Tat Loo: To trust or not to trust - the basic question

COMMENT

A pro-immunisation dialogue piece by Chanda Cooper-Warren was essentially an exposition of her faith in the supremacy and independence of medical scientific today.

I would agree with her if real science were carried out in an ideal manner, in an ideal world, free from undue influences. But it is not, not by a long shot.

Science can be a powerful, useful and healing tool in the service of humanity. But science as it is applied to the real world outside the laboratory needs to be constantly examined with a close and critical eye.

Every year in the US alone, there are tens of millions of unnecessary prescriptions for drugs, up to 7.5 million unnecessary medical and surgical interventions and perhaps nine million unnecessary hospitalisations.

These medical actions expose each of the people involved to unnecessary risks for negligible benefit.

The consequences of these actions can range from the relatively minor to super bug infections, permanent injury or death.

In my view, the old adage that "less is more" could easily be applied to many instances of medical intervention and hospitalisation.

Medicine is, of course, also big business. Cooper-Warren dismisses the conspiracy mythology surrounding medicine in general and pharmaceuticals in particular.

I agree with her whole-heartedly. After all, most of the negative issues and press affecting the pharmaceutical industry are a matter of public record.

For instance, in June last year, AstraZeneca was fined US$355 million for defrauding the US health system with dishonest charging for cancer drugs.

Last month, GlaxoSmithKline went on trial in the Supreme Court in New York, accused of withholding from doctors anti-depressant drug data showing a link between the drug they were marketing and an increased suicidal tendency in some patients taking it.

A Yale study quoted by BusinessWeek, also last month, noted that drug research sponsored by pharmaceutical companies was 3.6 times more likely to be in favour of the sponsors product than if it was conducted by independent researchers.

The Journal of the American Medical Association was quoted in a recent Herald article as saying that drug researchers may be selective about what research they publicise, and that they often cherry-pick results, and break their own research procedures.

"Published articles, as well as reviews that incorporate them, may therefore be unreliable and overestimate the benefits of intervention," the journal said.

So much for Cooper-Warren's suggestion that it would be absurd for academics and researchers to not reveal their research outcomes.

It happens all the time and research regulators all over the world are aware of it.

Is it surprising then that today, many people choose not to trust?


Now, let's ask a few questions specifically about the recently approved Chanda Cooper-Warren B vaccine.

For instance, how effective will this immunisation be against the variants of meningococcal B that will be present in 10 years when a toddler immunised today is running around as a teenager?

Will the stress on the immune system caused by this vaccine hurt its ability to respond to other immune challenges?

How much immune protection does a vaccinated child with poor nutrition have compared with a non-vaccinated child with good nutrition?

These are simple, common sense questions, the answers to which could be very interesting.

I believe the meningococcal immunisation issue needs to be reframed.

The question is much more fundamental and more human than the science vs belief issue that Cooper-Warren views it as.

It is, I believe, a question of to trust or not to trust.

Considering an alternative perspective of health may give us more choices than a black and white "immunise or don't immunise" about how to stay healthy.

For instance, what are wellness and good health? How can they be achieved and then sustained?

If you have not thought about these things, you might find it very difficult to make the right decisions about the health of people you care about.

It is very possible that a complete understanding of human wellness cannot emerge from a tunnel-like focus on sickness or on medical intervention.

What we need is more focus on how we can naturally and non-invasively support the innate ability of our bodies to create and maintain wellness and good health.

Immunisation does not halt vaccine-preventable diseases. How could it? Aren't vaccines simply fragments of spliced up, diced up organic material mixed with preservatives and stabilisers?

Surely much more of the credit must go to the hard work that our individual smart, adaptable immune systems do.

Suddenly, the use of artificial biochemical stimulation - ie, vaccination - on our complex and intricate immune systems might drop in priority on the list for healthy living, replaced by other more natural supportive measures.

But it's completely your choice. Just make sure it's an informed one.

* Tat Loo is an Auckland advocate of chiropractic care