Don't try to insult me.
The term anti-vaxxer is a medical equivalent to racism, similar to calling someone a (insert disparaging race, religious, sexual, or political belief here) accusing them of being bad and in need of being corrected or excluded from "correct society."
Don't try to insult me by calling me an anti-vaxxer. Use of words and phrases like (insert disparaging race, religious, sexual, or political belief here) say more about the speaker than about the accused. People who accuse "anti-vaxxer" are, in fact, insulting themselves. People who accuse (insert disparaging race, religious, or political belief here) are censoring not just the accused, but also themselves, their ability to listen, to learn, to understand, and to maintain a civil society, moving towards higher goals and truths.
Miss-information, missing information, an absence of knowledge and understanding that might move us forward together is the natural consequence of censorship via censuring phrases like (insert disparaging race, religious, or political belief here).
About me?
l have a healthy suspicion of all "patent medicines." Patent medicines are intentionally unnatural, secretive, and controlled for profit, not for health. The patent medicine model uses the term "health care" only as a marketing term. If the "buyer," or their supporters have no money, the patent owner cares not one cent. Marketers of patented medicines often claim to prevent, diagnose, and treat diseases, while avoiding the word cure. Why? Most cures come from health, from improving healthiness, few from medicines, fewer still from patent medicines.
All patent medicines have risk of side effects or potential adverse consequences, apologetic names for negative consequences, that vary from individual to individual and according the the health and illness statuses of each individual. Patent medicines are often marketed as "one size fits all" to promote sales, not health.
The medical study Our prescription drugs kill us in large numbers, by Peter C Gøtzsche, published in 2014 reported that "Our prescription drugs are the third leading cause of death after heart disease and cancer in the United States and Europe. Around half of those who die have taken their drugs correctly; the other half die because of errors, such as too high a dose or use of a drug despite contraindications." It's not just pills - New Zealand Epidemiologist Neil Pearce found that "When the inhalers came on the market in the 1960s, asthma death rates went up in the same way the sales did" but "when he sent his manuscript to the company (which one should never do), they told him he would be sued." Gøtzsche concluded, "The control of medical practice by market economics does not serve the needs of the
patients very well and is not compatible with an ethically based profession."
When anything, like car accidents or gunshots, or patent medicines, are known to causes deaths we can look closer and see that most car accidents, even most gunshots and most patent medicines - don't cause deaths. Some cause serious injuries and disabilities, but again, most car accidents and most gunshots do not cause serious injuries or disabilities. Even more cause minor injuries. But most car accidents are trivial, even most gunshot wounds are "it's just a flesh wound," not serious. We notice the deadly cases, and ignore the many that are so trivial that we don't report them to our insurance company, don't call the doctor - it's not worth the effort (unless we can sue someone).
Even as thousands of cases of serious injuries and deaths occur, most injuries caused by patent medicines are minor. Easily ignored.
WHERE? Of course it is possible for someone to be injured, even to die, from activities that generally improve healthiness, like exercise - but most of the time such actions improve the patient's healthiness. Healthy activities often aid healing and cures of illness. Few, if any, patent medicines can improve the patient's healthiness. Most are designed to fight signs and symptoms of disease, not to address the cause, not to cure.
How many of our patent medicines are more dangerous than helpful? In which cases, which situations are they more dangerous than helpful? We simply don't know. In addition, as we research and learn, denial by manufacturers, necessary to ensure that sales, occur, continue, and rise. The profit motive overwhelms that evidence. Most patients who are injured and most families who lose family members due to the dangers of patent medicines receive no compensation, even after the medicine was withdrawn.
There are five basic keys to address any illness:
1. Prevention
2. Diagnosis
3. Treatment
4. Caring
5. Cure
Patent medicines are focused, like a scalpel. Most patent medicines only address one of the five keys. The other five are outside of the scope of the patent medicine. In most cases, the other aspects of addressing illness come from health. This is natural and healthy. It is generally considered risky, even dangerous to use two or more patent medicines at the same time. In addition, patent medicines affect the body. Causes of illness, cure causes, can be present in diet, body, mind, spirits, communities, and environments. Patent medicines cannot affect most causes of illness.
Let's look at these individual elements.
1. Prevention of Cause
We prevent illness by preventing the cause from rising to the state where it causes illness. Causes are everywhere, but none of the things we identify as causes of illness cause illness most of the time. Causes of illness are like car accidents and gunshots - not causing illness most of the time. There are two basic ways to prevent causes from creating an illness:
a. address the presence of the cause before it causes illness
b. raise the healthiness of individual's diet, body, mind, spirts, and communities such that the level of present causes do not cause illness.
2. Diagnosis of Present Cause (cure cause)
Unfortunately, most of today's diagnostic protocols ignore present cause. The concept of present cause does not exist in conventional nor alternative medicine, which studies past causes and potential causes while often avoiding cure causes. A cure cause is the cause which, when addressed, results in a cure. Most cure causes are addressed by actions that improve the healthiness of the patient.
There are two basic types of present causes - and two basic types of cures:
a. Attribute causes are addressed by an action that changes, transforms the cause such that it no longer causes signs and symptoms of illness. The attribute cause of an illness might be present in the body, the mind, the spirits, the communities or the environment of the patient.
b. Process causes are addressed by an ongoing process that changes, transforms the process cause such that it no longer causes signs and symptoms of illness. Process causes of illness can be present in diet, body, mind, spirits, communities or environments of the patient.
Most patent medicines are designed to address signs and symptoms of illness, not present causes. Patent medicines are limited to addressing causes in the body of the patient and cannot affect causes in the patient's diet, mind, spirits, communities, or environments.
3. Treatments for Signs, Symptoms, and Consequences of Illness
Treatments address signs, symptoms, and consequences of illness - rarely addressing cause. Patent medicines are usually designed to address physical - bodily - signs and symptoms of illness. Only in a very few cases, like an antibiotic, does a patent medicine also addresses cause, and potentially cure the illness.
Healthy actions, on the other hand, can address signs, symptoms, and consequences of illness in body, mind, spirits, and communities of the patient. In addition, healthy actions to address signs, symptoms, and consequences often also address cause - and can cure.
4. Caring for Patients
Caring for patients comes from communities. A pet dog or cat can provide more care for its injured owner than can a patent medicine, because patent medicines are not alive. Caring comes from friends and family - and only from the medical profession when local caring is not sufficient.
Patent medicines don't care, although they might be administered as part of patient care.
5. Curing Illness and Disease
Curing is accomplished by addressing the cause of an illness. Causes of illness can be present in diet, body, mind, spirits, communities, and environments of the patient. Most patent medicines are designed to affect the bodily signs and symptoms of disease, not the causes - and have little chance of curing. An illness is cured when no more treatments and no more caring is required for that specific case of illness.
Most patent medicines make no claim to cure and cannot cure any disease. The patent medicine paradigm is so devoid of cures that even diseases like the common cold, a hangover, influenza, measles, COVID, and more, are easily cured with healthiness but classed as "there is no cure for..." Most diseases today are considered incurable. Cured is not even medically testable for any non-infectious disease like arthritis, back pain, cancer, Crohn's, depression, diabetes, epilepsy, fibromyalgia, gout, heart disease and hypertension, Lyme disease... we don't even have a test of cured for obesity or scurvy. Without a test of cured, no cures can be found. How many cures have been discovered in the last ten years? twenty? thirty? fifty? What are their names? The Nobel Prize in Medicine, in its 130 plus year history has awarded a single prize to a cure. Patent medicines, as a rule, to not cure.
Most cures come from health, from healthy actions, activities. From natural healthy processes. We each suffer hundreds, perhaps thousands of illnesses in our lifetime. Most are easily cured. Only a few see a doctor. Most doctors avoid the word cure, disavow cures.
New Medicines
Patent medicines are new by design, and as Nassim Nicholas Taleb advised in Antifragile, most new things don't last. Why? Because when they are new, we don't know their faults, and Taleb advises, "The problem in deciding whether a scientific result or a new “innovation” is a breakthrough, that is, the opposite of noise, is that one needs to see all aspects of the idea—and there is always some opacity that time, and only time, can dissipate." By the time we know the entirety of knowledge about a new patent medicine, the patent has expired, and nobody cares. New things are dangerous, often deadly. There are many reasons why patent medicines claim to be "Safe and Effective" - because many are soon proven to be dangerous and ineffective, so that a new "Safe and Effective" claim can replace them.
Theory of Cure
I am a student of cure. I don't claim to cure people - that is illegal in the current patent medicines paradigm. I study the theory of cures, curing, and cured.
The best cures come from caring for and improving our healthiness in every way possible: healthing our diets, bodies, minds, spirits, communities, and our internal and external environments (sometimes called our "terrain").
Healthing is the best medicine, the best of preventative, the best treatment, the best cure.
ps. Don't call me a conspiracy theorist...
*1. Deadly Medicines and Organised Crime: How Big Pharma Has Corrupted Healthcare, Peter Gotzsche, 2019
