If you’re coming to this blog for the first time, or you haven’t read my previous post, I strongly suggest you take a look and focus especially on the exchange of comments following that post. They are not only tremendously informative, but also quite moving.
I commend Mary McGonigle-Martin and Tony Martin, the parents of a young California boy who became quite ill last fall after drinking raw milk, for their willingness to engage in this kind of open discussion. I commend others for their sensitivity, as well as their enlightening comments.
A few things that come out of this exchange for me:
–That “holistic” medicine, by viewing the entire body-mind system, is so totally at odds with how our culture views health as to be nearly from another planet. How easily we (yours truly included) may look to holistic approaches for answers, yet still fall into the traps of our conventional system, sometimes without realizing it, of misunderstanding and misinterpreting illness and turning it into something to be avoided at all costs. So I could especially appreciate the notion of our society having turned occasional serious illness into ongoing chronic illness.
–How much there is to learn about health care, and how the learning should be a positive thing, rather than something to be disparaged. I say this from the perspective of how the subject of raw milk is treated by public health authorities: that it’s dangerous, to be consumed at your own risk, case closed. That many of these public health individuals are scientists makes their attitude even more unpsetting. Why not further exploration as to why raw milk is so powerful in easing various conditions, and under what conditions it potentially becomes a danger? Maybe some of the lessons about its power can be transferred to other areas of health and medicine.
–The danger of extrapolating major conclusions from individual situations. We do that a lot in our culture, and as a media person I’m as guilty as the next journalist. Not unexpectedly, the individuals affected—whether by raw milk, an auto accident, a crime—extrapolate from their own experiences. Individual examples can be helpful in explaining complex situations, but they also run a danger, well articulated in the comments.
For additional discussion, take a look at the Honest Human by Suzanne, who launched the exchange on my previous posting.
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