Homeopathy and Dr. James Le Fanu: if this is a witch hunt, help me find my torch … In describing the BMA’s recent vote against homeopathy on the NHS as a “witch hunt”, Dr. James Le Fanu has misunderstood the nature of evidence-based medicine, writes Martin Robbins. Dr. Le Fanu is confused by the sudden interest in attacking homeopathy, after the BMA voted to stop providing it on the NHS, and cites two possible reasons for it.

It could, he suggests, be a cunning NHS PR stunt to divert attention from other criticism. Or it could be part of a devilish conspiracy by the medical establishment to seize some prime property in London. As someone involved in these attacks I can offer a third reason, one that seems to have escaped the doctor – ordinary people are fed up with the absurd sight of taxpayers’ money being wasted on magical pills from the 18th century. – UK Telegraph/ Martin Robbins

Dominant Social Theme: Homeopathy is witchery.

This article is first showing us some of the criticism against homeopathy before discussing it in a balanced and reasonable way.

I would like to point out that the attacks cited above (which are typical) are not intelligent. Here is what I mean:

1. The first thing said is that this doctor would like to join the ranks of those against homeopathy and carry a torch — which implies the burning of witches. In other words, he wants to destroy it. But this is not intelligent because no reason or facts are given, just he doesn’t like it. Not liking something (as we all know) is subjective and has nothing to do with facts of intelligence.

2. The second part, the suggestion that this is “magical” and also “science of the 18th century” is also not intelligent for these reasons.

a) to say something is magic is a judgment which shows the person saying it does not understand it and means nothing more. For example, if we went back 100 years and showed someone a cell phone they would use the word “magic” (or worse ones), yet obviously they just don’t understand what a cell phone is. So using this word actually reflects a lack of understanding of the critic. Again, not a reflection of their intelligence.

b) to criticize it as 18th century science is also not intelligent because it has no meaning. It is implied that it is out of date but actually much of science that we  use and consider true is older than that. For example, Newton’s findings are still relevant today and apply to our daily lives. This is also true for understanding the relationship between electricity and magnetism (18th century), the periodic table of the elements, engineering and on and on — all discoveries of some time ago that even though it dates back to that time, are all considering still accurate and useful. So to say that homeopathy is “wrong” because it dates back to the 18th century is unintelligent.

The writer now goes on to give a more fair and balanced perspective on this issue.

Free-market Analysis: It should be fairly clear to most who patronize the “alternative” media that there is a vast divide as regards health care and medicine. Many writers, speakers and researchers in the alternative ‘Net media find mainstream medicine no more convincing than mainstream science or mainstream economics, and for many of the same reasons. Here at the Bell, we would gladly admit that homeopathy makes no discernable sense; yet we are not apt to discard it as a potential treatment just because we don’t understand it.

The excellent point is made that mainstream medicine is no more convincing. That is exactly the reason that many turn to homeopathy. If mainstream medicine was so logical, reliable, reproducible, EFFECTIVE, then we would not turn to other methods. An obvious point glossed over by critics. It is actually those of us on the front lines of medical practice that are best qualified to say that the mainstream methods are really not that great.

Of course, this is generally a kind of dominant social theme in the early 21st century: “If it is not scientifically comprehensible and proven in double-blind tests, then it is mere superstition.” Of course we would like to make the point that double-blind tests, especially those conducted with fairly limited numbers of people over fairly limited time periods may not amount to much more than superstitious rituals themselves. Anyone who keeps track of the drugs launched after “double blind test confirmations,” only to then be recalled years later by Big Pharma, should surely be aware that such tests raise as many questions as they are intended to answer.

This again is often ignored, that the use of medicines based on double-blind studies in the past often turn out not to be reliable or even “living up” to the suggestion they would be effective. Double-blind is not an especially useful method of determining reliability of medicines.

It is not just double-blind tests, of course, that are questionable. We have been privileged to analyze Western cultural, military, sociopolitical and intellectual assertions over these past few years and in conducting our due diligence we have often been shocked by how often fundamental verities often resemble promotions more than reality. We suppose we should not be surprised, for by now we have concluded that virtually every aspect and facet of Western existence has been tuned to advance the interests of a small circle of incomprehensibly wealthy families and individuals. And yet we do remain repetitively astonished.

In science for instance, there is every indication that Einstein’s gravitational ideology is coming undone and that the “electronic universe” theory may provide a far more cogent explanation for physical science than what is being examined today. But you will hardly find a word about this in the mainstream press, which is constantly filled with wonder by elements of “big science,” which continue to produce little while costing much.

There is much going on in physics, as suggested here, that is behind the scenes and actually is quite different than what is usually promulgated. Just this week, scientists found that the size of atom protons is smaller than they thought. Does it matter? Here is what is said in one of the new’s stories:

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Smaller Proton a “Significant Shake-up”

The proton finding won’t impact most people’s daily lives. But if it proves correct, it means something fundamental is wrong in particle physics.

It’s possible the smaller proton means the Rydberg constant hasn’t been correctly measured. This value describes the way light gets emitted from various elements—a key component of spectroscopy, which is used, for instance, to tell which kinds of elements exist in galaxies and the vast interstellar gas-and-dust clouds called nebulae. Or, if the Rydberg constant is correct, the smaller size of a proton could mean the equations in QED theory will fail to work. (QED = quantum electrodynamics)

“It is a significant shakeup and could mean a complete rethink of QED, potentially opening the door to a new theory,” said Jeff Flowers, a scientist with the National Physical Laboratory in the U.K., who wasn’t involved with the experiment.

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In politics, the West’s regulatory democracy is ascendant, though there is little proof that regulations are at all effective in the long run or that, if effective, they produce the results that are desired. There are fundamental economic principles explaining clearly that regulations cannot function otherwise but as price fixes that manipulate the margins and thus distort the entire economy – subtracting from the quality of life whatever “perceived benefits” they may add to general welfare and safety.

In economics, mercantilist central-banking provides the basis for the world’s major economies though there is no evidence that human beings can in any feasible way set the price and quantity money without causing major financial crises. When the crises indeed do take place, central banks are sometimes blamed (at least a little bit, these days) for the carnage – as they should be – but the system continues onward, as if its dysfunction were not evident and the logic not discredited.

In literature and art, the symptoms of manipulation are everywhere. Throughout the 20th century, classical reading lists (the “canon”) were compiled, but anyone analyzing them without bias would soon see that that these lists included hardly any free-market thinkers and writers and were almost entirely socialist and “leveling” in nature. Art, meanwhile, has wandered into a sterile cul-de-sac that celebrates shock value, corporatism and giganticism over expressions of the human spirit and the aching beauty of past masterpieces.

Education seems lacking at every level, from public school through advanced scholarship. Children in the West are presented with ever-more dumbed-down curricula while the halls of higher learning are swamped by political correctness and general misinformation. The entire history of Western culture is routinely misrepresented at all levels of education, with little attention paid to real causation of important scientific, social and military events, even as certain individuals and groups are celebrated because they are politically correct.

What is startling, when one takes a step back, is that the 20th and now the 21st century seem to provide a kind of fish bowl of misinformation within which most happily swim, never knowing any better. It is in fact the Internet that has allowed us to exit this vast fishbowl and to take a step back to see how thoroughly Western society has been diminished.

There is, unfortunately, a pattern to it all. At every level of the West’s descent into a kind of ineluctable ignorance one finds busy agents of the power elite, beavering away to insure that the decline continues. The impulse, almost always, is to impress upon the naïve, the trusting, the young and the old, the halt and the healthy, that a handful of authorities, peopled by a select few individuals, are equipped to take life-decisions for all.

This is indeed the animating impulse of the 20th and now the 21st century. The power elite has left no stone unturned, no aspect of life untouched. Anywhere that one looks, the pattern is there if one wishes to see. Individualism is downgraded; Misesian human action is not to be considered and “experts” are celebrated for the vastness and costliness (the sophistries and sophistication) of their solutions.

Returning to medicine and homeopathy, we see the same forces at work. Bigness is celebrated. Experts are created and quoted via the same process that has created all the other questionable competencies. Health care and the provision of medicine is increasingly concentrated in the hands of Big Pharma which is in turn controlled by the elite. Hospitals and medical care, meanwhile, are increasingly socialized and subject to government control even though there is no evidence that care can be better provided by the public rather than the private sector.

Those who damn homeopathy and other non-pharmaceutical solutions, do so within the context mentioned above. So much is manipulated, coerced and entirely falsified. Indeed, it becomes highly ironic that authorities and experts, submerged in this system, pop up to point fingers at alternative medicine and health care, as if their own atmospheres were any less murky.

The medical establishment, worshipping zealously at the altar of the “double-blind,” has raised questions about vitamins, homeopathy, herbal medicines and acupuncture. But we would argue the track record of Western scientific endeavor of the past 100 years has been increasingly traduced by money power and therefore any protests must be seen within the context of a larger agenda of command and control.

Again, we do not know if homeopathy works, or why it might work. But the treatment and its medicines have been around for at least a century now and enjoy significant support. Likewise, there is plenty of apocryphal evidence that vitamins, above and beyond what is found in food, are very important to ongoing health. Acupuncture, recently, was apparently found to have some sort of scientific validity, so presumably it will be attacked less. But generally, the idea that any expert functioning within the environs of the West as it is today, has ascended to a level of unimpeachable integrity, is fairly and increasingly risible.

Conclusion: The Internet has truly provided us with a space capsule. As we soar above the West, we can see clearly how the culture and society have become distorted by power-elite dominant social themes. These fear-based promotions touch every aspect of our lives. Until they are eradicated or at least reduced in impact, we must be very careful to judge reality for ourselves. Whether it is homeopathy or anything else, we should attempt to see things as they are rather than as we are instructed they should be. It is the only way to escape from the fishbowl.

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http://www.rightsidenews.com/2010070810922/health-and-education/the-heck-with-homeopathy.html

The first question is if grains are not good for animals. The short answer is that grains are well accepted by animals if they are properly prepared. By this, I mean that the animal digestive tract is shorter than the human so the grains must be well cooked to be digestible.

Well, then, are they are in some way harmful? They are not if the quality is good. By “quality” we are meaning that the grains are complete, not just “leftovers” from milling. Also they need to be fresh, not rancid or spoiled. One would assume this is obvious but the fact is that commercial pet foods can use the leftovers and rejects from the production of human foods – the spoiled, contaminated, nutritionally inadequate floor sweepings – as their source of grains. Much of the concern about the harmful effect of grains in food for animals is because of the poor quality grain used in many commercial foods. The formula is like this:

Poor quality grain in commercial food = diminished health in animals = avoidance of grain based commercial foods = all grains are bad.

You can see that the first 3 steps make sense but the last conclusion does not as it is not taking into account that the health problems seen in animals has to do with the quality of the ingredient rather than the nature of it, e.g. that it is from grains.

Research into animal nutrition as cited in “Nutrient Requirements for Dogs” and “Nutrient Requirements for Cats” published by the Subcommittee on Dog Nutrition and Cat Nutrition by the National Research Council (about as reliable as one is going to find outside of the industry) reports that growing dogs fed a diet of up to 62% starch (which is an unusually simple carbohydrate, grains being much more complete) were able to digest 84% of the starch and use it for growth and energy. Even more significant these puppies had no apparent health effects from such a diet, growing the same as the group fed no carbohydrates.

Cats have been shown to be able to digest over 96% of starch fed to them.

There is more to this topic we have to consider but we will pick that up in the next posting if there is interest.