Positive Health Online

We in the UK have been forced to witness with numbing incredulity the slaughter of millions of healthy livestock and other animals, due to apparent scientific incompetence and bureaucratic suppression of information as well as the refusal by the government to use available (and offered) diagnostic tests to discriminate between animals infected with foot and mouth and those immunized via vaccination. Things have progressed in the science of immunity and diagnostic testing since 1967. It is unbelievable that before our very eyes we have seen sanctioned this needless tragic carnage on such a catastrophic scale.

As regular readers of Positive Health will no doubt have realized, I have of late also become furious at the continuous unwillingness, indeed apparent refusal of supposedly learned and caring professionals and government officials to implement blindingly obvious published research findings regarding successful natural health approaches.

Such strategies, including nutritional and herbal treatments, could, according to well substantiated research evidence, prevent us suffering terminal illnesses and might help to provide less traumatic treatment approaches to existing conditions.

When I first made my transition from 'straight' molecular biology scientist to natural health researcher and publisher, and started to compile research and publish books regarding scientific evidence of the far-reaching effects of nutritional substances upon health, I couldn't for the life of me comprehend why every doctor, researcher and medical bureaucrat didn't know about these findings.

After all, these tens of thousands of research studies are published in scientific and medical journals, are totally in the public domain and ought to be read by all. The bright, bushy-tailed idealist that I was, I naively thought that if one could prove that a given substance could improve health, the entire medical and scientific community would welcome such findings with open arms, and make available such health-promoting products or practices to the millions of people suffering the afflictions of cancer, heart disease, arthritis, and so many ghastly diseases.

How wrong I was, as was eminent Nobel laureate Linus Pauling, who suffered ignominious ridicule and worse in his quests to help cancer victims with vitamin C (read the gripping account of his battle against suppression of the evidence in Vitamin C and Cancer: Medicine or Politics? by Evelleen Richards, MacMillan 1991). Another giant in the battle to expose the toxic environmental chemicals which are undoubtedly behind the current cancer epidemic is Samuel Epstein (The Politics of Cancer Revisited, East Ridge Press 1998).

The history of natural medicine is littered with the fallen corpses from lost battles, from the concerted and orchestrated war throughout the entire 20th century and continuing today against proponents of natural approaches for cancer treatment. Even now, draconian laws exist which prevent anyone from claiming that a particular substance or approach (apart from surgery, chemotherapy or radiotherapy) can help treat cancer, even if the evidence supports this claim. Many excellent books have been published chronicling these numerous iniquitous inquisitions regarding cancer and AIDS, which have resulted in gifted doctors and researchers being struck off the medical register, imprisoned, or forced to flee to other countries to try to help patients. A few are The Cancer Industry and Cancer Therapy (dedicated to Linus Pauling) by Ralph Moss (Equinox Press 1992); Dirty Medicine – Science, big business and the assault on natural health care by Martin Walker (Slingshot Publications 1993); and Silencing Scientists and Scholars in Other Fields: Power, Paradigm controls, Peer Review, and Scholarly Communication by Gordon Moran (Ablex Publishing 1998).

Other battles between competing healthcare professionals have been waged between doctors and chiropractors in Canada, doctors and midwives in the US; even the practice of herbal medicine was formally dissolved in 1941 by the British Government (read The Incredible Journal of Herbal Medicine by Jill Rosemary Davies, page 19 this issue)!

Battles are also being waged from within the natural medicine community, with conflicting views about the benefits or otherwise of dairy products, types of fats and soya; (read Phytoestrogens Re-Examined by Kate Neil, page 28 this issue).

Human nature and the thirst for advancement of knowledge will always ensure a plentiful supply of differences of opinion in every field of endeavour. However, the suppression of information, the denial of professionals and the public alike to read the evidence and form their own conclusions, can be an unsavoury and even sinister attempt to manipulate and control events from which we appear always to suffer the consequences.

It seems to have taken me an eternity to progress through my stages of transformation from idealist to disbeliever. I imagine that I am not alone.