[lbo-talk] Doug Henwood's Critique of Gary Null

Doug Henwood dhenwood at panix.com
Thu Mar 18 07:24:32 PST 2004


mitchelcohen at mindspring.com wrote:


>Aluminum Fluoride and other compounds were waste products of the
>aluminum industry in the 1940s and 1950s that they didn't know where
>to dump. If you read the original "studies," they literally invented
>the fluoride/tooth decay model out of thin air. See, for instance, a
>great article 10 years ago in Covert Action on this, among a number
>of others.

Right, that's the place to look for medical evidence. Nonsense like this gives the left a bad name.


>Immunization -- this is a hot topic, but there is growing evidence

Growing anywhere besides the fevered brains of health cranks?


> of the dangers of immunization, both in terms of impurities that
>may have played a role in all sorts of immune compromising diseases,
>autism, and so forth. Until very recently, vaccines were
>manufactured using mercury, among other compounds, let alone the
>fragments of DNA and viruses from other species. If you look at the
>rationalization for some of the vaccines, even by their own
>standards there is no medical justification for them, only an
>economic one. The medical community itself wisely rejected the
>involuntary smallpox vaccinations proposed by the Dept. of Homeland
>Security. This was a big debate in the Bush cabinet. With
>Clinton/Gore, they would have imposed forced vaccinations on
>everyone. Here is at least one area in which Bush and the rightwing
>were notably better than the Democrats.

That's just ridiculous. Smallpox has disappeared. Polio, diphtheria, and many other diseases have largely disappeared because of vaccination. Nothing in life is riskless. In the case of mass smallpox vaccinations, the small risk of biowarfare didn't justify the potential benefit. Things were different when smallpox was ubiquitous.

People like you & Null are always citing these terrible risks from orthodox medicine, but the fact is that human beings are living longer than ever, and are cured of diseases, including cancer, that used to kill them. Science is imperfect, and capitalism deeply taints healthcare, but this sort of drivel appeals to ignorance and paranoia. Ask Null if he or any of his circle will open their records to independent evaluation of all their claims. I really doubt you'll get a positive answer.


>Why doesn't Barrett list the methods that he believes are unproven?
>If we jump to his later suggestions, Barrett includes chiropracty in
>that category.

Zounds, I can't imagine why!


> (I wonder what he thinks of acupuncture, Vitamin C drips, garlic,
>the elimination of pesticides/hormones/antibiotics in meats, and so
>forth. We learn a little later in his article what he thinks of
>Revici's methods for decreasing the acidity of one's blood and
>increasing the alkaline content, which is a crucial co-factor in
>making the body inhospitable to the generation and spread of
>cancerous tumors.

How do you know this, Mitch? Have you studied the biochemistry of cancer? Or do you just believe it because Null & his gang say it repeatedly on WBAI?


>Along with EECP, the once experimental procedure for forcing the
>development of new blood vessels to NATURALLY bypass blocked
>arteries, chelation therapy is indeed becoming increasingly accepted
>as effective treatment of heart disease.

"Increasingly accepted" by whom? What's your evidence?


> > recommended nutritional approaches for arthritis,
>Yes, what are they? Certain kinds of yams, of knowledge adapted from
>ancient cultures, are effective in treating arthritis.

So is that what Karen Finley was doing back in the 1980s? Arthritis prophylaxis?


>My two cents ....

Indeed.

Doug



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