If you want a sense of just how strong the “germ theory” is in the medical profession, try engaging a physician about the subject of vaccination. It’s pretty much an ideological matter. Vaccination is beneficial, no matter how marginal the disease or how many kids have problems, and non-vaccination is dangerous. End of conversation.
I’ve gotten an earful about vaccination over the last couple weeks in the course of reporting and writing a new BusinessWeek.com column about physicians showing the door to patients who resist vaccinating their children because of concerns about autism and other dangerous side effects from vaccination.
My sense is that this whole issue is turning into ever more of a flashpoint for American healthcare, a symptom of patients in conflict with an autocratic system. If physicians can reject parents of autistic children because these parents are understandably worried about vaccinating their children, then these doctors must feel quite threatened.
Yes, we know that some physicians are willing to go along with their patients’ wishes to postpone or avoid vaccination, but that willingness is usually more out of personal sensitivity than any personal objections to vaccination. (See my recent posting about my confrontation with a pediatrician at a media event.)
And if these individuals are part of a larger organization, watch out. I’ve recounted how a supervisor in a healthcare facility, opposed to vaccination for herself, ran into major pressure to push her employees to become vaccinated.
I got into a discussion recently about the necessity of the chicken pox vaccine with a physician I know who is generally open-minded about medical issues, and is willing to abide patients who refuse to have their children vaccinated. Since chicken pox is more an inconvenience than a dreaded disease, why do we need to vaccinate children against it? He immediately launched into a story of about how a pregnant woman he treated years ago died from chicken pox. It’s amazing to me how, when you tell a physician about examples of children showing signs of autism shortly after receiving vaccinations, they say your claim is anecdotal or coincidental, but when you argue against something they are for, they come back with anecdote-based arguments. Anyway, the long and the short is that there was no way to convince this physician.
Something else I heard from mothers of autistic children is how cavalier most physicians tend to be when children show improvement as a result of intensive psychological and/or nutritional therapy. In those situations, the physicians often claim that the children who improve weren’t accurately diagnosed in the first place–presumably to rationalize their stance that autism isn’t treatable.
My sense is that the physicians are so completely indoctrinated about vaccination during medical school that they can’t really entertain dissenting opinions. It’s just too threatening.
Yet the reaction we are seeing—rejection by the system of parents who won’t have their children vaccinated—reminds me of what happens in rigid political systems. As dissent mounts, autocratic rulers only become more autocratic. They impose restrictions on freedom of speech, make curfews, and eventually impose martial law. Are we beginning to see the imposition of martial law on parents who won’t vaccinate?
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The comments on my last posting, advising caution about the Mongolian milk study, are well taken. I suspect that underlying my anxiety is the counter-intuitive aspect of raw milk’s effect on overall health. The idea that you can consume all this fat and lose weight, as several people point out, is hard to believe, even when it happens on a personal level. I recently found that my cholesterol level after six months of drinking raw milk and kefir was unchanged. Definitely not what I expected. So I suppose that on some level I’m waiting for "the other shoe to drop," as it were.
Just curious. You said your cholesterol levels were unchanged after making some dietary changes. What changes did you expect?
From what I understand, the reserach has shown that dietary changes usually can’t change total cholesterol levels more than about 10% (www.thincs.org). But the dietary changes usually tried are low cholesterol diets, lower in total fat, saturated fat, and generally higher in carbohydrates. That’s probably because if the diet lacks cholesterol, the body makes what it needs (you probably already know this).
I have found that my total cholesterol has gone up in the past 11 years, especially since I left my high carbohydrate, low fat and not enough protein days behind me for good in early 2004, but various individual component levels have improved tremendously, except one. HDL has gone up from below the minimum recommendations to well above, triglycerides have gone from too high to very low (more important than cholesterol, too). VLDL is very low. The only thing that doesn’t look good to those who worry about cholesterol is my LDL, which is somewhat high (I suspect that if I had a normal glucose metabolism, the LDL would be lower). But all the ratios are good enough to keep my doctor off my back about it. I think the cholesterol issue is a moot point anyway (not causative).
I think you are on to something, actually, and I believe this fear of losing their licenses is what has kept pediatricians who disagree with the ever-widening vaccine protocol quite. It’s amazing how effective our medical system is at squashing dissent.
A few years ago, my total cholesterol slipped to just under 200, which had been an elusive goal for me. I credited the trend to reducing significantly my consumption of sugar, carbs, and saturated fats. So I assumed when I began consuming more saturated fats via the raw milk, that my cholesterol would head back up over 200. That didn’t happen. Like with you, my triglycerides are way down, and my LDL is borderline. I’ve known that the body produces its own cholesterol, but old ideas die slowly. I suspect as well that cholesterol is just a marker, and possibly not the key marker, in heart health.
The crux of his presentation was that the Institute of Medicine’s recent position denying an autism-vaccine link was based on only a handful of studies, which were deeply flawed. He and others have painstakingly gone over the data from those studies to show very convincingly that the studies in no way support the IOM’s conclusion. There is much, much more to it, and I would direct you to the organization for which Dr. Ayoub is the Medical Director – FAIR – the Foundation for Autism Information and Research: http://www.autismmedia.org/ .
We have a thread on autism/vaccines at NutritionCircle if you are interested:
http://www.nutritioncircle.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=208&hl=autism
In your experiment with raw milk and keifer, what else did you change in your diet? So often we think about treating our health concerns the same way the pharmaceutical industry does. They have the belief that one drug will treat one illness and that is how they make their money. They will identify health "threats" to introduce a "cure." When we move into the realm of treating our problems naturally, we all too often bring that same ingrained mindset with us. Only when we realize that our bodies can and do take care of themselves can we really begin to understand how to treat illness. The paradigm must change if we are to treat naturally. Give your body what it needs and it will take care of itself. In 400 B.C. Hippocrates stated, "Let food be your medicine and medicine be your food." Quite ironic then that this is the same man who the Hippocratic oath is named after . . . "First do no harm." We’ve come a long way in our medical establishment since then. The title doctor means teacher. What were they supposed to teach? How to live healthy. What are they teaching today? One last statistic for us. Where is the U.S. ranked in health world wide. Well, in trauma care the U.S. is #1. However, in health, according to the World Health Organization, we rank #37. Now why is that? I’ll let you decide.