Whites , Pots and kettles.

A pet gripe of mine is the ignorance with which certain people spew half baked nonsense around in this country. Its especially annoying when the ignorant are convinced that they have rationality on their side. I'm daily exposed to this in no better form than those who still cry foul over "Dr Beetroot".

For those not in the know , the ex South African minister of health proposed as part of a hollistic approach to fighting Hiv/Aids that it would of course be wise to suggest that people eat a vitamin rich diet (including beetroot and the natural antibiotic garlic) in order to help boost their immune systems. This was said in the context of africa where the diet is notoriously limited to meat and carbohydrates. Of course the media , as always , jumped on the opportunity to lose their collective minds and exitedly stated she'd claimed beetroot and garlic work as a cure for aids. To any sane person , informed person , you immedietly praised her statement and laughed off the silly media. But South Africa is not a country known for it's sanity or informed people. So around everyone ran jumping for joy that they had a new myth to spread about black people's worldview (the black people en masse raped children to try and get rid of aids myth had even began to seem a little crazy to them by now.)

As I said in one of my first articles on this blog , the issue of HIV and AIDS is far more complex than your layman understands. I recently came across this article which I feel might help explain to you why it's crucial that you do not let the message get lost in your personal agenda. As of right now ,to this very day , vitamins have proven to be the most effective fighters against hiv turning into full blown aids. Much more so than anti-retrovirals (extremely ineffective in people with poor diets) or anything shoved down our throats by the big pharmaceutical corporations. The problem is there can be no patents and therefore no money from simple things like beetroot , carrots and garlic. So it's hardly in their financial interest to advertise how effective they are (extremely) , and very much so in their interest to try and discourage their use. Healthy people aren't big consumers of pharmiceutical products. Any if you think I'm being cynical in my assessment of their motives .....well......grow the F#ck up.

Anyway....after reading this I hope that you'll all feel the appropriate amount of shame and next time think a little more before you swallow anything the media sells you ...not even to mention the pharmaceutical companies.

What's the difference between AIDS research and five-hundred dollar hammers bought by the Pentagon? The public has received more honest value from the hammers.

Research and conferences open and close with still no AIDS cure in sight. So we go on, spending vastly more money per patient looking for a cure for AIDS than we do even for cancer, even though cancer kills over ten times as many Americans. And cancer research itself has been largely inconclusive. After all, have you heard of a really reliable cure for cancer? But money isn't the problem. The $1,967 million the Public Health Service says was spent in the U.S. on AIDS in 1992 was only wasted because it produced virtually nothing to stop people from dying.

Depressing indeed is the sentence of death implicit with the diagnosis of either cancer or "HIV positive". Go get medical treatment, yet expect to actually get little more than hope. Hope might be in the form of knowing that not everyone that is HIV positive ends up with full-blown AIDS. AIDS related complex (ARC) and carrier patients exist. Half of all HIV-positive individuals are still free of disease after ten years (Haney, D. in Rochester, NY Democrat and Chronicle, February 13, 1994). Why have they not yet developed AIDS?

Maybe it is because some people have stronger immune systems. In that case, it is logical to go out of our way to build up the immune system of any AIDS patient. The body's natural defense system, which is so weakened by the AIDS virus, is highly dependent on that individual's nutrition. The Standard American Diet obviously won't cure AIDS. Concentrated nutrition research might. Just how much research has been funded to see how well large doses of vitamins do fighting aids? Very little. Drug research, yes. But not megavitamin research. Can a weak immune system really be due to a deficiency of AZT? No, but it might indeed be due to nutritional deficiency.

Robert Cathcart, M.D. in California treats AIDS patients with up to 200,000 milligrams (mg) of vitamin C a DAY. His findings are that even advanced AIDS patients live significantly longer and have far fewer symptoms. Imagine what prompt, large doses of vitamin C might accomplish in a recently diagnosed HIV positive individual.

Jean Carper's nationally syndicated column (February 24, 1993) reported that "heavy doses of beta carotene pills, 180 mg a day taken for a month, boosted the immune functioning of HIV-infected patients." If you are therefore thinking that carrot juice alone may have more power against AIDS than all the drugs put together, you may be right.

It gets even better. A seven year long Johns Hopkins medical school study of 281 HIV positive men showed that those taking vitamins had only about ONE HALF as many new AIDS outbreaks as those not taking supplements. Imagine: a 50 percent reduction in AIDS cases just from vitamins! The real wonder is that the dosages used were so small: only 715 milligrams of vitamin C a day, and about 5 times the US RDA of the B-vitamins and beta carotene. Larger amounts would almost certainly save still more lives (Neil Graham, M.D. in AMERICAN JOURNAL OF EPIDEMIOLOGY, December, 1993).

The last thing the medical profession needs is to prove Voltaire correct when he bitterly commented that "Doctors give drugs of which they know little, into bodies of which they know less, for diseases of which they know nothing." Nutrition poses a tremendous threat to medicine and pharmacology. If large doses of vitamins can do a better job than drugs, then it is an embarrassment to health professionals who have maintained "you don't need vitamin pills; just eat a balanced diet."

It goes beyond this, though. When vitamins outperform drugs, then big money is at risk. Vitamin C costs less than $20 a POUND for pure crystals. Multiple vitamin pills cost just pennies each. Carrots grow in your garden. If these common nutrients work, they certainly cannot be patented by a drug company. No potential for profit? Then no interest OR FUNDING for research. And AIDS patients continue to die.

Only one thing matters, and that is results. Even the small amount of nutritional research done has shown more promise than heavily funded medical research. The public has been told to wait for and try out new drugs as they come along. That same public has been told to NOT try vitamins. There is a bolt loose here somewhere. For the HIV positive individual, and certainly for the AIDS patient, it must be "any port in a storm." Vitamin therapy may indeed prove to be a safe harbor for many who are adrift with HIV.


Peace and love
Rooster