tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4745933059836525473.post8206061990363974951..comments2023-09-20T00:48:12.768-07:00Comments on 4allofyou: Bernard Rimland, Ph.D., Winner of the Noble PrizeMarcella Piper-Terry, M.S.http://www.blogger.com/profile/04801412997983907542noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4745933059836525473.post-62894624541596506662008-10-07T09:17:00.000-07:002008-10-07T09:17:00.000-07:00"Research along these lines - as well as on the sa..."Research along these lines - as well as on the safety of the vaccines - is desperately needed. As a parent and a researcher, I believe there should be a marked redirection of effort and funding, along the lines suggested above."<BR/><BR/> I had not read that testimony before. 8 years later.. So sad that so little has changed.<BR/><BR/> I found most interesting that he said, 'Would enhancing the immune system decrease the likelihood of adverse reactions to vaccines?' This indicates that, contrary to the cries of the "other side" and "pro-vax" camps, Rimland was (at least judging from this) NOT anti-vaccine.<BR/><BR/> He was for safer vaccines, as many are today, but also for making sure the body could deal with what we throw at it (both intentionally by vaccination, and unintentionally with environmental heavy metals, PCBs, general air pollution, other poisons, and hormone mimics. Not that people today aren't for that - indeed, the entire biomedical ("applied biochemistry") treatment movement is based on it. But I don't see that anywhere in the public debate about autism - or in <I>any</I> public debate about health and healthcare.<BR/><BR/> There is no mention of making our bodies better able to deal with the things that they have dealt with (more or less successfully) for the past couple few ten thousand years (or we wouldn't be here). True, we have much more mercury, cadmium, PCBs, lead, dioxin, and who knows what else around today tat our ancestors did 20,000 years ago. But that realization <I>supports</I> the idea that "what we get from food isn't enough" - a believe that too many people still believe.<BR/><BR/> Perhaps 20,000 years ago. whatever amount of selenium and B12 we got from whatever foods we ate was <I>enough for that time and environment</I>. It is not anymore, because our environment is radically more toxic. When are people going to realize that? When are we going to <I>force</I> them to realize that?<BR/><BR/> People talk so much today about 'healthcare' and what we are going to do about. How do we get people to talk instead about 'health'? Health<B>care</B> is about how to pick up the pieces once they have fallen apart (to use - and expand - the "puzzle piece metaphor" we all know). <B>Health</B> on the other hand is about how to keep the pieces from falling apart in the first place. Mainstream medicine has little <I>short-term</I> benefit in doing this, and preventing problems in the first place. But surely, wouldn't medical industry would derive a <I>long-term</I> benefit from such an attitude? Everywhere I turn I hear about how there's a shortage of nurses, and how hospitals are stretched to their breaking points. And then we have the looming crisis of Alzheimer's and adult diabetes "waiting in the wings" so to speak. At least these problems are <I>acknowledged</I>, unlike autism and childhood diabetes.<BR/><BR/> One major exception in 'prevention' is folic acid and neural tube defects. Probably because there it little you can do "about" a neural tube defect once it occurs. But even there, I've read it took the public health officials <I>years</I> to finally "catch up" to the research and start recommending higher folic acid intakes for pregnant women. And I wonder if we might be "causing" neonatal pernicious anemia by not supplementing B12 as well (see the discussion I started on the ABMD list).<BR/><BR/> The pharmaceutical industry has less of an incentive to be truly "preventive", both short-term and long-term. Short-term, they lose profits. Long-term, there will always be some things that are simply too severe to simply "prevent". But the pharmaceutical industry has very very high up-front costs. Our FDA does not help - imposing extraordinarily high (and in some cases, such as cancer drugs, heart-breakingly misguided) bars for efficacy. Of course, the FDA was designed for the era of the early twentieth century, in which patients could not network with each other to determine whether a product really did work, and how well it worked, and when companies would willingly and knowingly sell poison and pass it off as medicine (conveniently forget about vaccines for a moment - I'm talking about things like antifreeze for indigestion and such.. Oh right, that happened just recently, didn't it?)<BR/><BR/> I don't think either of these situations exists <I>quite</I> as much today. Ordinary people have access to incredible amounts of information and "other-patient-knowledge" that would have been unthinkable even 20 years ago. Heck, I can read the same studies that the doctors do - or that they should read but don't. And I don't think companies today would be willing to sell poison quite so blatantly as they did back in the 1930's - at least no more than they already do (permanent tardive dyskinesia from neuroleptic usage comes to mind..) Companies would go belly up quite fast if they sold poison when people found out about it.<BR/><BR/> In any case, even (some) libertarians who favor abolishing most of the FDA and other regulatory structures do not propose getting rid of some measure of safety trials (Phase I). And of course let's not forget that the <I>current</I> system is by no means perfect. Hundreds of approved medications have serious side effects, others have been found to have side effects post-licensure (Vioxx comes to mind), and, to let vaccines creep back in a bit - that's just a whole 'nother can o' worms (really big ones too - think the movie Anaconda).<BR/><BR/> And then their are dietary supplements, which are (compared to "medications") for the most part totally unregulated. There are some which will cause serious harm - and probably all of them will if taken irresponsibly, but so will "approved" medications. But most are relatively harmless, even if they are not beneficial. The companies know that if they have a string of deaths related to their products, people will find out and they will be out of business. And there is always caveat emptor. That should apply to FDA-approved medications as well, but sadly for so many people it does not.<BR/><BR/> 6 our of 10 Americans say the presidential candidates should have a "plan for autism." Well, with only 20-odd days until the election, and nary a substantive word about autism in either campaign (please correct me if I'm wrong here), I don't think that's going to happen.<BR/><BR/> The presidential candidates talk about healthcare. But they talk about the same things that have been talked about for the past 20 years - how to make it more affordable, <I>not</I> how to make it so people need less of it. Talking about <I>health</I> is the only way I think that's really going to happen. Prevention versus intervention. To steal a line from Obama, that't the change we need. And that's what Rimland said 8 years ago about vaccine adverse events. When will we finally start to listen?<BR/><BR/>Jim WitteJimhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10951570753949444116noreply@blogger.com