About five years ago, I was asked to lead an introductory yoga session at a weekend retreat my synagogue held. I had never taught yoga before, but I had been to enough classes and done enough on my own that I could at least mimic a yoga teacher, so I lead about a dozen people through basic postures for about forty minutes. I ended the class with about ten minutes of meditation.
The next day, one of the participants, Pete, a man in his 60s whom I knew casually, came up to me and said, “You know, I’m a diabetic, and last night, when I measured my blood sugar, it was lower than it has been in years.”
I was pleased, of course, and encouraged him to stay with yoga, to see if he could build on such benefits long term. He didn’t, preferring his drug regimen, and a couple years later, Pete died from complications associated with diabetes.
I was reminded of Pete by a lengthy article in yesterday’s New York Times about type 2 diabetes. Its thesis is that diabetes patients worry so much about their blood sugar that they overlook the increased risks of heart disease and stroke associated with diabetes. The patients should instead get onto a regimen of statins, blood pressure, and other medications.
I read the entire article, wondering when it was going to mention the potential benefits on diabetes of nutrition, exercise, yoga, and meditation, but there was nothing, beyond a reference to the fact that many diabetes patients try to lose weight and exercise, but they don’t do enough or the effects don’t last and don’t seem to alter the progression of the disease.
I’ve not had to deal with diabetes personally, but I’ve met a number of individuals who have been able to fight it fairly successfully with aggressive attention to nutrition and exercise and use of yoga and meditation. The book, The Untold Story of Milk, states that after regular use of raw milk products, especially soured milk, “Diabetics are benefited, and in some cases the disease is permanently reversed.”
The NYTimes article is a good example of journalism that relies nearly exclusively on establishment sources. Buried deep in the article, after all the recommendations about statins, blood pressure medications, and other medications, is this statement: “Meanwhile, no matter what they do, most people with Type 2 diabetes get worse as the years go by.” So much for all those “miracle drugs” one doctor talks about.
I’m not sure why I was surprised about this, given all I’ve written about the media, but I just found myself feeling badly about all the effort that obviously went into such a lengthy article, and how it misled people about the possibilities for treatment.
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Any farmer who is thinking of fighting the agriculture authorities via the media should read Don Neeper’s account following my previous posting about distributing a press release on behalf of Autumn Valley Farm and Lori McGrath.
Like any farming or carpentry job, one key to success in public relations is in the preparation—putting together the media list, checking out the email addresses, contacting media to confirm who is the correct contact. And while Don only alludes to followup, it is as essential as the preparation.
With so much email coming in, reporters and editors can overlook things they might be interested in, so it pays to make followup calls to check whether a release was received, and inquire as to when it might be used. It’s well to remind publications that published the original agriculture department press release announcing the farm shutdown that this new release represents a followup to a story the publication has already covered.
These tasks are tedious and labor intensive, but they often result in at least limited success down the road. And even if they don’t result in a direct hit, they afford farmers a chance to get to know local reporters, who can be surprisingly interested once you get them one-on-one.
I must admit I blanched when I saw Steve Bemis’ comment that the media "is the single best hope this country has…" I suspect he’s right, though I must admit I’m not ready to bet my house on the chances of success.
Raw milk has been around for a long time before 1971, and quite a lot of science has been overtuned and revised since then. It would be nice if the scientific community would agree to take a new look at this issue with an open mind. Resources like PulseNet should help, since related strains of disease organisms can be identified via PCR..Data from outbreaks should be freely available, since I believe PulseNet is supported by our tax dollars.
http://www.reuters.com/article/healthNews/idUSKRA07667120070820
The news release was a bit skimpy on the study itself and focused on the presenter’s interpretation, so I wrote Dr. Gibbons-Burgener this morning and asked for the name of the journal that had published the study or an electronic copy of it. I’ve often found that you can find interesting information in the actual published results that may have been glossed over in the press release put out for public consumption.
Off the top of my head and without having access to the study, one could say that the bulk tank survey was performed on farms producing milk for pasteurization and so you would expect to find significant contamination issues. A much more relevant study would be a survey of Pennsylvania or New York farms producing milk for direct human consumption, but of course who is going to fund that? 🙂
Big media seems to me similar in many ways to big business and big governmentalways making the most from what benefits themselves. The result is (generally) cheap, autocratic promotion of the status quo. Come to think of it, big business, big government, and big media are really an interdependent triumviratea hugely powerful partnership.
I’ll say it again: Big systems act just like peopleself-interest rules, and size matters (that is to say, size produces influence). There are always exceptions of course, but in most cases truth is far more likely to rise up from the bottom than be delivered from the top. Expect big media to be a tag-along. They will speak loudly, but only AFTER the story is establishment-ready (of course then heralding themselves as heroic messengers).
I suggest we obtain our news and information, as well as our food, from the little guy.