Prof. Keith Scott-Mumby's Total Health Newsletter #33. Week ending Jan 10th, 2010
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• This week's Quote

1. Swine Flu Pandemic? Oh Yes, I Remember!
2. New Scary Resistant Strain of Tuberculosis
3. CT Scans May Be Great For Diagnosis But Are Very Dangerous
4. If You've Gotta Go
5. Up And Coming, Things To Look Out For...
6. What's In A Word?

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This Week's Quote:

I have often heard that one out of four people are weird or bizarre. If you think of your three closest friends, and they seem "okay", then it must be you

-- Rod Moser WebMD

1. Swine Flu Pandemic? Oh Yes, I Remember…

Amazingly, people are still talking about the pandemic-that-never-happened. It was all sales hype and population manipulation, of course, designed to sell a worthless product (Tamiflu science is a fraud, claiming it works to help prevent flu complications).

All along, intelligent and honest doctors were protesting that there was nothing to be concerned about. Only the government sneaks and toadies were prepared to lie, to save their lousy paychecks. This flu was no worse than others and far less deadly than most annual flu.

When the fall/winter wave of H1N1 swine flu is over, it will have been no more severe than an average flu season, predict colleagues from the U.K. Medical Research Council and the CDC.

What has been different, certainly, is that young fit adults died in the main, rather than the elderly and weak. That remains strange.

But going back to brutal figures, this "pandemic" was fatal less than expected. Marc Lipsitch, Harvard researcher, points out that before the 2009 H1N1 swine flu came along, planners were preparing for a pandemic with a case/fatality ratio of 0.1% -- that is, for one death in every 1,000 symptomatic infections.

Then Lipstich sent cold shivers down my spine by his actual calculations, which is that H1N1 swine flu has a case/fatality ratio no higher than 0.048% -- and maybe seven to nine times lower, depending on the methods used for calculation. What the heck does he mean, up to 9 times lower fatality "depending on which method is used for calculation"?

If you use the truth, instead of government lies? Presumably, that's what he is saying. Statistics are notoriously fickle. But they are not THAT fickle you can get an almost ten-fold variation in what figures are telling you! Only if you deliberately intend the figures to lie...

Meanwhile, Jeffrey Taubenberger, MD, PhD, of the National Institutes of Health is trying to maintain the scare tactics by likening the current H1N1 to the 1918 flu! "This pattern of pathology in the airway tissues is similar to that reported in autopsy findings of victims of both the 1918 and 1957 influenza pandemics," Taubenberger said in a news release.

Come on Jeffrey; it's the flu! What do you expect it to look like, syphilis?

2. New Scary Resistant Strain Of Tuberculosis

2009 saw several of my long-term prophecies coming true. More and more resistant strains of antibiotic resistant bacteria emerging was one of them.

Tuberculosis (aka. "consumption" and most so-called "slim" in Africa) is one of mankind's greatest scourges. The victim wastes away, coughs up blood one day and they are soon gone, lungs rotten. It killed millions, before improved social standards and good nutrition helped our immune systems beat it.

Among the many people struck down was the English poet John Keats; he was an apprentice surgeon and knew well what coughing up blood meant. See these notes on Keat's tomb in Rome. [here is another medical incompetence story: Keats was in my view killed by the starvation diet prescribed by an English doctor named Clark, who lived across the street in Rome. Good nutrition is vital to combat TB].

The responsible bacteria for tuberculosis belongs to the family that also includes leprosy. For a few decades there we kinda had it under control (not really, but improved nutrition and public hygiene helped a lot in the latter half of the 20th century).

We got some drugs, such as rifampicin and isoniazid. There have been, factually, very few effective drugs against this monster pathogen. Resistance soon arose, despite the practice of prescribing multiple drugs for this condition, specifically intended to prevent the emergence of drug resistance.

Well, we got multiple drug resistance (MDR-TB) instead! Now we have XDR-TB, short for extensively drug-resistant TB. There is TB on the loose now, worldwide, that is virtually untreatable by meds.

A study published last year (Aug 2009) showed that 99% of drug-resistant infections came from transmission, that is, from resistant strains being passed from person to person, rather than being caused by failed treatment.

There is a 33% chance you are carrying TB right now!

It's far commoner than most people think. One in three humans already carries the TB bacillus. Although it remains latent in most cases, the World Health Organisation (WHO) has estimated there were 9.27 million new cases of TB in 2007. There were 1.6 million TB-related deaths in 2005.

The official story is that drug-resistant TB is caused by inconsistent or partial treatment, when patients do not take all their medicines regularly for the required period or because the drug supply is unreliable (usual, blame the patients). In fact the real cause is adaptability of the organism and the very obvious point (to me) that drugs are variably absorbed, even when swallowed conscientiously. Why don't doctors ever take this into acount and monitor blood levels, if they care that much?

Anyway, bottom line... You had better get yourself prepared to live in a world without antibiotics, because these are the last days of such drugs. Killer germs are on the loose and they are multiplying fast (bacteria double every 20 minutes).

You need to get informed about what you can do; you need a copy of my comprehensive eReport "How To Survive In A World Without Antibiotics". Buy it TODAY, don't wait.

If you already have it, read it and figure out what you would do if you were diagnosed with resistant tuberculosis. My advice continues to be: DON'T WAIT TILL IT HAPPENS. That may be too late. Many unlucky victims have been killed within hours by deadly bacteria, despite all the medical advances of the 20th- 21st century era.

Meantime, eat well and get good nutrition. It's about the only protection against TB that works!

3. CT Scans May Be Great For Diagnosis But Very Dangerous. Did You Know?

A lot of my subscribers will be too young to remember the mass chest X-ray days of the 50s and 60s, when a truck would turn up at the office or school with mobile equipment and take x-rays of everyone. Screening for TB and lung cancer. Good idea, what?

Well, no. What actually happened was that these x-ray screening programs CAUSED more cancers than they "detected". Those who had been screened had a far higher rate of cancers; so much so that mass x-ray screening was dropped.

The same thing has happened with mammograms but the entrenched doctors of the cancer industry are not letting on. The truth is already out there, showing mammograms cause more than they "detect", but they won't admit it and stop killing women for profit.

Now the latest shock: CAT scans are pretty dangerous and nobody has been paying enough attention. Not until Rebecca Smith-Bindman MD did some poking around. She noticed that radiation doses from CT scans are often high and vary widely, and excessively high doses may contribute substantially to future cancers. Her findings are published in a new study published in the Archives of Internal Medicine.

CT scans are noninvasive medical tests that combine special X-ray equipment and computers to produce detailed cross sectional images of the body. The number of CT scans performed has exploded over the last three decades, growing from about 3 million yearly in 1980 to about 70 million in 2007.

The new research comes in the wake of the discovery earlier this year that more than 200 stroke patients at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles had received more than eight times the necessary radiation dose when undergoing CT scans. What was even stranger was the very large variation in dose for what was supposed to be the same procedure. Even the FDA is concerned (polite cough... A-hem)

In Smith-Bindman's study, researchers evaluated radiation doses given to 1,119 patients getting CT scans and found that the differences in radiation exposure were dramatic: much higher than needed but also very variable. Most dramatic, she says, was the dose and the dose range for a multiphase abdomen and pelvic series. While the median dose was 31, the range was from 6 to 90. That's more than a 10-fold difference.

Her team even went on to assess the lifetime cancer risk linked to the CT scan. They estimated that one in 270 women and one in 600 men who got a CT coronary angiogram at age 40 would develop cancer from that scan. That's very high in my book.

The message from Smith-Bindman's timely research is the need for doctors and patients to become more aware of the risks and she also emphasizes the need for more oversight of the scans. This issue pinpoints an old loop of logic - because a lot of people are doing it, doesn't suddenly make it safe or effective. Popular isn't the same as good, in any degree.

Make sure you are not lulled and just believe this new "magic eye" is OK, because all hospitals are doing it. Make the doctor justify the need or consider refusing and making them work for their diagnosis.

[Just to ram this home, another study by investigators at the National Cancer Institute (USA), also estimated the risk of cancer attributable to CT scans. They concluded that 29,000 future cancers could be related to the 70 million CT scans that were performed in the U.S. in 2007. This includes an estimated 14,000 cases resulting from scans of the abdomen and pelvis; 4,100 from chest scans; 4,000 from head scans; and 2,700 from CT angiograms. One-third of these projected cancer cases would occur following scans performed on people ages 35 to 54. Two-thirds of the cancers would be in women.

NEED I SAY THIS? These may be US statistics but the risks will be the same, whatever territory you live in!]

4. If You've Gotta Go... !

This article from WebMD is all the funnier to me as a Brit. Our rough, street words for penis include "cock" and "johnny"; a "john" is also a toilet and a "jerry" is the old-fashioned potty under the bed, when folks used to get up and use it to pee in the night, rather than walk down the garden in the cold night air!*

Veteran marathoner Jerry Johncock, 81, was four-fifths through the Twin Cities Marathon in October when he was overtaken by a urinary blockage. As he stopped to discuss his plight with officials, noting that he would have to quit the race to get to a hospital before his bladder burst, a spectator overheard the conversation and offered him the use of a "spare" catheter he had in his car. Johncock repaired to a rest room, administered the catheter, and returned to finish the race. [St. Paul Pioneer Press, 10-7-09]

I have always wondered about distance runners or long bike races. How do they pee? The secret was recently revealed to me by a colleague's husband who is a professional bike racer. If they gotta go, they just whip it out to the side and let it fly.

Usually a sympathetic team mate will steady the bike and block the view, hoping to have the favor returned at some point. So, now you know why aerial cameras suddenly pan out when watching a group of bikes riding suspiciously close together. It adds a whole new meaning to the term "whizzing by".

Amusing, but this tells me nothing about how women cycle competitors cope. Any of you gals like to enlighten me?

* My tutors taught me the importance of the old potty: a man or woman got to see their pee against white porcelain; good for estimating color. Amount was easier to assess. And sometimes there were visual surprises, like blood or critters, that a woman in particular might not see. There were even sounds! The clink of a stone passing could be very welcome! Finally, a whitish fur round the pot might mean diabetes (dried off sugar).

5. Up And Coming, Things To Look Out For...

No, this isn't the start of a new section. But there are one or two things I want to give you a foretaste for.

Firstly, the long-promised and overdue teleclass telling you how to use the SCENAR device for your pets. That is now imminent and you will get a separate email.

Next, I have come across the most amazing metal de-tox product available anywhere. I'll be interviewing the scientist who developed and patented it. I'll be talking about toxic metals in next week's issue and I should have a teleclass date for you then.

I also have a stop-smoking revolution for you: UNLIKE ANYTHING YOU HAVE EVER HEARD OF OR SEEN BEFORE. It works really well; that's a promise. So if any of my subscribers are still smoking, 2010 could be a good year for you to stop. Even if you don't smoke personally, you can pass this tip onto others who do and maybe have failed at quitting using existing methods.

6. What's In A Word?

Integrity.

This is a word we bandy about, often without understanding its full meaning. It is used interchangeably with honesty. The English have some scrumptious similar words, which are slowly falling into disuse, due to internationalization of language and the appalling verbal skills of television presenters and viewers. Probity is a good one; so is forthrightness; fidelity and rectitude are OK, but not such pretty words. Scruples and nicety I also like!

Here's the point:

integrity really means unity, wholeness or an undivided or unbroken completeness or totality with nothing wanting. The moral soudness and honesty comes in because when we lie and cheat we break off part of ourselves. Lies make us less whole and complete. If you don't believe me, try it both ways. You'll soon learn: lies = feeling unhappy.

In this fuller sense, synonyms for integrity are healthy sounding words, such as unity, oneness, wholeness and haleness (hale, note, from "hale and hearty", meaning well in mind and body).

You can't practise integrated medicine or believe in holism, if you allow lies into your life.

So, that's all for this week!

Be well; find the sacred in all you do, otherwise don't do it!

Prof.

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