The Complete Patient

Melissa’s ongoing upset about the safety of raw milk, based on her daughter’s illness, got me thinking…Suppose I raised my daughter on raw milk, organic produce, grass-fed beef, and other natural products—and assiduously avoided feeding her carbonated drinks, fast food, and other such staples of American culture. Then I sent her to Melissa’s for the weekend. (And Melissa, I’m just using you for illustrative purposes, since I don’t know what your family eats.) There, unbeknownst to me, she is fed a Taco Bell burrito, filled with factory beef, processed cheese, bleached-flour-taco, and other such goodies, all washed down with king size Cokes. A few days later, she becomes terribly ill with what seems to be E.coli, and almost dies.

How would I feel? I’d probably be pissed that my daughter was fed such junk food, since I avoided feeding it to my daughter partly out of fear that it could contain toxins. The experience would confirm all my concerns and prejudices about the factory food system.

In point of fact, of course, dozens of people did get sick a few months back from Taco Bell food. Out of 71 people who got sick, eight developed HUS-based kidney failure, and likely went through the same kind of experience Lauren Herzog experienced.

Once the smoke cleared, though, I doubt that Melissa would discontinue serving her family fast food (though maybe she’d go to Wendy's instead of Taco Bell).

My point is similar to that made by Dave Milano, “There are two distinctly different schools of thought at work here…a philosophical Grand Canyon.”

Because raw milk challenges so much about how most of us were raised, it has become a lightning rod. As a lightning rod, it is a symbol, of a gulf between two different approaches to nutrition, health care, and life itself. One fears bacteria as “germs” and wants the government to do everything in its power to stamp them out; the other sees bacteria as part of a larger ecosystem within which we humans try to integrate ourselves.