Wednesday 20 August 2008

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

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Like I said before, you and I will find much to disagree on, but this kind of article and your associated comments I can relate to. The article itself has a common sense appeal to me that warrants further investigation, and I quite like the fact that you've chosen to defend what most people would consider to be a horribly incompetant health minister in a manner that suggests you don't necessarily agree with the 'ol gal, but at least you're willing to consider the message even if it means a longer time to decode than an eloquently phrased, scientifically sound, medical journal would try and put it. I've given her the benefit of the doubt on this one (lets be honest, there's plenty more ammunition that can be used to debate her competence), as given the general level of intelligence in SA's population, its not surprising that she needs to pitch the idea at a level that a child understands, and responsible reporting would have picked that and helped with getting the real message across instead of chirping as it does

UB

Anonymous said...

Good to know UB (without sarcasm). Of course you must always make up your own mind , but that's best done with the facts , not by reading a sensationalistic media hyped up with a racist agenda.

I don't know if you remember when they called mbeki an AIDs denialist..... nothing could be further from the truth. They portrayed him as an uneducated hack who was spitting in the face of science......take a look at these videos to see what he really was trying to say ...( 3 parts)

http://kr.youtube.com/watch?v=nY_Pu2gvI-4

http://kr.youtube.com/watch?v=FZsTsTi2Jeg

http://kr.youtube.com/watch?v=FTJcv1WI6do

All this type of thing the more you look at it should make you more and more suspicious of the South African media.

Anonymous said...

So now u gonna tell me that a thieving (Likes gold watches from unconscious patients - Botswana incident) Minister of health who drank her previous liver to a pulp, and got pushed to the front of the queue to get a new one is an intelligent person with a full understanding of health aids & nutrition?

Ha ha ha...

Let the (intelligent) visitors to this blog decide for themselves how clever she is by reading some of her actual quotes:

http://www.southafrica.to/people/Quotes/Manto/MantoTshabalalaMsimang.htm


And then have a glance at:

http://www.badscience.net/2007/02/patrick-holford-food-is-better-than-medicine-south-africa-tour/

for some sobering info on vitamins & aids

You see mr Chicken, normal simple logic tells anyone with even half a brain that a person that has ANY disease will have a better chance of recuperation on a healthy diet than someone who is not eating a healthy diet.

And massive amounts of vitamins only creates expensive piss

And now you're probably gonna tell me that all these scientists in the medical field who has studied viruses for decades are all idiots?


Your birth certificate is an apology from the condom factory

Anonymous said...

Anon ...Don't go distorting what I've said and take it out of context...it's a cheap trick and exactly the one the media used to discredit these individual. You may be able to fool stupid people with this kind of talk , and lucky for you South Africa is full up of those. But don't waste my time...deal with what I've said , or don't bother.

It's makes perfect common sense that if you give someone with a bad diet and experiencing huge ammounts of stress (as one would if they were told they were hiv positive) anti retrovirals (some originally intended as chemical chemo therapies) that you are going to kill them faster than heal them. The issue needs to be dealt with hollistically from the groundroots , with all factors considered. That is all the ANC has ever proposed...anything different is in your mind. Of course they have a full understanding of health issues....do you think they are witch doctors or something ? Jesus....stop reading sites like south africa sucks...it's making you look ignorant.

Anonymous said...

Listen chicken,

Let me reply to ur response again:

I listened to the interview between Manto the Bantu and John Robbie on 702 talk radio myself, and she refused point blank to acknowledge that HIV causes aids. point. No grey area here. She doesn't have a clue. Don't you come and tell me i'm distorting the facts pal. The good Lord gave me two healthy ears to hear what people say.

South Africa is luckily NOT full of your type (procreation wouldn't exist...) and i'm not wasting your time, i'm talking to other readers of your pathetic blog and giving input from another perspective.

How can you have blog like this anyway, where people are given an opportunity to give their opinion, and when they do, and it differs from yours you tell them they're wasting your time? Talk about stupid! You give it new meaning.

You're quite obviously crept up so deep into the useless ANC gov's arse that if you hit Mbeki in the stomach you get a simultaneous punch in the face. That's probably where your 'globe trotting' funds come from.

There is no medical specialist that will give a malnourished individual huge amounts if anti retrovirals without making sure that the nutrition aspect is addressed as well. And this is DEFINITELY not the 'holistic perspective of your beloved ANC gov' (rather buy R60 billion worth of useless weapons and remeber asswipe, weapons are for killing people not healing people)

Let's not bullshit each other here:
The ANC gov (of which i'm sure you either work for or is a member of,)
Didn't (doesn't) want to admit that HIV causes aids, because they would put themselves in a position
where they could be taken to court for not supplying anti retrovirals.

I'll f^%%$kin read any site I like pal, and lastly i don't think the ANC are witch doctors, because they're even too f%^^&kin stupid to be witch doctors. The ONLY words they now are:

Kentucky
Mc Donalds
Nepotism
Corruption
Eish
What am i getting out of the deal?
Hau
Rooster
When's Lunch?
Just deny it!
Kentucky
Nando's
I'M Hungry!
emmmmm emmmmm emmmmm


etc. etc.

The Rooster said...

Go to youtube , look up thabo mbeki and aids. There is an hour long documentary in which Thabo Mbeki clarifies his view on Aids. Your comments about the ANC are actually absurb considering that in fact they do provide free antiretrovirals.....your argument falls flat at the first hurdle. If you want to take up this plight you should fight the greedy pharmaceutical companies who aggresivelly protect their patent rights and inflate prices. The inherent ethics here are that we're protecting the right to possessions over the right to life....and that's really sinister.