Some Thoughts to Ponder

• Experts can be wrong.   In Austria in the 1840's a Hungarian doctor, Dr. Semmelweis, was ridiculed by his peers for recommending they wash their hands after examining corpses in the morgue before delivering babies. The women of the time preferred midwives, because the mothers had a higher rate of post-partum survival. Dr. Semmelweis had a hard time persuading the medical community, despite the facts bearing him up. It would be decades before Pasteur and Lister would vindicate him.

• Wrong beliefs die hard.   It's been over twenty-five years since Australian doctors, Dr. Barry Marshall and Dr. Robin Warren, discovered that most ulcers are caused by a bacterium (Helicobactor pylori). Encountering the same kind of resistance to the idea that Dr. Semmelweis did, Dr. Marshall deliberately infected himself and then cured himself with antibiotics to convince a disbelieving medical community. Although stress and spicy foods can aggravate ulcers, they aren't causes -- and even though acidic medicine (aspirin, ibuprofen, other NSAIDs) can eat holes in your stomach lining, these heal quickly when not exposed to the bacterium. Yet three quarters of the population still think ulcers are caused by stress.

• Don't confuse symptoms with causes.   Cholesterol is no more to blame for heart disease than oxygen is to blame for fire. Many people have high cholesterol levels, but no heart disease. If you look at what's happening, you'll understand. Something is damaging arterial cell walls. Platelets move to seal damaged areas. That's when cholesterol snags on the platelets and builds up. Research is starting to implicate chemical pollutant, bacterial and maybe viral causes.