Pasteur

An article just came out about Pasteur that I just had to write about (you can read it here).

You may have noticed that I tend to collect a lot of negative information about vaccines (you can see most of it here), but that is because I find it is easier to collect as it becomes  available than it is to sift through the ginormous amount of propaganda interspersed with positive & negative studies when searching through the journal databases. I also feel that people have the right to know the negative info as well as the positive in order to make informed decisions about theirs & their family's health. Since vaccination is pushed so hard by physicians, governments, and the mainstream media, that leaves the negative to convey... because, in my experience, they usually won't tell you.

Pasteur is interesting because we learned so much from his work. He is reported however to have said on his death bed that it was the soil & not the seed. In other words it was the state of health of the person or animal & not just the pathogen - hence the reason why some people can be surrounded by people with colds but never get it themselves. When I read this article it made me think that in some ways he was attempting to amend the soil (as gardeners would say) by building up immunity by exposing people to the pathogen.

When I work with clients I'm trying to amend the soil too, by advising healthy diets rich in colourful fruits and vegetables.  By encouraging them to expose themselves to certain types of bacteria etc, through eating fermented foods (i.e. yogurt), and by going outside, working in the soil, enjoying the outdoors. Of course herbs are often part of that too, herbs that have a reputation for balancing the immune system or promoting the body's ability to adapt (more and more with scientific evidence to back them up). Herbs such as Echinacea and Rhodiola.

What do you do to "amend" your "soil"?

Think before you pink

For years now I've felt guilty because I cannot bring myself to donate to the various pink ribbon breast cancer campaigns, despite the fact that my grandmother lost both her breasts to breast cancer. Why? Two reasons. One, because it's all become too commercial for my tastes. Two, because I feel that the research that is funded doesn't look into ALL  the possibilities, such as herbs and prevention.

I felt like I was the only one who thought this way... until recently. Several people have told me lately that they feel the same way.

Recently, there have been variations on this theme in the media as well. For example: 
On the website www.preventcancer.com they have an article about how the "Chemical Industry Funds Breast Cancer Campaign". It talks about how Zeneca Pharmaceuticals has been a major funder of National Breast Cancer Awareness Month, even as it is one of the largest manufacturers of products that contain known carcinogens.
Then there's the article in the Edmonton Journal that says many of the products that promote pink give undisclosed amounts from the sale of their products to breast cancer research, and again many of the products they promote this way contain known carcinogens. The article further points out that little is being done to research ways to prevent breast cancer in the first place.

What do you think?
Do you pink?