The Elephant in the Hospital Room (and the Courtroom)

Our bodies die when one of five things happens:

1. They wear out, and suffer one severe or a series of cascading ‘mechanical’ failures
2. They are unable to recover from self-inflicted trauma
3. They are unable to recover from trauma caused by other people or human activity
4. They are unable to recover from trauma caused by a non-human biological agent
5. They succumb to ‘system failure’ caused by an inherent genetic defect

There are few of us who aspire to find a ‘solution’ for the first cause. Eighty or a hundred years is a long time for any physical device with a lot of moving parts to endure, and the cost of replacing most of our bodies would be astronomical, and the process and results grotesque.

Since the conquest of some of the biological agents like smallpox, tuberculosis, malaria and polio that have killed millions and even billions of humans, medical science (and we its patients) have become somewhat obsessed with causes 4 and 5, to the point we have come to believe that if we found ‘cures’ for these agents and defects we would all live long and healthy lives — as if causes 2 and 3 do not exist.

Cause 2, self-inflicted trauma is not just suicide. When we abuse our bodies through the use of drugs, ingested, inhaled or injected, we are poisoning our bodies. Smoking could easily be seen as a form of slow suicide. When we deliberately choose to eat too much, too little, or an unhealthy mix of foods and beverages, we are knowingly poisoning ourselves, inflicting trauma on our bodies as surely as if we systematically cut our bodies with razor blades. Most of us are now addicted to the things we eat — fats, starches, sugars, salts, alcohol, caffeine and all the other unnatural substances that make us temporarily feel better but quickly get us craving more as the illusion of well-being wears off. It’s tempting to blame greedy corporations for our addictive diets, but the truth is we have craved these substances and the highs they give us since we first discovered them, and if these cravings were not satisfied by corporations we would find other ways to get them. Humans have created a ‘market’ economy and production system that can and does find a way to produce anything that people want — in fact that’s one of the reasons we invented that economy and system. The fact that this economy and system makes it easier for us to get addicted to more consumables that are toxic to our health simply explains why more humans die today of complications of obesity than of malnutrition.

Cause 3, trauma induced by other humans is likewise not just homicide. We have so altered the chemistry of our air and water that it is changing the climate of the entire planet. It would be folly to think that such adulteration is not also massively affecting our bodies. The air we breathe, the water we drink and the foods we eat are laced with chemicals, both organic and inorganic, natural and man-made, that our bodies were never meant to ingest. Most of those chemicals have never been tested for toxological effect — there are simply too many for the testing agents to handle. Soaring rates of asthma, cancers and autism almost certainly have Cause 3 sources. They are the result of massive, collective human activity designed to make our lives better and, ironically, to make us healthier.

While Cause 2 and Cause 3 are different, in many cases there is no easy way to differentiate between them. This is why we are willing to at least listen to people who blame Big Tobacco for addicting them to the product that is killing them, and who blame Big Agribusiness for addicting them to sugar and starch and subjecting their children to so many hormones and antibiotics in meat that there are no antibiotics left to treat them when they really get sick.

I mentioned in an earlier article that some epidemiologists now believe AIDS and other diseases of those with compromised immune systems are not caused by HIV (a biological agent) but rather by inadvertent self-inflicted trauma — drugs favoured by homosexual males and toxins easily transmitted through shared and non-antiseptic needles. No one wants to hear this, because it would deprive the medical profession and Big Pharma of a great epidemic to solve, would make many of the sufferers of this terrible disease open to scapegoating, and would force science to admit a colossal blunder in diagnosis. And because it’s almost impossible to draw a line of responsibility between Cause 2 and Cause 3 traumas, it also raises the possibility and even probability that the poisons in our air, water and food are responsible for the damage to our immune systems that allow AIDS and the other immune-deficiency related epidemics ravaging much of the world. If poisoning by mining, air exhaust, food additives, antibiotics, dumping of wastes, and inability to clean up our water supplies are found to be the cause of auto-immune diseases and many cancers, a lot of people in high places could be looking at jail time for involuntary manslaughter. Not to mention a reputation in the history books as bigger mass-murderers than all the despots of human history combined.

A reader writes:

The writer believes that her disease itself is infectious, and she may well be right, but what if it is endemic in a society that ingests, voluntarily and involuntarily, millions of chemicals we have absolutely no idea of the long-range effects of on our bodies, and the infection agent is merely a catalyst that triggers the ‘syndrome’? Or what if it isn’t infectious at all, and it’s latent in all of us, just awaiting some other immune-system-challenging disease or some exhausting or stressful event in order to start wreaking havoc on our bodies? Are our bodies all fighting a constant life-and-death struggle with all the foreign, accumulating, interacting poisons that we ingest every time we breathe, drink or eat?

Because Cause 2 and Cause 3 are so inseparable, it is tempting for politicians, health agencies and especially corporations, who might be liable once a causal link to their activities is established, to insist that there must be a Cause 4 for all these epidemic and fatal problems that would get them off the hook, and to fiercely resist even looking at other possible causes. There is plenty of circumstantial evidence that manufacturing, energy and resource industries (including many operations run by governments) are guilty of causing an untold number of deaths from Cause 3 negligence, and, while it would be a very tough case to prosecute, finding a Cause 4 for these deaths would both shift suspicion and refocus attention on the much easier cures for Cause 4 illnesses.

So where does that leave us, the patients? The obvious lesson is not to depend on, or even particularly trust, those who have a vested interest in the outcome. We cannot and should not rely on governments, the NIH and its counterparts around the world, health care providers, Big Pharma, or of course polluting corporations to look after our interests — they are too busy looking after their own, which in some cases directly conflicts with ours. Here’s what we can do:

• Network with other people who share our symptoms and/or concerns. Information, and the support of others, are our greatest tools against ignorance, denial, cover-ups, and the hostility of those who have an axe to grind — and who don’t want our messages heard when they place their reputations at risk.
• Do our own research. Read stuff on the Internet, but also read alternative sources, not just those spouting the party line. Talk to people, meet and visit with those who are suffering, doing work, fighting uphill battles for the truth.
• Take charge of our own health. If our poor diets contribute to our poor health and eventual death, it will be small consolation to know that we were being slowly poisoned anyway. We need to take responsibility for illness prevention, personal health monitoring, self-diagnosis and self-management of our health. It is both foolish and unfair to leave everything up to the ‘professionals’.
• Think critically. We should take everything we read and hear with a grain of salt, even if it comes from ‘professionals’. We should be looking for alternative causes, treatments, approaches and ideas — care-givers only want to try one thing at a time, starting with the accepted most likely treatment, so they can get on to the next patient. They don’t have time to think critically. We must find the time to do so.
• Appreciate that most care-givers are doing their best, but that their science is not very advanced. We should treat care-givers as partners in looking after our health, not outsourcers. The doctors I know who are honest will admit that they rarely know the answers for sure, that they find their patients over-dependent on them, and that they just don’t have the time to take care of our health all by themselves. They’re caught in a difficult situation — we want to put them on a pedestal (and doctors who admit their fallibility lose patients and lawsuits). But they also want us to know the truth — that in many cases they don’t know much more than we do about how to prevent, diagnose or treat some of the most terrifying illnesses of our time.

This doesn’t mean giving governments, health agencies, health practitioners or polluters an easy way out. In addition to the above, we should be lobbying governments and the health-care industry for more patient-centered approaches to health care: More focus on prevention (including tighter controls on pollution and on food additives and chemicals), on enabling greater self-care (in part by requiring the profession and Big Pharma to share more information with the public, and not just when it is favourable to their point of view and bottom line), and on more holistic analysis of health care problems (not just looking for Cause 4 and Cause 5 answers). We need to get rid of the conflicts of interest between governments, Big Pharma and patients — and resolve them in our favour. And we need to recapture the rights we lost a century ago to treat ourselves — as long as we are prepared to sign a waiver accepting full responsibility for the results, we should be able to self-administer drugs without a prescription and without regulatory approval. It’s ludicrous that the food junkies can push our kids to consume huge amounts of Aspartame and other poisons, but we can’t buy Codeine to help ease a friend’s enormous suffering unless we get written permission from a doctor.

We’re old enough to take care of ourselves, and there’s plenty of evidence that if we don’t, we shouldn’t expect anyone else to.