The Complete Patient

The issues around Greg Niewendorp’s resistance aren’t easy to communicate to folks at large. You find this out when you are quizzed by someone who’s not had regular involvement. I spoke a couple days ago with a local reporter covering Greg Niewendorp’s case, and she had a number of excellent questions--I sensed she really was trying to understand the situation.

Her basic question: Why shouldn’t he be required to test his animals?

I tried to explain about his rights, and how he sells directly to customers who don’t care about the test—in fact, would prefer he didn’t do the test because they don’t want some chemical residue in their meat. Besides, there are all kinds of examples of federal and state government agencies exempting small businesses from environmental, labor, and other regulations that are too costly or cumbersome to administer.

“But isn’t this different?” she asked. “If his animals are carriers and brush up against deer, they can spread the disease to other farms. Isn’t this a public health issue?”

That launched me into the matters of animal health, human health, and rights. If the animals are healthy, they are not as susceptible to bovine TB, I said. Greg has come up with a mineral supplementation program for his animals to compensate for deficiencies in his region.

“Why doesn’t the MDA investigate this?” she wondered.

Well, maybe it has something to do with money, I answered, as in U.S. Department of Agriculture money that finances the bovine TB testing program. Plus, as the comments to my last post point out, you can't always believe the agency’s findings once you are in its crosshairs. They raided Richard Hebron based on a family that got sick, and without any proof, assumed raw milk was the culprit (when it probably wasn't).

But there’s more to it than that, I found myself saying. Increasing numbers of people want to buy meat that hasn’t had the injection for bovine TB. Just like they don’t want meat with the antibiotics and hormones common to feedlot animals. They don’t want meat that’s been corn fed. (There’s an interesting article in today’s New York Times about that subject.)

In fact, they don’t even want the U.S. Department of Agriculture inspection, and many of the other stuff the officials are doing to ‘protect’ us. It’s the same as with raw milk. (Now I was really revved up.) People don’t want milk that’s been through required processing. They want milk with the bacteria and enzymes and protein exactly as it came from the cow. They get all the protection they want by buying directly from farmers who carefully monitor their farms' production, and haven’t had to go through all the government requirements.

All of which led me into the germ theory, at which point I think I had exhausted the poor reporter. But as others suggest, keeping the media limelight on the MDA people, along with legal pressure, are the main tools at hand to get a shot at fairness.

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The discussion about appendices, following my post about the one-year anniversary of the Richard Hebron milk raid, got me thinking about tonsils.

When I was a kid, the big medical fad was to remove children’s tonsils, since they weren’t considered to be all that important. I had mine removed at age 5 (and my throat infections disappeared for many years). Of course, we have since learned that they are important in heading off a variety of serious infections, and I likely would have been better off having my immune system rejuvenated instead.

I’m not suggesting that appendices not be removed when they become inflamed, since a ruptured appendix is highly dangerous. It’s just another reminder to be skeptical when the medical experts say about one organ or another—“Oh, it doesn’t really do anything.” As the song says, “The hip bone’s connected to the thigh bone, and the thigh bone’s connected to…” And caring for them all is probably worthwhile.