Chewing on a Mother's Real Message About Raw Milk, and the Risks of Dramatic Stories
Thursday, March 29, 2007 at 10:49PM After I wrote my postings last weekend about my raw-milk dilemma with a neighbor, I had an opportunity to chat at some length with Mary McGonigle-Martin, the California mother of seven-year-old Chris, who nearly died last fall after consuming raw milk. His bacteria was never identified for certain in tests, but Mary feels certain it was raw milk from the Organic Pastures dairy that made him and several other California children ill.
I held off writing about the conversation because I wanted to let it, and the entire discussion here, settle a bit. I think I was bothered some by the fact that I felt so strongly about treating raw milk differently from other foods in serving it to others, kind of giving it a big red warning sign.
Listening to Mary recount what happened to her son reinforced my strong feelings…to a point. She recalls how she took a month late last summer to finally decide to purchase raw milk for Chris. “I thought, ‘What if…’ I went on the Organic Pastures site and read all the dairy stuff. I thought, ‘He (Mark McAfee) really runs a good dairy. He tests every bottle.’ But I went against my instinct and let my guard down.”
For three weeks after serving Chris raw milk, everything seemed to be going okay. The big benefit was that his symptoms of attention deficit disorder disappeared.
But then he became very ill, and Mary and her husband spent two months in the hospital watching him nearly die and, finally, recover fully. Mary wonders not only about the raw milk, but about the antibiotics doctors used to treat Chris, which may well have exacerbated his illness. The doctors, not surprisingly, won’t entertain that notion.
“There is no accountability,” she says.
More significant for her now, “I have to live with the fact that I gave my child raw milk that nearly killed him.”
Yet what occurs to me now in re-examining Mary’s story is that such drama plays itself out in many cases of food-borne illness. Whether individuals become ill from spinach, Taco Bell, seafood, or raw milk, the illnesses can take patients to the edge of death, or sometimes all the way there.
Because we don’t learn about each of these individual illnesses, we don’t get caught up in the drama of most of the situations. Then, when we hear the details of one or the other, it hits us hard, especially when it involves a young child. It moved me to a super-cautious position.
What I found refreshing about speaking with Mary was that she has retained her open-mindedness. While she feels she can’t in good conscience serve her son raw milk again, she backs the right of others to make that decision for themselves.
And she doesn’t try to create a climate of fear. “We live in a toxic world,” she says.
She’s still speaking with the medical people involved in treating Chris, trying to get them to examine their treatment methods so they won’t repeat possible mistakes again. “We’re not suing, but we want to get them to understand what may have gone wrong.”
As for the raw milk debate, she says, “We have two extremes. The raw milk people say you can’t get sick. The public health officials say that’s why we have pasteurization. I think there is a middle road.”
If that middle road is one that encourages us to explore the best food choices and sources possible, and recognizes the fact that even after making our best efforts, there is a slight bit of risk associated with all foods, then I’m okay with that. And just as there are no guarantees the most nutritious and carefully produced food won’t make us sick, there are no guarantees it will keep us healthy, either. I say this because of Michael Richard’s comment at the end of my original posting, where he laments “my first health setback since starting to drink real milk last summer.” I’ve heard health-food adherents express surprise, and disappointment, when they contract one or another illness, and I try to tell them not to blame themselves or their diet. Illness is just another inevitable risk of life.
Reader Comments (41)
Thank you for your excellent site and thoughtful commentaries. I have to add something to this discussion about raw milk "making" one sick because it gets to a point so incredibly fundamental to our health and understanding it.
As you know, bacteria and microbes are just opportunists. They will only make you sick when there is susceptibility or an underlying dysfunction to clean up. That is their role, and it is a profoundly important one from an evolutionary perspective. So getting sick is a crucial part of getting well in many cases, as getting sick, mounting a successful recovery and then getting well again is the ultimate and original detox. It's how our bodies slough off imbalances and impurities.
And, yes, the antibiotics in this case absolutely inhibited this young boy's recovery. Getting the doctors to admit that is impossible, because allopathic medicine is based on the whole germ theory model, and antibiotics (and vaccines) are at the core of that paradigm, and thus constitute the third rail of western medicine as it exists today.
There are countless cases in the homeopathic literature about acute illness leading to profound and lasting improvements in the patient's load of chronic illness, in this case perhaps the ADD.
Looked at this way, as scary as it was, this illness may ultimately have benefited this child as a way for his body to retune its underlying imbalance.
I recognize this whole way of thinking is completely foreign in our culture, but its a philosophy embraced by much of the rest of the world, and one I think we're slowly moving back to.
I respect this mother for maintaining an nonreactionary stance about raw milk, and doing the best she can for her child. I am just inviting everyone to take the discussion one step further to looking at illness as simply the language of the body and often our partner and friend, as much as we've been lead to fear it. Obviously, the more healthy we are, the less likely we are to succumb to disease of any kind. Sometimes acute illness helps us get there. Many mothers of autistic kids already know this, as when there child has a cold, their autism symptoms improve, and sometimes the results are lasting.
Homeopathy offers us great guidance in this area, and the more similiar the acute symptoms are to the chronic load of the patient (often in ways that are only apparent to a trained eye), the more likely the amelioration of chronic systems is to be permanent after acute illness.
Mrs. Martin says “The raw milk people say you can’t get sick.” To whom is she referring? I can only assume that her attention has been drawn by marginal zealots, because in my circles (which I believe represent the vast majority of those who support raw milk consumption) virtually NOBODY believes that you can’t get sick from raw milk. The point is that, by any reasonable measure of risk analysis, and in consideration of all known factors, raw milk is an extremely good food choice for most everybody.
Ron Schmid, the naturopathic physician who wrote “The Untold Story Of Milk,” is one of the strongest (and most vocal) proponents of raw milk. Here is a direct quote from Dr. Schmid to me, discussing raw milk consumption: “Of course people are going to get sick [from drinking raw milk].”
His statement was true, but if you think that he meant to imply that raw milk is, as a practical matter, unsafe, you misinterpret him. He went on to explain that raw-milk related sicknesses are rare, generally minor, and self-limiting, and must be viewed in the context of other health factors, such as immune strength (which raw foods can improve) and, of course, collection techniques.
Perhaps today’s typical American, indoctrinated by lawyers, government, vaccine manufacturers, doctors, and just about everybody else, into into believing they can be protected from all hurtful things, cannot discuss these things sanely. Maybe that helps explain Mrs. Martin’s awful sense of guilt (“I have to live with the fact that I gave my child raw milk that nearly killed him.”). I do not mean to diparage Mrs. Martin in any way--can’t say even that I wouldn’t feel like her in similar circumstances. But I do believe that it is wrong to use her statements as a model. To do so would be to draw broad conclusions from narrow circumstances. That’s bad science, and a bad way to run one’s life. Mrs. Martin herself acknowledges that when she indicates that she would not prevent others from making their own minds up about raw milk.
The sane middle is where raw milk proponents will find success. It’s where we all should want to be.
I disagree with your take on viewing raw milk illnesses in line with other food borne illnesses. Raw milk is riskier than spinach or other foods. It is the perfect medium for these infectious agents to grow once the internal natural defenses are consumed (http://healthpoints.blogspot.com/2007/03/raw-milk-waiting.html). That is why there are more incidence of raw milk illnesses and that is why there is so much official concern around the subject.
From what I understand raw milk related illnesses account for around 1/3 of all milk related illnesses. That is not rare to me.
Recounting that raw milk accounts for 1/3 of milk related illness gives us a limited picture. We need to know the RATE of illness from certified dairies, compared to the rate of illness from pasteurized milk, compared to the rate of illness from other food sources.We also need to know this data for life threating illness -vs- mild gastrointestinal illness.
The above risks then need to be evaluated in light of documented differences between two populations, lifelong raw milk drinkers and lifelong pasteurized milk drinkers.
The fact that this data is not available, after a half century of near universal pasteurization, speaks to the strangle hold that the dairy industry has on this issue.
I am thankful that raw milk has remained available, so that someone may indeed collect and disseminate this data some day.
So, if anyone out there would like to roll the dice and give their children raw milk, that is your right. I only hope you can live with yourself if you find yourself 24/7 at your childs bedside for 8 weeks praying he or she doesn't die.
As the conversation proceeds on this very sensitive story, I need to address two things. I will trust readers to not presume me callous if I am not moved to demonize raw milk in the face of opinions expressed by Mr. and Mrs. Martin.
First, the notion that 1/3 of milk-related illness is due to raw milk...
Those of you wishing to believe that statistic probably cannot be dissuaded, but the first time I saw it in print, I tried to track it down to root data, and was simply unable to do it. The raw data does not support the claim. Nevertheless it is gradually, maddeningly, becoming true by repitition! Ken. please look into this. You will find that most of the claims of illness from raw milk come from government investigators who have a nasty habit of making assumptions that fall into line with their job descriptions. You do not have to take my word on that---do the due diligence and look at the claims.
And also on that same subject: If raw milk is so dangerous, or even deadly as some say, why are indiginous cultures with very heavy reliance on raw dairy able to survive so healthfully? The Masai in Africa (our contemporaries) live largely on milk and blood. They are sturdy, healthy, tall, and smart. (I'm told by someone who lives near the Masai that they look down their noses at everybody, for good reason!) They are not buying processed, pasteurized milk or even testing their milk or collection processes! How can that be?
Second, please bear with me as I relate a comment from a judge I met in Ohio. Over dinner conversation about law and regulation, he told me that the worst laws are the ones with names attached, e.g. Mikey's law, Sam's law (made-up names of course, but you get the idea) because they reduce all circumstances down to a tiny, uniform nib, and force judges to treat every single situation the same way no matter what the facts. As such, these laws are all about process and have little to do with justice. (Though I can't confirm the truth of his opinion, he also said that there is pretty wide agreement about that among judges.) That concept, I think, applies here. Making Chris Martin a representative of raw milk simply abrogates sensibility. Asking, as MH did, if I have ever watched my child on life support, is a step along the way of making our food choices process driven (as in a "Chris' law") where all pegs, regardless of shape, must be hammered into round holes. Everyone can sympathize with what the Martins went through, but we must guard against turning news into science.
Last, regarding Ken's comment that raw milk is the perfect medium for infectious agents [to grow and multiply], I am compelled to say this: Milk, in its raw state, is loaded with friendly bacteria that actually destroy pathogens. You can inoculate raw milk with a pathogen, and see that pathogen neutralized by friendly resident microbes. Inoculate pasteurized milk, and you get no inherent protection.
No matter, I suppose, since pasteurization is such an effective pathogen-killer. But where then, do the presumed 2/3 of pasteurized milk illnesses come from? The answer of course, is the same for pasteurized milk as it is for raw milk: Individual consumer factors aside (like immune strength), it's about the processing.
I'm curious.....do you have children?
Yes, I have two wonderful children, and a wife, all of whom I am devoted to, and love like any parent and husband would.
I hope that everyone can presume loving intent as we discuss these issues. I, for one, and I'm sure I’m not alone, believe completely that you and your husband have the well-being of your children always in the fore of your existence. My wife and I were discussing that very thing this morning. I think that your obvious devotion to Chris is a character form not as common as it ought to be today. (It seems that we have so glorified the pursuit of happiness that many forget that they are not alone in the world!) I would like to believe that I have some of that character as well. I certainly desire it.
With that said, I have apparently come to, perhaps with similar motivation to yours, an opposite view to yours on raw milk. I own a family cow, hand-milk it every day, and our family’s diet is full of raw dairy. We do it for health reasons.
Another thing you should know about me is that I make my living in a health field. I see illness every day, up front and center. I see the tragic suffering, and the opportunistic fortune-making (from diagnosis and treatment), that has come from all that sickness. The situation is particularly poignant to me because the disease set we treat today (I’m speaking of cancers, heart and vessel disease, degenerative conditions, digestive disorders, and behavioral disorders) were relatively very rare just a few short generations ago. I believe that the mess is largely the result of a shift from God-designed, to people-designed, diet and lifestyle--in essence, I blame our machine-oriented, centralized, processed-food industry.
That society-wide, mass suffering is what I was trying to get to in my last post. Chris’ story is heart-breaking--it naturally draws our attention. But I think that there is a danger that it may draw our attention dangerously away from the massive scale of illness that can be, I am convinced, reversed by a return to what Sally Fallon (for the record, of the Weston A. Price Foundation) has called our “nourishing traditions,” traditions that include the consumption of raw milk and other raw foods.
Believe me, I am not a cavalier individual. Quite the opposite--I am cautious and careful. I simply would never make food choices for my family based on a roll of the dice, as I know you would not.
Thank you for your concern, and for your willingness to discuss these things gently.
Dave
Thank you Dave for your response to my question and everything else you wrote. I wish I had a cow, but it wouldn't fit in with the swimming pool and all the cement--oh the Southern California lifestyle!
Obviously owning your own cow is the safest source for raw milk--the way God made it.
I would like to clarify something. I'm still pro raw milk. I believe in all its health benifits. However, when you don't own a cow, ones options from "safe" raw milk change. In California, raw milk is legal. Organic Pastures farm was our source. You buy it in a health food store like any other brand of milk.
Organic Pastures farm is state of the art. Please go to their website www.organicpastures.com for details. In theory, Mark McAfee's milk should be safe to drink. The goal of the raw milk movement is to have raw milk sold in the fashion throughout the U.S.
Organic Pastures was closed for a few weeks as a result of Chris and Lauren becomming ill (both children developed HUS). The state came in and searched but no sign of e-coli was ever found. Why? This is my question. Is it possible for e-coli to present for a short period of time and then disappear? I'm hoping that maybe Ken or Dave can answer this question.
The common thread for all 4 children that became ill is that they were first time raw milk drinkers during the hottest months of the year? Should there be a "caution" warning when drinking raw milk for the 1st time (when you purchase your milk from a large dairy like Organic Pastures)? Should children begin drinking it in the winter and spring when "bad" bacteria are at their lowest count?
Everyone knows that when you travel to Mexico, you shouldn't drink the water because it will make you sick. However, the people who live there don't get sick because their bodies have become immune to the bacteria.
Is it possible that raw milk works the same way? If you've been drinking raw milk for a period of time and then your exposed to e-coli 0157:H7 in the heat of the summer and early fall, you won't have a reaction. Your body is able to handle the exposure.
I'm not a biologist or doctor, so I hope these questions don't sound stupid. There has to be a logical reason that only four children got sick and that in 3 of the 4 children the same blueprint of e-coli was found. It wasn't the same blueprint as the spinach.
I'm a mom looking for answers.
Now I cannot give concrete answers to your questions, but I will tell you what I know.
First, for those unaware: There is no question that the infamous pathogenic strain of E. coli known as O157:H7 (we should be aware that there are many and ubiquitous strains of non-pathogenic E. coli) can cause severe illness, including the complication of hemolytic uremic syndrome (HUS) which Chris Martin unfortunately suffered.
When O157:H7 is identified as causing illness, for public health reasons it is important to identify the source. Demographic and behavior analysis is the way to get started. But such analysis does not conclusively demonstrate cause and effect. Follow-up testing of potential causes is necessary. Since, as Mary noted, Organic Patures raw milk was an identified “common thread” among four sickened children, Organic Pastures products were scrutinized. That nothing pathogenic was found in any Organic Pastures sample does tend to add weight to the idea that there may have been another cause. But that fact does not, cannot, unequivocally exonerate the dairy either, since a limited number of product units--the ones that found their way to the children--could conceivably have been contaminated. The relative liklihood of that potential is not for me to adjudicate of course, though it is strong information. The key is to be scrupulously objective in identifying potentials, and then test, test, test. (Whether raw milk was “a” common thread, or “the” common thread is an important question. I must say that Mr. Martin’s comment that his son was in a swimming pool the day before he drank raw milk gave me pause, because swimming pools are well understood to be potential carriers--via sewage inoculation. A well-publicized case of that occurred several years ago when the very young son of Atlanta Braves player Walt Weiss became ill after playing in a public wading pool. I presume that in Chris Martin’s case a pool was either not a common thread, or was tested and found clean.)
Regarding the temperature: Certainly heat, to a point, can increase bacterial growth rates, but I personally can’t say whether it was important in Chris’ illness. In any case, as far as I know, zero tolerance for the O157:H7 strain is the norm, so ANY amount of bacteria in milk would have been unacceptable.
Mary makes a good point about Mexican water. In a similar vein, I have queried many old farmers in this once robust farm region where I live, wondering whether they ever got sick from drinking their milk raw (milk which was often not collected in the cleanest possible way). The uniform answer I get is something to the effect of “God no! Everybody did that back then and nobody ever got sick!” I can only presume from that information that individual immunity is a factor. As such, I personally recommend that people changing from pasteurized to raw milk gradually ramp up their intake over a few weeks. (Please note that I suggest this “adaptation phase” merely to prevent transient diarrhea as the GI tract adapts to new flora, not as an adaptation to E. coli O157:H7.)
I hope this is helpful.
Dave
I never wanted to know so much about e-coli or HUS. I can only hope that our experience with our Chris' illness can lead to something positive. Life is full of lessons and for some reason a lesson for our family is to be learned.
As a result of Chris almost dying, I learned about generosity through the love that friends and strangers offered us. People all over the world were praying for Chris. A miracle truly happened for our son. The doctors and nurses even verbalized this to us.
So our experience with e-coli and HUS was life changing, but not entirely in a negative way. Each day I have with Chris is not taken for granted. When he drives me crazy, I smile. When I kiss him good-night, I savor the smell of his skin. I feel so blessed to still be a mom. Life is good!
My best to all of you on your mission to educated people about the benifits of raw milk. Hopefully Chris' story has touched each of you in a way that can help others. We only have each other and our "stories" to make this world a better place to live.
I know this is true in some other countries.
I have also assumed that the people I know who were safely raised on "dirty milk" survived not because they developed a tolerance to pathogens, but because their guts were highly populated with good bacteria (from the raw milk) that would then crowd out any bad. In the case of water, this would not explain different tolerances between native Mexicans and American tourists, unless the Mexicans were also exposed to good bacteria through other means.
Does exposure to bacterial pathogens bring tolerance, as it does with viruses? (I am thinking of the decimation of native populations when European explorers exposed them to viruses that the whites had developed a collective tolerance for).
I'm a few hours away from the Mexican border. In my late teens and early 20's, I went to Tiauana (spelling?) at least 5 times. It's just something you do for fun when you live in Southern California. Of course part of this adventure included drinking. It was common knowledge to only drink beer--no margaritas or mixed drinks because they were served on ice. The ice would make you sick. However, the Mexicans were drinking mixed drinks on the rocks, so I'm assuming they weren't getting sick from it.
This is hardly scientific, but you can see why I came to the conclusion that the Mexicans can drink their water and not get sick. Bars, regardless of what country they are located in want to make money. Logic dictates that they aren't going to serve drinks that are going to make people sick. Unless of course people drink too much and get sick all on their own.
I find myself wondering about populations such as the Masai and the Amish who consume raw milk regularly with no oversight and no illness. Could it be that their ancestors with low tolerance to pathogens were removed from the gene pool a long time ago?
The traditional foods of Mexico also similarly provide some protection. Because the parasites are not just in the water but on the fruit, on the vegetables, in undercooked meat, etc.
Wormwood (Artemisia absinthum) is an herb used to protect against parasitic infestation. The idea is to create a hostile environment so that the parasites never get a foothold (so to speak) in the gut. A healthy gut with lots of active friendly bacteria does the same thing for bacteria specifically, with some protection against parasites.It is an imperfect system but it seems to help much of the time.
Wormwood is a poison though, so it can only be used in small doses and its use in pregnancy, for people already weakened by illness or disease, and for small children is not advised. A traveler would use just one drop (one drop NOT one dropper) a day of the tincture. That is a very very smal amount. It helps, but regular precautions are still needed. Even with that low dose, I wouldn't advise using it for more than a month or two. I mention it here as an interesting approach to the problem of parasites – which might mimic other local protections obtained by growing up in the environment. In my small experience, friends with the “genes” (Americans with parents from Mexico or India) have no inherent protection.
I was advised to consume yogurt made from raw milk before trying to drink it. The explanation was because the milk contained a load of unfamiliar active bacteria my body needed a transitional “inoculation”. I did that for three years before I drank the fresh milk, mostly because I thought I had mild lactose intolerance. And I also thought I didn’t like milk. I was surprised to be able to drink the milk with no nausea, no diarrhea, and I liked it. Impossible with conventional milk.
Today both my dog and I did what we needed to do to help populate our guts for immune health – her version was to find and eat deer poop. Consuming wild non-carnivorous feces helps her to have an active gut needed for the high protein diet of a dog.
My much more palatable version was to munch on the wild greens popping up in my garden – unwashed, hopefully with some interesting wild yeasts, fungus and bacteria that will help me stay healthy. They are grown in a protected place, I don’t advise eating unwashed greens from the store or from locations you don’t know a great deal about. But this is also a traditional method of improving gut health.But so few of us have access to safe unwashed greens!
This has been a very helpful and wonderful thread to read. Thank you to everyone who has contributed to it. My only other comment is that I’ve chosen the raw milk because of the quality of the milk, but also because of the chance to know the farmer, meet the cows, inspect the milking parlor, walk the fields where the cows eat, and know exactly the details of every part of what happens to my milk as it leaves the cow, is put into bottles I sterilized, placed in the chiller, and is then quickly (in less than an hour) transported to my refrigerator. I like supporting a local farmer, and I like knowing (and controlling) where my food comes from.
I don’t want to buy my raw milk at a store. I think the process we go through – connecting with the farmer and the land and with the group of raw milk drinkers is part of the value.