A recent Toronto Star Article titled “Is Oprah Winfrey Giving Us Bad Medicine?” by David Gorski, an American oncologist, as well as a recent Newsweek article typifies the dilemma we face, as alternative practitioners. Both states that the idea of Oprah Winfrey and the platform she provides for various individuals and their anecdotal health stories is somehow negligent toward the public’s well being. Gorski quotes examples such as Suzanne Somers with her theories on reclaiming her youth and Jenny McCarthy’s claims regarding vaccinations and autism as examples of sloppy unscientific information.

What is our dilemma, as holistic nutritionists? Well, we know Gorski is not all wrong in his assessment of the examples given but we also know these ladies are not completely off the mark either. Suzanne Somers is right in her statement about drug companies and the “profit trumps ethics” model they operate under. The entire corporate world is under the microscope for exactly this right now. She is correct about the symptoms related to hormone issues and that hormonal problems are misunderstood. However, she is, I believe, mistaken in her conclusions as to the solution to aging. She has missed that Nature had a much better plan for us with regard to aging and investigations discussed on the website and in the book, the “Blue Zones” also showcased on Oprah as well as CNN, is starting to shed some light on true healthy aging. Somers also claims that using bio-identical hormones is safe. There is no information stating they are harmful and conversely, no information exists saying they are safe. They have not been in use long enough. Only time will tell us what is true ... look at the many examples of “lab science” determining a drug as safe, only to find out in the real world, years later, it is far from that.

Jenny McCarthy has successfully changed her son’s autistic reality and she has discovered a number of issues that her son had that, when corrected, saw him improve. She is not incorrect when she says that many of her son’s issues are common to other children with autism including vaccines being a mitigating factor. However, she may be misguided as to how the vaccination plays out in this story. The problem may not be the vaccines themselves, although I question the use of children as guinea pigs, especially in light of there being no “scientific” research studies on the effects of multiple vaccinations for anyone let alone children; that is truly “bad” science.  However, it is the pre-existing conditions of these children who react badly to vaccinations which should be studied. The questions should be: do they have sufficient good bacteria in their gut, good liver function; do they have pre-existing allergies or leaky gut syndrome? What is it about these children that give them a different result than the majority when vaccinated? I do believe that Jenny McCarthy understands most of what I just said to be the true case but she may not be expressing it that way and this leaves her vulnerable to being misconstrued or misinterpreted as unscientific.

Making observations about a group of people under certain circumstances and recognizing emerging patterns is not unscientific. The research community does this in qualitative research all the time.  So why are observations ‘scientific’ when the science community makes a statement but, observations noted by the alternative community are considered ‘unscientific’?  I will accept that this methodology is open to a lot of speculation when a correlation is found and it takes time to get all the facts right but that is case for both the scientific community as well as the alternative healthy community.  That is where we are with autism - but that does not make the connections made so far incorrect.  It is more accurate to say that findings are incomplete and other facts need to be found to understand the whole story.

What is missing from the Gorski article is that this M.D. had no intention of writing a fair and balanced piece.  He discusses unscientific methodology vs. the double blind placebo study that is now, the gold standard of the scientific community. I say, the only real science is Nature’s science.

Lab science and the double blind placebo format were created to understand Nature’s workings. The practice of dissecting and studying parts to figure out how things work is valid for that purpose. Unfortunately, somewhere along the way, lab science replaced nature’s real science, and now the medical community publishes its’ reductionist conclusions as fact. In doing so, they discount every other type of discipline including that of observation.  Human beings are not petri dishes nor test tubes and humans do not live in total isolation from their physical and social environments.  To come to a conclusion based on reductionist ”lab proof” thinking and extrapolate those finding to the real world is also “unscientific”.  Every year we read and hear about food and drug science gone “wrong” - this has been the case with hydrogenated fat or HRT or the drug Vioxx.   It took years, after the scientific community said these items were safe, for the truth to come to light. I keep waiting for anyone, a journalist, a member of the conventional scientific community or a member of the alternative health community to debunk this myth that lab science is the real science.  Until we accept what nature created as the only truly “scientific model”, we will continue to fail to ask the right questions to get the right answers.

Vaccinations are a good example. There is not a bacteria or virus that a healthy immune system can’t defeat and anyone who does not know this, does not understand the way nature works. Does “survival of the fittest” ring any bells?  Everything in nature is programmed to survive and is given the tools to do so if healthy. Good immune function is the only true path to immunization that is permanent. Vaccinations do not offer permanent immunity. Listening to the advocates of multiple vaccinations for all the people, all the time, the average person may begin to think Nature gave us nothing to fight these invisible foes. The truth is Nature gave us an arsenal but it left it to us to maintain it properly. Nature is smarter than man and therefore its plan to keep us alive is the one that works best. We should use research money to figure out what the immune system needs to function optimally and always ask why it didn’t, when it should have. Once we know that, we would have something to offer to truly protect ourselves from viruses and bacteria and be healthier in general. That is what the alternative or natural health community attempts to do. We still need more information but it is as wise and scientific an approach, if not better, than trying to trick and outsmart Nature using the results of artificially created circumstances from a lab.