Dear Juan,

Lisa Rosenbaum is spot on where she writes: "we tend to endlessly emphasize the related evidence, and when that fails, exude a collective sense of disgust."

To me that points exactly to the problem. Her "perspective" is that she IS right and other people who think differently are denounced as ("idiotic or dangerous") skeptics.

Maintaining one's own perspective is also the reason why I think people leave this email list and won't take the effort to read other opinions.

It seems to me, for the following examples, that Public Health departments are what Lisa Rosenbaum calls the "polluters who cunningly incite cultural battles that ultimately heighten distrust of science"?

Take for example type 2 diabetes, this can be cured with low carbohydrate diet, but is there a plethora of Public Health trails to check on beneficial diets?

Dr. Dean Ornish wrote an article in the Lancet in 1990, 27 years ago! about the benefits of diet  http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PII0140-6736(90)91656-U/abstract 
I don't understand why Public Health hasn't worked at "an intensive pace" with proper research.

Now, billions are spend on "NIDDM-medication" and millions of people taking those tablets that won't stop developing chronic diseases due to NIDDM. Public health knows that. Read this BJGP article: "intensive glycaemic control (HbA1c <7%) does not reduce the risk of onset or worsening of peripheral or autonomic neuropathy.
"It is unclear that the risk–benefit ratio of drug glucose lowering control is favourable."
"To date, none of the available antidiabetic drugs (metformin and insulin included) has clearly and rigorously (superiority trials) proven in the gold-standard double blind RCTs versus placebo to reduce macrovascular or microvascular complications" http://bjgp.org/content/67/655/85

Any wonder that there is an entrenched skepticism? Public Health Departments organises their own training and only take people up in their ranks who have a "disease" mindset. Free thinking, thinking towards health of the population, without interventions, does not seem to be allowed in Public Health?

Take for example vaccines. There is a plethora of "antivaxxer" literature about where Public Health could get engaged in. However Public Health will not in anyway rock their "disease beliefs" and won't enter into discussion. Public Health academics go as far as saying having "debunked" the vaccine - autism connection, without having done proper research.
In the following link I have indicated what I think are the gaps.  http://www.bmj.com/content/352/bmj.i867/rr-7

On a global scale, the WHO, won't budge with reference to checking the safety of vaccines. Frank Shann writes "DTP is associated with a 91% (46% to 150%) increase in all-cause mortality in children in high-mortality communities" http://www.bmj.com/content/355/bmj.i5170/rr-3
and he writes "WHO recommends DTP as the most recent vaccine for 84% of the time between 1 month and 5 years of age, and there were 1.34 million post-neonatal under 5 deaths in the least developed countries in 2015.[3] If all children follow the recommended schedule and DTP increases mortality by 38% (91% in studies with a bias index < 2.0), DTP is responsible for 310,000 (or 540,000) deaths annually in these countries alone. It is 2½ years since the systematic review’s findings were presented to WHO,[4] and there have been no changes to the recommendations and no trials started." http://www.bmj.com/content/355/bmj.i5170/rr-0

In "the first world", the developed world we have seen the emergence of endemics of non-communicable diseases (NCD),
will the developing countries follow suit and develop endemics in NCDs?
"Debunking" can only be done with proper research. Proper trials are needed with reference to vaccines and the emergence of NCDs such as asthma, eczema, hayfever, IDDM, inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), cancer, chronic fatigue, suicide, depression
and autistic spectrum disorders.
It is unethical not to perform any of these trials and the "ethical" argument against seems to be an attempt to suppression the evidence that Public Health departments do not want to emerge?

But the global burden of disease (morbidity) is now greater due to emerging NCDs since the start of vaccines.   http://www.bmj.com/content/355/bmj.i5170/rr-2

With reference to Influenza vaccines and immunisations, Public health departments and the WHO are totally wrapped up with the pharmaceutical industry and work at "an intensive pace" as partners, pressing on finding the right kind of evidence to convince the public from their point of view. http://www.eurosurveillance.org/ViewArticle.aspx?ArticleId=22609

These are but a few topics of concern that I have about Public Health. No doubt Lisa Rosenbaum MD has the health of people in mind (I am unable to find her conflict of interest disclosure). I can agree with the title "Resisting the Suppression of Science" from a public concern view point and not only from the current Centres of Public Disease point of view.



Dr W Havinga, locum GP, Gloucestershire, UK
GMC 3578256
@wouterhavinga
I am interested in normalising common illnesses.
Medicine focuses on symptom control rather than the developmental benefits from disease. 
Infectious diseases ("Virolution" & microbiome) and life events
can have developmental benefits but medicine, in my opinion, stigmatises patients 
with labels such as anxiety and depression and constantly spreads pandemic fears.
www.whopaysthisdoctor.org/doctor/312