Thursday, August 16, 2012

Dr. McDougall's "Favorite Five" from Recent Medical Journals

I know that I have already linked to an article from his newsletter this month, but I also want to point to that part of the newsletter where he discusses certain medical journal articles and comments upon them.

He comments upon an article in the July 18, 2012 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association on the uselessness of the current interferon protocol for MS. It hits close to home.  My niece has struggled with this disease for at least five years, and the protocol is an unhappy feature of it.  Her efforts to find some sort of alternative to this treatment lead her to read The China Study, adopt at least for a time a vegan and gluten-free diet, and enjoy some dramatic improvement.  That example led Carol and me down the vegan dietary path.  (We have not adopted a gluten-free approach.)  Dr. McDougall, in his comments on the article, writes about a diet study that he has undertaken with respect to MS.

When I last visited my oncologist, we got on the subject of the PSA test.  Dr. McDougall's position is that they are useless and that radical surgery is not beneficial.  My physician presented the anecdotal success of a physician friend of his and argued that the surgery in that case saved the life of his friend without significant side effects.  My anecdotal evidence - the experience of a fraternity brother of mine - is to the contrary, at least concerning the side effects.  He is a most unhappy man at this stage of his life, which I would argue is still relatively young.  He is alive, one must point out, but that begs the question of whether his life expectancy has been altered.  Would we ever know?  Anyway, McDougall discusses an article on the subject of such treatment in the July 19, 2012 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.

The other articles upon which Dr. McDougall comments address colonoscopies, fish oils, and folic acid.

Why is it that we tend to think that our food and medical cultures (especially the medical) are somehow not profoundly affected by and do not reflect in significant part man's sinful nature, something that we are not ready to concede elsewhere - politics for example or Hollywood or the homosexual subculture, or the media generally.  (On the international scene, is it valid to argue that America as a whole is somehow less fallen?  Is that like being less pregnant?)  I don't mean to be a pessimist here.  I am arguing for viewing just about everything (starting with one's self) with a critical eye from the radical perspective of Jesus.  Jesus' work was not simply critical, however, it was redemptive.  I think Dr. McDougall is doing the Lord's work.

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