From: deputydog23x@gmail.com   
      
   CONCERNING ANTIBIOTICS AND THE GERM THEORY OF DISEASE   
      
   by Peter Morrell   
      
       
      
   Concerning Antibiotics and the Germ Theory of Disease   
   [July 2001]   
      
   Domination by Theory and Bacteriological Reductionism?   
      
   "In attempting to reduce the use of antibiotics for respiratory infections it   
   is profitable to look at the incidence of several of these problems. Ear   
   infections in the US have increased from 9.9 million in 1975 to 24.7 million   
   in 1990 (1). Though there    
   are no comparable large scale studies, sinus disease appears to be increasing   
   as well. All respiratory disease are primarilly caused by bacteria colonizing   
   the nasopharynx." [1]   
      
   9.9 million to 24.7 million in 25 years, being 149% increase over 25 years, is   
   a 6% annual rise in these conditions. Given the veritable blitz on the   
   bacterial world with antibiotics, sustained in rich countries like the US over   
   this very same period,    
   how can bacteria be the cause of these steeply rising infections? The one   
   datum supplied simply does not seem to warrant the conclusion drawn.   
      
   "Antibiotic use (and misuse) has soared since the first commercial versions   
   were introduced and now includes many non-medicinal applications. In 1954 two   
   million pounds were produced in the U.S.; today the figure exceeds 50 million   
   pounds." [2]   
      
   1954 to 1998 is 44 years; a shift from 2 million pounds [1 kg. = 2.2 lbs] to   
   50 million pounds is 48 million; an increase of 48 million over 44 years is   
   1.091 million per year and that represents an annual increase of 54.5%. It is   
   hard to interpret such    
   figures against those of ear infections given above, as these are global   
   figures for all antibiotics in the USA. However, some might say that a 6% rise   
   in such infections would be much higher without antibiotics. Others might say   
   such a war waged against    
   the microbial world is fundamentally unwinnable and therefore futile.   
      
   Let me open an historical window to gaze out of...   
      
   "Lest in the eager hunt for specifics against the bacillus, we lose sight of   
   that most important factor, the predisposition, the soil upon which the   
   bacilli seem to flourish...let the bacilli take care of themselves, let us   
   take care of our patients." [3]   
      
   "Physicians who criticized the proposal to ground therapeutics in bacteriology   
   especially feared that domination by theory would oversimplify practice...the   
   complexity of clinical phenomena and the exercise of judgment could not be   
   bypassed by    
   bacteriological reductionism." [4]   
      
   Has much progress in this view been made in 120 years?   
      
   "The flaws in nineteenth century bacteriology were evident to everyone. Why   
   did diphtheria bacilli cause disease in one person and not another whose   
   throat cultures showed the presence of virulent bacilli? How did bacilli   
   actually cause disease? All    
   physicians were ignorant of the answers to these and many other fundamental   
   questions." [5]   
      
   And patently still are.   
      
   "Physicians were less concerned with how and why a therapy worked than with   
   the demonstrable fact that a therapy was medically valid, demonstrable, and   
   consistent." [6]   
      
   Does not 'bacteriological reductionism' ignore, exclude and downgrade the   
   importance of previous medical history, general level of health, hygiene,   
   psycho-social factors, diet and lifestyle factors in the development of   
   infectious disease? Factors which,    
   in fact, create the very susceptibility to infection, which distinguish 'the   
   infected' as a category from 'the non-infected', not only in the same town,   
   but in the same house or family.   
      
   Therefore, we might conclude that bacteria, viruses, and other bugs are not   
   'primarily the cause of all infectious respiratory disease', but secondary,   
   tertiary or even merely associative causes.   
      
   Finally, Professor Warner gives another clue that might explain both why   
   physicians in the 1890s despised the Germ Theory, and why physicians today   
   give antibiotics by reflex:   
      
   "Therapeutic conformity, or at least avoidance of criticism, was important to   
   the young practitioner trying to gain approval...regular physicians' attitudes   
   towards therapeutic change were molded by a dialectic between their commitment   
   to progress and    
   their loyalty to tradition." [7]   
      
   Perhaps the force of conformity in medicine is far more powerful than the   
   desire to answer those 'fundamental questions' that Rothstein lists above or   
   to make progress in the use of antibiotics that Dr Jones suggests in his   
   e-letter.   
      
       
      
   Asking some fundamental questions   
      
   When Joseph Watine says, "let us hope that he does not forget that antibiotics   
   still have the ability to save the lives of many patients suffering from   
   bacterial respiratory diseases (legionellosis, tuberculosis, etc)." [8], I   
   would say it contains an    
   outer meaning and an inner meaning.   
      
   Joseph Watine, in making this statement, utters a declaration of his own   
   medical conformity in the presence of his medically qualified brethren, 'beats   
   the drum', and declares his belief in his own training and its underpinning   
   system of beliefs, like a    
   declaration of belief before members of the mother church.   
      
   If, 1000 years ago, I had criticised a dominant medical practice like purging,   
   medical practitioners would have similarly reacted and pronounced their belief   
   that above all, sickness was "regarded as the finger of Providence. God used   
   illness for a    
   multitude of higher purposes...as a punishment..." [9]. Disease "was routinely   
   interpreted as the consequence of sin, crime, or moral fault, as precipitated   
   by evil spirits, or as the work of black magic. Disease was thus personalized   
   and given a moral    
   or religious meaning." [10]. Doctors would also have declared the healing   
   power of Christ in the world, and that Antimony, prayer and fasting were the   
   sole cures.   
      
   Such a reaction is broadly similar to that of Joseph Watine. His remark not   
   only reveals the unquestioning and deeply conformist nature of medical   
   training, practice and belief, and the desire to be just another grey brick in   
   a uniformly grey wall - a    
   conformist who questions nothing - but it also   
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)