The death of someone is the death of a whole world, and the death of a child the worst of all, unbearably painful for the loved-ones left behind. We can't want children to die or suffer permanent damage from measles.
At the same time as the measles publicity comes news about diabetes: drinking one can of fizzy drink a day seems to increase your risk of developing type 2 diabetes by 22 percent. The whole history of sugar, in particular corn syrp and its mass introduction (as big as a vaccination programme) has caused untold disease, suffering and death, and the fatal addiction continues (
http://www.gracelinks.org/133/film-review-king-corn). Road traffic accidents seriously injure 200 000 people a year in the UK, kill 2,200. The fact is many aspects of our behaviour, the conditions in which we find ourselves or the choices we make kill and maim us on a regular basis, a lot of them a result of wrong-thinking by scientists, dare I say it, or governments or epochs, and by commercial interest. Where do we start when we want to reduce human suffering?
One pointed thinking...on the end of a needle
I guess the thing about vaccines is, it would seem to be a simple solution with no price to pay, the disease can be prevented and eradicated, just a little scratch and you're done. That is, IF there is no deeper or wider price to pay than the little scratch, what if we are only scratching the surface of this issue? Our information on the subject may not be totallyl unbiased: some very big companies are making some very big money out of vaccines, and that money and the need to keep making more money, means that these companies, sure as eggs, are spending some of that money on getting Big Access to our media world, our political world, our medical world, and our heads.
I heard on Radio 4 this morning that certain elements of yer British Public are cwoss with Doctors and have lost faith in them, because they believe them to have a vested interest in giving vaccines vis a vis a small fee which is paid to GPs for each one given. GPs are rather hurt by this, according to the Dr interviewed. This doctor might have shown a little more imagination, as it is undeniably true that there is commercial interest in vaccines, it's coming from behind the friendly and reassuring face of Doctor, from the companies that research, market, manufacture and distribute them, and this is big business and big business rules apply. Is this the best way to spend society's money on researching health, reducing suffering and death?
The take on the MMR vaccines causing autism has been discredited and the last remains of possibility thoroughly ground under the heel of national publicity, we are obviously totally stupid to have taken any notice of it, scoff scoff. But what if Andrew Wakefield was onto something, just not exactly what he thought or could prove, because his approach was flawed? (allow Andrew Wakefield to reply and open a balanced debate by watching this
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d7kbWfsygG4). History illustrates that Scientific Certainty about health never lasts forever. Firstly, even if a few pre-disposed children develop autism triggered by the vaccine, then these children also are a world in themselves; the question of who is at risk, who should avoid the vaccine should be researched with equal zeal. But more than that, what do we know about the proliferation of 'unexplained' degenerative diseases in 'later' life, for example? How can we study and know the quality of life and health over a life time of every human world living on this planet? Is it really so simple, so black and white? I can't know from the material evidence available, the studies haven't been done, probably can't ever be, the task is too multi-faceted, too huge.
It is easy to fork out for a vaccine in a little vial, pay the company, get the protection. It is much harder to look at the wider picture; what makes some people more immune than others, what makes some people less vulnerable to serious complications from a disease, what is the exact nature of the disease, it's origins, it's place in the general picture, what makes it develop? We are not merely herd animals, meriting herd immunity, we are, or at least we have the potential to be more. As Monty Python put it in the Life of Brian, we are all individuals, more and more so, in every aspect of our being.
The Relationship between the Bug and the Being
When no other solution exists, we have to use the blunt intstrument, but what if other solutions, much more marvellous, were to exist, if we went out to find them? What about the really interesting questions such as; how come some people are naturally immune, or suffer less from it, what makes people suffer serious symptoms or complications, what place nutrition, pollution, mental health, spiritual nourishment, love, childhood....whole human health, the relationship between the Bug and the Being, so, so interesting...
Now, onto badgers. Are we going to send out a team of killers, or are we going to set up a team of creative solution seekers?
In our desperation to cut down on TB, we want to 'kill' the source - badgers as the Government erroneously sees is (the scientists consulted don't). Well, badgers are victims of TB, there are the rats as well...and so on. But why are our cows falling for it, why is it worse? Could the way we raise cows cause the disease to set in, and infect the badgers? Imagine we wipe out 70 percent of the badger population. Do we want the badgers to build up their population afterwards and start spreading TB again? (after all, we aren't leaving the TB immune badgers behind, we're just using a blunt culling instrument). Or do we want them gone from Britain forever. And if they go, will there still be TB? Yes. And who next? And what are the consequences in the general ecology of wiping out a species? (don't know don't know don't know but kill anyway, panic).
Getting our relationship right with nature
I observe, and I have infinite faith in humanity when I say we have in our world an abundence of creative thinking humans who can turn their attention to nature and work with it. And I have equal faith that Nature can offer us an abundence of solutions, if we know how to work with her. Yes folks, we have to get our
relationship right.
There is a global tendancy to see ourselves as the hapless victims of a capricious Nature, clearly a heartless killer by nature, or to try to be the capricious and heartless killer of nature in order to control it and be its Ruler.
Nature has the potential to be a horrific killer,has been in the past, and is also the undisputed basis for our physical existence, an abundent wealth of possibilities. Here we need Discernment; in our epoch, nature unheeded, unthought out, neglected and abused, is a totally different thing from nature observed lovingly and respectfully without commercial bias, thought about attentively and intelligently, and worked with co-operatively. And who does all this? Humanity.
We are beginning to understand (those of us who care to look at ecology and so on) that it functions as a whole system, and can be balanced, or not. You can't kill of bits of it without causing shifts and holes and reactions in the whole thing. For examples of the extraordinary success which happens when genuinely free from vested interest agroecology turns its great mind to real solutions for feeding the world: see what happens when Agroecologists think out solutions for areas where natural disasters are the norm, seeking out nature's own solution and putting it into practice (Harvest of the Future film by Marie Monique Robin) rather than 'killing' off the 'bad' bits (the Monstanto Global Disaster Programme). This is THE film for our future, virtually impossible to hear about it in English, but this site works
http://zero-games.ru/video/Les-Moissons-Du-Futur.html
So if we get our relationship right with Nature, how will this help us with Measles and Badgers?
