Re: Concerning Antibiotics & The Germ Theory of Disease

I've read about the diet and I think
it 'might be a decent diet' for somebody
'already in good health'. Good Flora!

Intestinal Dysbiosis(Bad Flora)?
Bad Diet!




On May 29, 3:44 pm, drcee...@xxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
On May 29, 7:21 am, rpautrey2 <rpautr...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:



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
denotes how belief-driven, how theory-dominated medicine is. That is
no less true today than it was in pagan or medieval times. The beliefs
might have changed, but the attitude hasn't. In "the seventeenth
century...the accent of therapeutics lay on expelling toxic substances
from the body - by purging, sweating, vomiting, and the much favoured
surgical technique of bloodletting..." [11]. Milder shadows of these
practices persist in herbal and proprietary preparations with
laxative, diaphoretic, expectorant or diuretic properties.

Getting back to the superficial point his question raises, I would say
that because antibiotics do not and cannot even impinge upon, let
alone remove, the OTHER causes of disease [other than 'germs'], so it
is clear that their power over disease is limited. Indeed, their
curative power is very precisely limited to that narrow, specific
role. Therefore, in cases where removal of such 'germs' is most
urgently required as the main therapeutic objective, then yes, of
course, the effect of antibiotics is demonstrably spectacular, even
miraculous. However, such is not so commonly the case today as
compared to 50 or 100 years ago. It is not the full picture.

Today, especially in the rich countries, the power of antibiotics is
diminished precisely because the conditions or causes that create
infectious disease are largely constitutional, dietary and psycho-
social and not so overtly bacteria-driven. "Villermé [in 1828]...was
able to prove that morbidity and mortality rates were, in a sense, a
function of the living conditions of a given class...filth and
overcrowding were proved to act...as the indirect causes of
fevers." [12]. And thus it became apparent that "cleanliness was in
some way a protection against disease." [13]. Although "water-borne
infections were checked by a combination of bacteriological diagnosis
and improved sanitary engineering." [14], many physicians remained
sceptical of the Germ Theory.

It was not unusual in New York for "well known physicians to get up
and leave the hall when medical papers were being read which
emphasised the germ theory of disease. They wanted to express their
contemptuous scorn for such theories and refused to listen to
them." [15]. Some physicians "refused to believe that the horrifying
effects of many diseases could be traced to an almost invisible micro-
organism...nineteenth century bacteriology raised more methodological
and substantive questions than it answered...scepticism was…a
reasonable position…taken by many leaders of the profession." [16]

Some, more reflective persons did exist. "One of Koch's students once
asked him why anthrax bacilli caused death in an animal. Koch said,
'Why its vessels are plugged with bacilli!' The student asked, 'A
mechanical death?' to which Koch replied, 'Certainly'...such
questions, which should have raised serious doubts about all
bacteriology, do not appear to have disturbed physicians very
deeply." [17]

Certainly, there are social, financial, economic and cultural causes
of disease every bit as potent as bacteria and just as active today in
certain parts of every town and city. Therefore, the power of
antibiotics to cure such 'infections' is correspondingly diminished
[to zero] and yet they are prescribed in a reflex manner like old-
fashioned palliatives to mollify patients and/or their concerned
parents, a point made in some letters to this article.

Adopting briefly the homeopathic cloak, I would have to say that most
'ear infections' so-called are better treated with Pulsatilla or
Belladonna, whichever most closely matches the symptoms of

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