I posted a couple of items recently with some anxiety, because I was afraid of the responses I might get—flame wars that would confuse the issues I try to clarify. As it turned out, the responses have been mixed.
One of them was about H5N1 and dioxins. That drew a helpful comment from Theresa, whose post on another site had triggered my own. An excerpt from her comment:
Regarding the second item (the strong possibility, as suggested by Dr. Tenpenny in the other article I reproduced, that bird flu crosses species and infects humans when those humans are immunocompromised by dioxin), I meant to highlight the other methods of preventing bird flu on which the public health community should be spending money, specifically, improving the overall health of the people of Southeast Asia, where dioxin contamination (from Agent Orange as well as from industrial sources) is a cause of major health problems.
This makes sense to me. When I scan the Vietnamese online media, I find too many stories about the ongoing horror that country endures thanks to the American techno-warriors who poisoned Vietnam with Agent Orange rather than deal with its political reality. Dioxins really are a problem in southeast Asia and many other countries. (And Iraq seems to be generating still more problems.)
So I appreciate Theresa's thoughts, because they help us understand more about the health problems we all face—especially those of us living in the toxic dumps of the Third World.
Then I got another comment from Ralph Fucetola, JD, in response to my criticism of Dr. Rima Laibow:
Dr. Laibow is a graduate of Albert Einstein School of Medicine and has distinguished herself as a practitioner of drug free medicine for about 30 years, gaining a reputation in her original training as a Psychiatrist, and later for working with children who are the victims of Vaccine Induced Disease and with people with serious environmental challenges. In all the pages about her on the Internet you will not find any patient complaints.Now Dr. Rima has taken on the task of trying to heal the body politic. I am proud to be with her in that effort. Our goals include educating the public and decision makers about the natural solutions to the many threats that face our health and freedom.
Gen. Stubblebine is a graduate of West Point and a skilled general officer (head of Army Intelligence from 1981 through '84. A Patriot, he has dedicated his life to protecting the Republic and the Constitution. His strategic vision is clear; we are very lucky, in the Health Freedom and Patriot movements, to have him as a guide and leader. If the Republic is to survive, we need people like him.
The ridiculous rumors and stories about either of them them are just stupid folk spouting off about what they know little of; or jealous fools who resent our growing success. Oh, and there are those who earn their "living" in the industries of death - Big Agra, Big Pharma, Big Chema, Big Petrol, Big Govt... they have reason to attack with the usual disinformation.
Having just retired after 41 years of teaching basic business writing, I am alarmed to find a person with a JD degree who doesn't understand which words get capitals and which don't.
Later in his comment Mr. Fucetola apologizes for the "amateur status" of the video I linked to. But his own comment commits so many elementary errors in argument that I wonder where he got his JD degree.
He invokes the appeal to authority by mentioning Dr. Laibow's degree from the Albert Einstein School of Medicine. General Stubblebine, he tells us, is a graduate of West Point. I have a degree from Columbia University, and a nephew who's a recent graduate of the USAF Academy. So what?
One thing I learned at Columbia 50 years ago was not to fall for semantically loaded terms like "heal the body politic," "natural solutions," and "protecting the Republic and the Constitution." My professors took care to tune my bullshit detector, and it still works very well.
Mr. Fucetola also relies on the generic response of the American Right since 2001: the ad hominem argument. If anyone criticizes him and his associates, their comments are "ridiculous rumors and stories" from "stupid folk" or "jealous fools who resent our growing success." ("They hate us for our freedom," someone once observed.) It's much easier than refuting the criticisms themselves.
Or the critics are simply making a living out of "the industries of death." Heaven knows many do, including Halliburton and the countless mercenary firms terrorizing the Middle East these days. We have plenty of documentation about the grief they've caused.
But Mr. Fucetola offers no documentation for his assertions about "Big Agra, Big Pharma, Big Chema, Big Petrol, Big Govt"—he's just groping blindly for hot buttons. I am no fan of the corporate world, but neither am I a fan of the paranoid style that Mr Fucetola expresses so well.
Mr. Fucetola and the other paranoids are discouraging in two ways: First, their arguments are so abysmally bad that they discredit flu skepticism in general. This is unfortunate because a seriously skeptical argument, if it ever shows up, will be tainted by association. If Big Pharma really does eat us alive, it will be because Mr. Fucetola has run interference for it.
Second, the criticism of "those who earn their living" from promoting bird flu rings false when Dr. Laibow's own website offers lots of shopping opportunities. So who's really trying to make a buck out of people's anxieties?
No matter how bad the pandemic may be, I suspect that far more harm will be done by people trying to exploit the fear of it. That is why I love Flublogia, because it's full of people who only want to understand the real problem and explain that problem to the rest of us.
