uspreventiveservicestaskforce.org/uspstf12/prostate/prostateart.htm

@Science Mom-
What about breast implants, face lifts, botox, etc. of course these are done for purely
altruistic reasons.

Lawrence:

if you knew your history, you’d know that.

She is having trouble with forming with sentence structure, forming an argument, using actual evidence, making herself clear, and worse as told Science Mom that she is naive and to not cite someone never mentioned by Science Mom: why should we assume she knows any history?

I think we are dealing with a runner up to Thingy.

@Denice-
I am glad that I have not “witnessed horrible examples of those who are ill consulting
with a charlatan” etc. I commend you on your “utilising” your skill to educate those
who do so.

@Chris-
I quote you @184-“she is having trouble with forming with sentence structure”
Hmm…..
I quote “Science Mom@177 “There is little to no oversight for your altie snake-oil salesmen and can literally get away with murder, in large part because people like you who get sucked into their world are too embarrassed to do anything about them when you realise you’ve been had; you just slink away.”
Asked for citations- Who is getting away with murder?
What does this have to do with history?
People like me? Rather arrogant statement.

anna, is English your second language?

@Hinterlander– but I watched my friend die from lung cancer after 5 horrible
years on and off chemo with the end stage being a colostomy from the ravages of chemo.
Cancer is horrid.

I appreciate your kind words! ( -btw- you should hear me with 2 drinks!)

You are an acquired taste but once done, then it’s easy to see the experience, thoughtfulness and wit in your posts. I would definitely like to hear you with two drinks!

Anna – I’m sorry to read about your friend. However, you miss my point. I was replying to your sarcastic comment #186 with “a horrible example of someone who was ill consulting with a charlatan”. Cancer is indeed horrid but in many cases treatable or curable if caught early and treated conventionally. As Lawrence states above cancer treatments are improving, moving ahead all the time, unlike alt “medicine” which simply spins round in circles spouting the same cr*p.

By my count, Andy Wakefield has been on three “top science fraud” lists in the past month: Medscape, CNN and now Time. He must be so proud of his achievements!

It’s getting harder and harder for the “true believers” to keep their faith in Wakefield, which I suspect is why he’s resorted to filing a lawsuit that hasn’t got a snowball’s chance in Hell (or Texas, for that matter). He needs to rally the faithful and convince them that he’s not irrelevant.

Unfortunately, even the mass media have decided that he is irrelevant – or, even worse, ridiculous. I predict that Wakefield will be getting more and more of his “media attention” on low-wattage late-night conspiracy-theory AM radio station talk shows in the coming years.

Prometheus

Who was that “nut” who discovered the benzene ring?

@narad-
You are absolutely right-
Sorry-thinking about the snake image- Freudian perhaps.

Ahh, I see a post was made between our comments.

@Denice-
Well put-English is my second language.

Orac thank you for allowing all opinions bar those that align with Jacob’s 😉

Ren

Yes, the human body is self-developing. Yes, the human body is self-repairing. And, yes, the human body is self-defending.

And of course each of these can go awry and kill us.

@Emily

Ren answered your naive statement in quite an amusing manner. 🙂

I’d like to take a slightly different approach:

Yes, the human body can heal itself. In fact, many of the specific mechanisms involved are well known to SBM and research is on to learn more about other mechanisms.

Quite clearly you are not aware of how SBM works. When the mechanism for self-repair/defence has failed, medical intervention is required to either boost it or supplement it (e.g antibiotics).

In many cases, repair may no longer be possible. Here again, medical intervention is required (hint: organ transplants).

Sometimes, an over zealous defence mechanism itself can lead to diseases (auto-immunity) which has to be controlled.

Similarly, most diseases occur precisely because of inadequacy of the body to deal with the derangement in one or many systems or specific locations in the body.

The human body is not perfect and its capacity for self healing/repair/defence can only go so far. When it has reached its limitations, intervention is required.

Ofcourse, even these interventions are not perfect, but practitioners of SBM actually put in the effort to make them as near perfect as possible.

You and your family are fortunate that you have so far been free of serious ailments. If you are free from ailments, you do not need any sort of intervention.

But everyone is not so fortunate and it is also not necessary that you will remain fortunate forever (not that I wish ill-fortune on you or your family). Diseases occur despite doing your best to maintain optimum health.

What do you believe a person should do when they fall ill despite taking all measures to maintain optimum health? Should they follow unproven, implausible claims for treatment where risks and benefits are largely unknown; or should they follow well-researched, reasonably well-understood (or atleast, proven) treatment modalities?

This discussion has specifically turned to the role of vaccines in the prevention of infectious diseases. However, it is folly to assume that SBM advocates against or does not advocate a healthy diet, exercise, good sleep etc for maintenence of optimum health.

SBM very much emphasizes the importance of these factors. However, for an effective disease prevention strategy, these are not enough. Some specific prevention strategies, such as vaccination, have to be included. As has been pointed above, effective prevention of a disease such as measles is not possible without effective immunization.

A lot of research has been done on this which the regulars always generously link to. If you really are open minded, as you claim to be, perhaps you should take a look at it and see for yourself. I’m afraid, you will have to invest some time and effort, though. A cursory glance is not enough.

To Ren & Krebiozen,Yes, the human body is self-developing. Yes, the human body is self-repairing. And, yes, the human body is self-defending.

And of course each of these can go awry and kill us.

What does that mean? What are you talking about here?

And secondly, the Native American Indians did not die a day after meeting whites. It was after their lifestyles had been compromised that they fell ill.

If germs cause disease why are not my 4 kids sick with flu & other illnesses that their friends have? They associate with them all the time? And my kids are not “protected” by medicine’s voodoo vaccines. Why do so many people who get the flu every year (with or without fluvax), once they change their diets & lifestyles, NEVER get the flu again? I suppose the virus takes pity on them & leaves them alone as a reward for long service?

Maggots don’t cause the carcass & flies don’t cause the garbage & germs don’t cause the disease, they FOLLOW it.

And by the way, the human body has about 100 trillion cells & 10 times as many microorganisms ( viruses, bacteria etc) residing in/on it. God help us if germs are the cause of disease.We would never be well.

To LW Post 176: I am sorry you needed antibiotics. Would you mind telling us what you had that needed antibiotics? I would be very interested to find out.

@Emily:

But you really can’t blame them- they are products of their training, largely funded by GSK, Merck etc & they honestly have not been well trained in helping people potentiate their innate healing powrers (WOOO I hear the chorus!)

I’m curious, then, as to who mis-trained the people who lead to the spread of smallpox vaccine way back when Jenner introduced it, and to the spread of the germ theory back when Pasteur came up with it, given since I don’t think that anything like Big Pharma existed back then.

Emily @215: As a healthy active eight-year-old, I developed a severe infection in my hip. The infectious organism must have entered through some unnoticed scratch like all the others an active eight-year-old acquires. The infection quickly became so severe that I could not walk and my fever was so high that I was delirious.

Such infections just happen. They always have, in all of human history. In the good old days before antibiotics, I would have died. Thanks to antibiotics, I survived with just a slight limp.

(OT) Another case of fraud.
Maybe you have alredy discissed this.
“Red wine researcher accused of falsifying data” http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-01-red-wine-accused-falsifying.html

And secondly, the Native American Indians did not die a day after meeting whites. It was after their lifestyles had been compromised that they fell ill.

Um, no. There was an epidemic among the Arawak after their first contact with Columbus, even though he only stopped there briefly, kidnapped a few people, and left. No major lifestyle changes.

Also just to note, the pre-Columbian lifestyle was in no way “pure”. Many Amerind peoples understood how to smoke meat, for example, few had what we would consider a truly balanced diet, and some, such as the Incas, had as complex and decadent a civilization as any spawned in Europe. What they didn’t have was small pox-until the Europeans showed up with it.

Reuben wrote a blog post about how anti-vaxers (and Thingy) use the whole “polio vaccines cause polio” truism to scare you, if you’re dumb enough to believe them…

Which is why the vaccinators are the number one germ theory denialists.

Emily @218: please use either quote marks or blockquote to separate your words from what you’re quoting. It is confusing to read a comment in which you appear to be arguing with yourself.

Lupus is hopelessly treated medically, yet quite easily & successfully recovered from through the application of natural hygiene principles.

Well, that ought to be a relatively testable claim. I always like claims that a disease is “quite easily & successfully recovered from”. You have the PubMed cases, I presume?

@ Emily:

Although you may not *personally* subscribe to any of the alt med/ natural health advocates I survey, some of your ideas *sound* quite similar. Needless to say, these concepts have been around a long time: people are suspicious of physical intervention with their bodies and interference with their autonomy. Most alt med speaks to this ( possibly naturally-selected) fear; also ideas have filtred down over the past 150 years or so ( I know most about those in US and UK)- e.g. vegetarianism, the value of grains, anti-vaccination etc.

Right now there are several groups who promote diet and supplements as alternatives to medical care: the Alliance for Natural Health ( worldwide), the Natural Solutions Foundation, as well as promoters whose websites provide “information” as well as selling products ( cited above by me). They have vested interests in alienating trust in doctors and pharmaceuticals: both monetary and psychological- people without serious educations criticising entire professions and business sectors and developing a following- that’s an ego booster!

I have heard irresponsible advice given to people with serious conditions- including scaring folks off of most pharmaceutical products : chemotherapy for cancer, meds for mental illness, ARVs for HIV/AIDS, most vaccines, as well as drugs for heart disease, and antibiotics. Often their supporting “data” is a pastiche of unrelated studies, poorly done research, polemics, and out-dated resources. They present themselves as “experts” when commonly they do not have relevant training: more significantly they are not tested and monitored as doctors are- *yet* they prescribe treatment plans and may tell their followers to avoid all doctors but NDs ( HealthRanger.com). They also have a political agenda that opposes regulation.

Because their ideas are *not* supported by data they need rely on conspiracies to explain why their hypothesis- although it is “correct”- has never been accepted by the mainstream. Contemplate the magnitude of a conspiracy that would explain how AJW was “shafted”: it would have to encompass pharmaceutical companies, medical associations, media, and goverments in at least two countries *working together*. How likely is that?

Maggots don’t cause the carcass & flies don’t cause the garbage & germs don’t cause the disease, they FOLLOW it.

And by the way, the human body has about 100 trillion cells & 10 times as many microorganisms ( viruses, bacteria etc) residing in/on it. God help us if germs are the cause of disease.We would never be well.

I take it that Emily’s too busy being enlightened to have noted the obvious contradiction here.

Andreas Johannsen

Which Europeans when?

Probably British/French and at the same time. There were a lot of diseases in Europe like smallpox and bubonic plague that were not present in North America. I suspect European warfare was more deadly than that in New England and Eastern Canada as well.

Emily:

And secondly, the Native American Indians did not die a day after meeting whites. It was after their lifestyles had been compromised that they fell ill.

Pizarro and the Inca Empire have been mentioned, as has the east coast of North America (except the part where the Puritans actually used previously cultivated fields from a tribe that no longer existed).

Now let us see how she does with the other side of the continent. Emily what caused the Whitman massacre? Why did George Vancouver and Peter Puget see evidence on smallpox when they were the first Europeans to see the Puget Sound Native Americans?

And I am still waiting to find out with real evidence why the rate of measles in the USA in 1970 was only 10% of what it was in 1960. Surely, Emily, you have the title, journal and dates of the PubMed indexed papers that explain it already?

emily: ” Professor Linus Pauling , dual Nobel Laureate, said “the cancer establishment is largely a fraud”
emily: “but then intelligence & stupidity are not incompatible.”

You go, girl!

Militant Agnostic wrote:

Probably British/French and at the same time. There were a lot of diseases in Europe like smallpox and bubonic plague that were not present in North America. I suspect European warfare was more deadly than that in New England and Eastern Canada as well.

I was asking because if I understand correctly, there was a lot of variation between different times and regions in early modern Europe. The Swedish life expectancy, if memory serves, seems to have shot up by well more than a couple years during the 18th century, probably because of fewer wars and less frequent failed harvests. I’d expect something similar goes for England and France (not fewer wars perhaps in those cases, but definitely less fighting inside the country, as they both took to primarily fighting on other people’s land in the 18th, after both suffering civil wars in the 17th).

If antibiotics are essential, how is it that my 4 kids, myself, my husband & many of my colleagues have NEVER taken antibibiotics, or any drugs, for over 20 years?

Can’t wait for DOD to decide there’s something in what Emily says, and order military surgeons to go back to treating wounds with boiling treacle.

Emily:

o Chris, my long suffering, ignored friend: I do not know everything (I’m not young enough for that!)& I do not know why the figures were as you said, & I haven’t had time to look more deeply into it.

It is really quite a simple answer. You just have to look past the principals of “Natural Hygiene” and actually embrace real science, and read some history. Perhaps if you had learned some of the latter your ideas on the Native population of the American continents would be more accurate.

Do try harder. I provided you the census data, all you have to do is look in some real resources. There are also some very interesting books on history like Pox: An American History, Polio: an American Story, Inside the Outbreaks, The Ghost Map and The Great Influenza.

You might also try catching up on some basic biology, and acquaint yourself with the PubMed index. Your comments about Natural Hygiene would only work on Htrae (no one who denies germ theory would mention cytokines, or even care about leukocytes).

Though do try harder to find that answer, I am really curious what you will come up with. Because those who forget history are doomed to repeat it, we already had an echo between 1989 to 1991, and it looks like we will have another one soon.

Hey, my comment had no links and was not long! I really hate the moderation bot.

Emily, try harder to answer my question. It is a very simple answer, all you have to do is know a little history and some real science.

It is not the first time, and there are always interesting reasons for some to never ever attempt to type out the only answer. My favorite are the ones who try to use data from Wales and England, which last I looked were not part of the USA.

Though I should warn her that the census data is on a very large pdf file, and it is on one of several tables. Though tp be nice, here is that data plotted out.

No interest out there in fasting & Natural Hygiene? Surely some of you are keen to learn the true biological principles of health & disease.

If these principles were practiced, then 90% of both modern medicine & alt/med practitioners would be on the hunt for another line of income!

Give the body a chance!!! Why is medicine so bloody militaristic? Almost every deviation from normal physiology is suppressed. Anti-pyrretics, anti-biotics, anti-virals, anti hypertensives,anti-resorptives, anti -acids anti this, anti that. The war metaphor is apt. No wonder people have lost faith in the power of their own bodies, because the medical fraternity have never learnt it. Nutrition is not even taught to any great level in med school. My God!! Fasting is not even mentioned. And still we have tosillectomies, appendecectomies, cholecystectomies,hysterectomies, thyroidectomies, the vast majority of which could be avoided (not all!).

It is little wonder that people turn to alternatives. They are speaking with their feet & their money.However, there are some medics who come upon more efficacious methods of restoring health, but they have to learn them outside medical school. I refer to Drs Jonn McDougall, Joel Fuhrman, Dean Ornish, Peter Sultana, Caldwell Esselstyn, Michael Klaper, Michael Stern, Alexander Fine, Theo Coumentakis amongst others. Seek them out, you’ll be far better off than the just seeing the average grass-roots doctor or specialist who knows very little about nutrition, fasting & the true causes of health & disease.

Emily, why did the rate of measles incidence plummet 90% between 1960 and 1970 in the USA? Please provide adequate documentation for your answer from PubMed indexed papers.

To Chris:

Read the JID but sorry- I am not a convert. In fact, I feel more convinced of Natural Hygiene principles than ever. How can you say that Natural Hygiene is not “real science”? I feel you probably have no real idea of these principles, so it was a throw-away line.

How could it be that many poor wretches suffering influenza & severe pneumonia in the Spanish Flu pandemic of 1918-9 survived without the usual rounds of drugs & aspirin, & were put in tents on hills because hospital beds were full?
“To Surgeon -General William Brooks the temperature charts told the story: fresh air, sunshine, a fruit & water diet were producing miraculous results. The results were startling.For the first time since the epidemic began there was hope that the unknown virus might yet be defeated with nature’s own weapons” pp78-79

What an absolute tragedy the esteemed scientists of today think our only hope against germs, pandemics & epidemics lies with vaccinations.

No Chris, I read your articles & thought, thank God I have raised my children & helped people with natural hygiene philosophy & practice. I understand the true power of healing that lies innate within us all.What would anyone learn from the official CDC propaganda: wash your hands, provide a barrier & get jabbed with chemicals, attenuated viruses & adjuvants. No wonder the States has a terrible health record in so many parameters, including childhhod health. No wonder there are more & more great doctors lambasting modern medical practice- from Dr John McDougall, Caldwell Esselstyn, Dean Ornish, Joel Fuhrman, Neal Barnard, Peter Sultana, Ray Strand, Bernie Siegel & others- free thinkers all of them, not beholden to the drug companies.

Indeed, it was DR Marcia Angell, 20 years editor of the NEJM who said: “the FDA is now so dependent on the pharmaceutical industry it has now become big pharma’s handmaiden” p243 in her book ‘The Truth about the Drug Companies: How they Deceive Us & What to do About it’

Also in her book

” I became increasingly troubled by the possibility that much published research is seriously flawed” (p18 intro)
“The pharmaceutical industry has an iron grip on Congress & the White House” (Back cover).

I suppose she has crossed to the dark side also, part of the woo brigade who believe in conspiracies & the like.

Wow all, if this is science, call me a quack!& I’ll continue to not vaccinate my children.

Emily, please answer my question. It is really a very simple thing to find out once you open your mind to real science and history.

T-reg, thank you. That was great. I always appreciate your comments here. Unfortunately Emily won’t pay any attention.

@LW: Thank you. I am not sure whether we can convince emily to take a more rational approach, but the lurkers always benefit.

Also, Emily, please help explain the following phrases into English or provide documentation:

“Read the JID but sorry” — sorry, I don’t speak “initials.”

“”To Surgeon -General William Brooks the temperature charts…” —- citation needed, sorry, I am not take your word for it without proof.

“No wonder the States has a terrible health record in so many parameters, including childhhod health….” — compared to when? A century ago? Please provide citations.

“from Dr John McDougall, Caldwell Esselstyn, Dean Ornish, Joel Fuhrman, Neal Barnard, Peter Sultana, Ray Strand, Bernie Siegel & others- free thinkers all of them,…” — again citations, I recognize only one name, and I really don’t think you are depicting him accurately.

“Indeed, it was DR Marcia Angell, 20 years editor of the NEJM who said:…” — again, citation needed, because I need to see the whole quote in context.

The previous is why we insist on real citations. Please tell us why the rate of measles incidence in 1970 was only 10% of what is was in 1960 in the USA. I actually left you a very big clue, start there.

Dr John McDougall, Caldwell Esselstyn and Dean Ornish all prescribe statins, and are thus clearly beholden to the drug companies.

Vicki:

Emily’s claims aren’t even consistent.

I noticed. Why would she even mention white blood cells if she denies germ theory?

Narad:

Do edify everyone about the fantastic benefits provided to William Carlton.

Or how well it worked for Dr. Immanuel Pfeiffer:

Pfeiffer, a physician who advocated fasting and hypnotism, was at one time president of the American Psychic Society.28 A vehement critic of the Board of Health, he apparently thought that people in good health were not at risk for contracting smallpox — a belief that was not representative of the views expressed by those who opposed vaccination.

Despite her denial, her children are being protected by herd immunity, and even by the removal of germs from her local water supply. She is being a parasite on society.

And she still needs to answer my very simple question.

Hey Emily, are adenoidectomies all right? You didn’t mention them at all.

If “paralysis = polio” what’s measles? Skin rash?

Can you try a little bit harder? Geez.

So proud of what that I am pretty soon; don’t. Have like half-normal flora is not an oxymoron. This system will needlessly suffer. The bad body has to say to rest of vaccines, “is not arguing like a need serious” with his very similar to straw man. They will observe this discussion customer, day, you don’t know. So take yourself diseased, to as you, to the WC pertussis vaccine.

Have you noticed that the link was also broken the last time you posted this?

In fact I have but I thought it was just a glitch or something. Thanks, anyway.

Measles Virus and Its Associated Diseases

h_ttp://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC414019/pdf/bactrev00057-0102.pdf

Emily, why don’t you also do a bit of reading? Many of your exclamatory statements have been addressed by other commenters here (including requests for citations, please). Normal conversations tend to be two-way & usually don’t involve shouting at each other. The use of reason tends to be much more effective.

Looks like Emily took the blue pill. Put her in the ***kin sack.

Please, open your eyes! The truth is right in front of your face, but to anyone like you who thinks that denial is a river in Egypt, there is little hope!

Simply ranting and declaring victory isn’t impressive or convincing, Emily.

Everyone is not scared of measles in spite of all the fear mongering.

Funny, you seem to be terribly frightened of the vaccine.

Welcome back to the Th1Th2bot Reunion Tour!

@ Science Mom: I gave up on “Emily” two days ago…and I figuratively put her in the ***kin sack then.

“Read Dr Donald Berwick’s ( outgoing head of Medicare/Medicaid) 2 months ago- up to ONE THIRD of SBM is a waste, costing 250billion dollars & “thousands of lives””

“SBM is being attacked from its own ranks- & rightly so. For the magnificent 10% of SBM, which does save lives & make life much easier, you have the other nonsense of 90% (read non-science).”

Is she saying 90/100=1/3?

Here’s the data Chris is referring to as a graph.

Also, according to the CDC Pink Book, in the ten years before the measles vaccine was introduced, 1951 to 1962, there were 5,704 deaths from measles in the USA. From 1971 to 1982 there were 236 deaths.

Is anyone seriously suggesting those huge drops in both morbidity and mortality are a coincidence, or due to improved nutrition or medical care?

I think our emily is being a tad bit dishonest when she says

Read Dr Donald Berwick’s ( outgoing head of Medicare/Medicaid) 2 months ago- up to ONE THIRD of SBM is a waste, costing 250billion dollars & “thousands of lives”

The quote seems to be:
“Twenty percent to thirty percent of health spending is “waste” that yields no benefit to patients, and that some of the needless spending is a result of onerous, archaic regulations enforced by his agency.”

You can agree with him or not, but he is not saying that 20-30% of SMB is “waste” but that the spending is. I’ve not been able to find a direct quote, but his major concerns seem to be that patients are over-treated, complexity of the system, too many rules and fraud.

I can see why you didn’t actually post the quote, since it doesn’t mean what you claim it means.

Matthew Cline:

She seems to interpret the germ theory as saying something like “if you’re exposed to a pathogen you will get infected”,

So she just lacks a basic understanding of high school biology. Why is she trying to educate us?

@Emily:

Science based medicine is being attacked from its own ranks! Oh the horror!!

Welcome to the world of SBM, where self criticism is routine. SBM criticises itself to figure out where it is going wrong. When was the last time you tried to consider that what you may believe maybe flawed? The answer, I presume, is never.

What is different about what Drs. Barnard and Esslestyn are proclaiming and what SBM advocates?
I will admit that I have not read their books, but I did go to their websites and also read what I could find on pubmed by them. The only differences that I could find are:

Dr. Barnard strongly advocates a vegan diet. However, he doesn’t back it with any data that a vegan diet is any more beneficial than a low fat, balanced diet with an abundance of fruits, vegetables, cereals and legumes with low consumption of meat/poultry/fish/dairy.

Dr. Esslestyn proclaims along the same lines, except that he also advocates maintaining total cholestrol to <150 mg/dl instead of the currently recommended <200 mg/dl. He also calls for lower fat in the diet than the current ideal of 30%. Also, he does mention the benefits of using statins along with diet modifications in managing serum cholestrol levels.

Not quite the radically different opinions that you are making them seem to be. Further research may mandate a lesser total cholestrol level than currently recommended. If that maybe the case, the guidelines will be revised (as has been done in the past in light of new evidence).

As regards Dr. Esslestyn’s claims of total reversal of CAD with diet alone, when even expert cardiologists had ‘written those patients off’ – well it is not implausible, however, where is the data that the risk is worth the benefit?

When one says that an expert cardiologists has “written off” the patient, it usually implies that the chances of survival are abysmally low without surgery or interventional procedures. It does not mean that the chances of survival are nil. Surgery or interventional procedures are advised in such a situation because, if solely diet and lifestyle modification are used, there is a slim (not nil) chance of survival. Those who may take the risk, may most likely not survive, but some may. Where is the data that most survive without intervention in such cases?

How do you know that he is only talking about success stories and not the failures? Proper research talks about and analyses the findings from both, weighing the benefits against the risks.

As further research is conducted, better understanding of previously overlooked or hitherto poorly understood parameters may emerge. This may allow the cardiologist to determine more accurately* who requires procedures and who does not. Until such information emerges, it is not worth the risk to recommend against procedures for every patient in such a situation.

*in the above mentioned situation

About SBM failing miserably in chronic diseases – the fact that we have patients who live long enough to suffer from their chronic diseases is a testament to the effectiveness of SBM. Without adequate management of the conditions, many would not live long enough to see the long term consequences of their disorder, because the disorder itself would have killed them long before that. As the life expectancy of patients with chronic disorders improves, the attendant long term consequences of those disease emerge which, again, SBM is making an effort to prevent. I don’t see the woo-meisters doing anything of the sort. You haven’t moved forward from the notions and misconceptions of the past 3 millennia.

Emily, have you figured out why measles declined so quickly in the USA between 1960 and 1970 yet? Please do educate on how that happened.

@ Emily:

A quick note: Doctors (or anybody else) attempting to use books to contradict the consensus peer-reviewed literature is a big red flag. Because books aren’t peer-reviewed, they can claim whatever they want to.

Those who have an actual case, and are interested in making it in a way which will actually convince others, make it in the peer-reviewed literature. Those who can’t, should be viewed with extreme skepticism.

If you can’t support your claims with REAL citations, they are unworthy of serious consideration.

Emily:

For not supplying citations & references for my arguments, I apologize. I simply do not have the time to go through my notes & library & drag them out,as, like many, I have multiple responsibilities & time constraints.

Do you even know what the PubMed index is, and how to use it?

Emily:

And Chris, I know why YOU think the measles rates declined 1960-70 but what does that prove? Vaccines work? Please define ‘work’?

“Work” for vaccines: kids don’t get the disease the vaccine intended for.

Now we wait for your explanation of why only 10% of the rate sick kids with measles in 1970 than they did in 1960. And the measles rate in the USA has never been more than half the level since 1970.

Emily:

Because something is not there, doesn’t mean it has gone away- it just might change form. Suppress the acute, & guess what. You get the chronic!

That is an interesting excuse for not answering the question. The old “it turned to something else that we really can’t define or prove, but we will just call it chronic” dodge. Yes, I’ve seen it before.

Now do something original and come up with a real answer, and include actual citations.

emily: “Vaccines work? Please define ‘work’? Because something is not there, doesn’t mean it has gone away- it just might change form. Suppress the acute, & guess what. You get the chronic!”

I’d also like to hear about this “chronic measles” you seem to think has been created by vaccination. Also more about smallpox and polio, diseases I am shocked to find that we did not really eradicate, but which purportedly continue in mysterious “chronic” forms that are only detectable by anti-vaccine zealots.

I will be patient waiting for the answer, as emily is off saving people from various ailments, some of which may even exist.

Maybe that “chronic measles” is of the asymptomatic, non-transmissible, undetectable kind that Thingy is so concerned about for reasons that escape me.

I would like to know about Emily’s follow-up of her “cured” RA, MS and lupus cases. Call me cynical but I suspect that they have a period of remission on, but not because of, her natural hygiene fasting/diet which leads her to count them as successes. Later they relapse, realize that natural hygiene is hokum and find a proper doctor, never going back to Emily, who never finds out her approach doesn’t work.

That’s the way a lot of so-called alternative cancer cures “work” in that they lose many patients to follow-up but count them as successes anyway, despite the fact many of them have actually died.

@Edith Prickly:

Are you saying that vaccinating against measles somehow created a new “chronic measles” that has so far escaped the notice of the health care community?

Well, the article Hidden in Plain Sight by Richard Moskowitz at whale.to (not linking, to avoid the spam filter) claims that the reason that the attenuated measles virus usually causes no symptoms is because the attenuated virus evades the immune system, which lets the virus cause a permanent infection. However, this likely isn’t what Emily is talking about, since she seems to think that vaccines suppress the symptoms of the disease they vaccinate against.

my post @293:
That should have been – “Dr. Esslestyn proclaims along the same lines, except that he also advocates maintaining total cholestrol to less than 150 mg/dl instead of less than 200 mg/dl, which is currently recommended.

@Emily:

As for reading their books for evidence, well, if they can publish a few papers which are listed on pubmed, they can also publish their findings in support of these other claims on pubmed. But a search reveals nothing of the sort.

As has been pointed above, you cannot expect to be taken seriously, if you are going to cite a coffee table book as your evidence.

If you think that the aforementioned doctors are not highly critical of SBM, you haven’t read/heard them enough

Perhaps you are right that I have not read enough about their claims and thus my conclusions about them maybe premature.
But have you looked at the possibility that you don’t know much about SBM, either? It is also possible that they are proclaiming SBM to be flawed, relying on your ignorance of SBM and selling you almost what SBM advocates, just repackaged and at a higher price.

On their website, they are basically peddling books and supplements, so why does it seem to you that they have no vested interests in their claims, but conventional medicine does?

Read Prevent & Reverse Heart Disease by Esselstyn & see his evidence of atherosclerotic reversal without drugs!

Emily, we are taking the time to read your posts, even though we don’t agree with you. The least you can do is read our posts too. I dealt with this in my post @293.

I suggest you discard your notions of conspiracy theories for once and look at things. You alt med types keep claiming that SBM advocates are too narrow minded. However, the fact is that your inability to even momentarily suspend your beliefs about conspiracy theories indicates that the description is more apt when applied to you.

One thing I learned was that measles virus like to invade cells that deal with immunity, which is why many people who die from measles die from secondary infections. Due to the cells measles replicates in, the immune system is suppressed and this leaves an opportunity for other pathogens.

Nice, isn’t it.

You know what else the measles virus** is capable of doing other than immunosuppression? Primary infection, viremia and persistent infection.

Nice, isn’t it?

**wild-type or vaccine-type

Emily:

Our bodies PRODUCE disease, they don’t resist it! You cannot resist something that has no entity, and disease has no entitative existence.

Seriously?!?! Seriously?!?! Helloooo! There are these things called microbes which, if they get into our bodies, can cause all sorts of harm to us.

Years ago our 3 kids all had measles…Their symptoms, to us, were reparatory in nature, remedial & defensive.

Reparatory and remedial? Umm, no.

The virus was to us, an accessory after the fact.

Are you for real?! If they hadn’t been infected, they wouldn’t have had the symptoms. You’re saying that the virus follows the disease. “Terrain of the Body” is false.

Finally, I love how your last line is “Let truth be your authority, not authority your truth” straight after listing a number of “authorities.

To Julian @ 311
“Seriously?!?! Seriously?!?! Helloooo! There are these things called microbes which, if they get into our bodies, can cause all sorts of harm to us”.

What do you mean, IF they get into our bodies?. For every
one cell of Julian, there are ten viuses & bacteria. Microbes are ubiquitous in nature. I honestly laugh when I see such microbe paranoia. Why aren’t we sick all the time? We can’t escape them. You have residing in you microbes of all descriptions, by the trillions!!! How come my family (never any flu shots) have not had the flu for over 30 years while our neighbours,(unsure about their vaccination status) gets the flu EVERY year! And they blame the bugs. We laugh, not at them, but to ourselves. I guess the influenza viruses take it easy on us for some reason.

“Reparatory and remedial? Umm, no”.

ALL symptoms are remedial, defensive, regulatory & reparatory. Think about this for a moment. You cough. Why? To expectorate or clear the airways. It is defensive, whether clearing dust or mucous or whatever. You vomit. Why? To rid the body of toxic or unwanted matter, be it food, bile or whatever. You get a fever. Why? For every degree in rise of temperature, the rate of travel of leukocytes doubles, this is a universal, reparatory process called leukotaxis.It is needed & reparatory, the body is working as designed! Fevers are beneficial in nature. Endotherms like humans manufacture their own fevers while ectotherms, such as lizards, have to rely on external thermo-regulation, like the sun, to help restore normal function.

“Are you for real?! If they hadn’t been infected, they wouldn’t have had the symptoms. You’re saying that the virus follows the disease. “Terrain of the Body” is false”.

Symptoms serve a purpose, whether they are the result of an infection, inflammation, a burn, poisoning, whatever. The symptoms ARE the resistance!! This is basic biology which has been lost in modern medicine because, as Dr Marcia Angell stated in her seminal book “The truth about the Drug Companies: How They Deceive Us”:

” The FDA is now so dependent on the pharmaceutical industry that it has become big pharma’s handmaiden” P 242.

And Dr Angell might know. She was Editor of the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) for 20 years.

The plethora of drugs to suppress symptoms is the result.

And tragically, we pay a heavy price for such ignorance.

Emily, your first paragraph of #310 doesn’t make any sense.

As for the rest, it’s like you remember your high school biology but then muddle it up with whatever woo you’ve read since then. (Would you mind telling us how you manage to see so many people with whom you ‘help’ with fasting? Is it because you’re really actually a CAM practitioner?)

I see the crux of your argument is “SBM treats the symptoms, not the cause” which is typical CAM bullshit. SBM treats the symptoms *whilst* discovering and treating the causes. Hence getting surgery whilst also providing blood pressure medicine in the meantime, etc.

Your anecdote about your kids and bed rest simply proves what the others have been saying: that SBM actually recommends, for some situations, exactly that. That you think it’s some sort of undiscovered or hidden treatment plan says a lot about your comprehension skills. And willingness to be open minded and/or change your mind about what you think SBM is.

‘Ancient wisdom’, wow you are full of CAM canards. Want to try something a little less obvious for your next trick?

‘reverse our biological ages’… I literally laughed out loud at that. Nice to know you’ve discovering the fountain of youth, and yet no other researcher has. You should write up a paper and publish it. You’d win a Nobel prize for it.

The rest is blah blah anecdote, blah. You have no peer-reviewed papers or other citations (wow, what a surprise, you didn’t post any like you’ve been repeatedly asked to), and instead have confirmation bias and pop-health books.

Bah, you’re a CAM crank and not particularly coming up with anything unusual in terms of ‘arguments’. And here I was hoping for something a bit more interesting from a germ denier.

Hey, that’s funny.  

Emily @213: “If germs cause disease why are not my 4 kids sick with flu & other illnesses that their friends have?”

Emily @310: “Years ago our 3 kids all had measles, naturally acquired”

But then, bizarrely, “The virus was to us, an accessory after the fact.” Does that mean they were sick first and then the virus moved in?

@LW: Ah you nailed it before me. I was just searching for the post where she mentions that her kids never got the flu.

Emily,

Perhaps you could answer a few questions about Natural Hygiene then:

1. What is the mysterious ‘nerve energy’ and how is it detected?
2. What are the names of the toxins that cause toxemia (in the NH sense, not the real medicine meaning of the term)?
3. How does Natural Hygiene explain newborns who have neuroblastoma – a type of childhood cancer?
4. How does Natural Hygiene explain the death of Dennis G. McDaniel while undergoing Natural Hygiene treatment at a Natural Hygiene retreat?
“Despite heroic attempts to save the life of DENNIS G. McDANIEL by competent health care personnel, Mr. McDANIEL continued to suffer with dehydration, malnutrition, diarrhea, low blood pressure, elevated pulse, and elevated fever, resulting in acute renal failure, acute respiratory distress and cardiac failure. DENNIS G. McDANIEL’s physical condition continued to deteriorate, despite competent efforts to save his life, and he died on September 24, 2005”
http://www.casewatch.org/civil/vetrano/complaint.shtml

I really would like answers to these questions.

@Emily

Our bodies PRODUCE disease, they don’t resist it!

Yes, and piles of garbage produce rats and rotting meat produces maggots. I do recommend you try living in the modern era, rather than a century or two ago.

Emily:

When you understand the principles & practices of Natural Hygiene, you understand that health & disease is governed by the law of cause & effect. Diseases need causes & when causes are introduced, disease is just as natural as health, but it it is not normal.

So where are these laws of Natural Hygiene discussed in a PubMed indexed paper? And I put italics on two of your words. Contradict yourself much?

Our bodies PRODUCE disease, they don’t resist it! You cannot resist something that has no entity, and disease has no entitative existence.

Earlier you said: “inflammatory cytokines are deactivated, white blood cells de-marginated & near miracles happen.” Do you know how cytokines and leukocytes work. That phrase was a description of what happens with fasting, except I read Shelton managed to kill more than one patient through starvation.

Eg- Years ago our 3 kids all had measles, naturally acquired (the “herd” must have let us down),

That is because folks like you are reducing herd immunity. You only have yourself and the rest of your anti-vax friends to thank for that.

Sadly, most of our children’s friends have had their tonsils out (unnecessarily), their appendix out (ditto above), are on puffers ( ditto)& have regular doses of anti-biotics. How tragic!

That is odd, because tonsils are very seldom removed these days, and it is very odd for a child to have an appendectomy. Plus, regular doses of antibiotics does not sound right. You have just made and extraordinary claim, I expect you to support it with some kind of survey that those interventions are as common as you say.

The lady who before XMas recovered from severe, unremitting RA, fasted for 21 days ( water-only, as this is the only real fast), recovered because her body had the ability & vitality to heal itself. Heberdens nodes reduced in size

That’s interesting, especially since Heberden’s nodes are solid bone, and are found in osteoarthritis, not rheumatoid arthritis.

I think what Emily is claiming is something like: being vulnerable to infection is a “symptom” of not being in perfect health, and becoming infected is a logical consequence of being vulnerable to infection.

You cannot resist something that has no entity, and disease has no entitative existence.

Why do I get the feeling that Emily could also go on about Royal Rife?

I think what Emily is claiming is something like: being vulnerable to infection is a “symptom” of not being in perfect health, and becoming infected is a logical consequence of being vulnerable to infection.

Natural Hygiene has a somewhat peculiar notion of “infection.” Let’s go straight to the horse’s ass mouth:

The idea of specific infection has no place in a rational philosophy of cause. So-called specific infection is septic infection. Sepsis is the only infecting agent in all the so-called specific diseases. Sepsis arises from decomposition. All secretions, excretions and exudations are non-toxic until they decompose, whereupon they become toxic.

Shelton rambles on in this fashion for some time (“An Introduction to Natural Hygiene”) before mentioning in passing that having a reaction to poison ivy is also “infection.”

Oh, and Emily, how many deaths caused by water-fasting has Vivian Vetrano been in on, anyway? There’s at least William Carlton and Dennis McDaniel, but it seems like Shelton’s Health School had more of these little oopsies while she was there.

Shelton rambles on in this fashion for some time (“An Introduction to Natural Hygiene”) before mentioning in passing that having a reaction to poison ivy is also “infection.”

OMG! Have we discovered Th1Th2’s secret identity?

I still do, SB&I Troll, I still do.

One presumes that since the measles was “years ago,” child #4 could have been born more recently. I don’t think we have cause to conclude that Emily can’t keep her kids straight.

Two years ago on a show called What’s Good For you? they set out to prove how “contagious ” the flu virus was. They deliberately exposed healthy people( by putting pus & sputum from infected & sick people into thier nasal & oral cavities, believe it or not)& waited.

Ah, yes, the well-known and readily obtainable “flu pus.”

Sorry, I’ve been away. Did I miss emily telling us what type of “health” practitioner she is and who the unfortunates patients are that she sees?

emily: “I have seen numerous people with acute appendicitis fast (water-only) back to health with no drugs or surgery required.

I know what I know.I have piloted many of these people personally.”

What sort of Health Titanic does emily pilot?

Truly, it would be instructive to see emily and other modern-day germ theory denialists prove their views once and for all by volunteering to be inoculated with HIV, hepatitis C, Ebola virus and other harmless microorganisms which could not possibly initiate disease on their own in such sturdy folk. I look forward to seeing the study results published in Medical Hypotheses.

No doubt “What’s Good For You?” is indexed in PubMed.
I expect further citations of this type, perhaps to Tosh.O or Jackass.

All joking aside, you’re saying nothing surprising when you insist that not everyone exposed to the flu virus gets the flu. Individual susceptibility varies for many reasons. However, if you don’t believe that viruses cause disease, I suggest another TV-worthy experiment – get a transfusion of a unit of Hepatitis C infected blood. I’m sure someone as healthy as you would have no problem with that.

I suggest another TV-worthy experiment – get a transfusion of a unit of Hepatitis C infected blood. I’m sure someone as healthy as you would have no problem with that.

That could be written off as importing someone else’s Sheltonian “pus.” Better trial design is needed.

Emily’s comments make me wonder: I had chicken pox as a kid (despite being vaccinated), but eat far worse now, less exercise and don’t fast…. why did I get chicken pox when I was healthier, but not now when I’m an adult and worse off phsyically?

My guess is that her argument will boil down to a typical positive-thinking CAM thing of “you’re just not doing it right” or “negative energy affects the outcome”. Blah blah blah victim blaming, blah blah no proof.

I feel so sorry for your kids Emily. How many times will you starve them ‘for their own good’? And while they’re dealing with an illness too?

#342, Emily

Hilarious. According to you, microorganisms do not live in laboratories, only outside in the ‘real world’. *Roll eyes* Please explain how the scientists keep microorganisms from entering the labs.

In Canberra University, Australia, Professor Peter Collignon, Assoc Prof. of Infectious Diseases even stated publicly during the swine flu scare mongering 2 years ago, that the best way of getting swine flu was to get the swine flu jab!!!!

I live in Australia. We were one of the first countries to have people DIE from getting the flu before a vaccine could be created. Most of the people who all got sick (some of whom died) were the ones who did not have the vaccine. Once the vaccine was administered to a large group of people, very few people from then on got the flu. How do you account for that? Oh yes, you only believe the stuff posted by CAM proponents. You’re full of crap and misinformation.

And for Krebiozen who stated that fasting for 31 days was dangerous. Please do more study & research on this subject, it possibly might save your life one day.

If fasting is so good for us, why do we need to eat at all? Why do we need to eat daily? Why does the human race not just all suddenly decide that they’re not hungry after all and only eat once a week?

In Canberra University, Australia, Professor Peter Collignon, Assoc Prof. of Infectious Diseases even stated publicly during the swine flu scare mongering 2 years ago, that the best way of getting swine flu was to get the swine flu jab!!!!

I would find that quote easier to believe if Prof. Collignon actually teaches at the University of Canberra. Someone who can’t get his university right is not my source of choice.

Emily:

Nonsense like that should not be dignified with an intelligent reply.

Perhaps you could demonstrate an intelligent reply to my question. Surely you’ve had enough time to do your research.

Exactly how did the rate of measles incidence in the USA drop by 90% between 1960 and 1970? Be sure that your answer is well documented.

We await with bated breath, all agog to see what Emily will dignify with an intelligent reply.

OK, Emily, we’ll accapt that the number of children was a typo. Now, how do you square your statement that they never get sick with your later statement that they all came down with the measles? Oh, & we’re still waiting for an explanation of why so many of them have apparently had tonsils & appendices removed, when the first procedure is rare these days & the second isn’t exactly routine.

1)@lilady 356: My serotype comment last week was obviously unsuccessful, because it was meant to highlight, in a slightly humorous way, that we are not concerned with the profile of any paticular virus. Similarly, does it really matter if the hemaglutenin & neuraminidase enzymes are 1 or 21 when helping limit the damage of influenza. We need to lift our level of health, not artificially lift our antibodies.

2) @ alison 359: If you read my previous posts correctly, you’ll see that our kids do get sick (very rarely), but never with the flu, despite living next to an influenza colony. And if you were interested, which you probably weren’t, you would have seen that I continually emphasise the 3 principles which are axiomatic in the biology of health & disease:
* the body is self-developing;
* the body is self-repairing;
* the body is self defending.

Neither allopathic voo or alt/med woo is needed MOST of the time, provided causes are removed & the conditions of health supplied.

Disease is just as natural as health, & is represented by symptoms & signs which themselves are reparatory in nature. They have survival value, just the same as fever. They are not to be suppressed as allopathic medicine does most of the time, but understood as “allies in disguise”. BTW, I am NOT advocating “watchful waiting”, which is a medical nonsense!

It so happens that where I live there is still a fairly high rate of unnecessary “cashectomies” on children (* & adults- cholecystectomies, thyroidectiomies, apendecectomies etc). Tragic!

@ Chris 355, my long suffering antagonist. You don’t seem to get it. I’m not impressed with the one fact that measles (or any illness) declined in a given time IF the only intervention was a drug or a vaccine. I can get rid of headaches with aspirin, or heavier pain killers, & there would obviously be no more measles, I mean headaches. I need to address the REAL causes. I would ask lots of other questions about the period 1960-1970 when measles morbidity declined. How many more middle ear infections were there at this time, tonsillitis cases, bronchitis cases, asthma, allergies etc?

It is a downright tragedy that the American people are being duped by big pharma’s seduction of medicine into believing that for every ill there is a pill (or a vaccine). Health comes about through healthy living, & if any of the sceptics out there in the Church of Modern Medicine are really interested in this subject, please let me know & we discuss this reasonably & intelligently.

@352 Thomas

Good point, I hadn’t thought of that.

@354 Emily

Perhaps you’d care to point out which bit was nonsense and refute it like a grown up: with citations and data.

Here’s a link for you:

2009 Flu pandemic in Australia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_flu_pandemic_in_Australia

It’s wikipedia, but if you google for ‘swine flu deaths australia’, you’ll find a number of online news reports. First sentence of Wikipedia, “As of 21 October 2009, Australia has 36,991 confirmed cases of H1N1 Influenza 09 (Human Swine Influenza) and 186 confirmed deaths due to the disease”. There’s more info about how they controlled the flu as well, under “measures to control an outbreak”, which details the use of vaccines (and good hygiene). The article seems out of date, so googling is probably a good idea as well.

You could try refuting/discussing that, or you could answer my question about fasting. Pick something and discuss it properly; or else I’ll just assume you have no facts. My questions are legitimate, how is it nonsense to ask them? And my facts are legitimate, so how can it be nonsense to post them?

I honestly don’t understand how fasting would make things better, so enlighten me. That’s why you came here remember, to point us in the right direction?

if any of the sceptics out there in the Church of Modern Medicine are really interested in this subject, please let me know & we discuss this reasonably & intelligently.

Reasonably and intelligently? Who will be representing you in the discussion?

(Sorry, cheap shot, but I couldn’t resist)

@ Emily: I nailed you on your (non) knowledge of measles…you are now claiming it as a humorous comment.

“It so happens that where I live there is still a fairly high rate of unnecessary “cashectomies” on children (* & adults-*cholecystectomies*, **thyroidectiomies**, ***apendecectomies*** etc).
Tragic!”

Emily, try looking up:

*Gangrenous Gall Bladder

**Graves Disease, Thyroid Cancer

***Peritonitis

Please also provide information how the body heals “naturally” from gall bladder disease, Graves disease, thyroid cancer and a diseased appendix.

Yesterday at ShotofProtection, Steve Michaels was whining about me be not asking about mortality because that has more variable associated with it. He is very upset with me, and he and someone else think it that calling me a meanie is a logical way to discuss the question.

Except I am not the one ignoring the costs of hospitalizations and rates of post-disease disability. It is not that I am forgetting about deaths, they are just ignoring the whole picture.

I have that question for a while. I have chosen it because I noticed places like childhealthsafety try to cloud the issue by focusing on deaths, and stretching the timeline back a century or more. They also try to muck up the data by including countries where the counting is not so clear (like Canada skipping a few years of case tabulation, and countries that did not start vaccinating until later). Then there was the ones who try to change the decade.

I actually started to use the census data because “backer” whined about only using data from 1950. He found more excuses when I destroyed that bit, plus complained about the use of “incidence” versus “deaths.” Oh, if you search that blog for “backer” and that data, you’ll see I asked him more than once. He never answered.

And neither has John Stone or “childhealthsafety.” My favorite comment (and I think it was on this blog) was John Stone telling us it would be better to treat measles rather than prevent it. Unfortunately, I cannot find it quickly.

So yes, Emily, that is a very specific question. So either answer it or just say “I don’t know.” Stop trying to claim you have superior knowledge when your closed mind refused to find an answer that takes most of us less than five minutes.

Just a reminder of what Emily’s first comment started with:

Let the truth be known. Vaccinations had very little, if anything, to do with the decline in infectious diseases over the past 100 years.

So she actually noted incidence, so she needs to prove her claim. And I am being nice, I am only asking for that proof for one disease.

So, Emily, stop making excuses. Explain how measles declined by 90% between 1960 and 1970 in the USA. Show us the actual documentation.

Disease is just as natural as health, & is represented by symptoms & signs which themselves are reparatory in nature.
I look forward to Emily’s explanation of the ‘reparatory’ nature of a ruptured appendix…

But, Chris, what about the people who aren’t afraid of the incidence of a moderate disease of childhood?

Once again, augie, I’ll ask you why you’re so frightened of a vaccine as opposed to a disease.

To Flip @ 351

“Hilarious. According to you, microorganisms do not live in laboratories, only outside in the ‘real world’. *Roll eyes* Please explain how the scientists keep microorganisms from entering the labs”.

I never said m/o don’t live in labs, I said virulence has more relevance as a labarotory term, than in the natural setting.

“I live in Australia. We were one of the first countries to have people DIE from getting the flu before a vaccine could be created. Most of the people who all got sick (some of whom died) were the ones who did not have the vaccine. Once the vaccine was administered to a large group of people, very few people from then on got the flu. How do you account for that? Oh yes, you only believe the stuff posted by CAM proponents. You’re full of crap and misinformation”.

Professor Peter Collignon, Associative Professor of Infectious Diseases in your own country, stated during the swine flu ‘fiasco’ that the people getting the vaccine were more likely to get the flu. It created quite a stir in Australia, but was typically dulled down by the medical PR machine.

Most people in Australia rejected the swine flu propaganda! The Government wasted millions of dollars stockpiling H1N1 vaccine & the majority of people were not stupid enough to fall for it. The uptake rate was, medically, very disapointing.It seemed for once there had been an outbreak of common sense.

They even had to “pull” the recommendations for the vaccine for babies because, in Western Australia, there were so many severe reactions to it. The reactions were fever, which is the body working as designed, but what were the recommendations then? Lower the fever!! What insanity!Here was the little baby’s body defending itself against a toxic insult, including thimerosal (mercury), by elevating its temperature, & the supposed experts, who caused the problem in the first place, then dumming down the baby’s innate & natural physiological response with more drugs.

The swine flu fiasco was regarded by most Aussies, even those FOR vaccinations, as completely over the top, & they answered the medical call by non-compliance. Go Aussies! You have more sense than the yanks.

One of the greatest mistakes (especially during any so-called pandemic)is to suppress the symptoms. And this is exactly what Government health advice ( obviously driven by doctors) recommended: Take anti- pyrretics & tamiflu- your body is useless, it is not self defending,the flu bug is out there & will jump on you & possibly kill you.

What a lack of faith in the the human body’s self-healing capacities.

Why did the recovery rate of people with influenza in parts of the States shock even the Surgeon-General in 1918-19 when the poor wretches were housed in tents & fed water & fruit only, as drug supplies were exhausted?

” And from the first the results were startling… fresh air, sunshine, a fruit & water diet were daily producing miraculous results, & for many with severe pneumonia. For the first time since the epidemic began there was hope that the unknown virus might yet be defeated with nature’s own weapons.” (Plague of the Spanish Lady pp78-9). This book was a social history of the Spanish Flu, not a health treatise .

“If fasting is so good for us, why do we need to eat at all? Why do we need to eat daily? Why does the human race not just all suddenly decide that they’re not hungry after all and only eat once a week”?

Please don’t ask inane questions like this. By your logic, if sleeping is so good for us, you would ask, why not sleep all day. If sex is so good for us, why not copulate all day & night?

I have seen literally thousands of people recover from serious health problems through fasting. Fasting allows the body the rest & energy to potentiate its own healing. That’s why when we are acutely sick we experience anorexia. Our bodies naturally curtail the hunger mechanism to potentiate healing. This is not woo or voo, this is basic physiology. Our bodies are intelligently designed (woooo there, I hear you say, show me the data on PubMed).

I won’t go into the biochemistry of fasting through time constraints but would dirct you to http://www.healthpromoting.com ( Dr Peter Sultana & Dr Michael Klaper- yes real ones) or read Fasting & eating for Health by dr Joel Fuhrman (another real one).

Do yourself a favour Flip & investigate this line of inquiry with an open mind, not a sceptic’s mind. It could prove life saving, no exaggeration.

Emily is a fanatic.
You will never convince her.
Water fasts for the seriously ill are dangerous.

Explain how measles declined by 90% between 1960 and 1970 in the USA. Show us the actual documentation.

But, Chris, what about the people who aren’t afraid of the incidence of a moderate disease of childhood? What about the people who are concerned more with mortality or permanent sequelae?

The chances of mortality and/or permanent sequelae are far higher with the disease than with the vaccine. Ugh-troll knows this but likes playing stupid.

Could you tell us how measles vaccines drastically reduced mortality between 1900-1950 so as to dwarf the number from the 1960’s forward?

Could you tell us what Abraham Lincoln did to win the American Revolution? Oh, Lincoln didn’t have any role in the Revolution?? Then I guess nothing he did was of any value whatever. That’s what passes for logic in Ugh-Town.

Are vaccines totally necessary for every single person? Absolutely not. For any scientist to say so would be dishonest.

The data shows that only a small minority would need a vaccine to possibly, maybe, potentially prevent death.

Why does this moron bother? By the same logic, we should get rid of ambulances, because only a small minority of people will need ambulance transport to possibly, maybe, potentially prevent death, and for most people they won’t turn out to be “totally necessary.” But because we can’t know beforehand which people will be in that “small minority” and have that safety precaution in place for just them, we make sure it’s in place for everyone who might need it.

It’s the same principle with vaccines: we don’t know who is going to get a tetanus infection from a puncture wound; we don’t know who’s going to be at the picnic when the measles carrier sneezes; we don’t know who will cross paths with the person contagious with H1N1. What we do know is that reasoning “Oh, the chance of any one individual needing this protection is low; therefore, each individual should forgo this protection” will lead to no one getting protected, and plenty of people experiencing death and maiming. For no good reason than to feed Ugh-troll’s egotistic delusions. Ugh.

Well, she seems to be proud that they suffered:

Eg- Years ago our 3 kids all had measles, naturally acquired (the “herd” must have let us down), they had fever, discomfort, prostration, anorexia, light sensitivity & of course the rash.

Most parents usually protect their children from fever, discomfort, anorexia, light sensitivity and rash.

Emily, given that you have advocated prolonged fasting as a ‘cure’ for a range of illnesses, the assumption that you’ve applied this technique to your own children’s illnesses is probably a reasonable one.

Incidentally you seem to be using the term ‘anorexic’ rather loosely. Most people would take this to mean anorexia nervosa, which is distinctly different from someone skipping a meal or two or not eating because they feel unwell, and can itself be dangerous & life-threatening. It’s certainly not ‘reparatory’!

@Emily:

I would ask lots of other questions about the period 1960-1970 when measles morbidity declined. How many more middle ear infections were there at this time, tonsillitis cases, bronchitis cases, asthma, allergies etc?

When you say this, are you implying:

1) The measles vaccine suppresses the symptoms of measles, leading to these other problem?

2) The measles vaccine causes a chronic measles infection, leading to these other problems?

3) The “toxins” in the measles vaccine causes the other problems?

4) Something else?

Emily, why did the morbidity of measles in the USA decline by 90% between 1960 and 1970? Please provide suitable documentation for your answer.

Trust me, it is not my imagination that you have not answered that very simple question. Please answer it intelligently, because I understand that is an asset that you value. I also value that asset, along with integrity and honesty.

So please answer my question honestly with some good documentation. I believe you have had adequate time to acquire adequate data.

@herr doktor bimmler

Inquiring minds are also wondering about the fate of “Professor Peter Collignon, Assoc Prof. of Infectious Diseases” at Canberra University (comment #342).

Perhaps he fasted himself into non-existence. That Natural Hygiene fasting is powerful stuff.

Hmmm!

Emily’s only response has been an indignant reply to first-time poster attack_laurel‘s reasonably concluded concern for Emily’s children…

I’m still stuck on the fact that Emily starved her children while they were ill from the measles. That is truly horrifically cruel.

…but Emily continues to ignore all requests to defend her previous unsupported claims.

@376, Emily

I never said m/o don’t live in labs, I said virulence has more relevance as a labarotory term, than in the natural setting.

So you believe that organisms work differently in a laboratory setting than in the ‘real world’? Am I right in thinking that’s what you mean?

Professor Peter Collignon, Associative Professor of Infectious Diseases in your own country, stated during the swine flu ‘fiasco’ that the people getting the vaccine were more likely to get the flu. It created quite a stir in Australia, but was typically dulled down by the medical PR machine.

I care very little for what one Professor said. I want you to refute the facts: that people were *dying* before the vaccine was created, and deaths were reduced once it was introduced. I do not fall for the logical fallacy of authority. I do however, consider statistics and data. Try posting some.

What one Professor thinks is not proof of anything. What matters is the *total* data available in peer-reviewed studies, etc. If what one Professor thinks held any water, then we’d all just agree that gravity doesn’t exist because one nutter out there says it doesn’t.

Most people in Australia rejected the swine flu propaganda! The Government wasted millions of dollars stockpiling H1N1 vaccine & the majority of people were not stupid enough to fall for it. The uptake rate was, medically, very disapointing.It seemed for once there had been an outbreak of common sense.

Well, you obviously don’t live in Australia. There are pockets of anti-vaccine resistance, yes, and there certainly was a lot of pseudo-scientific objections – largely because of our media being influenced by American media and the AVN – but no for the most part, nobody “rejected it”. (In fact, outside of a few family members who are into woo, I never even heard of anti-vaccine people until I started reading science blogs. That’s how much influence anti-vaxxers have on our media) But seeing as how you believe it to be so, feel free to point me to *data* or *statistics* from a reliable source (no AVN thanks) on how most of Australians “rejected” the vaccine; I will remind you that there were also restrictions on who could receive it and when. I’d also like to see data from a reliable source which states that the flu virus somehow disappeared via other, non vaccine methods.

But it’s nice to see you finally show your true colours: that you really are anti after all. All your protestations of not being for CAM or for SBM is shown to be a lot of posturing and not much else.

They even had to “pull” the recommendations for the vaccine for babies because, in Western Australia, there were so many severe reactions to it. The reactions were fever, which is the body working as designed, but what were the recommendations then? Lower the fever!

As with many other urgent vaccines, it could be that the vaccine was not tested thoroughly enough to discover these reactions. However, given the urgency of the situation, and the high number of people who got sick (and *died*), the benefit at the time outweighed the risk. When it was discovered there was a problem, it was recalled: no cover-up, no conspiracy, just blatent transparency. I will note though that the *majority* of those who got sick were on the Eastern side of Australia, where this ‘pull’ did not occur, IIRC.

Here was the little baby’s body defending itself against a toxic insult, including thimerosal (mercury), by elevating its temperature, & the supposed experts, who caused the problem in the first place, then dumming down the baby’s innate & natural physiological response with more drugs.

Ah, the mercury card. See, you really are anti-vax. Please, tell me how making a baby fast would have prevented, cured or stopped that baby dying from swine flu. With data and citations please.

The swine flu fiasco was regarded by most Aussies, even those FOR vaccinations, as completely over the top, & they answered the medical call by non-compliance. Go Aussies! You have more sense than the yanks.

Oh well, since you have data… whoops, no, none there either. Yes, go Aussies! We were the smart ones who actually invented a vaccine and produced it fast enough to actually prevent more deaths!! In fact, us Aussies have a lot to do with producing great scientific strides: like Howard Florey, who helped make penicillin. We’re not as anti-scientific as you yanks, although it does creep in. Meryl Dorey, the head of AVN, the anti-vax group, is American. But like every place, there are always fringe groups and fringe ideas that have nothing to do with reality.

Take anti- pyrretics & tamiflu- your body is useless, it is not self defending,the flu bug is out there & will jump on you & possibly kill you.

Ah, now you really show your ignorance. Did you bother to read the Wikipedia article? Did you actually read my comment? Because if you did, you will have noticed that along with encouraging and producing a vaccine, the Government, health authorities, hospitals, etc. made many large and public campaigns to encourage GOOD HYGIENE. Ie. they told people to wash their hands, not sneeze all over people, to stay home if they were sick, to see a doctor, etc. Wow, gee, the Government and Big Pharma actually ENCOURAGED ‘natural’ measures.

Vaccines were provided, mostly, but not exclusively, to people who were more likely to get the flu or more likely to pass it on (teachers, doctors, nurses, etc).

What a lack of faith in the the human body’s self-healing capacities.

So those people who died from the swine flu just should have done what instead? Come on, tell us…

I’d also like you to tell me how you can cure my clinical depression. Do I just “think positive”? How can I “self heal”? I’d really love to know this in particular, because this has been an illness for me since I was 10, and waiting a few decades have shown no sign of “self healing”. I must be doing something wrong, so please tell me what it is I’m missing.

Please don’t ask inane questions like this. By your logic, if sleeping is so good for us, you would ask, why not sleep all day. If sex is so good for us, why not copulate all day & night?

It’s not inane. It’s called argument reductio ad absurdum. Look it up if you don’t know what it means.

You have not explained *why* fasting is good for us, *how* it works or anything. Your reply to me is nothing more than posturing. I can explain why sleeping is good for us, and why too much is bad for us, and why too little is bad for us: can you explain why fasting is good, and why 31 days of fasting is even better?

I have seen literally thousands of people recover from serious health problems through fasting./blockquote>

How? Are you some sort of professional practitioner? A voyeur? A nurse? A doctor? Or are you just making shit up based on anecdotes you’ve read on the internet?

See, you post Professor whatsisname as some sort of authority, but you’re unwilling to tell us how you manage to see so many people with these ‘treatments’. If you’re going to play the authority card, may as well go full tilt and tell us what your credentials are.

woooo there, I hear you say, show me the data on PubMed).

If you know we’re going to say it, why not just do the easy thing and post it? Then we’d actually stop hounding you and actually discuss the hypotheses and data behind it all. Until then, put up or shut up.

Do yourself a favour Flip & investigate this line of inquiry with an open mind, not a sceptic’s mind.

I’m open minded enough to consider what you say, and then if I notice a hole in your argument, I point it out. If you can’t fill the hole, then I’m not convinced. That’s what being sceptical is all about. I’d change my mind if you posted something that wasn’t full of holes, misinformation or lacking data. You have no idea what ‘sceptic’ means.

Here’s an anecdote for you: I have very little money at the moment, and that combined with an odd schedule means I often only eat one meal a day. Sometimes I eat nothing at all in 24 hours, and roughly a meal’s worth over a couple of days. Do you know what happens? I start getting extremely irritable, frustrated, I lose concentration, I fumble with my work, I spend most of the day feeling my heart beat racing, and I get shaky. I also spend most of my time thinking about how hungry I am. According to you, these are good things and I should do it more often? (Oh, and I’ll not forget to add that making a depressed person hungry is just not a good idea… But according to you, it should ‘heal’ me, no?)

Oh, I know – I’m doing it wrong.

You are full of victim-blaming bullshit. Maybe if you weren’t I’d be much kinder in my response, but you pulled the one card that I just get furious at. What’s more, you’re a victim-blamer who knows outright that she should be posting actual data, but doesn’t because she can’t.

Show me the data. Then I’ll think about it with an open mind. Don’t post books, don’t post anecdotes, don’t whine about how I’m wrong and the PR machine has me: if the information is so f*ing obvious and so plain as day to you, then it’s not a secret and Big Pharma hasn’t swept it under the carpet. So let’s figure out how to use Pubmed (I did and I’m an artist, not a medico) and find some figures shall we?

@382, Emily

Where did you get that idea that I starved anyone, let alone my 3 children?

You said you made your children fast while they were sick. Unless you have a different dictionary than us, “starve” can be used in exchange for the word “fast”. If they really did just not eat because they felt sick, then you should have been darn sure you write what you mean. This is why we like detail here, ambiguity leads to confusion. (See Alison’s reply to you also at #383)

Forcing anyone to eat when they are anorexic is dangerous!

OMFSM. You are fucking stupid. I seriously hope your line of business does not involve the mentally ill.

You’ve hurt your argument so much, the only thing that would save it now is DATA.

Darn blockquotes… Sigh… It should have read…

I have seen literally thousands of people recover from serious health problems through fasting.

How? Are you some sort of professional practitioner? A voyeur? A nurse? A doctor? Or are you just making shit up based on anecdotes you’ve read on the internet?

See, you post Professor whatsisname as some sort of authority, but you’re unwilling to tell us how you manage to see so many people with these ‘treatments’. If you’re going to play the authority card, may as well go full tilt and tell us what your credentials are.

woooo there, I hear you say, show me the data on PubMed).

If you know we’re going to say it, why not just do the easy thing and post it? Then we’d actually stop hounding you and actually discuss the hypotheses and data behind it all. Until then, put up or shut up.

Do yourself a favour Flip & investigate this line of inquiry with an open mind, not a sceptic’s mind.

I’m open minded enough to consider what you say, and then if I notice a hole in your argument, I point it out. If you can’t fill the hole, then I’m not convinced. If you can, I may find further problems, or I may agree with that point and move onto the next. If overall, your points are valid and there is data to back it up, I change my mind. That’s what being sceptical is all about. I’d change my mind if you posted something that wasn’t full of holes, misinformation or lacking data. You have no idea what ‘sceptic’ means.

Here’s an anecdote for you: I have very little money at the moment, and that combined with an odd schedule means I often only eat one meal a day. Sometimes I eat nothing at all in 24 hours, and roughly a meal’s worth over a couple of days. Do you know what happens? I start getting extremely irritable, frustrated, I lose concentration, I fumble with my work, I spend most of the day feeling my heart beat racing, and I get shaky. I also spend most of my time thinking about how hungry I am. According to you, these are good things and I should do it more often? (Oh, and I’ll not forget to add that making a depressed person hungry is just not a good idea… But according to you, it should ‘heal’ me, no?)

Oh, I know – I’m doing it wrong.

You are full of victim-blaming bullshit. Maybe if you weren’t I’d be much kinder in my response, but you pulled the one card that I just get furious at. What’s more, you’re a victim-blamer who knows outright that she should be posting actual data, but doesn’t because she can’t.

Show me the data. Then I’ll think about it with an open mind. Don’t post books, don’t post anecdotes, don’t whine about how I’m wrong and the PR machine has me: if the information is so f*ing obvious and so plain as day to you, then it’s not a secret and Big Pharma hasn’t swept it under the carpet. So let’s figure out how to use Pubmed (I did and I’m an artist, not a medico) and find some figures shall we?

@382, Emily

Where did you get that idea that I starved anyone, let alone my 3 children?

You said you made your children fast while they were sick. Unless you have a different dictionary than us, “starve” can be used in exchange for the word “fast”. If they really did just not eat because they felt sick, then you should have been darn sure you write what you mean. This is why we like detail here, ambiguity leads to confusion. (See Alison’s reply to you also at #383)

Forcing anyone to eat when they are anorexic is dangerous!

OMFSM. You are fucking stupid. I seriously hope your line of business does not involve the mentally ill.

You’ve hurt your argument so much, the only thing that would save it now is DATA.

herr doctor bimler @ 390:

Wished into the cornfield?

+1 for classic Jerome Bixby reference.

Putting his name into google brings up a page from the WHO which states that he’s at Canberra Uni.

This is what I find at the WHO site:

Prof. Peter Collignon
Director of the Infectious Diseases Unit and Microbiology at the Canberra Hospital, Professor at the Medical School of the Australian National University.

Canberra Uni. and ANU are unconnected.

@397, Denice

Depression is merely pathologising everyday moods… not chemical or hereditarial at all! It can be easily treated with St Johns Wort, 5-HTP or B-vitamins, a healthy diet, sunshine, fresh air, exercise, meditation and journal writing. And strength of will, I suppose.

Yeah, one of my family members keeps telling me it could all be due to (lack of) vitamins. I will agree that certain ‘natural’ things affect me, like lack of proper food, or exercise, but I assure you that it does not ‘cure’ only temporarily ‘relieves’ or ‘impacts’. Certainly, just waiting around for it to go away doesn’t work. Incidentally, when younger and doing research for a project on depression, I fell for a lot of that woo-based thinking. It wasn’t until I started thinking more about it and reading more science that I realised how stupid a lot of those things were.

I wish you well- life can be hard but sometimes we can learn ways- and use science- to circumvent that miserable dark beast and feel a bit better. I hope so

Thanks, I appreciate your kind thoughts 🙂

@399 Lilady

Gee, I wish I had posted your comments under my ‘nym.

I think that’s a compliment… ? 🙂

@400 Herr Doktor Bimler

Canberra Uni. and ANU are unconnected./blockquote>

Yes, I know – sorry my comment was typed hastily and I wrote ‘uni’ instead of hospital. My point was that perhaps down the line someone has confused the two (and ended up proving my point by my mistake 🙂 )

I wrote ‘uni’ instead of hospital.

Ah, all is clear.
Here is Collignon’s actual position on H1N1 and flu pandemics:
http://www.eht-journal.net/index.php/ehtj/rt/printerFriendly/7169/9258

Needless to say, the view that Emily ascribes to him — “the best way of getting swine flu was to get the swine flu jab” — exists only in her own mendacious mind.

@ flip: You might want to read about cognitive approaches to depression as well as attributional research. Although I’ve thus far managed to keep my own head above water, I find that the mists that swirl from its cold depths have an icy beauty all their own- yes, art helps.

@ lilady: Because you’re brave, you might fancy listening in on parts of a 6 hr special that focuses on the so-called shafting of one AJW featuring new BFF, David Lewis,( @ the Progressive Radio Network 8 pm tonight; Progressive Commentary Hour) which will cater to AoA sensibilities- not that they have any. Wearing boots and protective garments are strongly advised as the crap should be flowing effusively. I shall be otherwise engaged- it’s Chinese New Year.

@401 Alison

Thanks! I wish me well too 🙂

Alison @ 385

A reasonable assumption? I’d hate to hear you when you were unreasoable!

Anorexia is not a disease- it is the term for loss of hunger. Anorexia Nervosa is completely different- is is a disease.

Krebiozen @ 392

Your ingorance of such an ancient & efficacious method to potentiate healing is surprising. If you are interested in arming yourself (& perhaps your family)with the knowledge & wisdom of the benefits of APPROPRIATE fasting, refer to the American College of Cardiology Conference April 2011 reported in the NYT April 9th 2011:

” it appears that fasting is causing some major stress, & the body responds to that by some protective mechanisms that potentially have a beneficial effect on the risk of chronic disease…
” The effect of fasting, abstaining from food on a regular basis, leads to metabolic changes that are good for the heart….
” People who fast routinely have a lower prevalence of coronary disease” Dr Horne from the American College of Cardiology.

Also read Dr Joel Fuhrman’s book Fasting & Eating for Health.

My advice is: don’t wait for data in PubMed before you aquaint yourself with this priceless wisdom, it could literally save your life!

Flip @ 395

I am sorry you experience depression, & I trust my responses to your blog don’t exacerbate your condition.

“So you believe that organisms work differently in a laboratory setting than in the ‘real world’? Am I right in thinking that’s what you mean?”

Absolutely! “Newer evidence is now showing that the level of nutrition of the host can also directly influence the genetic makeup of the virus, ALTERING ITS VIRULENCE.” SuperImmunity By Dr Joel Fuhrman p33

Also, refer to “Anti-Oxidants & Viral Infections; host Immune Response & Viral Pathogenicity” J Am Coll Nutr 2001; 20.

Regarding the Australian situation with Swine Flu, you need to be more mindful of the public sentiment in your own backyard.The medical profession was disapointed with the swine flu vaccine’s public uptake. As I said, you can’t “pull the wool” over too many Aussie eyes, notwithstanding yours. Go to http://www.eht-journal.net & read the truth about the fiasco of swine flu in Australia ( & the world):

” The widespread media coverage as well as government press releases induced panic & UNDUE FEAR (my emphasis) in the population” (of Aust).

You also state:

“You are full of victim-blaming bullshit. Maybe if you weren’t I’d be much kinder in my response, but you pulled the one card that I just get furious at. What’s more, you’re a victim-blamer who knows outright that she should be posting actual data, but doesn’t because she can’t.”

Since when do I blame the victim? I blame “causes” for disease. Medical ads blame the victims (re smoking ads-‘smoked eh?- got lung cancer!’ & melanoma ads- ‘too much sun, silly’).

Diseases are the result of certain “causes”- a few not within our control but most within. Study Natural Hygiene & you will learn them. It’s not difficult, just get your head out of PubMed for a couple of hours & read some wisdom.

“Ah, the mercury card. See, you really are anti-vax. Please, tell me how making a baby fast would have prevented, cured or stopped that baby dying from swine flu. With data and citations please.”

Get serious, Flip! Better than responding to the above nonsense about fasting babies, do you really think it’s a healthy thing to inject aluminium, formaldehyde, polysorbate 80 & other chemicals into a ONE DAY- old baby? Please use your common sense more than you use the Pub!

“You said you made your children fast while they were sick. Unless you have a different dictionary than us, “starve” can be used in exchange for the word “fast”. If they really did just not eat because they felt sick, then you should have been darn sure you write what you mean.”

I never said anywhere that I “made” anyone fast, let alone my children.If I didn’t say it, please don’t assume it. That’s not good science Flip. And by the way, fasting & starving are NOT the same thing. Fasting is physiological, governed by precise metabolic adaptations ( glycogenolysis, gluconeogenesis, ketosis etc all a result of autolysis). In fasting, vital tissue is not auto-lysed.

Starving is pathological, with a sharp pre-mortal rise in nitrogen excretion & vital tissue is used. Please get your basics right & do some reading on this vital, life-saving subject.

“OMFSM. You are fucking stupid. I seriously hope your line of business does not involve the mentally ill.”

I honestly feel sorry for you. Get a life!

Lilady @ 367:

Please also provide information how the body heals “naturally” from gall bladder disease, Graves disease, thyroid cancer and a diseased appendix.

Resorting to natural hygienic principles will prove efficacious in helping the body recover from gallstones (the body often expels the gravel in a fast); Graves disease & other autoimmune diseases respond well also, as does appendicitis. I am yet to see a thyroid cancer patient adopt hygienic principles & practices so can’t comment on that.

If I had another 2 hours I could elaborate how the above pathologies were reversed but I haven’t. Go to http://www.healthpromoting.com or http://www.fastingbydesign.com & this will enlighten you.

@ Emily:

I quote your story of your three children getting the measles:
So back to the kids. What did we do? Nothing, intelligently! They all fasted on nothing but water, a little fruit after that & all conserved their energy by total bed rest.

The bolding is for emphasis. You claimed they fasted on nothing but water, which is starvation. If they did it for a day because they were sick and did not feel like eating, that isn’t a fast (except by your goalpost-moving standards), it’s children not wanting to eat. But I suspect now that you went overboard in your attempts to prove to us all why starving the body of vital nutrients is so awesome, and got tripped up when people called you on it. Fasting is dangerous for adults; when imposed on children it is child abuse.

(@rowrbazzle: I’m not a first-time commenter, but I’m a very sporadic one. I’ve been reading RI for a couple of years. :))

(@flip: I know, right? And best wishes to you! I went through a medication-induced bout of depression a few years ago, and stopped eating almost entirely for nearly 3 months. It did not cure me of anything, and everyone was horrified by my appearance.)

Yes flip…that was a compliment. Your post is superb.

We love to welcome intelligent posters here…and I’m still jealous that you posted that retort to Emily.

I read some of Peter Collignon’s comments at the time of the H1N1 influenza crisis and IMO, he was on the wrong side of the issue. He wanted to proceed slowly with development of a vaccine and implementation of an immunization program. Here in the United States the vaccine was only made available to children and younger people who were considered to be the most vulnerable.

More than two years past the H1N1 Influenza pandemic, Collignon is still jabbering and still on the wrong side of the issue. Recently he has been quoted as saying that immunization again H1N1 influenza “may” impact a person’s defenses against seasonal influenza viruses; based on a few very weak studies that have been published.

@Rowrbazzle!:

No need to apologize. I was just adding info to the conversation. 🙂 Unfortunately, I seem to have provided a distraction to allow Emily to sidle out of answering some uncomfortably astute questions. 🙂

Forgive me, this is a long one. It could be longer. I’m a writer by nature and can get quite detailed, so apologies ahead of time…

@407, Denice

Incidentally, my experiences with obtaining mental health support has been pretty crappy. I know my experience is anecdotal, as well as singular, however it has turned me off seeking professional help for a while. I’m the last one in the world who will say it’s perfect, or even remotely ‘good’. However, I still support it because it is scientifically based, and getting better all the time. As compared to the non-scientific crap that many mentally ill people have had to suffer through in the past.

As for art, you don’t have to tell me. It’s what I do for a living.

@408, Emily

Your ingorance of such an ancient & efficacious method to potentiate healing is surprising.

Ah, the “it’s ancient, it must work” card. Hmm, anyone care to play some bingo?

The rest of your reply to Krebiozen leaves me with this question: do you understand what a risk/benefit analysis is?

Now we come to your responses to me:

I am sorry you experience depression, & I trust my responses to your blog don’t exacerbate your condition.

😛 Ah raspberries! Actually, fighting woo is helping me vent all the built up frustration. PS. Don’t build up your ego on me. I have far worse demons in my head than some anonymous person on the net could come up with. And this is fairly mild compared to some of the actions I’ve faced with people who have disagreed with me. Actually, very very mild.

So you believe that organisms work differently in a laboratory setting than in the ‘real world’? Am I right in thinking that’s what you mean?

Absolutely! “Newer evidence is now showing that the level of nutrition of the host can also directly influence the genetic makeup of the virus, ALTERING ITS VIRULENCE.” SuperImmunity By Dr Joel Fuhrman p33

The fun thing about this is I get to ask two questions: what evidence (you might want to post it instead of regurgitating books at me again) and why/how do organisms behave differently in a lab? Please explain how double-blind placebo trials that specifically eliminate bias end up not replicating actual world events. With evidence please, not your mumbo jumbo.

I went and looked at the second reference (Anti-oxidants, etc, here). Please point out to me where in the text it talks about organisms behaving differently in lab conditions. The first sentence says: “Malnutrition has long been associated with increased susceptibility to infectious disease.”

I’d like to know how fasting prevents disease if you’re posting references that disprove your point. (Maroon!!!) In fact, I didn’t see anything that suggests anything to do with your point of view. (Even more maroon!) You are either very stupid or have trouble with reading comprehension. Or just very very biased.

Hey look, I opened my mind, read what you asked: and funnily enough discovered that you’re talking through your hat.

As for the book, I do not have finances to buy a book just for this discussion and have no access to a library at the moment. So I’ll ignore that for the time being.

Let’s move on to the sites you posted at the bottom of your comment.

Health Promoting says:

Relative contraindications to prolonged fasting include pregnancy, extreme weakness, inadequate nutrient reserves, some kidney problems, the use of certain medications, and some types of cancer… Fasting is not a cure.

Apparently, they don’t see it as a cure-all. Well, that’s two things you didn’t read properly. Oh wait, you didn’t read the Wikipedia article I posted before either. Three.

They say: “In order to facilitate these changes we offer educational programs dealing with diet, exercise proper body use, stress management, sleep, and psychology”

Oh look, they encourage things that SBM doctors do. What a surprise.

They say: “Fasts typically continue for 5 to 40 days”

They don’t say why longer is better, or what happens in prolonged fasting. Or what the potential risks are. (I’ll admit I only read a bit, as I’m lacking time)

They disclaim: “First, TrueNorth Health is not a hospital, or medical care facility with a staff of doctors, nurses, etc.”

Yeah, I trust non-doctors for treatments as much as I trust my dog to fix my plumbing. So what happens in an emergency situation? If someone faints from fasting too long, or has a heart attack? Oh, their ONE doctor and their ONE psychologist may be able to help. (Chiropracters don’t count for me. That’s woo too) Apparently you’ll see a lot more of the staff chiro than you will the actual doctor. What does a chiropracter have to do with fasting? I find it interesting also that you stay at the facility but no nurse is on hand. And NO ONE AT ALL is available during the night. Fuck, if you have a heart attack, better make sure it’s during the day.

I’d like to know where it’s actually explained why and how fasting works. I’d like to know each step: the chemical and biological reactions in the body, what parts of the body work to interact to produce a beneficial effect, etc.

I could read the rest of the site, but I have work to do and better things to do at the moment. I could come back to it later, along with the other site you posted. This comment is long enough as it is.

If you could point me directly towards a page on either site which elucidates: how fasting effects the body (ie what chemicals or biological events occur in sequence), where they post links to their relevant research which is apparently published in journals, where they explain how depression can be treated by fasting, actual statistics of treatment rates (ie. how many people treated/cured, how many drop-outs of treatment, what other treatments are used in percentages, etc), a risk/benefit analysis, that would be really helpful. I don’t have time to wade through every sentence of each site.

Regarding the Australian situation with Swine Flu, you need to be more mindful of the public sentiment in your own backyard.The medical profession was disapointed with the swine flu vaccine’s public uptake.

Yes they were: you know why don’t you? Because AVN and other anti-vax idiots kept yelling at the media and creating FUD. Popularity does not prove something right, and neither does FUD. But uptake was still good. I note that you avoid my question again: how and why did the deaths and illness stop, if not for the vaccine? Stop telling me the vaccine wasn’t used: even if it wasn’t, that still doesn’t tell me HOW the flu went away in your worldview. How did it go away?

The widespread media coverage as well as government press releases induced panic & UNDUE FEAR (my emphasis) in the population” (of Aust).

Yes, the media is often wrong. Like in the US, in an effort for ‘balanced’ viewpoints, there was too much reliance on the creating an equal voice with anti-scientific views. The Government and relevant health organisations ended up over-stressing the issue as a counter to it. Additionally,
a warranted although over-the-top concern for a new vaccine with a shorter-than-normal testing period affected people’s viewpoints. Mostly the relevant authorities gave balanced, detailed encouragement; the rest is hype created by the media. Just like with the discussion on global warming panic, fear and doomsday scenarios are strawmen constructed by FUD.

I’ll remind you that I was in the country at the time, and I spent some of that time in or around hospitals and a doctor’s office, and watched the news myself. I’m very aware of what was going on at the time, not based on some post-hoc reading of some journal. I remember the hype, just as I remember seeing on the news that people were dying in my own state from the flu, where mostly flu season is reduced to “that annoying thing where you *might* get sick”. What do you think the deaths were something else and conveniently labelled as from the flu in order to deceive the public?

You can argue all you like about “wool”, but I remind you that I asked you for a reason why people stopped dying and getting sick, and how the people who did die/get sick could avoid it. You’re grandstanding and trying to avoid the question, just the same as with Chris’. You won’t answer the question of course, but it does make you look foolish to lurkers and fence-sitters. If the answer is so easy and so obvious to you, then surely it would be just as easy to type it out.

Since when do I blame the victim? I blame “causes” for disease. Medical ads blame the victims (re smoking ads-‘smoked eh?- got lung cancer!’ & melanoma ads- ‘too much sun, silly’).

Right there. Right there you do. Maybe you’re such an idiot you can’t see it. But here I’ll explain it to you: by denying the actual causes of illnesses you are victim-blaming. If someone gets lung cancer, in your world, what did the person do to get the illness? What could they do to avoid it? And what could they do to cure it? And what are these “causes”? Are they all the same thing? If so, how come every single illness, with their myriad different symptoms, all come from the same cause? If so, shouldn’t one cause create one symptom?

See you keep saying that Natural Hygiene works, but you never explicitly, outright say what the “causes” are and how it all works. You just wave your hands around and say a few nice-sounding sentences but never explicitly state what you mean. How do you get skin cancer, or lung cancer? If I make up an experiment, how do I show that X causes Y, via your worldview? How do I show that Z treats Y, and the underlying X?

Let’s make it a little more realistic:
I don’t smoke, drink and my only ‘bad food’ at the moment is chocolate. I don’t really exercise, but we’ll chalk that up to depression and lethargy. I have normal blood pressure and cholesterol, no diabetes (will admit to being overweight, but again, lack of exercise), and am not on any medications. And I seem to be inadvertantly fasting. What am I doing differently to your ‘natural hygiene’ system and why am I still depressed? And why does not eating regularly make my depression worse, not better? Why am I not losing weight even though I am eating less? What am I doing wrong? You’ve helped people with Natural Hygiene ‘treatments’ before, so help me: what do I do?

The only difference as far as I can see is that you believe the “cause” for an illness is how one lives your life. And yes, that is victim blaming. Because how does a 10 year old, who has a pretty comfortable life, who has never been mistreated, who has parents who love them, become suicidal? How does a well-fed, fit-bodied kid who does lots of sports, with plenty of friends, become suicidal? What the fuck did I do (or not do) that caused my illness? What the fuck does a 10 year old do to cure it? You tell me that, a straight answer. I bet you don’t. I bet that cuts a little too close for your comfort to say it.

Diseases are the result of certain “causes”- a few not within our control but most within. Study Natural Hygiene & you will learn them. It’s not difficult, just get your head out of PubMed for a couple of hours & read some wisdom.

No see, you don’t get it. You’re trying to convince me, so you have to explain it. I’ll get my head out of Pubmed, if you get yours out of your ass for long enough to explain it with no ambiguity. Explain it in two sentences. You tell me, exactly what I am doing wrong. Because if it’s “not difficult” you should have no trouble explaining it. And you should have no trouble answering at least one or more of the questions I’ve posed above.

Get serious, Flip! Better than responding to the above nonsense about fasting babies, do you really think it’s a healthy thing to inject aluminium, formaldehyde, polysorbate 80 & other chemicals into a ONE DAY- old baby? Please use your common sense more than you use the Pub!

Whoops – I got you so riled up now you’re actually revealing how much of an anti-vaxxer you are. My common *knowledge* tells me that there’s arsenic in apples – as well as human bodies. There’s a certain amount of radioactivity to bananas. Do you not give your children ‘natural’ food? Funny thing is that common sense is so often wrong. Maybe you need to take a course in psychology. Hell, my high school class taught me all about illusions, bias, and good experimentational methodology.

I’d like to see you try and argue your way through that list of anti-vax nonsense. I have nothing to add because a simple read of the rest of this site, Science Based Medicine, or fuck, even any other science-based blog would come up with a billion refutations. But hey, you live in your own little world there. I’ll tell you what: I’ll read your books, if you read those. I’ve already gone part way, having read some of your suggestions. Let’s see you even remotely read one of the sites we’ve mentioned and have you discuss it without screwing up your comprehension skills.

I never said anywhere that I “made” anyone fast, let alone my children.If I didn’t say it, please don’t assume it.

There’s a saying: if we were mindreaders, we wouldn’t need telephones. If you imply it, don’t get annoyed when someone else repeats it back to you, see below:

Post 310

So back to the kids. What did we do? Nothing, intelligently! They all fasted on nothing but water, a little fruit after that & all conserved their energy by total bed rest.

You want to clarify, fine. But don’t blame us for your lack of clarity in the first place. Words have meaning, and the order in which you use them is just as important as what words you choose to use.

And by the way, fasting & starving are NOT the same thing. Fasting is physiological, governed by precise metabolic adaptations ( glycogenolysis, gluconeogenesis, ketosis etc all a result of autolysis). In fasting, vital tissue is not auto-lysed.

Once again, I point out that if one uses a thesaurus, it could be considered the same thing. Maybe you’re not a native English speaker and something is lost in translation. Once again, I point out that if you’d like to avoid being misunderstood, it is best to be as clear as possible. Ambiguity leads to confusion.

As for your differential, I am not that well-versed in medical terms, so I will leave commentary to someone else.

I honestly feel sorry for you. Get a life!

Right back at ya. Apparently we’ve reverted to high school girls. Hey – are you still worried about exacerbating my condition? Cause you know, in the words of some great Aussie comedians: Sticks and stones will break my bones, but names will cause permanent psychological damage. (That is an actual punchline from the great Lano & Woodley) Ah, but seriously folks… do you starve or fast someone as a treatment for anorexia? Which one is it? (Explain it like I’m a dummy and have no medical knowledge whatsoever. Which is somewhat close to the truth)

Still no data I see. Can I ask at this point… why, if this Natural Hygiene works so well, will there not be anything on Pubmed? Why if there are studies by that Health Promoting organisation, can they not be found there? Why do you have such an aversion to Pubmed?

Resorting to natural hygienic principles will prove efficacious in helping the body recover from gallstones (the body often expels the gravel in a fast); Graves disease & other autoimmune diseases respond well also, as does appendicitis. I am yet to see a thyroid cancer patient adopt hygienic principles & practices so can’t comment on that.

What are these natural hygienic principles? See, if you can’t elucidate on the *how* why would anyone even begin to think that it works? You just assert it’s so without ever explaining the mechanisms. Let’s take the A-Z route. If fasting is A, and ‘getting better’ (whatever that means.. actually, what does it mean?) is Z, what are the steps to get from A to Z? Why does it work for a myriad of symptoms?

Bah, like I’m ever going to get a straight answer from you.

But you know what: if you do, I might actually change my mind. Me, sceptic. You, anti-vaxxer.

I have a comment – long one – in moderation to Emily. In the meantime…

@413 Attack_laurel

Thank you – and best wishes to you too. I can’t imagine going 3 months like that. I hope you’re feeling better now. (Ech. I hate that. There’s no words in any language that fully describes how useless other words are to sympathise with another mentally ill person. The experience is not one that can be “worded away” either)

@415 Lilady

Well thank you 🙂
I have been an on and off lurker here over the last few years, via SBM. This is my first discussion/commenting. I’m not really into the medical side of science so I haven’t been around. I’m glad my comments have met with agreement, and even more surprised that anyone would be jealous of it. Thank FSM, I actually sound intelligent to someone else! 🙂

As for H1N1, I remember a lot of noise about the vaccine, but I also remember that there were plenty of tourists, returning-from-holidays school kids, and the like, getting sick. Many of them had to be quarantined, if they weren’t sick already. I can understand a reasoned debate about rushing a vaccine vs proceeding a bit slower, however most of what I remember wasn’t reasoned: it was over-the-top concerns about not knowing how the vaccine would work or if it would at all. Although I don’t want to downplay the risks, it seems to me that vaccines and their underlying mechanisms are fairly well understood and that since we regularly produce flu vaccines (which cover a variety of flu strains anyway) people shouldn’t be so concerned as to consider vaccines as useless. There was a lot of hype about it being ‘untested’ as well, which was patently untrue: trials were being done, but were prioritised and perhaps shorter than normal, due to the urgency.

As far as I’m concerned, the Government and relevant organisations reacted as they should have, by providing information, resources and assistance to the public; implementing plans to assist states and relevant organisations to deal with the situation; and including various organisations as part of their plans/information system. By far, the hype was from those who opposed the vaccine or thought it was “just the flu” (ie. non-lethal), and the increased noise thereafter was the Government and related bodies trying to shout them down.

It is helpful to remember that the majority of the outbreak occurred around our mid-year holidays, and people were either returning to work or school, where they could potentially infect lots of people due to their contact with other flu carriers. I too was worried about the speed at which the vaccine was introduced, however, I balanced it with the benefit and deaths at the time, and think that the threat of pandemic is enough to outweigh the risk. I paid particular attention to the issue as I was travelling mid-year, along with my family. We all got a flu vax, and Tamiflu just in case – no swine flu vax was available at the time – and my family was quarantined for 2 weeks on return as they work at a school.

Especially in a fast-evolving situation like that, which also requires more immediate action than negotiation, compromise or discussion for other large public issues, I don’t think it benefits anyone to go on about how the governments acted too hastily post-hoc without serious data to back it up. Like with all emergency situations, there’s little time to react and when/if you do it can be fatal in either direction. The science underlying it all is put to the test, and flaws may be found – and again, not wanting to downplay the actual/potential problems – but it’s one of those situations where benefit and risk are extremely nuanced. A review afterwards is always beneficial, to highlight problem areas and make improvements, but you can’t know these things beforehand and those in charge need to make a science-based practical decision and quickly.

I’m not naive enough to think that it couldn’t have been handled better, but I’m also not naive enough to think that downplaying H1N1 is a good idea either. Like people who go on about plenty of other “panic” events, they often forget that public knowledge and encouragement of doing something leads the event to never happen or happen only slightly. And then they point and say: “see, it wasn’t worth panicking over, was it?”

@418 Lilady

Oooh, I missed that. Does Emily eat gravel maybe? I think eating stones and pebbles might be a bit too ‘natural’ for me.

Blagh, my comment is long. Never type when you’re tired and loquacious. (I’ve known that word for 20 years and only now get to use it! What a lovely, unused word it is)

@lilady

but rather to keep the patient NPO

Who says SBM doesn’t recognize the power of fasting?? 🙂

her doktor bimler @ 419

“Emily, you are incorrigible. You have already commented on “unnecessary thyroidectomies”, twice, in comments 249 and 361.
You seem to have a low opinion of your own comments, you pay so little attention to them”

That’s the problem with these blogs. You read that I have seen uneccessary thyroidectomies & then I say that I haven’t seen a patient with thyroid cancer adopt hygienic measures & recover, & you then cry foul! I’m incorrigible.

I have never seen anyone with a thyroid malignancy is what I should have said, but I have seen many with Graves & Hashimotos recover without drugs & many with thyroid nodules/tumours recover without drugs.

When you are one out of many amongst a pit of lions,you cannot cover everything. Just call me Daniel!

“When you are one out of many amongst a pit of lions,you cannot cover everything. Just call me Daniel!”

You can’t soar like an eagle, when you hang out with turkeys.

Just what is a “hygienics”, “hygienic fasting” and why does Emily hang out with turkeys?

Emily, please tell me how fasting, which is a cultural practice where I come from, has not been able to cure illnesses in my family till date.

Show me where natural hygiene has become a handmaiden to any supposedly “natural” things (vitamin megadoses, homeopathy etc)?

The fact that Natural Hygiene rejects its competition in the marketplace of crackpot belief systems does not somehow elevate it, Emily.

I have never seen anyone with a thyroid malignancy is what I should have said, but I have seen many with Graves & Hashimotos recover without drugs & many with thyroid nodules/tumours recover without drugs.

When then Emily, do these cases not make it into the medical literature? This would be an important finding and should be shared with the medical community but it does have to be well-documented with the appropriate medical records. Why isn’t this in the literature again?

Emily:

And by the way, fasting & starving are NOT the same thing.

The only difference between fasting and starving is that the former is done intentionally. Otherwise, they are the same. And yes, if you fast long enough, tissue will be broken down by your body. Just look at activists on long-term hunger strikes; they’re not in good shape. I would be very intrigued to know what, in you mind, makes fasting different from starvation, and how it can prevent the damage that starvation causes.

And honestly, do you seriously think people are going to believe you when you say you’ve seen people spontaneously recover from things like Grave’s Disease or appendicitis but decline to provide any evidence of this? You’re claiming to have seen medical miracles and asking us to simply take your word for it. Seriously?

@ flip ( @ 419, at present)

Ah, you read me wrong!I wasn’t necessarily recommending _counselling_ *but* I was pushing you toward reading theoretical ideas and research about cognitive approaches and attributions: how what we think and *how* we think can make depression better or worse- not neglecting the biological underpinnings at all, which you probably know about in detail. Because we are biological entities that think and talk, sometimes it is possible to train yourself into becoming your own therapist- read what students in the field might.

As to the art: here’s a quote I like: Mr Turner’s painting was criticised for its “indistinctness”. His response: “Indistinctness is my forte.” Believe it or not, it’s relevant because he was trying to capture light, we’re trying to talk about ephermal thought-feelings.

@ flip:

I have a comment in moderation for you and it’s
not what you may think: I am not *at all* telling you to get counselling.

Beamup #436:

I am increasingly coming to the conclusion that Emily is engaging in the practice known variously as “making s*** up” or “lying through her teeth.”

And I’m increasingly coming to the conclusion that Emily is engaging in the practice of what I call “side stepping”, or what in military parlance is known as flanking maneuvers.

She attacks Point A. When you defend Point A, she side steps to attack Point B while ignoring Point A. This side stepping continues through Points X, Y and Z until she finally returns to Point A and the game starts all over again.

@420 Emily

I have seen a number of cases in my life. I know what I have observed, the patients know & their families.

Two things: you still haven’t told us *how* you’ve managed to see these cases. Second thing is that apparently in your world, bias only exists on the part of those mean scientists. We’re all human, which means we’re all prone to make mistakes or post hoc arguments. This applies to you as well, even if you don’t want to admit it. This is why experiments are designed to eliminate as much bias as possible, and why anecdotes – which often come from faulty memory or false correlation – are not permissible evidence. You may believe in it strongly because of your experiences, but just like other humans, your experiences may be tainted by beliefs. There is no way of knowing one way or the other without making records and statistics and data and experiments. This is true whether you’re treating anyone (you may think you’ve cured someone when they don’t return, but it could be they got worse) or whether you’re just believing anecdotal data from those books you’ve been posting about. See if you’d learn to use Pubmed, you could actually read the data itself, in make your own mind up and see if any of it correlates with your own experiences. If it doesn’t, then you could further investigate why. You may lead back to the same conclusion – it works – but it would be more honest, and although misguided, I would respect you for it. As of now, I have no opinion one way or the other because you don’t state *how* you have come to have this knowledge.

The cases have not been methodically recorded for data in any study, for reasons I’ve stated before.

I may have missed it, but I don’t recall you stating any reasons for not being recorded in data. If you did, I’m sorry, either restate the reasons or give the comment number where you did. At any rate, your Health Promoting website link shows that at least some organisations do produce data, at least from what they say in their PR. Even if you don’t, they or someone else does record it: so why not link to it? And why is it so wrong for them to record it? How do they measure how effective the treatments are if they don’t make records? What they just go by memory? How do they judge from one patient visit to the next how well the patient is doing if they don’t make notes? How do they figure out what contraindications there are – and Health Promoting listed a few – if they don’t make experiments or record these things?

But in the hands of a skilled & competent hygienist, fasting used appropriately can obviate the need for much surgery & medications in many, many cases of disease.

Except you never say why it’s not useful for some things and not others, nor do you explain how fasting is beneficial for those things which you claim it works for.

I really don’t care if you so enamored with eminence, er evidence-based medicine that you think no one but medically trained doctors can read & use their brains & their common sense.

Where’s that bingo card? Ah there it is – check one, “different ways of knowing” fallacy.

I don’t really care that your enamoured with your worldview. You evidently have no reading comprehension nor actual understanding of bias and ‘common sense’. You evidently trust you senses far more than you should.

The problem with you & your ilk is that you think that just because most of the alternative health information is nonsense, which it is, that everything else that challenges the medical system, without PubMed references, is just as much nonsense.

Actually I know absolutely nothing about Natural Hygiene and have no opinion of it. In fact, I rarely read anything about medical science because it’s not my interest. Outside of a few things on vaccines, I am not aware of many of medical issues and ideas out there. You piqued my interest and I am trying to understand how it works. So far all I know is that Natural Hygiene is some sort of fasting process, and that what SBM considers causes of illnesses aren’t actually causes, but something else causes things and what that is hasn’t been explained. That the sum of what I got from your comments and from the little I’ve read due to your references.

But your replies to me are not definitive enough to answer my questions, and I still don’t understand how it works. Maybe that’s the fault of your ability to describe it, or maybe it’s that it is indeed nonsense. I don’t think I’ll ever know if it’s the former rather than the latter. But if you were the PR person for it, you’re not doing a good job. Even a PR person knows how to explain their position in less than an A4 page. You’ve had plenty of opportunity and words to do it, and I still don’t know how it works. That doesn’t make it nonsense medically, it does however, make it incomprehensible to the average person.

Natural hygiene as a system does not purport to have all the answers, but after studying this for many years, it has more than the drugging medical business.

None of which you can actually post because it a: doesn’t exist, b: isn’t relevant because there are other ways of ‘knowing’, or c: because ….? You keep saying there are answers, but you refuse to post any. Wonder why that is…

Even Dr Marcia Angell, editor of the NEJM for 20 years, recognized that modern medicine was suffering because of its unholy matrimony to big pharma: “The FDA is now so dependent on the pharmaceutical industry,it has become big pharma’s handmaiden” from ‘The Truth about the Drug Companies: How They Deceive Us & What to do About it’ p242.

Somebody please turn the record over. It’s stuck on the same song.

Was she a quack too because she din’t supply PubMed references?

You obviously don’t understand what Pubmed is. It’s a website that catalogues and allows one to search online published papers on a number of scientific topics. This allows one to find and read many papers which might ellucidate some answers on the issue of whether or not Natural Hygiene is efficacious, whether or not there are risks and what they are, what the limitations or contraindications are, etc. It allows one to gain an overall understanding of the progress of a particular treatment, as well as the individual papers that make up that progress, if it’s progressed at all. You post a quote from a book. Books are not papers, and depending on how bad the author/editor is, may not reference papers on the subject; or may misquote, cherry pick or otherwise bias the impression of the reader as to the true nature of the topic at hand.

This is why we like Pubmed, it allows us to find and read the actual papers referenced, and see for ourselves the actual data behind the subject. That’s what scepticism is: finding and reading the data and not taking someone’s word for it.

Even if I were to find a book well-written and the person’s opinion I agreed with, it does not mean that the same book or author has been entirely correct. Furthmore, books and experiments take many years to write, and even more to research. In the time it takes to get the book/paper through editorial oversight and printing, new experiments have taken place which give new information that can greatly change the nature of the understanding of that subject. This means that books can be extremely out of date very quickly: and why Pubmed is preferred because one can find the latest info as it is published and get a better and more up-to-date perspective of the whole.

Reliance on one book or paper is not a good idea, because it doesn’t fully encompass the data on the subject. Reliance on one book or paper suggests an unwillingness to read the whole, and an even greater unwillingness to consider that a subject must be judged not just on the ‘proofs’ but also on the ‘disproofs’ as well. If one outweighs the other, then we can lean towards agreeing with proven or unproven. When new evidence for either side is given, we adjust our position accordingly. That is what science does, and that is totally NOT what you seem to be doing.

You have picked a side and are unreluctant to see any wrong in it or any nuance. Real life doesn’t work like that.

Now, you ask if she was a quack: was that quote you posted from an interview, part of the book itself (ie. she’s the author), was she being true and honest about the situation, was she cherry picking… etc? I don’t know. If I had opportunity to read the book, and the accompanying data surrounding the issue (large as it would be), then I could say whether she’s talking out of her ass or not. But without that, I’m simply going to say: I don’t know, and it doesn’t change the following one little bit:

You can poke holes all you like in other people’s science, but it does not, REPEAT IT DOES NOT prove your treatment efficacious and with little risk. Posting quotes from authorities about the nature of medicine DOES NOT PROVE YOUR TREATMENT TO WORK.

Which is why we ask for data, you idiot. And if you have none to provide, then yes, you won’t convince us, because we’re not going to take someone’s word for it. You tell me the sky is red, I expect you to explain how you know that and how I can prove it for myself; I do not expect you to simply say “I’ve seen it with my own eyes”. Eyes can lie to you. So can people.

The other thing you seem to be implying with this little evasion is that it won’t be in Pubmed because SBM is conspiring to prevent any criticism. To which I say: how did you find out about Natural Hygiene if it’s so well hidden? The people who are for it are writing books, and have organisations/facilities, and are quoted in things. Do they not have enough funds to produce experiments or publish their own papers? Or are they simply not doing it because there are “other ways of knowing”. (Except of course, we all need to use language in order to communicate ideas, which means there’s only one way of finding out about Natural Hygiene: through communication) Apt for this thread, you’ve got a little “brave maverick” about you.

@428 Emily

You should have said ” Professor Collignon is wrong because he has dared to criticise vaccinations. How dare he? This is the Holy Grail. He must be punished. To Coventry you go, with Wakefield & all the other blasphemites!”

This just proves how ignorant you are of how science works. There’s plenty of debate, large and small, within the scientific community. Heck, they even ask for other people to help them from time to time – if you follow any astronomy news of the ‘faster than light’ atoms that happened last year. That you think criticism is not allowed shows you to be completely on the side of CAM where this canard is used often. Is there any CAM tactic you *don’t* use?

Another thing you don’t understand is a risk/benefit analysis. Honestly, I wonder what the education system is like – I learned this stuff in high school. Those who were critical weren’t wrong *because* they were critical, but because they didn’t fully understand the risk/benefit of the vaccine at the time. (Speaking of putting words in people’s mouths. Oh yes, strawman. Check another off the bingo card)

You never list what Natural Hygiene works for, although you drop illness names like they were celebrities; you never state *how* it works, as though ‘fast’ is some sort of biological mechanism or process in itself; you can’t give a list of contraindications or risks, although you state it’s not for every illness or person; you can’t explain why no nurses are provided at a facility that uses fasting for a ‘health improvement program’; you can’t prove your position by attacking ours…. I could go on, but I won’t.

Even my kids know more about how to avoid disease than you do.

Tell me what you tell them about avoiding depression. Teens go through a lot of anxiety, and I’d like to know what you advised them to do when dealing with it.

Actually, I’ll retract every single question and request for data and you can get away from your Pubmed issues, if you can just answer this one:

What did I do/why as a 10 year old kid to become depressed, what could I have done to cure it, and why haven’t I “self healed” even though I’ve been ‘fasting’?

Answer that one. Answer it succinctly, in a way a non-medico could understand, without grandstanding. If Natural Hygiene isn’t a suitable treatment for it, say so, that’s fine, but then tell me what *is* a good treatment instead and why Natural Hygiene isn’t a good treatment. You answer that one, I’ll go away and open-mindedly investigate it further. Heck, I’m not a fan of anti-depressants, having tried it once upon a time, and met with some crappy doctors too; I’m interested in learning about other methods of treatment. I’m happy to investigate other options and apparently Pubmed doesn’t scare me as much as it scares you. I’ll read your books and your sites too, if you can succinctly point to where they discuss depression treatments. You answer that one, and I’ll lay off the rest.

@443, myself….

I want to clarify this:

You can poke holes all you like in other people’s science, but it does not, REPEAT IT DOES NOT prove your treatment efficacious and with little risk. Posting quotes from authorities about the nature of medicine DOES NOT PROVE YOUR TREATMENT TO WORK.

What I meant was that you can poke holes in other treatment options and in medicine/science on a whole, but disproving hypothesis A does not by default prove hypothesis B to be true. This is a typical creationist tactic, and a fairly obvious one that you’re attempting to use. That SBM or CAM does not work does not by default prove that Natural Hygiene does.

… And this:

This just proves how ignorant you are of how science works. There’s plenty of debate, large and small, within the scientific community. Heck, they even ask for other people to help them from time to time – if you follow any astronomy news of the ‘faster than light’ atoms that happened last year.

By “help” I meant criticism – they were asking for help in the form of healthy debate, expecting other scientists to find holes in their work in order to solve a problem with their data. They actually asked their ‘competitors’, other scientists to bash their data to bits. That’s how accepting of criticism scientists are.

Emily…you haven’t answered any of my questions:

1. Where did you received your science education?

2. Where did you ever “teach” health sciences?

3. What degree do you possess?

4. What health care professional licenses do you have?

5. What is “hygienics”?

6. What is a hygienist?

It’s fun playing bullsh** bingo with Emily!

Flip @443 – simply superb! 🙂

Narad @ 448 – if the fruit-meals included a couple of kiwifruit, you’d very definitely be ‘good to go’!

@ flip:

Altho’ art can be “the mirror of the invisible world”** of emotion and dream, it can also be a way to understand external reality- how the world is put together and how it “works”. Oddly enough, my own background includes art as well as science and is too complicated to explain here( if you added the complex family, work history and relationships- it looks like a friggen cat’s cradle)

One theme has always resonated with me- and works against being morose- is the concept of *agency*: the idea of being an active agent, creating change through effort. I always sought to improve my own abilities ( whatever they may be) by active work, planning and perserverance. I know that sounds old-fashioned- my father used to say,”If one thing doesn’t work, try something else”- but ideas like this also show up in research about “resiliance” and depression. I work on projects and on myself- I usually have several irons in the fire.

Expression and communication are not to be sneezed at either.

** phrase stolen from Nizami.

Emily:

I must close now, but I will get back to you re the other issues you raised.

Like the question I asked you over ten days ago? Seriously why did measles incidence in the USA drop 90% between 1960 and 1970, and have never been half as high again?

Come on, it is a very simple question that you brought upon yourself when you claimed:

Let the truth be known. Vaccinations had very little, if anything, to do with the decline in infectious diseases over the past 100 years. The rate of mortality & morbidity declined because of improved social conditions, which occurred well before the introduction of vaccines or anti-biotiocs.

Stop avoiding it. Answer or just go away.

@446 Narad

So what you’re saying is Natural Hygiene is merely a revert to the four humors? Aka, the fallacy that life was better during Victorian (or whatever) times – aka the romantic notion of the good old days?

Minus perhaps the bloodletting I guess. Interesting that they seem stuck in the past but willing give up more icky things like bloodletting.

The primary causes are the unnatural habits of living that are productive of the systemic state that gives rise to the manifestation known as hemorrhoids.

Ah, now I see where Emily gets her ambiguity from. No one else defines these “habits”, so why should she?

@448 Narad

A fast not only rests the greatly debilitated digestive system, but permits elimination of toxins. Toxins must be kept low.

The toxins gambit sounds exactly like the four humors. The extracts you post remind me of something a friend said once: you can make anything sound deep if you say it the right way. In other words, a lot of statements, but no info on how or why it works.

@449 Alison

Thanks again!

@451 Denice

I agree with work and occupation, and also find it a good way to avoid the bad thoughts. However, at the moment, motivation is lacking and so work is not helping much right now. Change has not so much motivated me either, more a need just to preoccupy myself.

Mercola’s site suggests that ‘hidden trauma’ causes these illnesses. It sounds like a tarted up form of meditation and counselling, only with less clarity in explaining how it works, and the addition of more victim-blaming

I overlooked the EFT bit on first pass, but it does remind me of something. The trauma angle isn’t Natural Hygiene, it’s Ryke Geerd Hamer. The initial pleomorphism babble initially made me wonder whether Emily was peddling GNM. Perhaps it simply oozed in without recognizing that it’s not really compatible with Shelton.

The good news is that you’ve shown even more how into CAM you are.

This requires qualification. While there were technical squabbles within the NH blob, Shelton rejected *other* systematized forms of nonsense, so syncretism is out. This is presumably why Emily stresses her rejection of any woo (save the One True Woo).

The human body is self-developing, self-healing & self-defending. Axioms. Self-evident. No need for proof or debate.

However, it is not always successful. If someone inhails smoke, they will cough. The symptopm of coughing is self- defensive in nature, at all times & under all conditions.

If there is overwhelming smoke being inhaled, the coughing reflex will be overwhelmed, & the result will be death. Just because the coughing wasn’t successful in saving life, in no way discredits coughing as self-defensive!

Vomiting up a poison is self-defensive. Whether the action is successful or not is dependent upon many factors, including the volume & toxicity of the poison, the vitality of the person etc. If the system is overwhelmed, this again does not invalidate the fact that this symptom is self- defensive.

A laceration causes a cascade of bio-chemical activity at the injured site, including, especially, inflammation. This inflammation is self- repairing in nature, under all conditions & circumstances. If the laceration is severe, the regulatory processes of the body may be overwhelmed & end unsuccessfully. The person might bleed to death. Again, this does not mean the symptom is no longer self-repairing. It will continue until death at the cellular level, which is where & when all defensive & reparatory processes end.

Chronic disease always includes chronic symptoms &/or signs. This is because of chronic irritation through the continuation of various causes in the person’s lifestyle/dietstyle, plus a minor genetic component.

For example, people with auto-immune diseases experience chronic pain, inflammation & other symptoms in involved areas, which can possibly lead to destruction of joints & other tissue. The inflammation is mistakenly blamed for this, when in reality it was the causes of the inflammation which are to blame.

In the Spanish Flu of 1918-9 there were many deaths of young people from secondary bacterial infections such as pneumonia, due to what is believed to be “cytokine storm” –
inflammatory overload in the lungs especially. The real reason for this was not H1N1 virus, but the host conditions at the time. Terrible nutrition, appalling living conditions, windows shuttered in most places including hospitals, heroic (but often fatal) doses of aspirin & other drugs, fumigation & of course this came immediately at the end of the war with all its privations.

Natural hygiene is NOT a curative system. It is NOT a treatment plan! It is a way of life which accepts the fundamental principles governing life (mentioned at the start)& tries to provide the organism with conditions conducive for the successful operation of these principles.

There will be times when circumstances are such that certain interventions are necessary & life-saving.

That is why NH is not very popular with the alt/med brigade, nor the allopathic lot. There is nothing to sell or lean on except the power of the human body. No gimmicks, no shareholders, no “magic”.

Experienced NH practitioners have a deep understanding of this power & its limits. The needs & capacities of the individual will determine what course of action will be recommended.

Like ALL health systems, NH is based on certain theories. Not the 3 principles elaborated at the start, as they are axiomatic, not theoretical.

Allopathy has its theories of disease such as germ theory, herd theory & free- radical theory, to name a few. Other modalities have their own theories, such as Homeopathy with its own theories of like curing like, as elaborated by Dr Samuel Hannermann.

NH postulates that disease is caused by enervation & toxemia. I won’t elaborate these fully here, but it’s important to know that enervation (exhaustion of vitality) leads to toxemia.

The causes of disease are many & varied, influenced by hereditary & genetic factors:

Poor nutrition, excesses of any kind such as work, exercise, food, sun, sex etc, deficiencies, too little rest & sleep, drugs, alcohol, caffeine, tobacco, sedentariness, stress- the list is long.

By removing as many causes as possible that are within our control, such as nutritional insults (& this goes far beyond the standard “eat a balanced diet” mantra) & requires a deep knowledge of the subtle causes of enervation & toxemia, & then by providing the appropriate biological conditions upon which health depends, something miraculous happens- health improves, naturally.

NH has never purported to be the answer to all health issues, but in my very considerable experience, it has far more to offer the vast majority of health problems than any other modality, including allopathy.

Holy cats. I’m only going to take this in bits, as the whole thing is utterly pointless anyway.

The human body is self-developing, self-healing & self-defending. Axioms. Self-evident. No need for proof or debate.

Emily, do you understand that, in constructing an axiomatic system, you don’t get to import homely semantics based on word coincidences?

For example, people with auto-immune diseases experience chronic pain, inflammation & other symptoms in involved areas, which can possibly lead to destruction of joints & other tissue.

I’m quite confident in the supposition that you have never actually spoken with a rheumatologist or, really, given the subject the slightest meaningful thought. Pray tell me, O Axiomatic One, whereunto doth the Voice Celestial delivereth its Inflammation upon the Perfectly Created Body in reflection of deviation from the Law of Life that is the surface manifestation which the worshipers at the Altar of So-Called Modern Medicine thriftlessly term “antiphospholipid syndrome”?

Or, skip that and just go screw yourself (unless you’re fasting, in which case I imagine you’d have to hold off for a bit). You’re just unimaginatively rerunning the Shelton playbook. At least Fenwicke Holmes had style.

Germ theory denial, then?

Oh, yes, that’s been made explicit. Germs are the Natural product of so-called disease. Fungi, bacteria, and viruses can all turn one from the other in reflection of something or other.

@171 Scottynuke

Apologies – I’m an Aussie and am not familiar with the shorthand for most the USA state names.

@459 Emily

I see you’re posting the same comment here as on the Burzinsky thread. I don’t know whether that’s more of a time saver for you or for me.

The human body is self-developing, self-healing & self-defending. Axioms. Self-evident. No need for proof or debate.

That’s where you’re wrong. Nothing should be considered ‘self evident’, because as I’ve pointed out repeatedly, ‘common sense’ and things we experience can often be wrong. Have you not ever heard of visual illusions? And that’s just one example. “Self evident” is just another way of saying you have anecdotes and nothing else. It was “self evident” that bloodletting was a good idea. Guess how well that worked out once scientists actually began being more self-critical of their ideas. It was “self evident” that the Earth was the centre of the universe. Everything and anything should be looked at critically because that’s how easy it is to be wrong.

Vomiting up a poison is self-defensive. hether the action is successful or not is dependent upon many factors, including the volume & toxicity of the poison, the vitality of the person etc

Tell that to a suicidal person next time they down a bottle of pills. Apparently killing yourself that way won’t work on your planet? Funny how many of them have to be taken to hospital and revived because they couldn’t vomit the poison up. (Oh I know, they were just “doing it wrong”. Again) Is this why pill bottles have child safety mechanisms? If vomiting worked so well, parents wouldn’t have to worry about such measures, because their kids would just vomit up whatever they swallowed – and this goes for all those little beads, coins, etc that they manage to swallow too.

Do you notice how you make all sorts of exceptions to the rule, so that by the end, your rule is irrelevant? You make exceptions here for variables, but mention SBM and you think there is no such thing in relation to treatments and medications. Emily the Contradictor strikes again!

Your following list of “self evident” actions by the human body is not an answer to the question of how fasting acts on a biological mechanism. You’re purposely avoiding answering with a multitude of irrelevant examples of OTHER biological events.

Your list does not tell me how Natural Hygiene gets from A to Z. It might tell me things that may or may not happen to the body, but does not tell me what the ‘practice’ of Natural Hygiene actually does. They are not one and the same, even if you think they are.

Nor does your list explain any of the “causes” of these illnesses as Natural Hygiene sees them.

Natural hygiene is NOT a curative system. It is NOT a treatment plan! It is a way of life which accepts the fundamental principles governing life (mentioned at the start)& tries to provide the organism with conditions conducive for the successful operation of these principles.

It’s not a curative system or treatment plan, but you recommend it for treating many conditions which you’ve listed in past comments on this thread. It’s a way of life which happens to use the exact same recommendations – ignoring the fasting – that SBM recommends and most people do anyway to keep healthy. Why bother subscribing to this platform at all? It seems to me that you could just as easily go along with SBM and simply avoid medications as much as possible without actually committing yourself to being a Natural Health subscriber.

That is why NH is not very popular with the alt/med brigade, nor the allopathic lot. There is nothing to sell or lean on except the power of the human body. No gimmicks, no shareholders, no “magic”.

Yes, feel free to ignore yet another one of my rebuttals. Natural Hygiene has organisations (to which at least one you must pay a fee to be a member of), facilities, books, courses, and other things. There ARE things to sell, and your argument that Natural Hygiene is ignored because of lack of profits is incredibly ridiculous.

Experienced NH practitioners have a deep understanding of this power & its limits. The needs & capacities of the individual will determine what course of action will be recommended.

None of which you can describe in detail. At least with a medication I get a list of contraindications and risks, as well as benefits, for a variety of applications if there exists more than one. Natural Hygiene as described by you can only say “it works for some things, but not others and there may be variables but maybe not, and we still use surgery/meds but they’re bad things, and it’s not a treatment plan but it treats X illnesses”.

Like ALL health systems, NH is based on certain theories. Not the 3 principles elaborated at the start, as they are axiomatic, not theoretical.

I have no idea what that is supposed to mean.

Allopathy has its theories of disease such as germ theory, herd theory & free- radical theory, to name a few. Other modalities have their own theories, such as Homeopathy with its own theories of like curing like, as elaborated by Dr Samuel Hannermann.

Wow. Not only is this a clear and blatant use of the “other ways of knowing” bingo slot, but so patently wrong.

NH postulates that disease is caused by enervation & toxemia. I won’t elaborate these fully here, but it’s important to know that enervation (exhaustion of vitality) leads to toxemia.

You’ll have to because I have no idea what you just said. If I translate it, it sounds something like: disease is caused by loss of energy. Which causes the body to get toxic. Which can be removed by fasting/doing nothing. (Ha, you are not a Dame of Contradictions, you are a Queen of them!) Fasting apparently causes the body to both detoxify and re-energise. Am I right in thinking that’s what you’re saying?

Because if it is, that makes no sense. Also, I’d love you to point to some sort of medical book I could look this process up in, if you can’t be assed explaining properly, just give me a starting point so I could look into it further. No “books”, but proper biological/medical textbooks.

The causes of disease are many & varied, influenced by hereditary & genetic factors:[etc]

Ah, so the causes are many and varied: fasting or doing nothing works for *some* illnesses, but not others and in many cases surgery or medication is still beneficial. Guess what Emily? You are actually suggesting – except for the fasting – exactly what every doctor and medical scientist recommends. Shocking!!

Basically you’ve accepted everything about SBM except the acceptance of the methodology behind it. It’s like the others said, Natural Hygiene is stuck in the time it was invented and meanwhile science has moved on; you’ve moved on with it but you just don’t want to admit it, preferring your lovely Georgian landscape and the pretty sounding “four humors” fallacy.

By removing as many causes as possible that are within our control, such as nutritional insults (& this goes far beyond the standard “eat a balanced diet” mantra) & requires a deep knowledge of the subtle causes of enervation & toxemia, & then by providing the appropriate biological conditions upon which health depends, something miraculous happens- health improves, naturally.

But what are the risks? You’ve given us the benefits, but how can we judge whether or not they outweigh the risks? Once again you’re asserting stuff without backing it up (because it’s “self evident” of course), nor explaining the underlying mechanisms of this so-called toxemia, nor pointing to any kind of statistics that one could properly judge Natural Hygiene by. Stating “it works” tells me nothing because it’s not detailed enough to be accurate in the real world. Especially when you factor in that you’ve admitted that there are many variables; many variables mean many possible outcomes, which means “it works” is hardly close to an accurate overview. It works better than placebo? Better than medication? Which meds? Which surgeries? Which lifestyles? For what ages? Genders? Etc etc etc ad naseum.

NH has never purported to be the answer to all health issues, but in my very considerable experience, it has far more to offer the vast majority of health problems than any other modality, including allopathy.

Yeah call me crazy but your ‘experience’ doesn’t convince me. I have experience that fasting sucks. Doing nothing sucks. And I already do most of your Natural Hygiene methods. And none of that makes me any healthier. One anecdote cancels out the other. Which is why we don’t use them.

I’m done. I’ll reply to the other already-made comments here and on the other thread, but unless you get something new or original to say, I’m out. It’s not so much that I can’t handle your repetitiveness or made up my mind or am running away, it’s that I can’t handle my repetition. I’m bored just thinking about making further replies. Given your repeated lack of interest in: replying honestly and to the actual questions asked; reading what you write; reading what we write; and the many many other points about your lack of understanding on various relevant topics on the scientific method… it’s quite clear you’re not interested in thinking critically, nor having an honest and open discussion. You couldn’t have done a worse job in promoting Natural Health to someone who has never heard of it before.

Enjoy your stroll through the green lush hazy pristine world of yours, Regina Emily. I do hope you never lose your positive thinking, lest you become like the rest of us faulty humans going down the path to hell with a coffee in one hand and a vaccine in the other. We all know that too much or too little of something is just not appropriate for healthy living, and it’s just our damn fault if we get sick because we just weren’t being ‘natural’ enough. And especially it’s our fault since we’re stupid enough to go to a doctor or do something about it (except fasting which is magically exempt), because that makes things worse. My goodness, if only we’d just stop hitting ourselves!

My Queen, that is a high pedestal you’ve sat yourself upon. And it is built on one thing: victim blaming.

@460 Attack_laurel

I agree: see my above final paragraph.

why did the rate of measles incidence in the USA drop by 90% between 1960 and 1970? Please include real cites in your answer.

Wow. Chris really sounds like a broken record, doesn’t she? May be she needs some whoopin’.

Chris really sounds like a broken record, doesn’t she?

*cue Woody Woodpecker laugh*

Wow. Self-awareness really isn’t one of Thingy’s strengths, is it?

— Steve

@466 Narad

Well, has your physician ever stressed the importance of not combining melons with any other type of food? Didn’t think so.

Yeah, that should teach me to write a response after being awake for more than 24 hours. A better way of putting it is to say that *most* of what I read as being part of the Natural Hygiene lifestyle was stuff that most doctors would recommend. Minus the fasting and weird food combinations.

@470 T-reg

Great point! I didn’t think of that at all. One wonders why fasting is needed at all; maybe in Natural Hygiene-world fasting speeds up the process of ‘self healing’.

If the body’s capacity for self healing is limitless, it should make no difference if we interfere with it by using drugs and surgery. Any harm done by them should be taken care of by the body itself.

Trans: Let me infect you first then we can talk about self-healing later.

Great point!

re Flip @ 465:
“Yeah call me crazy but your ‘experience’ doesn’t convince me. I have experience that fasting sucks. Doing nothing sucks. And I already do most of your Natural Hygiene methods. And none of that makes me any healthier. One anecdote cancels out the other. Which is why we don’t use them”.

Exactly what methods have you already embraced? Please tell me? Maybe I can help you, you never know.

To answer your many misconceptions would take me hours & I’m not prepared for that. I have studied health for many years & taught it at vaious institutions, when possible with a natural hygienic philosophy, have seen thousands of people recover or drammatically improve from adopting the principles & practices of NH, but I’m unwilling to sit here & conduct a correspondence course for you. I have far more important things to do,&, as you twist everything I say & then expect me to explain myself, I am simply wasting my time.

“My Queen, that is a high pedestal you’ve sat yourself upon. And it is built on one thing: victim blaming”.

Do you mean like the medical profession blaming somkers for their lung cancer & sun-lovers for their melanomas?

re 472-4:

This is what I mean. You people are not after serious discussion. You fabricate things & then condemn the innocent.

When did I state the body’s healing power was limitless? Pray tell? Either you haven’t read previous posts or you just want to see what you want to.

As for SBM already covering what hygienists do, except for fasting, I have 2 points to make.

Firstly it was not medicine which elevated the well understood conditions of health first, it was NH practitioners & other non-medical researchers.

Smoking: doctors not that long ago recommended it! NH practitioners have been warning people of the deleterious consequences for over 100 years.

Exercise: Medical practitioners discouraged CHD patients from exercising long after HH’s were extolling its virtues.

Sun Exposure: Modern medicine until very recently has discouraged sun exposure to the detriment of the population’s vitamin D status. NH’s have been encouraging moderate sun exposure for over 100 years.

Dangers of fever suppression: medicine again has been asleep at the wheel. It is in NH literature dating back 100 years of the benefit of fever. It took until 2011 for the AAP to change its stance on fevers.

Alcohol: medicine today is still in the dark ages as far as this is concerned, often stating that moderation is “good for the heart”. Yeh? But as Dr mendelsohn so rightly stated: “the funeral rate stays the same!” Why? Because of other increases such as breast cancer, oropharyngeal cancer, neurological problems, liver problems etc.

The need for a plant-based diet: again medicine has been circling the airport while NH advocates have been encouraging plant-based nutrition for 100 years at least. Finally, plant-based nutrition has been taken up by some medical doctors like Fuhrman, McDougall, Ornish, Esselstyn etc. Better late than never.

Secondly, you must be joking when you say medical doctors emphasise these lifestyle factors. Maybe where you live, but where I’m from I see almost total neglect in this area.

The standard lifestyle advice given to men by most doctors here is: “don’t smoke & where a condom!” Good one!!

And as to the list of things where NH was “way ahead of medicine”: even assuming it’s true, it’s also true that even a blind prig can occasionally root up an acorn.

Oh, good. Another morning where I am greeted with more of Emily’s delusional homilies, and no sight of an answer to the simple question I ask two weeks ago. She is obviously pulling the stuff out of thin air.

I just came across something amazing (apologies if anyone has pointed this out already and I missed it) – according to Natural Hygiene menstruation is actually pathological. As Herbert Shelton put it:

in the average woman, due to lack of their normal support, the abdominal organs gravitate toward and rest upon the pelvic organs, and thus interfere with the return circulation from the pelvis, we easily understand why the hyperemia (excess of blood) becomes great enough to result in a leakage of blood and blood serum through the lax tissues of the uterus.

Shelton explained this more comprehensively in his book ‘Menstruation-Its Cause and Cure’. Any comments on this Emily?

But as Dr mendelsohn so rightly stated: “the funeral rate stays the same!”

Well, yeah. You’re going to die of something someday. There’s no way to prevent that.

Encouraging sun exposure without sunscreen has appeared in those swirling vortices of mis-information I survey ( esp. Mercola, but the others as well): sunscreen itself, chemical interference with Mother Nature’s Benevolence, has been impugned as *causing* skin cancer ( Mercola, I believe). Even Brazilian models** concur. Oh where to begin?

Skin cancer rates ( including melanoma) have been increasing. Yet I hear so much about the health benefits of the sun ( esp. via vitamin D) from Mike Adams et al; Mercola even likes tanning beds. We have Australians- like flip- @RI, one of the places where skin cancer has become more prevalent in younger people: as I’ve been watching the Open lately, I can see that you certainly get lots of sunshine, right?

Again woo-meisters irresponsibly toss out mis-information that could be harmful to many people: my cousin Will, a businessman who *avoided* the sun ( white as a sheet like the rest of us plus he’s half Irish) got melanoma- he’s alright now after treatment which wasn’t easy I was told. I am in a high risk category myself for skin cancer in general ( I looked at the contributing factors years before his illness and found I have them all) so I wear 100 SPF most of the time. Ancestors and family from the land of mists, so what can I say? I love San Francisco.

** Gisele Bundchen, recently.

Smoking: doctors not that long ago recommended it!
Haven’t we been through this with Emily already?

People keep making that claim; then when pressed for examples of doctors who recommended smoking, they point to advertisements where actors *dress up as doctors* and recommend smoking.

Two weeks ago it was Anna.

“We annually have TV and other media campaigns by relevant authorities to “slip slop slap”.”

Dearie me, you need to get up to date. It’s now slip, slop, slap, seek, slide. Seek … shade. Slide … on a pair of sunnies. They’ve discovered that Australians have a high rate of sun damaged eyes as well as melanoma.

And for all those Vitamin D aficionados. Those recommendations apply for the hours of 10am to 3pm. I don’t know of anywhere in Australia you couldn’t get your daily dose of vit D in a very short period before 10am.

in the average woman, due to lack of their normal support, the abdominal organs gravitate toward and rest upon the pelvic organs, and thus interfere with the return circulation from the pelvis, we easily understand why the hyperemia (excess of blood) becomes great enough to result in a leakage of blood and blood serum through the lax tissues of the uterus.

Women’s posture improves greatly in middle age, obviously. I wonder if Shelton mentioned that. Though, I suppose, given his habit of starving sick people, perhaps none of his patients survived long enough to experience menopause.

Thankfully men’s posture is always excellent, otherwise they would start bleeding from the penis.

Somebody tip off alert Hood to this, pronto.

Emily @475 said: I have studied health for many years & taught it at vaious institutions

So (without much hope of actually getting an answer, but you never know!) – Emily, please tell us where you have studied & taught “health” (previously it was “biology”, I believe), and what your qualifications are (in “health” & in teaching). Because, if your ramblings here are anything to go by, you don’t seem to remember much from your studies of biology & there is little evidence that much meaningful learning would go on in your classes.

Pass the popcorn, someone! (I’ve taken the dog for a good brisk walk so I’m sure I can manage a little snack while waiting for an answer.)

Re Flip @ 478

“For fucks sake, if it’s too long to write out, point to a website I can read this from. I don’t understand what you’re saying, so if you can’t clarify, or another website can’t, then I’ll just assume that it makes no sense. You really are a bad PR person for your own cause”.

Flip, you really need anger management help, & to spend less time on your flogging your blogging & more time living hygienically… (Hint- take it!).

I have given you some websites previously but here’s one more: http://www.healthscience.org. But be warned. This might exacerbate your anger. A ” real” one, Dr Pavleski, tells you in a 40 minutes video why vaccinations are your straw man.

Good luck to you “mate” ( Aussie Flip), stick to your SBM (Seriously Bad Medicine) & become a good little ‘sheeple’ in the High Church of Modern Medicine, where you can kneel down & pray at the altar of the data-deity.

Go to your trusted Priest who will annoint with a multitude of drugs,for all manner of conditions both mental & physical, all the while saying: “well, if this one doesn’t work, we’ll try this next”… or.. “the cure is just around the corner” (just like cancer) or….” I’ll send you to another specialist”…..or “it’s all in your mind”… or…” this new drug has been well tested & shows promise, & we have other drugs to counter the side-effects”.

All very firmly planted in pure science & foolproof randomly- controlled trials, run by prests who have only your best interest at heart.

And, BTW, Elvis just left the building.

Somehow I don’t think he did. I think he died at the altar of data-deity (his toilet) with 14 prescribed med’s coursing through his gullible veins, like millions of other “sheeple”.

You’re a true believer Flip, & the Nuns & Priests love you for it, as do the Church’s Holy Water shareholders.

Flip, you really need anger management help, & to spend less time on your flogging your blogging & more time living hygienically… (Hint- take it!).

It doesn’t seem to be having much of a salutary anger-management effect on you, kiddo. (Sheeple? And could you figure out what “blogging” means?)

@ Alison: The doctor that “Emily” refers to is one of the “stars” of the anti-vax movie “The Greater Good”, reviewed here by our expert movie critic Orac on November 11, 2011:

“Anti-vaccine propaganda lands in New York City this weekend”

“Is it any surprise that Dr. Palevsky comes across in the movie very much as being “anti-vaccine”? Of course not. He even writes articles for the NVIC. It’s also no surprise that Dr. Palevsky spends much of his time on The Greater Good promoting a litany of anti-vaccine pseudoscience, including the “toxins” gambit, conspiracy mongering about pharmaceutical companies, and claims that vaccines aren’t adequately tested. Late in the movie, he’s even shown speaking to the American College for Advancement in Medicine (ACAM) and using the most brain dead of anti-vaccine gambits, namely claiming that because mortality from various infectious diseases was falling before vaccines for those diseases were introduced it must mean that vaccines are useless.”

I checked out his website and he is not practice pediatrics in Northport New York right now. He says he has a nurse practitioner who is seeing patients in his stead…and that he is around somewhere covering decisions made by the nurse practitioner.

BTW, there have been a number of outbreaks of pertussis in Suffolk County New York recently, centered on the Northport School District. Northport is the location of this quack’s medical practice.