I was listening to a segment on NPR yesterday afternoon about preparations already well under way for next winter’s flu vaccine. (Unfortunately, I can’t find the link on the NPR site.) A scientist from Princeton, I believe, was explaining how the flu virus mutates slightly each year into several variations, and how scientists have developed advanced models to anticipate the changes so they can come up with a flu vaccine that is likely to be effective against next year’s crop of strains.

Of course, there was no mention in the discussion about the role of our immune systems in reducing the odds of being hit by the flu bug. No consideration of the role of nutrition in helping strengthen the immune system.

Both the interviewer and the interviewee were totally consumed by the wonders—no, the miracle–of medical technology in protecting us.

What Miguel, Gary Cox, and others are saying in the lengthy dialogue following my May 17 post, it seems to me, is that the problem of pathogens and food safety need to be viewed holistically.

But our medical and public health systems are based on specialization, which is at the other end of the analytic and diagnostic spectrum from any kind of holistic approach. We have professionals who specialize in controlling the flu bug, just like we have professionals who each specialize in controlling parasites and E.coli and asthma, and so on down the line.

Among public health and agriculture professionals, there are those who deal with E.coli 0157:H7 in vegetables and those who deal with it in farm animals, and those who deal with it in processing plants and others in restaurants.

It’s very difficult to have any kind of discussion about holistic systems with these people, because they have been taught to think about problems within their area of specialization. I think that’s why it’s so difficult for individuals like cp2 and concerned to really relate to the arguments being offered, even as they attempt to demonstrate sensitivity. Miguel’s wonderful illustration about flies and garbage doesn’t make any sense if you’ve been conditioned through umpteen years of schooling and professional work to obsess about the germs the flies might carry around.

To these people, raw milk is like the flies—it is a carrier of pathogens, and thus must be eliminated. They can’t take seriously an approach that views raw milk as part of a larger holistic system that helps build immunity and reduces the risks associated with pathogens and viruses, not to mention the risks of various chronic diseases. There can be no question of “choice” because enforced “protection” from any and all pathogens takes precedence.

NAIS raises the same issues. The animals must be tagged and followed because if there’s disease, we need to be able to track down the source of the pathogens, the flies, as it were, that started the whole thing. The idea that animals left to graze on healthy pasture fed by nutrient-rich soil are much less susceptible to disease in the first place sounds to them like gibberish.

What’s most bothersome, though, isn’t the difference of opinion. There’s always been room in this country for people with divergent opinions on issues large and small. What’s bothersome is that the germ/safety-obsessed want to impose their obsession on everyone. They can’t stand it that some of us aren’t terrified because a few people became ill from Dee Creek raw milk or someone in Missouri may have become ill from raw milk, or wherever. It’s very difficult with such mindsets to see the forest for the trees.