Hello all
Many of you would recall how fired up I get sometimes when I see things like no full fat sour cream at the supermarket. I also get fired up with certain media articles and one today fired me up in the Sunday Mail in QLD. Below I have copied the article for you and then I have copied my email to the author. Read and enjoy!!
THERE isn't enough room on this website to list all the things I don't know.
There's not even enough room in Wikipedia, which - if it were an actual book - would take you 123 years to read.
Recently, though, there's been an explosion of people with a wildly inflated sense of their own intelligence. Suddenly, everyone's an expert.
Me, not so much. I understand how little I know about lots of things. For example, I know less about science than scientists. I know less about medicine than doctors. I know less about tax than my accountant, less about cooking than Donna Hay and less about animals than Bondi Vet.
There's no shortage of genuine experts who have degrees, qualifications and years of experience in their fields. Having access to Google does not make you an expert, nor does having a website or watching a YouTube video. These things simply make you someone with an internet connection.
"Everyone's an expert today," confirms social researcher Neer Kornntsok, "partly because we feel we need to be. We receive kudos for proclaiming our definitive knowledge to others and we compete to be the first to share facts, articles and videos."
But reading some articles doesn't put you on par with a scientist and here's where it canbecome dangerous.
A few years ago, I worked with a lovely guy who had left school at 16. When his wife had their first child, he "did his research" and they decided not to vaccinate their daughter.
At the time, everyone around him insisted it was safe (and vital) but he was adamant. "I've read a lot about this and I watched this amazing video," he insisted, "Vaccinations are just a way for big companies and the government to make money."
Where do you start arguing the extreme illogic of that? Not here; I'd need more space and a wheelie bin full of rescue remedy.
While I accept my former co-worker was a thoughtful person who meant well, I'm floored by the extraordinary assumption that he knew better than every scientist in the world _ not to mention Bill and Melinda Gates who are spending hundreds of millions of their own dollars funding vaccination programs in third-world countries to eradicate killer diseases such as malaria.
What on earth could make a civilian believe his Google "research" is superior to decades of science?Is it arrogance?
"The internet has made expertise a mouse click away," says Korn."And a little knowledge is a dangerous thing.
"Just ask any GP who has to contend with self-diagnosing patients, determined they can identify their prognosis and treatment. They address them more as colleagues than patients because they place their internet search on par with the doctor's years of expertise."
Doctors really do live this every day. One of my friends who is a medical specialist says: "You find yourself getting into these exhausting debates with patients who insist they've read something that goes against what you're telling them.
"Unless you're highly experienced, it can be extremely difficult to judge the credibility of the information you find online."
Which brings me to the Australian Vaccination Network (AVN) which, despite its official-sounding name, is in fact a group of civilian self-styled "experts" who campaign vigorously, and at times misleadingly (according to findings by the Health Care Complaints Commission), against vaccination, both on their website and in the free talks they give around Australia, sometimes to expectant parents at pre-natal classes.
While publicly peddling its anti-vaccination message, the AVN cleverly makes it sound like there are "two sides" to the vaccination debate.
In fact there aren't two sides, and there is no debate.
On one hand there is science and there is no other hand.
Because no link between vaccination and autism has ever been found. None. Ever.
What has been conclusively proven is that while they are not 100 per cent perfect, vaccines are the best and only way to protect babies and children from diseases like whooping cough that can kill them.
And the personal choice argument? Well, it's a bit like arguing that driving your car drunk is a personal choice.
You see, the lives of babies too young to be vaccinated depend on herd immunity in the rest of the community.
So the choice made by that guy I worked with didn't just affect his family. His well-intentioned yet ill-informed decision has the potential to harm my family. And yours.
Watching (or even producing) a YouTube video with some cherry-picked statistics set to rousing orchestral music is not the same as having a university degree or having your research findings peer-reviewed.
I'm baffled by this growing sense that everyone has the right _ indeed the obligation _ to challenge facts that have been established scientifically, independently and repeatedly over years, even decades.
"Do your research!" is the common faux clarion call of so-called "experts".
These exhortations are usually accompanied by a helpfullist of links to skewed, scientifically baseless articles that back up their claims. It's easy to mislead people with random graphs and alarmist statements.
I'm certainly not suggesting becoming a flock of sheep or suspending critical thought.
But I don't need to "do my research" before I vaccinate. Or before I accept the Earth is round and that gravity exists. Scientists far smarter than I am have already done that research and the verdict is unanimous, thanks.
My Email to Mia Freedman following Pro Vaccination rant in Sunday Mail 18.3.12
Dear Mia
I was disappointed to read your column in the Sunday Mail regarding Vaccination.
My background is a factual investigator dealing with lies, deceit and corporate fraud.
I also have had a passion for health and nutrition for 20 years. I am not qualified in that field in the traditional sense, so that may make me one of the "experts" you refer to.
I have developed a finely tuned skill at being able to conduct effective research and see through lies.
I don’t like to see a person as talented and successful as you being fooled by the medical establishment over topics like vaccination.
I can teach you how to easily determine the real truth in relation to such matters as vaccination, and even cancer cures if you open your mind for a moment.
Don’t do your own research into the science since this is confusing, is often biased and is the standard operating procedure as to how the medical establishment keep the upper hand as to what is commonly accepted as truth in medicine. For something to cure "there must be scientific evidence" or "there needs to be double blind studies conducted" are common phrases they bandy about. The fact of the matter is that something either cures or it does not. A truth does not require a scientific study before it becomes a truth. This is a man made and false system of evidence which serves only the Pharmaceutical companies.
What is easy to research is the behaviour and tactics used by the medical establishment. If you look at the history of it all you find the American Medical Association for example was created as a means of protecting profits by none other than a Rockefeller who is well known to have dubious involvement in the corporate world with monopolies, the fraud of federal reserve banking, involvement with media dissemination to the public, just to name a few. The AMA and FDA in the USA maintain an equivalent style of control here in Australia via the TGA.
I know of a method of cancer cure for skin, breast and some other internal cancers which I have had first-hand involvement in which cures in weeks. Yet the medical establishment have banned this for human use claiming it is a scam and dangerous. I won't get started on cancer but in the words of the great two time Nobel prize winner Dr Linus Pauling "Everyone should know that most cancer research is largely a fraud and that the major cancer research organisations are derelict in their duties to the people who support them."
Did you know for example the medical establishment have attempted to restrict the access of the public to vitamins and nutritional supplements several times in recent years? This is done under the guise of "protecting" us (when there has been 1 death attributed to such supplements in years – compared to 10,000 deaths in Australia each year from correctly prescribed and correctly consumed medicines, or 100,000 in the USA per year.) All they are trying to do is protect profits for their drug industry. This is easy to see and easy to research. Imagine the deterioration of the health of the public if we lose access to vitamin supplements!
Corporations enable individuals to separate themselves from immoral activities and still sleep at night. This is how many businesses operate – look at the banks!
I hope I have left you with at least some curiosity to the fact you may not be able to believe all you hear from the medical establishment. What have they cured in the last 100 years? Nothing! The only real cures in recent years have been attributed to things like Vitamin C for scurvy (and they resisted that for over a 100 years) and Vitamin B3 for Pellagra.
Once you get on the right track with this sort of thing you start to see through the lies of the world in which we live.
I am happy to assist you further if you want to embark on a journey of truth and discovery.
Best regards
Cameron (Brisbane)
