A very sensible approach, I agree. I’m intrigued to know (as a lifelong vegetarian given alot of stick from my meat eating colleagues!) whether there is in fact good evidence that avoiding meat does help boost the immune system?

Many thanks,

Emily.

I forgot two important points in the list of preventive measures above.
.
* In the western hemisphere, where sunlight is hard to come by, it is wise to expose oneself, at least for an hour’s sunlight daily, when avilable. Sunlight kills germs very effectively. Neils Finsen got his Nobel Prize in physiology in 1903 for showing that sunlight (UV rays) kills TB germs! Writing in the 2006 book “The Light Revolution” Richard Hobday (Findhorn Press Ltd) wonders as to why the benefits of sunlight are not made use of in medicine these days?

* In additon, sunlight helps the body to produce vitamin D, a vital amine, which stimulates the immune system, much needed during epidemics like H1N1 ‘Flu.

* Medical world seems to forget the path breaking contribution of an American Physician, Theobald Smith, who, as far back as 1888, propounded the “Grimm’s Law” of infections which states that while a “disease is directly proportionate to the virulence of the cause it is inversely proportionate to the resistance of the host.” This gave fillip to the new science of immunology although it did not take off until September 1981 when the “so-called” AIDS epidemic broke out.Improving the host resistance must be our mantra in this season. (Letter to Gage: quoted by him in his book Theobald Smith, Page 215)

The “science” of pseudo-science.

I liked the comments on my blog about the pseudo science in the blog. I am at a loss to know what science is all about? If science is what scientists do and publish here are such scientific bases (all quotes only) of what I wrote about 1) fear , 2) meat eating and immunity, and also 3) science of yoga.

1) “Research shows that fear can actually lower our immune system response. With the threat of a global pandemic, fear may be our worst enemy.”

“The psychological stressors of surgery deal a blow to the immune system, but this is hardly discussed in the medical community,” says Prof. Ben-Eliyahu. “Ours is among the first studies to show that psychological fear may be no less important than real physiological tissue damage in suppressing immune competence.”

2) With thousands of new studies and a better understanding of immunity, today’s experts agree that the link between emotion and immunity is robust. But it is also intricate and filled with surprises that open a dramatic new window on the nature of emotional health.
3) Recent studies have linked maternal consumption of an unbalanced high-protein, low-carbohydrate diet in late pregnancy with raised adult blood pressure in the offspring. Because high-protein diets stimulate the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis, we hypothesized that an unbalanced maternal diet might increase maternal cortisol levels, exposing the fetus to excess cortisol and programming lifelong hypersecretion of cortisol. (one of the causes of immune depression-note mine)
4) NUTRITION AND IMMUNITY IN MAN by Lillian Langseth
ILSI Europe Concise Monographs, 1999 International Life Sciences Institute.
5) David Shannahoff-Khalsa’s scientific articles on yoga are many, with some published by the American Journal of Physiology, CNS Spectrums:The International Journal of Neuropsychiatric Medicine, Brief Treatment and Crisis Intervention (in press), International Journal of Psychophysiology, International Journal of Neuroscience, Life Sciences, Biological Psychology, Human Neurobiology, Gastroenterology Nursing, Subtle Energies and Energy Medicine Journal, IEEE Journal of Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society, Physical Review E, Cancer Research, Biochemistry, and the Journal of Organic Chemistry. He has also contributed chapters to prestigious medical texts, two include Marcel Dekker, Inc. books – OBSESSIVE COMPULSIVE DISORDERS: Diagnosis, Etiology, and Treatment, and STRESS: NEUROBIOLOGY AND NEUROENDOCRINOLOGY.
6) Wahbeh, H., Elsas, S.-M, Oken, B. S. (2008). Mind-body interventions: Applications in neurology. Neurology 70: 2321-2328 [Abstract] [Full text]
7) lader, C A, Reddel, H K, Spencer, L M, Belousova, E G, Armour, C L, Bosnic-Anticevich, S Z, Thien, F C K, Jenkins, C R (2006). Double blind randomised controlled trial of two different breathing techniques in the management of asthma. Thorax 61: 651-656
Br Med J (Clin Res Ed) 1985;291:1077-1079 (19 October), doi:10.1136/bmj.291.6502.1077 Yoga for bronchial asthma: a controlled study. R Nagarathna, H R Nagendra

Thank you for letting me know what science is. I have recorded some of my thoughts hereunder for readers’ kind consideration. Debate, like the one that is possible, thanks to BMJ blogs, is a great tool to express one’s opinions without fear or favour. All need not agree with one’s views but everyone should respect other’s views for knowledge to grow; the latter happens most of the time by refuting false dogmas and not by repeating known facts. Here I submit most humbly some of my thoughts in this area.
SCIENCE Vs SCIENTISM.
“The central problem of our age is how to act decisively in the absence of certainty.”
Bertrand Russell.
Science and scientific temper simply mean curiosity. They are efforts to get to know the secrets of Nature. Many a time Nature refuses to fully divulge her secrets when one goes very close. Children, before they start schooling, are curious but, when they come out they become, by and large, just repetitive robots because of their brainwashing in schools about the accepted norms in science. Occasionally, there are exceptions, but their numbers are very small. To swim against the current is not easy, either. Research depends on grant money; most grants come either from the government or industry. Both masters would like their interests guarded. Refutative research, which tries to demolish the scientific myths, is not funded and so is nipped in the bud. Publishing the data from those studies is almost impossible in the present atmosphere.1 Even one’s position in a University might be threatened!

Scientism, on the contrary, is like a powerful religion that tries to influence people’s understanding of this Universe in the accepted norms. Any attempt to show evidence to the contrary is being hushed up with all the might at their command. Scientism was helped by the early successes of technology based on the present scientific paradigm. Society venerates science for the simple reason that we have the telephone, electricity, easy transportation, satellites, space ships, nuclear war heads and the computers et cetera, thanks to the conventional scientific paradigm. In addition, there is this big money business in scientific technology. Powerful countries are sold to scientism because they have been able to build destructive weapons, thanks to scientism. These weapons give the countries enormous powers to dominate the world. The lure of medals and prizes and the large amount of money involved in some of the prizes like the Nobel have even made people fake research findings or plagiarize them from others without acknowledging the original source.2

That is how science got a clean chit from society. Let us examine the present strong pillars of science to see how strong and solid they are. The Big Bang, origin and evolution of the human species, the relativity theory and, quantum mechanics are those four pillars.3 Reductionism and statistics are the pillars of medical science and biology.4 Darwin’s theory of evolution is found wanting in many areas. Evolution inside a species is different from evolution of a new species; a bird from a fish, for example. The latter needs thousands of biochemical reactions that individually will have no survival advantage when the ultimate new species arrives by accident.5 The efforts by Richard Dawkins to sell Darwinism to the public are not very scientific either. One example of the very complicated eye developing from a small depression in the earlier species looks rather too simplistic.6

The relativity theory, first developed by a German physicist, Lorenz along with the French mathematician, Poincare, had a significant contribution also from the famous Irish mathematician, Fitzgerald.7 Albert Einstein, the deified guru of physics, had very little to do with it. Einstein, however, had contributed immensely to Brownian movement, photoelectric effect and movement of ions in solutions.8 Einstein giving away his Nobel Prize money to his first wife, whom he had divorced by then, gives credence to the view, held by some close confidents, that the original Nobel paper of Einstein did have his wife’s name as the first author, which must have disappeared later. 9 Recent powerful radio telescopes, like the Hubble’s, have further deepened the mystery by showing that more than 95% of matter and energy are occult and do not follow our theories in physics!

Be that as it may, the question raised by Prof. Dingle of the London University about the theory remains unanswered so far.10 The assumption in the theory that there is same velocity of light independent of the direction of measurement with respect to the motion of the earth has recently been found to be inconsistent.11 The jewel in the crown of physics, the quantum theory, does not seem to have much connection to reality. We still do not have answers to questions like a) what is a wave function? b) In the Schrödinger’s equation what are the waves “of” and what are the waves “in”? and third c) what is an electron?12 Who has seen an electron?
The basic problem in the theory of evolution would be, if we accept that there is no design and there is no teleology as sold by the scientific establishment, to explain the prior existence of the DNA! The accepted laws of chemistry need chance collisions between simpler constituents.13 Darwin’s book Descent of Man makes it mandatory for us to discount any design. Dawkin’s book The Blind Watchmaker makes an effort to clarify some of these questions!14 Lamarck must have had his last laugh in his grave when he came to know that rats developed diabetes following destruction of their pancreas by drugs: they then passed the disease on to their offsprings-evolution through inheritance of acquired characteristics-Lamarckism.15 One would benefit a lot by understanding the word Entelechy-spontaneous development of order, as opposed to entropy-disorder, first coined by the German biologist, Driesch (1867-1941).16

NASA claims that there is no life anywhere outside the Earth, but they could not discount bacterial life deep down the surface of Mars. There are some indicators to that possibility in the recent works. Mathematics, the foundation of all sciences, including the King of sciences, physics, can not explain many of our experiences in life. Let me quote Albert Einstein himself here: “Insofar as the propositions of mathematics give an account of reality, they are not certain; and insofar as they are certain, they do not describe reality.”17 If there is no design how could a high school student, Ramanujam, write down large number of new and original theorems, some of which he could prove but, some others he simply stated as true, and were later proved by other mathematicians at the Cambridge University?18

The remarkable picture of that gigantic explosion, the Big Bang that began the Universe: the latter expanding ever since, is understood even by a school boy/girl. What happened before the Big Bang?19 Maddox, the then editor of Nature, in 1989 did write that Big Bang theory would be forgotten by 2000 AD. Edwin Hubble did put forward arguments against the theory but the big one bangs on!20 The Tired Light hypothesis shows that the Universe is not expanding. All that we can say about the universe today is that it is very, very old. The million dollar question as to how the world began remains unanswered!21 Big bang and the Black holes make good material for lay books that are sold like hot cakes and make their authors very rich, but most of that stuff is still in the realm of science fiction!22, 23

Science deals with our five senses only. What the senses can not measure and observe does not make science in the present paradigm. However, the observers’ consciousness impinges on the findings. An electron is what it is depending on who looks at it! When no one is looking at the electron, no one knows what the electron does!24, 25 There are a lot of things in this universe that our five senses can not realize and they exist all the same. Science does accept that what is known today could be proven wrong or replaced by a new theory tomorrow, but to say that what we don’t know today (or what does not fit into the present paradigm) is unscientific is illogical. But that is exactly what scientism is trying to do.

To give a few day-today examples: we are not able to measure our thoughts, our emotions, and many of our actions based on those emotions and thoughts. Do they, then, fall out side the realm of science? Do thoughts exist? Do emotions have any role in human physiology?26 If the answer is yes, then we need a change of paradigm in science, at least in medical science, where the RCTs (randomized controlled studies) have been sold as the last word in medical research. The truth is that there is everything wrong with this approach. No two human beings could be compared based on a few of their phenotypical features. The results are there for all to see. Most, if not all, RCTs have given unreliable results in the long run. But look at the following in the encyclopaedia of RCTs published by the establishment!

“A major difficulty in dealing with trial results comes from commercial, political and/or academic pressure. Most trials are expensive to run, and will be the result of significant previous research, which is itself not cheap. There may be a political issue at stake (cf. MMR vaccine) or vested interests (cf. homeopathy). In such cases there is great pressure to interpret results in a way which suits the viewer, and great care must be taken by researchers to maintain emphasis on clinical facts.
Most studies start with a ‘null hypothesis’ which is being tested (usually along the lines of ‘Our new treatment x cures as many patients as existing treatment y’) and an alternative hypothesis (‘x cures more patients than y’). The analysis at the end will give a statistical likelihood, based on the facts, of whether the null hypothesis can be safely rejected (saying that the new treatment does, in fact, result in more cures). Nevertheless this is only a statistical likelihood, so false negatives and false positives are possible. These are generally set an acceptable level (e.g., 1% chance that it was a false result). However, this risk is cumulative. There is a tendency for these two to be seized on by those who need that proof for their point of view.”27
Before we do more damage to mankind by blindly following the reductionist paradigm, at least in medical sciences, let us think of a new paradigm.

Let research be directed to find out the myths and dogmas in the present paradigm to replace them with newer ideas and findings that might make life easier for mankind. Of course, it might destroy our “rice bowl” for the moment, but we might get a bigger bowl in future. Scientific temper should make us identify the false dogmas and enable us to destroy them. Science is change and what does not change is not science. Professor John O’M Bockris so beautifully describes the new paradigm shift that is needed in science in his classic The New Paradigm.3 What does not change becomes religion. That is why I sometimes feel that scientism is a kind of religion we are made to follow blindly. Present science is excited about nanobots but does not bother about our giga problems like environmental pollution, abject poverty of the majority, preventable illnesses which kill the poor and unemployment of the majority!

It is preposterous that medical science does not worry about health promotion, while it goes overboard about disease interventions, many of which make the patient worse! Sir William Osler had warned us not to intervene when the patient is doing well, but that is exactly what we do today! Medicine does not believe in the wellness concept. Everyone is ill unless proved otherwise is the present paradigm, thanks to the total body scanners. Routine check up is the biggest medical industry, while we know that predicting the future is impossible in a dynamic human system using a few data of the initial state. Even changing those parameters might not hold good as time evolves.28 Changing those parameters might even harm patients in the long run, while it is mandatory to do so if the patient is symptomatic and is suffering, because doctors are here to “cure rarely, comfort mostly but to console always.”

The effort here is not to belittle the great strides science has made in the last two centuries. The stress here is to let the reader know that there is so much noise in this area that almost drowns the signal! Unless we silence those noises and try to pick the signals science will not progress and mankind will still be in the dark.29, 30 Even if one person is stimulated to think on those lines, the purpose of writing this will have been achieved, despite the fact that 99% of the readers would be angry or unhappy about the contents. Conventional journals would hesitate to publish this piece for obvious reasons-their peer reviewers will not permit it and the editors dare not take the responsibility themselves!

“Certainty generally is illusion and repose is not the destiny of mankind.”
Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.

“A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.”
Max Planck
BIBLIOGRAPHY.

1) Hegde BM. Need for a change in medical paradigm. Proc. Royal Coll. Physi. Edinb. 1993; 23: 9-12.
2) Campbell EG, Louis KS, Blumenthal D. looking a gift horse in the mouth. JAMA 1999; 279: 995-999.
3) Bockris J O’M. The New Paradigm. A&M Publishers, College Street, Texas. 2005.
4) Milloy S. Science without Sense. Cato Institute, 1997, Washington DC.
5) Behe MJ. Darwin’s Black Box. Free Press, New York, 1996
6) Dawkins R. The Blind Watchmaker. WW Norton and Co. 1996.
7) Poincare JH. Relativity theory before Einstein. Arch. Netherlands Sci. 1900; 2: 232.
Hey T and Walters P. Einstein’s Mirror. Cambridge University Press, 1997.
9) Bjerknes C. Einstein as a plagiarist. XTX Corp. Downess Grove. IL. 2002.
10) Dingle H. Science at the cross roads-Doubting relativity. Martin and O’Keefe. London, 1972. (also. Dingle’s unanswered question. Nature August 31, 1973)
11) Michelson AA and Morley EW. Velocity of light in various directions compared to the direction of movement of the earth. Am. J. Sci 1887; 3: 333
12) Lindley D. Where does the quantum weirdness go? Basic Books 1996.
13) Steinman G and Cole MN. Synthesis of biologically pertinent peptides under possible primordial conditions. Proceedings National Academy of Sciences of USA. 1967.
14) Milton R. Shattering the myth of Darwinism Park Street Press, 1997.
15) Lamarque JR. Natural History. Daterville, 1815, Paris.
16) Freyhofer HH. The vitalism of Hans Driesch: The success and decline of a scientific theory. Peter Lang Publishing. 1982.
17) Hey T and Walters P. Einstein’s Mirror. Cambridge University Press. 1997.
18) Kanigel R. The Man who knew Infinity- A life of the genius Ramanujam. Washington Square Press April 1991.
19) Lorenz H, Mie G. in Paula La Violette, Beyond the Big Bang. Park Street Press, Rochester, Vermont, 1995.
20) Tully RB. Origin of the Hubble Constant Controversy. Nature 1988; 334: 209.
21) Lerner E, the Big Bang never happened! Vintage Books. 1991.
22) Hawking S. A Brief History of Time. Bantum Books, 2000.
23) Weinberg S. The First Three Minutes. Basic Books, New York, 1997.
24) Schrödinger E. Science and Humanism Cambridge University Press. 1954.
25) Wigner EP. Consciousness affects wave function in The Scientist Speculates (ed. Good IT) Heinemann, London, 1961.
26) Penrose R. Shadows of the mind. Oxford University Press. 1994
27) Randomized controlled trial –www. wikipedia.org/wiki/randomised controlled trials.

28) Firth WJ. Chaos-predicting the unpredictable. BMJ 1991; 303: 1565-1568
29) Pratt D. Consciousness, Causality, and new Physics. Soc. Sci. Explorer 1979; 11: 67-78.
30) Kaul. PN. Mind over Matter. The Scientist 2003; 17: 8.

“He has the right to criticize who has the heart to help, “ said Abraham Lincoln.
I take all criticism by well meaning friends in that way with malice towards none. My innocent statement in the blog: “avoid meat, if you can,” has been the most criticized pseudo-science. Any response-positive or negative- makes one grow and responsiveness is the key to growth. I have given hereunder some more studies and opinions about meat eating and the immune system. One could always be blamed for selective references, as it should be. I also have a conflict of interest in that I am a converted vegetarian for the last 25 years and have enjoyed every minute of that. I became a vegetarian to see if it is possible to do so before advising patients-to walk my talk.
1)“You’ll live longer. If you switch from the standard American diet to a vegetarian diet, you can add about 13 healthy years to your life, says Michael F. Roizen, MD, author of The RealAge Diet: Make Yourself Younger with What You Eat. “People who consume saturated, four-legged fat have a shorter life span and more disability at the end of their lives. Animal products clog your arteries, zap your energy and SLOW DOWN YOUR IMMUNE SYSTEM. Meat eaters also experience accelerated cognitive and sexual dysfunction at a younger age.” In Listen to your hormones by Abraham Kryger Pages 102 &103.

• 2) “You can further modify your diet by eating less saturated fat and animal protein (particularly red meat), by limiting dairy products. Try eliminating red meat from your diet or, if necessary, eat it no more than once every 10 days. Also eliminate or reduce your intake of fried meats. Try to replace the meats in your diet with servings of fish, particularly oily fish such as salmon. (Salmon is also reported to be bad by some authors)
• Eat more fruits and vegetables. Green leafy vegetables such as broccoli are very rich in antioxidants. Add several servings a week to your diet. Do not overcook them and think of creative ways to prepare them. Add more servings of other fruits and vegetables to your diet, as they are rich sources of antioxidants as well………
If you follow these guidelines, you will move your diet in the proper direction toward protecting your immune system. In Cleveland Clinic.org.
my.clevelandclinic.org/disorders/chronic_fatigue_syndrome/hic_Diet_Exercise_Stress_and_the_Immune_System.aspx – 76k –

3)“Woodson Merrell, MD, director of integrative medicine at Beth Israel Medical Center in New York City. Says, “The strength of our immune system is what makes the difference between who gets sick and who doesn’t.,” Science recognizes that 80% of your immune system is actually living in the digestive tract. With that being said, it seems relevant to sustain everything between points ‘A’ and ‘B’. This can be achieved by simply avoiding foods which weaken immunity and to welcome those that do. Sometimes we are its worst foe. Proper nutrition is important for an energetic immune system. By way of the Western diet we’ve become malnourished…. “

4) In this new study, National Cancer Institute researchers looked at the diets of more than half a million people aged 50 to 71 and found that those who ate 4 ounces of red meat a day—about the size of a small hamburger—were the most likely to die from heart disease, cancer, and all causes over the next 10 years. Beef, pork, bacon, sausage, cold cuts, hot dogs, and other red or processed meats all increased the odds of premature death.
The study authors also noted that the increased death rates found in study participants may be “conservative estimates because red and processed meat consumption may be higher in the general population.”
Santos MS, Lichtenstein AH, Leka LS, Goldin B, Schaefer EJ, Meydani SN. Immunological effects of low-fat diets with and without weight loss. J Am Coll Nutr 2003;22:174-82.

5) In the future, Dr. Mills hopes to delve into a new area of interest where little research has been done but the anecdotal evidence looks promising: diet and immunity. When Dr. Mills works with HIV and AIDS patients at clinics, he’s noticed that those who go vegetarian seem to improve, with increased energy and higher T-cell counts. “Medical literature supports a plant-based diet as being better for overall immune system function,” Dr. Mills says. “So its effect on patients with HIV is something I’d very much like to examine in the future.” Medical research shows conclusively that a plant-based diet reduces chronic disease risk, so that’s something I absolutely encourage my patients to move toward,” says Dr. Mills, a graduate of Stanford University School of Medicine, who became interested in the connection between diet and health when he went vegetarian as a teenager. “
R Sinha, AJ Cross, BI Graubard, MF Leitzmann, A … – Archives of Internal Medicine, 2009 – Am Med Assoc
Methods: The study population included the National Institutes of Health–AARP
(formerly known as the Ameri- can Association of Retired Persons) Diet and
Health Study cohort of half a million people aged 50 to 71 years at base- …
Cited by 1 – Related articles – Web Search
Meat Intake and Mortality: A Prospective Study of Over Half a Million People (Arch. Int. Med 2009; 169: 562-571.

Instead of going on like this, I think we can call it a day here. I do not mind being called a pseudo-scientist. I am reminded of Rudyard Kipling’s poem “IF”-I could keep my head. One can not be a reactive person. It was a very educative exercise in all. I have had to read up a lot about meat eating and the immune system, which I would not have done otherwise. I am grateful.

To Peter Flegg,

Medical history clearly shows that if doctors of the time only concentrate on the totality of available peer-reviewed scientific “evidence”, no progress would be made.

This woman’s work http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/29/health/research/29cancer.html is only being looked at because “looking at the totality of peer reviewed medical articles” is getting oncologists nowhere.

The ordinary people in the street, through ludicrous changes in definitions of “epidemic” by WHO, and by diligiently reading open debate such as this, in BMJ, are quickly realising that in diverse respects the current medical system (emperor) has no clothes.

It is fortunate for people that there are many, like Dr Hedge, who don’t wear the blinkers which so hampers the thinking of the average NHS employee today. It’s also fortunate for some patients in the NHS, that there are some above average employees, who keep the system’s handbook looked away and unread.

Long may that continue. Though I wonder if perhaps a day will come when in order to maintain control, the “system” will require that all doctor’s consulations are recorded and reviewed by “experts” who are familiar with the totality of peer reviewed “words” so that heretics like Hedge can be firmly nipped in the bud.