Last week, germ lawyer Bill Marler took two actions that were intriguing for their timing. As I mentioned in my previous post, he issued a press release calling on Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to veto SB 201, the legislation that will do away with the coliform standard that is a threat to the ongoing production of raw milk in California.
Second, he posted a video of Chris Martin in the hospital on life support during September 2006, after allegedly becoming ill from consuming raw milk from Organic Pastures Dairy Co.
When I read the news release last Friday, I dismissed it as an opportunistic marketing effort by Marler. Now that Ive viewed the YouTube video he posted, and re-read the press release, I think I was wrong.
This two-pronged attack on SB 201 is a vivid example of how ever-more politicized the raw milk issue has become. Except to go along with all the other weirdnesses of this casethe timing that overlaps a national outbreak of E.coli 0157:H7 illnesses from raw spinach, the inaccuracies in the writeup by the California Department of Health Services, the lack of a smoking gunthere is now another. Ill call it the video synch problem.
Before I get into the specifics, I should preface this story with my reluctance to even discuss it, since it is as pure a piece of propaganda as you are ever likely to see. It takes a single tragic case, provides inflammatory and inaccurate narration (suggesting, for instance, that all six sick kids were on life suppport), and presents it not only as fact, but as if its indicative of a major health problem. I was sent a version of the video, without the narration, about nine months ago, by the Martin family, and asked to keep it private. I did done that. Now, though, as the raw milk situation becomes ever more political, the Martin family has apparently decided to hell with their privacy, theyre going to work with Marler to do everything they can to bring down SB 201 and Organic Pastures.
Theres at least one major credibility problem with the video. If you watch the video carefully, youll notice that at the end, Chris seems to get sicker and sicker as hes attached to a ventilator. In fact, you can hear him breathing laboriously.
Also near the end, youll see two dates, seemingly from the video camera, in the lower right cornerSept. 23, 2006, and then Sept. 24, 2006. Theres only one problem with those dates: Chris Martin wasnt on life support those days.
The reason those dates stood out to me was because Mark McAfee has told me on several occasions that he visited Chris and another patient, Lauren Herzog, at Loma Linda Medical Center on Sept. 23. Heres how Mark recalled the situation when I spoke with him last April: “I arrived at the hospital expecting these kids to be there with the priest by the bed. Instead, I’m told, ‘I don’t think the kids want to talk to you because they’re on their cell phones.”
I decided I should call Bill Marler, the lawyer for the Martins and Herzogs, and try to find out what was going on here. He told me it was the Martins’ idea to post the tape on YouTube. “Absolutely out of the blue, the Martins contacted us, saying, ‘Perhaps we should put this up so the governor knows.’ “
Marler said he has a technical assistant who edited ithe tape for length and added the narration–it all took about an hour. So it was all just coincidental, “fortuitous,” as Marler puts it, that the video came in just as Marler was issuing his press release.
And what about the discrepancy on the dates? He went back to check in his office, and then called me back about an hour later: “The dates on the video are not consistent” with actual events, he said. “I don’t have an explanation. It looks like it is off. There were two periods of time when Chris was on the ventilator. If Mark was there on September 23 or 24, it’s possible he (Chris) was not on the ventilator.”
He added, “I have nothing to hide. I have nothing to spin. It is what it is. I believe the explanation is there is something wrong with the date on the camera.”
I’m not sure if this might affect the court case. But clearly there is a major credibility problem, or rather, another credibility problem among a seemingly endless number. If something as fundamental as the dating is wrongso obvious that a non-lawyer like me picked it upthen you wonder what else is wrong in this sad and sorry case. After all, we all know how easily digital photos and videos can be adjusted and edited to make points particular parties want to make.
I think the problem here for Marler and the Martins may be that the political tide is showing some signs of shifting with the likely implementation of SB 201. If it is adopted with essentially no opposition, as seems possible, it takes much of the fire out of the Marler/Martin arguments about the dangers of coliforms, and the need to keep Organic Pastures and Claravale Dairy continually on the edge of collapse. Then it might serve as a reasonable model for other states. And an indication of a shifting of mindsets.
You also explained that you were not the "Gumpster" who posted a comment on Daily Kos that I took issue with. I noted that there and do the same here.
I must say, however, your level of mistrust of anything that might negatively impact raw milk is amazing. Clearly, your days as a journalist are over. Your inability do deal with facts that do not serve your world view makes you a perfect blogger – far better than me I must admit.
*Yawn.*
Somebody on this very blog once told me that I get caught up in "minutiae." Who was that? Oh right, it was David Gumpert.
She said that after someone is taken off the ventilator, a person still may need assistance with breathing until the lungs are strong enough. The video portrays the progression of Chris Martin regaining the function of his lungs.
Watch the tape again. You will see three different things on his face.
Maybe the problem here is that someone is listening to Mark McAfee for the correct facts.
David, you disgust me in your lack of empathy for these sick people who drank raw milk. Sure, other foods cause illness, but some raw milk dairies repeatedly cause people to get sick and end up in the hospital. I gained some understanding of the "food rights" issue following this blog, but still worried about the "put raw milk in the stomachs of every kid out there" mentality. Clearly, this is the dominant point of view in your sorry movement. Thanks for motivating people to fight you tooth and nail (hoof and teet) to push bans or something close to them across the country.
Also, your pathetic personal attacks against Bill Marler and regulators or academics on this site speaks volumes about your lack of credibility and research into the "real" opposition.
anonymous (don’t want my name used for your personal attacks against me or my family)
I dont even know what words to say to someone that is able to dismiss a sick child on life support as propeganda.
http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2006/11/26/news/californian/20_59_3711_25_06.txt
"Mary said Chris ate spinach and drank raw milk in the days leading up to his hospital stay, which began Sept. 7. She said she isn’t sure which product contained the bacteria."
"They said that if the first doctor Chris saw when he went into the hospital on the first night would have put a wristband on him noting that he should not receive a dose of antibiotics, then the second doctor may not have administered the dose that sent Chris spiraling into trauma. "All they needed was one little wristband," Mary said."
You are right; the mindset is shifting. Back in December they said raw milk would be the top health issue in 2008.
http://tinyurl.com/yvduzx
It may be weird, but this chaos is progress! I think we’re in the 2nd stage.
Thanks for your blog – keep shining the light.
-Blair
"ALL TRUTH PASSES THROUGH THREE STAGES: FIRST IT IS RIDICULED. SECOND, IT IS VIOLENTLY OPPOSED. THIRD, IT IS ACCEPTED AS BEING SELF-EVIDENT."
SCHOPENHAUER
How many times do his black robed coworkers sitting on high refuse to allow "facts" to be presented, how many times do the "facts" get presented thru appeals to different blacked robed judges that see the "facts" differently?
So it would appear that in the justice system the "facts" are only the "facts" in the eyes of the last black robed beholder. Not very comforting.
Two years later, I find myself extremely disturbed by the McAfee comment:
"I arrived at the hospital expecting these kids to be there with the priest by the bed. Instead, I’m told, ‘I don’t think the kids want to talk to you because they’re on their cell phones."
That was the tone of comments at the rally/press conference when the recall was ended and yet Chris Martin stayed in the hospital another four or five weeks. "The parents were lying about the milk," "the kids weren’t all that sick anyway," blah blah blah.
We had a *party* when this child was still critical:
http://www.rebuild-from-depression.com/blog/2008/08/raw_milk_generosity.html
Amanda
Are children now on life support how many, and where???? What are the "facts"?
http://www.centralvalleybusinesstimes.com/stories/001/?ID=9655
If you are a microbiologist studying bacteria,the truth is simply that there is no such thing as "good" or "bad" bacteria.Any bacteria can be cultured by providing the optimum conditions for its reproduction.To eliminate the bacteria change the conditions to those that slow its reproduction.
http://thehealthadvantage.com/biologicalterrain.html
Instead, as Dr. Bernard Jensen and Mark Anderson assert in their book Empty Harvest, "The germ theory is still believed to be the central cause of disease because around it exists a colossal supportive infrastructure of commercial interests that built multi-billion-dollar industries based upon this theory. To the scientific satisfaction of many in the health field, it has long been disproven as the primary cause of disease. Germs are, rather, an effect of disease."
Interestingly and to this day, the whole theory of microzymas and how they operate has never been disproved – or proven false – by opposing research. To the contrary, decades of research beginning with Pasteur himself – has only served to bolster the mycrozyma theory. Not only does the germ theory remain unsubstantiated today, but Pasteur himself recanted it in his private journal, writing the famous words which were revealed many decades after his death:
It is not the germ that causes disease but the terrain in which the germ is found.
Professional scientists who study microbes are already in the third stage.They accept the truth about unpasteurized milk as being self evident.
It also appears that Mark McAfee confused one of the other breathing devices with a cell phone.
Love your humor Amanda. Maybe he thought when Chris was wearing the white hat that is was a new hands free device.
The only one making this case weirder and weirder is you and Mark Mcafees spin on this.
What does this mean? The party is over. Do we all realize this yet? Here we are, debating the moral character of Mark McAfee and the timeline of events in the Chris/Lauren illnesses (we debated this topic AD NAUSEUM last summer, too!), and the whole system is about to crash. Banks are failing, our country is bankrupt, the housing crash hasn’t even hit bottom yet…and those in the know are saying that THIS depression will be WORSE than the 1930s. But in the 1930s, the vast majority of Americans lived on farms, they were at least able to feed themselves. Now, less than 5% does, and most farms aren’t self-sufficient.
Everyone here undoubtedly wants a clean food supply, but don’t we yet see that FOOD SECURITY is soon going to trump FOOD SAFETY? Ask any oldtimer who survived hard times and poverty if they would throw away the milk or pick the fly out of it and drink it anyway, if they would throw away the moldy cheese or cut the mold off and eat it anyway. How did they survive if food is so inherently dangerous?
Have you ever seen the Foxfire books? The books about the old time traditions of Appalachia? The people featured in those books are old. They smoked pipe tobacco and butchered their own hogs and drank moonshine and largely went without modern medicine, yet they survived and thrived. Ask yourselves, everyone – why are we so SICK in comparison?
Where our food comes from is going to be a big issue in the coming year, especially with farmers on the brink of implosion (don’t forget that $376 billion we owe to China in Fannie/Freddie bonds alone – if we can’t pay them, I’m sure that they’ll settle for our food). I think we all need to reexamine our relationship with farms and food, our (irrational) fear of germs and microbes, or we risk not having any food.
Does anyone want to talk about that, or do we want to stay entrenched in the Chris/Lauren/Marler/McAfee love-hatefest?
Google Second Harvest click on news read the USA Today article many Americans with jobs need help with food stamps. In Ashville NC every 1 in 6 are on food stamps.
We have been led to beleive in paper money backed by nothing resulting in a 97% loss [confiscation of our wealth] in purchasing power . We have in the last 75 years destroyed 80% or more of our family farms. Our politicos are bought and paid for by the corporations. We have standing armies worldwide and have sacrificed our youth on the altar many unprovoked foreign wars.
Rome and other world powers engaged in these same activities and collasped. Can we be far behind or are we special?
I wish all this were not so.
33467. (a) A dairy farm that produces and processes raw milk
shall have its raw milk tested twice per week by a state accredited
laboratory for coliform, E. Coli 0157:H7, and standard plate count.
The raw milk shall be tested from a location determined as most
appropriate to enhance public health and safety by the secretary, in
consultation with the State Department of Public Health.
(b) The results of the tests conducted pursuant to subdivision (a)
shall be transmitted electronically, upon completion, by the
laboratory to the dairy farm that is the subject of the tests, the
department, and, upon request, the State Department of Public Health.
(c) Except for the test results for E. Coli 0157:H7, data and
results from the tests conducted pursuant to this section shall be
used for informational purposes only and shall not be used for
enforcement purposes.
33468. A dairy farm that produces and processes raw milk shall
have its raw milk sampled and tested at least once per month by the
department for pathogens that cause illness in humans, including, but
not limited to, Campylobacter jejuni, E. Coli 0157:H7, Listeria
monocytogenes, and salmonella. The department shall deem raw milk
containing an amount of any such pathogen sufficient to cause illness
in humans as nonconforming. The raw milk samples may be taken from a
location determined as most appropriate to enhance public health and
safety by the secretary, in consultation with the State Department
of Public Health.
33469. (a) A dairy farm that produces and processes raw milk in
compliance with this article shall not be required to comply with the
coliform requirements of Sections 35781, 35861, and 35891.
(b) A dairy farm that produces and processes raw milk that does
not choose to opt in to this article shall comply with the coliform
requirements of Sections 35781, 35861, and 35891.
Every cloud has a silver lining.All of our problems are opportunities.
"On our farm we have seen increased feed,fuel,fertilizer,seed ,electricity,and machinery costs."
We stopped feeding grain to our cows,stopped growing grain and stopped plowing the fields.This gave us more hay and pasture so we don’t have to buy feed.The machinery is used a lot less.We have to buy straw but not fertilizer.The straw and manure from the winter bedding makes a lot of composted manure to fertilize the fields.
We sell everything directly to friends who are eager to reconnect with the source of their food.They tell us what price we should be getting for the food and it is 4 or 5 times what we would be getting from any other market.We raise all of our bull calves until they are mature and fat enough to butcher.They return about 4 times what we would get if we sent them to auction.
It is true that the wholesale markets have been depressed by the continuing concentration in the markets.The market is telling us to make adjustments.Find other markets and produce what those people want.Those sick people are catching on that it is the way food is produced that is the problem.They know what kind of food they are searching for.If you take care of the life in the soil,the plants and animals will prosper and so will you.
While the economy was booming in the 90’s we barely scratched out a living selling everything wholesale.Now everyone else has joined us in a depression and we are selling everything retail.Even though we aren’t making lots of profit,our relative wealth has greatly increased.
We even went to once a day milking which cut the cows milk production even more.When we sold grade A milk at $10.00/hundred pounds we were averageing about 5 or 6 gallons /cow feeding grain and milking twice a day.Now at $94/hundred pounds(thats $8/gallon)we get 2 or 3 gallons/day.So each cow brings in $16 to $24 a day compared to $5 or $6.I know the price of milk has gone up since then but we had only one company to sell to and thats what they were paying when I quit.
I know it takes time to make the transition.I sold most of the cows and started with only seven cows.I lived off the money from selling the cows for 2 or 3 years and learned something about how to make cheese.
As for the regulations,you will need to study law for bit.
As for my nursing opinion, that was estute of someone to notice the 3 different kinds of breathing assistance devices on different dates. I had watched it briefly, and had to rewatch it 3 times with pen and paper to catch all the details mentioned.
In the clip dated 9/18, Chris is intubated and on a ventilator, with the tube taped to the side of his mouth. The tube in his mouth goes through his vocal chords into his bronchial tubes, and the vent forces air and oxygen into his lungs. It has to be taped so it doesn’t slip out or he doesn’t pull it out – tubes going throught the vocal chords are very uncomfortable. Even adults with them in have to be sedated and sometimes restrained. He also has a nasogastric feeding tube going into one of his nostrils which is used to put formula-like stuff directly into his stomach. A wrist restraint is tied to his left wrist. His coloring looks like a renal patient to me, and there is some sort of tube going into his left chest – too blurry to tell if it is a dialysis catheter or a chest tube. When the vent settings are too high for the lungs and blow too much air pressure, sometimes holes are blown in the lining of the lungs and a chest tube has to be in to balance the air and fluid. I’m guessing it is a dialysis catheter though.
In the clip dated 9/23, he has a bipap machine on. This can force oxygenated air into the lungs without intubation. Many people with sleep apnea wear these devices at night. My brother-in-law has one. It is primarily for apnea and can be used for other breathing issues such as those caused by oversedation.
In the clip dated 9/24, he has an oxygen mask on, and his breathing is very loud. But he is breathing unassisted; and only receiving very humidified oxygen, or maybe even a breathing aerosol treatment (there is a lot of steam).
The video states that he was intubated on the 16th; and that the tube was taken out but had to be reinserted due to pancreas failure 5 days later, which would be the 21st as the videos are dated. I’ve never heard of someone having to be intubated due to pancreas failure. The pancreas doesn’t really affect the lungs too much. Even renal failure doesn’t affect the lungs, so we aren’t getting the whole story about why he was intubated. That said, the 23rd bipap is after the 21st, and he is off the vent.
Even if David is wrong about the vent dates, there is still the issue that the source of the infectious e-coli is assumed, and not proven. It is unfair to villify somebody based on evidence that is not sure. If it is not factual, it is slander. Saying that the infectious e-coli was probably caused by milk from organic pastures in the video, if it is ever proved wrong, is grounds to sue everyone who made the video. We have all been wrong at one time or another. When it comes to life, and peoples’ livelihoods alike, it is a mistake to act as if someone is guilty until they are proven to be so.
It serves nobody – not even the patient – to villify people who have not been proven, beyond a shadow of a doubt, guilty.
Gwen