Subject: (Gordon) (Rowe) Discouragement in Bermuda..... (fwd)
Date: Sat, 27 Mar 1999 093112 -0600 (CST)
From: "Roy L. Beavers" <rbeavers@llion.org>
To: emfguru <rbeavers@llion.org>
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---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Sat, 27 Mar 1999 09:54:29 -0500
From: jeff.gordon@wellnow.com
To: "Roy L. Beavers"
Subject: Re: (jg) (emf) (Rowe) Discouragement in Bermuda.....
Hi, Roy --
I know you understand fully what you're saying, but I'd like to underline
it and voice my agreement with you:
>- "proof" that a product is SAFE before it may be introduced into the
>-market -- then you have a whole new ball game..... (The "Proof" of
>-safety standard......)
I've been watching for years how these same principles apply in the field
of (so-called) "alternative health" or "natural medicine". The orthodoxy
raises the fearful spectre that "these herbs [or whatever] are not proven
safe!" which distracts folks from realizing that the conventional
therapies and pharmaceuticals are themselves not particularly safe, and in
some cases not proven safe to the degree we're left to think that they
are.
Easy example: chelation therapy versus bypass surgery. The charge is
that "there are no good studies!" to show value and safety of chelation.
Well, that's sort of true, but it's the kind of true that is misleading.
Chelation has been in clinical use by medical doctors since the 1950's;
there's a mountain of clinical and 'case history' evidence present for it,
generated over many decades.
It's forgotten in the moment that bypass also lacks such studies -- you
don't typically do double-blind placebo-controlled trials when the
'losers' of such trials can reasonably be expected to perish in the
effort; and it's difficult to -pretend- to do bypass on a 'control group'
anyway. Statistically bypass is not a particularly beneficial procedure.
It's definitely "major" surgery, highly invasive, requiring substantial
recovery time -- and often has to be repeated in about 5 years, since it
does -not- address underlying causative factors in any way whatsoever.
Weirdly, every time an article appears in a journal somewhere, saying that
bypass is being done too often and is riskier than is commonly believed,
the number of bypass operations being done goes -up-, not down. One has
the feeling we're not really paying attention, somehow.
The point of all this: We've got conditioned ways of viewing and
interacting with the world, that we generally don't know we have. One
such element of conditioning is that an accuser must be answered;
otherwise, it must mean (we imagine) that the accusation is true.
That concept doesn't bear up to examination for very long. For one thing,
it leaves the accuser or questionner in complete control of what's going
on, which makes no sense, really. (Can you say "Salem witch trials"...? I
thought you could.... )
Lyndon Johnson had this down pat; I'll spare us the precise language of
his statement and paraphrase it thus: "Call your opponent a pig lover.
Then sit back and watch him deny it."
Our conditioning in this regard means the "weight of public opinion" will
tend to swing in the direction of the 'side' that first requires proof of
the other, and doesn't immediately get that proof.
We (understandably) hesitate to press such a demand; it's because to do so
is to call the wisdom or integrity of the other party into question,
something most of us won't do lightly and in "polite company". (And
besides, aren't -they- the experts, and we're just the ordinary folk?) It
may prove necessary, however, that we simply learn to do it, given the
state, and the conditioning, of the world we find ourselves in at this
time.
We'd want to do it in as polite, grown-up, and "statesmanlike" fashion as
we can, I think, and let the truth of the matter hang there in the air for
all to see.
-- Jeff -- http://www.wellnow.com
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Reprinted with permission of Roy Beavers, http://www.feb.se/EMF-L/EMF-L.html