More on Holistic Cancer Treatments, the Benefits of Bacteria, Physician As Patient, and Raw Milk

A few odds and ends:

–Thanks to Linda Diane Feldt for her suggestions about herbs and diet shifts (regarding my post about Elizabeth Edwards) that can be helpful in dealing with breast cancer. This is exactly the kind of educational information I wish we’d see more of (or even a little bit of) from the mass media. There has been some attention paid to lifestyle changes that can help prevent breast cancer, but most of the coverage is about the standard treatments of chemotherapy and radiation. And some is just totally uninformed. I saw one reporter speculate about whether removing the rib where Elizabeth Edwards’ cancer was detected might solve the problem.

–Thanks also to Ken Conrad for his highly readable explanation about the benefits of bacteria, and how their interactions help maintain balance in the natural world around us. I suspect that the move to pasteurize almonds involves more than nudgy bureaucrats. It is symptomatic of a number of problems in our society, including the unfortunate distance we’ve moved from the farm and other parts of the natural world, our need to control ever more of our environment, and the nearly hysterical fear around so much of life that’s been fomented by the media, lawyers, and government officials. I think this latter problem has its origins in our legal system and media structure, both of which encourage laying blame and assessing penalties on those found to be “at fault.” Lots of business and government officials are simply covering their rear ends.

–Are doctors who work for insurance companies to aid in denying patient claims violating their Hippocratic oath to “first, do no harm”? A physician whose claims for treatment of his five-year-old daughter with cerebral palsy were denied asks this question in a recent Boston Globe Magazine article. It’s encouraging when doctors who experience patient outrages respond with their own outrage. Unfortunately, doctors don’t generally gain the full patient experience, since they push each other and family members to the front of the lines for sophisticated tests and treatments, and then heavily discount any charges.

–Finally, there’s some encouraging news on the raw milk front. Ohio’s appeals court agreed to the state government’s request to withdraw the appeal of the Carol Schmitmeyer case, in which her cowshare arrangement was upheld by a lower court. And in both Ohio and Maryland, there are aggressive efforts to gain legislative approval of cowshare arrangements…and both seem to have realistic chances of succeeding.