RE: Re: What hope can be offered to AIDS patients?

[Guest guest]

On 1/18/06, orpc_xtpc <kpuglis@...> wrote:

> Actually, there is a Mexican epidemiologist, Rodolfo Acuña-Soto, who

> has been doing research about the smallpox epidemics for something

> like 12 years and there is considerable credible evidence that it

> was not smallpox at all, but a native hemorrhagic fever similar to

> ebola...

> http://www.discover.com/issues/feb-06/features/megadeath-in-mexico/

Well that does not cover the whole of the issue, only a small part of

it, but nevertheless, fascinating! Thanks!

Chris

--

Dioxins in Animal Foods:

A Case For Vegetarianism?

Find Out the Truth:

http://www.westonaprice.org/envtoxins/dioxins.html

[Guest guest]

Chi-

>I am not contradicting myself, I am actually being very consistent.

>I will explain.

Fair enough. That strikes me as a completely reasonable explanation.

However, I second both responses made to you on this issue, and

I'd like to see your responses to them.

>I actually have pictures of a 2 acre corn field where all treatments

>were the same on the whole field except for an application of

>paramagnetic rock that was applied on one half of the field. Not only

>were there dramatic differences in the corn on each side of the field

>but in the drive row down the side there was an amazing difference in

>the " weed " seeds that germinated. The farmer has never needed to

>plant " weed " seeds on his farm, he claims that he always has plenty.

>So, in this case, an apparently insignificant change in the energy

>terrain had a dramatic difference not only on the corn plants, but

>also on the weed germination in the drive row.

Can you post them to the files section? I'm sure many members would

be very interested in them.

-

[Guest guest]

Chi,

[Quoting me:]

> > I read your post and find your analysis of weeds, plants, and soil,

> > totally sensible and consistent. However, your analogy fails in

> > certain observable ways. First to note what should

> > be evident, it is fraught with the danger of serious

> > error to generalize even between mamallian species about

> > the effect even of a single chemical, and the

> > magnitude of that danger runs much deeper when comparing,

> > for example, humans to birds. Yet you are freely

> > generalizing very broad concepts between not even

> > plants and humans at this point, but even soil and humans.

> Does the above mean you disagree with Voisin when he says at the

> coclusion of chapter 5, " This helps me understand the ancient

> proverb, 'The same soil makes both corn and men', which, stated in

> more scientific terms would read, 'Animals and men are the

> biochemical photograph of the soil.' " ?

It seems to me that what I said was rather specific, precise, and

literal, compared to the above formulation, which is metaphorical, and

the meaning of which is rather obscure when divorced from its context,

especially since it begins with the word " this, " which stands in place

of something that remains unknown without having read the preceding

text. So I don't understand why you would think it would increase any

clarity in my meaning to convert my comparatively clearer and literal

meaning into an approval or disapproval of a statement, the meaning of

which is much less clear.

That said, the fact that the same soil determines the health of the

corn plant and the person eating it, which appears to me to be

Voisin's meaning, or that the health of a human is reflective of the

soil in which her food is grown, does not seem to conflict with what I

said above, which is that any analogy between how a soil grows

desirable (from our perspective) crops rather than " weeds " ultimately

must fail, because humans have our own system of immunology that

involves totally different phenomena.

And I made the point further, still not conflicting, that an animal's

immunology involves very different phenomena as a plant's immunology.

At the time, the discussion was the analogy between " weeds " and

pathogenic, infectious viruses and organisms, hence the first point.

The point described in the first sentence of this paragraph, on the

other hand, is not a direct response to the immediate discussion, but

is relevant insofar as any parallels might be implied in the future

between a plant's immunology and a human's based on your studies of

Albrecht, since I know that such parallels can be drawn, and since I

also know that one could run into folly by pursuing them to too much

depth for the very reason that we have different system's of

immunology. But my primary point was about the analogy between weeds

and pathogens.

> To discuss soil fertility with me you should really learn something

> about it.

On your past suggestion, I have purchased and read the Acres USA

primer, which you suggested as introductory to Albrecht. I have not

read The Albrecht Papers yet, although I would like to in the future,

and, of course, you bear sole responsibility for my knowledge of their

existence and wish to read them.

Likewise, I would suggest that you familiarize yourself with some

basic textbook biology, physiology, and biochemistry so you can get a

basic understanding of what has occured in those fields in the last

six or seven decades since your favorite authors have written their

great works when discussing immunology or vitamin D or identifications

of vitamins with me. Following up on research extraneous to NAPD

helps understand NAPD a little bit more in some respects than reading

NAPD over and over again -- for example to know that Yoder's test did

not test for antirachitic properties and was neither specific to

vitamin D nor activator X is useful knowledge when considering Price's

findings and *hypothesis* about activator X -- and I suspect the same

is true with the Albrecht Papers.

>I have no idea what your term, soil " immunology " , means. I

> don't know what soil immunity to weeds is either. I have never run

> into that in my studies of soil fertility.

I coined the phrase to refer to the analogy that *you* were drawing

between weeds and pathogens. Your admission that there is no such

thing as soil immunology only enhances my point.

> When you say that plants go back and forth over time to the same

> cycles of plants as the conditions of a soil change, it indicates to

> me that you don't understand the manner in which soil conditions

> change.

Admittedly, your knowledge of soil science surpasses mine. However,

it is my understanding that over very large amounts of time the

natural process is for ecosystems to cycle, and for plants to cycle

from grasses, to flowers, to trees, and eventually to repeat the

cycle.

> For the most part, soil is not under construction but rather

> under gradual destruction, even without our interference. This is a

> one-way street where the nutritional value of the plants growing

> there is in decline until the plants are so weak that they are

> unable to reproduce. Then new plants that can survive in that

> terrain, because they place less demand on the soil fertility and

> produce less nutrition, take over.

How is this " destruction " then, if the new plants thrive? My

impression from the primer -- and I will cede to your correction on

this point -- is that when a new generation of species takes over it

can contribute to restoring some of the balance in mineral ratios and

such. But admittedly it's been a long time since I read it.

But in any case, in a grander picture, different plants have different

roots. A carrot cannot destroy the soil 40 feet below it. But when a

forest takes over, old growth trees have enormously deep roots, and

when they eventually burn down, they leave in their place nutrients

sucked up from deep in the earth and locked up within themselves and

release them into the soil. And if plants cannot initially grow in

these nutrients, there are microorganisms that can make them

eventually into a more usable form. Ultimately the law of

conservation of matter and energy must apply.

> The same would be true for the animals or people that lived there

> and depended on the plants for nutrition. As the plants declined in

> nutritional value the population density of animals in the area

> would be expected to decline and the health of individual animal

> would also decline.

Well yes, but this would happen on a much smaller time scale than the

cycle to which I was referring.

> NAPD has an example of decline over a thousand years or so of a

> human population. I don't expect what these natives were doing would

> have undergone any substantial change during this time but the only

> reasonable explanation to me would be soil fertility was declining

> so the food that once kept these people healthy no longer did and

> the change was gradual over obviously many generations.

I've read NAPD many fewer times than you apparently (actually only

once, except certain parts) and it's been a couple years, so I'd

appreciate it if you would speak clearly of the populations you're

talking about in it. But from memory I suspect you're referring to

the skull thicknesses that Price measured of Native Americans, finding

a significant thinning of the post-Columbian era relative to the

pre-Columbian era. If so, then I think it is probably a matter of

both. Many natives changed their diet as corn and some other crops

came from Mexico, actually around the same time I think.

> > Look at the black death for example. Yes, there were

> > agricultural misfortunes around the time it came about,

> > but after it killed a third of Europe, it didn't come

> > back when soils the world over went through

> > much trouble, lowering the immunity of the people.

>

> I don't know much about the black death, but I sure wouldn't want to

> have taken the treatment. Soils the world over have never gone

> through much trouble, whatever that means. Although somewhat

> limited, there are areas in the world where soil construction takes

> place.

I didn't mean the world over at one time, and I apologize for the lack

of clarity. I mean that most populations over Europe who experienced

the Black Death experienced periods or continue to experience periods

where soil is in great decline, and while certain diseases might well

be attributed to that fact, the Black Death does not come back when

the soil gets bad. Becuase there is such a thing as *specific*

immunity to a microbe, which means that there is an independent

contribution of the icrobe to the question of immunity, in addition to

the terrain.

> > Or look at how the Europeans brought all kinds of diseases that

> > ravaged natives of the Americas all over. Even if some of the

> > native groups had declining skull sizes since Columbian times,

> > and even if some of them or even all of them didn't have

> > perfect diets, it is difficult to conceive that the Europeans

> > diets could possibly have been better, since the Europeans

> > quite clearly wrecked the soil while the natives tended to

> > maintain it, or at least many of them did, in many areas where

> > they hunted and left the woods rather than cutting them down.

> > Yet 65% or more of the natives were killed off extremely quickly

> > by infectious diseases brought by the Europeans, while the

> > Europeans had immunity. Because the Europeans had specific

> > immunity to those diseases.

> What is a perfect diet?

I didn't use the phrase above, so I'm not sure why you're asking.

> In fact, according to Albrecht, because for so long European

> soils have been limited with respect to population, they have done a

> much better job of maintaining their soil fertility. With the large

> land area in North America and the relatively small population there

> was never a need to maintain soil fertility. The natives or early

> explorers could exhaust the soil fertility at one place and simply

> move to another. They couldn't do that in Europe, so they were

> forced to do a better job maintaining soil fertility.

I was referring to those of European descent who settled here, and to

their notorious destruction of, for example, the New England soil.

From what I have read, the natives in the area hunted and let the

forrests stand. Although that type of set up might still drain the

soil over time, it hardly compares to letting the soil just whether

away in tilled fields. One of the groups Price studied (I forget

which one) used forest for the very purpose of preserving their soil

for longer periods.

In any case, my point was that the differential immunity to various

diseases of the natives and the European settlers can better be

explained by differences in historical populational exposure to the

specific microbes than it can by a superiority of the nutrition of

European settlers.

> > This doesn't happen with soil and weeds.

> > Soil does not have B cells that provide " memory " to the

> > immune system that, having experienced a

> > " weed " before can provide specific immunity to that weed.

> > In some ways there are analogous elements, but they

> > are very different processes in the majority of ways

> > and stretching the analogy can easily lead to unjustified

> > conflations.

> Maybe someone can explain what this means as I have no idea.

If you Google [ " B cell " memory] without the brackets, using the

quotes like so, you will get plenty of information on the first page.

Since my understanding of the immune system comes from a textbook, I

can't vouch for which is the best article to read, but surely the

Wikipedia or Answers.com articles would provide a basic introduction

and it looks like their might be introductory articles from more

medically reputable sources as well.

If you aren't aware of immune memory -- which is but one small example

of how an analogy between weeds and infectious organisms fails -- this

underscores the point that your excellent grasp of a small number of

works would be put in much better context by gaining an introductory

familiarity with the topics that you are frequently discussing on the

list. NAPD is a great book, but it doesn't itself suffice to

understand itself within the context of the totality of what we know,

which is unimaginably much more than the body of scientific knowledge

that existed in Price's day. I'm not saying that current scientific

views trump Price's view by any means -- only that Price was limited,

as we are limited, by the state of knowledge of the day, and that we

are likely to misunderstand, rather than understand, the actual

significance of Price's work by focusing on it and it alone.

Chris

--

Dioxins in Animal Foods:

A Case For Vegetarianism?

Find Out the Truth:

http://www.westonaprice.org/envtoxins/dioxins.html

[Guest guest]

Chi,

> At the end of Chapter 28 Voisin states:

> " All these observations serve to illustrate how very different

> results can be obtained from trials based on a foodstuff so

> variable, although identical in appearance. It cannot be stated too

> often, nor sufficiently stressed, that the progress of biological

> and medical sciences must necessarily be slow so long as no

> consideration is given, either in experimentation or in dietetics,

> to the pedological and agronomic origin of the foodstuffs employed. "

> I know I have taken this quote out of context but hopefully it will

> have some meaning for you. The foodstuff in this case was milk. You

> would be able to put the quote in context if you are able to read

> the chapter, it is just over two pages long.

> I would certainly be interested in any studies you can refer me to

> that take the pedological and agronomic origin of the foodstuffs

> employed into account.

That's only relevant when dealing with food stuffs. A real lot of

research is done by isolating single chemicals -- something we

couldn't really do in Price's day, because in almost all cases we

didn't even know what the chemicals were that we were dealing with for

quite a long time after discovering their effects. We can make lots

of process understanding things in extremely elaborate ways at the

_molecular_ level now. It's fascinating.

Still: this cannot replace studying what foods themselves do, because

foods are mixtures of chemicals; nor can studying cells replace

studying organisms, because organisms are a community of interacting

cells; and, yes, if we study foodstuffs we need to take soil into

account.

There is a place for both forms of research: reductionist research

that studies individual chemicals, and holistic research that looks at

the effect of whole foods on whole organisms. The important thing is

to recognize the place of each, and utilize both of them, and

synthesize the information we get from both into a view that is as

complete as we can make it.

Since the soil issue doesn't really apply to studies at the molecular

level, and since our knowledge of this has increased to really

astronomical depths since Voison, he was wrong that _no_ progress

could be made.

The field of dietary advice is a totally different, less rigorous and

less precise area of research that does suffer from the stagnation of

which he writes.

> As perhaps you realize by now, even the content of Weston Price's

> activator X in a foodstuff would not be sufficient for me to judge

> it's nutritional value. That, imo, can only be determined by the

> outcome on health in feeding experiments.

It appears you mean that the nutritional value can only be determined

in that way, but in fact " activator x " can only be determined that way

as well, because Price was only able to distinguish activator x from

vitamin D by its effect on dental caries, and even in that case

appears to only differentiate it from D2, which itself he doesn't give

a citation for or explain in much detail. Since the Yoder test is a

test that is specific neither for vitamin D nor for " activator x, "

whatever that actually is, the only way to tell the " activator x "

content is by its effect on an organism when fed.

> As I would suggest to the

> consumer purchaser of raw milk, don't judge the nutritional value of

> raw milk by nutrient analysis, judge it by it pedological and

> agronomic origin but confirm that by actually drinking it.

I agree with this.

> I have no problem with leaving all the nutrient studies to you while

> hoping you are taking into account these agricultural variables that

> can alter the outcome of experiments. I will continue to concentrate

> on finding out how to create soil fertility to grow food in that

> would equal or surpass the nutritional quality of food used by

> Weston Price in his experiments, primarily with dental caries.

> In what you do, you are among many. In what I do and the approach I

> take there are few. Good luck to you.

For my current article, most of what I'm looking at is the effect of

isolated vitamin A and D experiments, so agronomics isn't really a

factor.

I agree with your general approach when it comes to choosing what food

to eat. But for academic learning, rigorous experimentation,

reductionism, holism, epidemiology, molecular studies, and so forth

all have their proper place. And to answer the question of what

causes immunity, or what a particular nutrient's identity is, is to

engage in that type of academic pursuit.

> > Admittedly, your knowledge of soil science surpasses

> > mine. However, it is my understanding that over very

> > large amounts of time the natural process is for ecosystems

> > to cycle, and for plants to cycle from grasses, to flowers,

> > to trees, and eventually to repeat the cycle.

>

> From my studies this is not the case. If you have a scientific study

> that supports your view, I would be glad to read it.

When I have some more time I'll try to look into what I'm referring

to, but it's been a while.

> > How is this " destruction " then, if the new plants thrive?

>

> It is destruction caused by climatic forces. When there are no

> longer parent rocks to renew the soil to make up for the slow

> erosion of minerals to the sea, the soil fertility declines.

Ok, I'll concede this point, although it seems to me that inland from

coasts this process would be so slow as to be negligible, but perhaps

I'm wrong. I wonder if there is an eventual mechanism for

replenishment from the sea. It doesn't seem possible that the whole

earth could fall into the ocean eventually.

Volcanoes would be a mechanism of replenishment, wouldn't they? And

the formation of islands within the ocean would be a way of

sea-to-land replenishment, wouldn't it?

> > But in any case, in a grander picture, different

> > plants have different roots.

>

> Again not true according to Albrecht. The same plant has different

> roots because plant root lenght is not genetically determined, it is

> determined by the soil fertility the plant is planted in.

That plants with the same genes have different roots in the same soils

does not contradict the fact that plants with different genes will

have different roots in the same soil. Even if but indirectly due to

genetic effects on age, the roots must differ by species. A carrot

will never grow as deep as the tap root of an oak, for example.

> As I have mentioned in other posts, my son is reading my copy of

> NAPD atm. When I get it back I will reference this in its exact

> location in the book.

Ok. I apologize, then, for an earlier comment regarding your lack of

clarity on references to NAPD. It seemed like you were being cryptic

deliberately, but apparently I was wrong.

> The soil fertility in New England was in decline long before the

> Europeans arrived. The natives were not responsible for the decline,

> the weather was. Albrecht calls trees " nature's last stand against

> the erosion of soil fertility " , so remember when you see trees you

> know the soil fertility is low. The type of forest further indicates

> the soil fertility.

But obviously removing the trees will greatly accelerate the decline.

There are degrees of soil decline.

> > In any case, my point was that the differential immunity to various

> > diseases of the natives and the European settlers can better be

> > explained by differences in historical populational exposure to the

> > specific microbes than it can by a superiority of the nutrition of

> > European settlers.

>

> Fine, I disagree. The natives wouldn't have had the problems of the

> European settlers until they ate the inferior quality of nutrition

> of the European food. Gosh, I thought that was the point Price over

> emphasized in his book.

As , I, and probably others have pointed out repeatedly, Price did

not have data on any natives prior to previous ravishing by disease.

More importantly, I think your history here is very confused. The

natives here gave their foods to the European settlers! The history

we're talking about substantially predates the advent of the white

man's canned food and syrups.

Chris

--

Dioxins in Animal Foods:

A Case For Vegetarianism?

Find Out the Truth:

http://www.westonaprice.org/envtoxins/dioxins.html