Now that things have slowed down in this thread I find I have the time to address the significant amount of misinformation in LindaLou's last post,
Message 40. I'm not replying to LindaLou, just correcting misinformation.
LindaLou writes:
Of course, what I had in mind was that herbs are many times safer than pharmaceuticals.
There is no basis for this claim as stated. Pharmaceuticals have to pass through the FDA regulatory maze which includes years and years of testing for efficacy and safety. Herbs are specifically exempt from FDA regulation by congressional legislation.
While it does make sense to accept the claim as generally true, since on average herbs probably have less effect on the body than pharmaceuticals thereby making them, on average, less risky, the risks of any particular herb or drug can only be reliably established through rigorous scientific testing and analysis. And so if one were given free play in a pharmacy to self-medicate, the risks are probably much less if one sticks to herbs.
Of course, in the real world one cannot self-medicate with prescription drugs, but only with herbs and vitamins and supplements and so forth. Self-medication with prescription drugs isn't permitted because we understand they can cause problems if used for other than their specific purposes, and then there are drug interaction issues, so prescription drugs are only available with a doctor's prescription.
But even in the absence of formal testing, some herbs have been found unsafe. For example, ephedra is currently banned pending testing to establish safety after it was implicated in some deaths.
What I'd forgotten about was that stories grab the headlines all the time about how herbs and vitamins can be bad for you...
The scientific side of this discussion is underpinned by scientific studies, not by headlines. It is the position of naturopathy that is underpinned by headlines, anecdotes and websites.
I might add, pharmaceutical drugs are quietly withdrawn after they have injured and killed people.
This is a conspiracy type of claim. For those vulnerable to accepting conspiracy claims, there is nothing I can say. For everyone else, hopefully you realize that conspiracy claims are often advanced in support of claims for which there is no evidence. Why is there no evidence? It's a conspiracy!
The problem is that often the authors of these stories go no further than to read the title of the study, or possible the abstract, or they report someone's injury or death without proper research into what all the circumstances were.
This is a response to a list of stories provided by Nator in
Message 38:
This list was provided in response to this inquiry from LindaLou in
Message 37
LindaLou in Message 37 writes:
Herbs and vitamins have killed and maimed? Would you present your statistics on these dangerous and deadly substances please?
The list is of various articles about cases where herbs and vitamins have caused injury and deaths. LindaLou's unsupported assertion that the authors of the stories haven't read beyond the title or abstract is just another of her many erroneous assertions, and it is obviously false on it's face just by clicking on the links. Some of the articles are news stories, while for those about studies, some include interviews with the paper's authors, and some are by scientists themselves (e.g., Henry I. Miller, research fellow at the Hoover Institute). LindaLou's assertion is without any factual support.
The point that Nator was making was not the one LindaLou was attempting to address. Nator was not claiming that herbs and vitamins and supplements are dangerous, but that LindaLou's claims of safety are without factual support. Nator demonstrated that this was so by citing cases where vitamins and herbs had caused harm and even death. Rather than address the evidence itself LindaLou instead engaged in the fallacy of attacking the sources of information by issuing false charges.
Would you like me to address each of your citations? I am willing to do so but I have this hunch that I'm going to be called an apologist, making excuses for anything I don't like.
LindaLou is trying to give the false impression of unfair treatment, but she does accurately describe our assessment of her approach. She does just make up ad hoc reasons for anything the doesn't like. The oft-repeated criticism of LindaLou is that she values anecdote and emotional appeal far above scientific investigation and analysis. She values the worst sort of evidence while rejecting the best on the basis of charges of greed and conspiracy, possibilities she seems to exclude from her preferred and completely unregulated field of naturopathy.
What's with the ones about OD-ing on water? What's your point? Do you think an ND would tell someone to go and do this?
The point of including water in the list shouldn't need to be explained, but anyway, one of LindaLou's erroneous opinions is belief in perfect safety, and as Nator pointed out, even water is not completely safe. By extension, if there are some dosage levels of water that can kill, then obviously anything, even the most innocuous herbs and vitamins, can kill. That's why scientifically establishing efficacy (including dosage levels) and safety is so important, because some herbs and vitamins do not need very high levels to cause significant health problems and even death, e.g., ephedra and vitamin A.
The most striking example is this article claiming that vitamin E is bad for you. The article doesn't even cite the study; but if it's the one I'm thinking about, then they used the DL-form of the vitamin, which I said in a previous post is useless. The people who designed a vitamin E study using that form of the vitamin were either utterly ignorant, or deliberately out to misrepresent an essential vitamin with the power to heal -- as has been shown in better past studies.
This is yet another unsupported claim, that the study used the wrong form of vitamin E. Let's see if there is any truth to it.
The link is
High doses of vitamin E may hasten death | New Scientist, and the article includes responses from the lead author, Edgar R. Miller. LindaLou said the article doesn't even cite the study, which is true, but there's an excellent reason for this. The article was about a presentation of a study soon to be published, as the article clearly states:
Maggie McKee in New Scientist writes:
The researchers presented their results on Wednesday at a meeting of the American Heart Association in New Orleans, Louisiana. They will publish the work in the
Annals of Internal Medicine.
And was the study published, as this 2004 article claims? It sure was:
Meta-analysis: high-dosage vitamin E supplementation may increase all-cause mortality appeared in the January 4, 2005, issue of the Annals of Internal Medicine, less than 2 months after the presentation at the American Heart Association meeting.
By the way, those using or considering vitamin E supplementation might take these words from an Edgar R. Miller editorial to heart (
An Editorial Update: Annus horribilis for Vitamin E):
Edgar R. Miller in Annals of Internal Medicine writes:
Vitamin E has enjoyed superstar status among dietary supplements. Because of perceived health benefits, vitamin E supplements are consumed by many people. As this editorial shows, recent trials have further weakened the evidence for benefit, while the evidence for harm has accumulated. We did not fully appreciate just how many people may be putting themselves at risk by using high-dosage vitamin E supplementation until this issue of Annals, in which Ford and colleagues use data from the 1999-2000 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey to estimate that about 12% of U.S. adults (24 million people) consumed 400 IU or more of vitamin E daily from supplements (20). Furthermore, older adults were more likely to use high-dosage vitamin E supplementation. We are disturbed that a presumption of benefit by so many may increase risk for mortality. We call on health professionals to warn the public against the use of ineffective or even harmful interventions, such as vitamin E, that may compete with well-established preventive measures. High-dosage vitamin E is a prime example of misplaced priorities.
Now, on to LindaLou's next unsubstantiated charge, that they improperly used the DL form of vitamin E. I'm guessing that LindaLou believes that synthetic vitamin E, which is what I think she means by the DL form, is worthless. Once again LindaLou is wrong. According to the paper, alpha-tocopherol is the active form, and this is the same as "1100 IU of synthetic vitamin E or 1500 IU of natural vitamin E", and this is consistent with other sources such as Wikipedia.
The next paragraph contains a few fallacies, so I'll have to address them one at a time.
Vitamins, in the right quantities, will do no harm. They are essential to the body. Vaccines are not.
It's hard to find any logic in this. Is LindaLou trying to claim that that which isn't essential is not natural, and that anything not fitting this definition of natural should never be placed in the body? This would exclude most foods, since most contain something that is not "essential to the body."
The illogic stems from LindaLou's unscientific approach of inventing ad hoc reasons for rejecting anything she doesn't like, such as vaccines and mercury fillings and anti-depressants and in fact almost everything from what she seems to think of as "the medical/industrial complex." In this case she throws up the bogus reason that vaccines are not "essential".
Remember, I said that an important principle of naturopathy is prevention. A strong, healthy person can fight off illness without the need of a vaccine...First, a healthy body prevents disease, making vaccination unnecessary.
This has been rebutted many times, but it doesn't hurt to briefly rebut it again.
First, health can do nothing to prevent exposure, and much evidence has been provided of healthy people struck down in the prime of life by a dangerous virus.
Second, no one is always healthy, and viruses will opportunistically attack people who are already sick or weak. For example, a healthy person hospitalized after a serious car accident might succumb to measles. For another example, a robust 80-year old might not be able to fight off a serious bout with the flu.
Third, there is a miscomprehension on LindaLou's part of just how dangerous some of these viruses are. She just can't seem to accept the evidence of history of withered limbs from polio and deaths from diphtheria and measles. And some of this history is very recent, as modern outbreaks of diseases like measles, brought on by declining vaccination rates, indicate.
This includes optimum levels of vitamin C. The studies of Klenner, Pauling and others attest to its efficacy.
While vitamin C does have positive health effects that are not under dispute, the exaggerated claims of Klenner and Pauling have never been scientifically substantiated. It is instructive of the scientific process that even the considerable prestige of a scientist like Nobel prize winner Pauling was insufficient to convince the scientific community of something for which there was insufficient evidence.
Are the compounds in vaccines rendered harmless in the body? Who knows? No studies have been done to find out.
LindaLou's point isn't obvious, so let me explain. She's trying to claim that since in addition to inactive virus vaccines also contain chemicals of the delivery media, where are the studies showing that these chemicals do not cause harm?
But the fact is, many, many studies
*have* been done, and I have no idea why LindaLou would say this after all the studies that have been cited in recent threads. The numerous studies do not prove that these chemicals (in the tiny quantities they appear in a vaccine shot) cause absolutely no harm whatsoever, but that's just the nature of science. No negative can ever be proven. There will always be the possibility that we'll learn something new. However, we can be very, very certain that if there are any negative health effects, they are very subtle or limited to a very small segment of the population.
We've already established that vaccines stimulate the body to produce antibodies to a virus, thus preventing disease.
I disagree.
I do not know why LindaLou disagrees. Needless to say, there is absolutely no doubt whatsoever that vaccines provide immunity to disease with a very good degree of reliability.
With your other statements, you seem to be trying to put together a case of circumstantial evidence that if the air we breathe and the water we drink etc. are not pure, and this doesn't harm us, then why should I think vaccines could be harmful? Firstly, there's the issue of toxic load on the body.
LindaLou is here equating a vaccine, which you receive in minute quantities at widely separated intervals, with the ill health effects from polluted air and water, which we breath in continuously and drink frequently. LindaLou frequently mentions antifreeze as a component of vaccines, and I don't know whether this is true, but even if it were, what, precisely, is the danger of a minute quantity of antifreeze injected once or twice a year? And how does this danger compare to risks inherent in the diseases the vaccines protect against?
The scientific information available today says that vaccines cause no detectable harm, and that the diseases they protect against have the potential for causing significant harm, including permanent disability and death.
Viruses can and do enter the body through a break in the skin as well as through the mucous membranes.
Not very often though.
"Not very often" is very misleading. Certainly it is only a small percentage of the time that a hurtful virus invades through a cut and makes a successful incursion, but we take in viruses and bacteria with every breath, and it is again only a small percentage of the time that a hurtful virus successfully invades in this way. In reality, LindaLou is making it up as she goes along. Every cut is an opportunity for viral invasions, and also, of course, for bacterial invasions (I assume LindaLou is also against antibiotics).
You can read about some of the problems of the intranasal flu vaccine
here:
...Intranasal injection of certain viruses has resulted in a serious brain infection called encephalitis, presumably by direct infection of the olfactory neurons that carried the viruses to the brain. Time will tell whether the live viruses in FluMist will become linked to cases of encephalitis.
I can find no evidence online of nasal vaccines causing brain infections, though it doesn't seem impossible. But much more significantly, consider that every breath you take contains viruses. If the "olfactory track" is actually a "direct pathway to the brain", as LindaLou's cite claims, then this is as true for the viruses you breath in as for nasal vaccines.
While investigating this I did find this about encephalitus at the
Mayo Clinic Site:
MayoClinic writes:
In rare instances, secondary encephalitis occurs after vaccine-preventable childhood viral infections, including:
- Measles (rubeola)
- Mumps
- Rubella (German measles)
This just reemphasizes that there are genuine risks to not vaccinating your child. The possibility of permanent disability or death from diseases like measles, mumps and rubella is very, very small, but they are not zero, and the possibility of these ill effects of these diseases is definitely much, much greater than for the vaccines for them, as study after study has shown.
To address your final comments, "natural" means what is optimal for the body.
LindaLou has substituted one undefined term for another. She defines "natural" as "optimal for the body", but doesn't define what "optimal for the body" means. One would think that having a body immune to a number of diseases without actually experiencing the risks involved in contracting them would be a pretty optimal thing.
In this strict sense herbs are not natural per se. It's a rare case where they would be recommended by an ND as a first or second line of treatment. To prescribe them the way you would prescribe a pharmaceutical -- to mask symptoms...
If by "pharmaceuticals" LindaLou is referring to vaccines and antibiotics, then once again LindaLou is dead wrong. Vaccines do not "mask symptoms," they provide immunity to disease, meaning that one never contracts the disease and thus never experiences the symptoms. And antibiotics do not "mask symptoms" since they're designed to eliminate the bacteria causing the symptoms, which means that antibiotics are focused on the root cause and not on the symptoms.
LindaLou has a remarkable ability to latch onto information which is either untrue, unverified or unreliable, and she presents this misinformation over and over again without incorporating or even addressing any of the many rebuttals. Hopefully posts like this one will help make clear that the true threat to health is the mindless acceptance of scare-mongering while ignoring the conclusions of scientific studies. Declining vaccination rates are a threat to the health of everyone in modern societies everywhere.
--Percy
™ Version 4.2