Auto-immune disorders

Have you ever wondered how true is this medical concept?

In the mid ‘50s, Wietebski et al came up with four postulates ( = concepts which can be used to reasonably explain otherwise inexplicable phenomena). They included similar conditions induced in laboratory animals and antibodies found against a specific human organ eg thyroid, colon, liver and so on.

Over the following decades three trends became clear: a) the incidence of “autoimmune” diseases eg inflammatory arthritis, diabetes, colitis, psoriasis, leukaemia and other cancers, to mention but a few, has seen a sharp increase b) doctors and patients have resigned in accepting this explanation as “fact”, treating these conditions as “incurable” c) those who dared explore other possibilities or solutions have been decried as being “unscientific” or “spontaneous resolutions” and are flatly dismissed.

A few researchers, unaffected by medical guidelines and dogma, have raised questions about the validity of this concept (having observed many such examples of improvement in such disorders, using a basic logical analysis, I thought that I had discovered something new - but I was wrong to think I was the first!).

So, the bottom line is that the so-called “evidence based” Medicine is perfectly suitable in comparing the efficacy of a drug against another one and/or against placebo BUT, it is totally hopeless in searching for environmental influences on health or some simple natural solutions to problems haunting modern day humans.

We refuse to see the same pattern in smoking and asbestos in cancer as with traffic and other chemical pollutants in asthma, cardiovascular disease and cancer; we see another inexplicable rise in childhood type I diabetes but we ignore the possible links with milk proteins as we do with alcohol in many other chronic conditions.

As a patient, I want my doctors to sort out my health problem, regardless to whether or not the means used are believed to be “scientific” or not, not to perpetuate it by piling up a few long term medications, which always have a finite benefit and a risk of side effects.

Is this a classic case of “scientific purity” being rated as a higher priority, than a person’s individual wellbeing?

I can feel my old friend Hippocrates, turning in his grave….