The Infectious Myth

Infectious Myth - We can’t trust our eyes - 05/28/14

Everybody who has studied biology even at a high school level has seen pictures of the internal structure of a cell or other microscopic biological bodies, such as viruses. Many of the structures we see have names, like endoplasmic reticulum or golgi apparatus. And we learn about the probable function of these structures. Researchers study them, drugs are planned based on the impact on them. Diseases are studied based on the difference between microscope pictures of healthy versus diseased cells.

 

This episode’s guest, Dr. Harold Hillman has been saying for a long time, since at least 1970, that what we are seeing is only an artifact of the process of killing the cell so that it can be observed under a light microscope or electron microscope. It is possible to observe living cells under a light microscope, but very often cells are “fixed” (killed), dehydrated, colored and suffer other indignities that can drastically change what is seen.

 

Dr. Hillman makes two major observations that drew him to his conclusions. First, in living tissues, structures move around, and the network of fibers that supposedly provides structure to the cell is smaller than the size of the objects that move around. Secondly, structures always seem to have the same orientation under the microscope, which is impossible. They should have a random orientation. The apparent thickness of spherical objects, such as membranes, should vary with the angle of the cut. Consequently he believes that much of what we see under a microscope is false.

 

Fundamentally he believes that valid observations can only be taken from living systems, preferably whole organisms. Even cell culture systems introduce many anomalies and observations from them producing structures and behaviors that cannot necessarily be extrapolated to living organisms.

 

Dr. Hillman’s ideas are potentially revolutionary but he also talks about the wall of silence he has experienced from both major journals, that most often reject his papers without explanation, and from leading scientists whose work is based on what is seen under microscopes, who refuse to talk to him.

 

This censorship of radical ideas is unfortunately common in science, and belies the myth that scientists are always open to new ideas.

 

For more information about the work of this scientist, see: http://harold-hillman.com

Infectious Myth - Marian Tompson, Breastfeeding Rebel - 05/16/14

Marian Tompson was a rebel against formula feeding in 1956 when she co-founded La Leche League and became its first president. Anyone associated with La Leche League or breastfeeding promotion knows this. Fewer know that she rebelled against the advice that HIV-positive mothers should not breastfeed, in the late 1990s, when she founded http://AnotherLook.org to take another look at the evidence against breastfeeding, that turned out to be shockingly thin. She was also a rebel against other aspects of childbirth and child rearing, such as birth without anesthetics and birth at home.

 

Marian Tompson recently co-wrote her autobiography, “Passionate Journey”, even though her journey is far from over, she is still running Another Look and is back on the board of La Leche League, apart from spending time with her children, grandchildren and great grandchildren. Listen to this interview with a remarkable woman.

 

The Infectious Myth - Jennifer Raff

Jennifer Raff, a PhD anthropologist, published a blog on March 25^th claiming that parents are being lied to about vaccines. Her opinion is that virtually all information claiming that vaccines are unsafe or ineffective is wrong, and that parents should just listen to respected scientific sources. Her blog post, entitled, “Parents you are being lied to”, quickly went viral, especially after it was picked up by the Huffington Post. This interview is a vivid reminder of the difficulty of having an open discussion on the issue of vaccines. People are being lied to about vaccines, but which side is doing the majority of the lying?