In much earlier posts (Health – Sickcare 1 & 2) I have talked about the Microbiome and its importance to our personal health. There is much news about more natural health care, but then there is also the response from the science and medical community that automatically debunks such options. I was talking recently with a friend who is a top-rated biomedical researcher – if you recall from my introduction, I once was a biomedical researcher as well. As he talked about his research and his ideas, I interjected with my now more esoteric alternate ideas about whole-body health. He looked at me incredulously and after a couple of seconds, continued his talking and thoroughly disregarding whatever I had to say that did not support his thoughts. He is a true believer in mainstream science and cannot fathom anything outside the established doctrines. It’s not that mainstream science is wrong, but it is incapable of accepting that there is a bigger picture to explain much of what ails us in this modern world. I grew up in a system in which when you had an ailment, you went to the doctor who then treated that symptom with some drug or other acceptable treatment. Then I started learning of more holistic systems from the east that seemed as effective, but were automatically debunked as fakery and or by practitioners called charlatans – nearly always without evidence of course, simply using mainstream logic as their guide. As a probed deeper with a skeptical mind, I found that there was indeed fakery, but it was coming from the mainstream as much as it was from alternate ‘medicine.’
As is typical in mainstream science and academia, we get the stories of the pioneers but not the whole story. For instance, in the discovery of the Structure of DNA, the Nobel prize and all the glory went to James Watson and Francis Crick (and Maurice Wilkins – another DNA structure researcher), but few people outside of the field of biology will know about the immense amount of work and effort by Rosalind Franklin in uncovering the structure of DNA that allowed the pair to publish the crucial paper. As is typical for that time (1962), the work by Franklin during the 1950s was used but her major contribution was marginalized because she lacked the male genetalia to be accepted as a true scientist. Sadly, Franklin died of ovarian cancer in 1958 and wasn’t able to make a case for her involvement in the discovery. This is just one of many cases of science being blind to the full picture. Early science was after all a prestigious group of traditionally European scientists in a closed club. The ideas were also often closed and accepting one point of view while ignoring others that are inconvenient (known as scientism) was a norm – and still is. Add the money involved in traditional health care and you get an even more closed-minded club.
In the discovery of ‘germ theory’ by Louis Pasteur in 1850, the medical field readily accepted Pasteur’s ideas. These ideas led to the modern Allopathic forms of medicine we take for granted – treating symptoms and disease as isolated components happening within the body. While today, homeopathic medicine is making in-roads into the mainstream profession, it is still regarded by most as quackery and dismissed simply because homoeopathic ideas do not fit with traditional germ theory. It wasn’t that Pasteur was a closed-minded person per se, but like many of us, wanted to be successful and prove his theories about dangerous germs that attack us as the cause of all human disease. Germ theory claims that fixed species of microbes from an external source invade the body and are the first cause of infectious disease. In the late 19th century this was readily accepted as doctrine and modern medicine, allied with bio-pharmaceutical research (in both industry and universities), became the foundation of treatment – the birth of the medical/industrial complex. When I began as a research technician in the 1970s there were numerous pharmaceutical companies, but today the mergers and take-overs has produced a small pharmaceutical cartel centered around the American Medical Association and similar European associations specifically to manipulating the legal system in their favor. The western homeopathic medical profession is trying to get a foothold as an alternative medical intervention system, but it is still labelled as quackery. Note your medical insurance program will not likely cover such intervention even if research shows it is successful. Recall my story about Linus Pauling from my Sickcare-1 post.
Have you ever wondered why only a few people get a cold after coming in contact with someone that already has one?
If Pasteur’s theory was right surely we would all ‘catch’ a cold with no exception? Mainstream science says it is due to natural immunity, but therein lies the problem. Traditional immune ideas state that you must have already been exposed to the virus to have immunity – the basis for all the multitude of vaccinations we give infants these days – in line with Pasteur’s original Germ Theory. Natural immunity is based on the idea of a healthy body – so what is the mainstream admitting to without saying it?
Pasteur, had a brilliant opponent named Antoine Beauchamp who completely rejected Pasteur’s ideas and put forward the idea that the biological terrain of the animal is the cause of disease, not the germs themselves, although they can initiate disease in an unbalanced organism. He believed that germs and parasites will only survive in acidic and unfavorable conditions and therefore mere exposure to germs is not enough to get sick. An inconvenient fact is that many ‘survivors’ of an epidemic are exposed to the disease but do not succumb to the disease or exhibit any symptoms. Beauchamp believed that we are already living with multitudes of germs and that when the body became ‘out-of-balance’ that disease occurred. On his death bed Pasteur is in fact reported to have admitted that Beauchamp’s theory was right and that all disease starts with the condition of the body. This is the basis for most modern homeopathic medicine – the ecology of the whole body. So what creates a ‘good’ body with a good immune system able to withstand disease is a whole topic in itself and goes deeper than we realize. It encompasses diet, the body’s microbiome, mind frame and curiously a deep spiritual perspective (again, not a religious one – see earlier diatribes about this on earlier posts on this blog). TBC…..
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