The Complete Patient

We’ve been very fortunate on this blog to have had a number of people willing to share their experiences and knowledge around food-borne illness.

First, there’s Mark McAfee of Organic Pastures Dairy Co. Mark is open almost to a fault. He can’t resist commenting, and in so doing, turns himself into a lightning rod. He discussed his views of what happened regarding the illnesses of the six children, ad nauseum.

Then there’s Mary McGonigle-Martin, mother of Chris Martin, followed by Melissa Herzog, mother of Lauren Herzog. They both discussed the situations from their perspectives, to the point of exhaustion for many readers.

And finally, we’ve had any number of extremely well informed participants in these debates—Miguel, Dave Milano, Steve Bemis, Sylvia, C2, Kirsten, milkfarmer, and many others too numerous to mention.

Now, we can dispute these individuals—especially Mark, Mary, Melissa—in terms of what they said, how they said it, when they said what, and so forth, but the simple fact that the discussion took place is highly unusual.

The reason it’s so unusual is that, despite the fact that millions of people (the CDC says 77 million) are victims of food-borne illness each year, there are three huge obstacles that prevent the kind of discussion that took place here.

The first obstacle is the legal/public relations obstacle. There are very very few business executives who, when their companies are identified as possible sources of foodborne illness, are willing to candidly talk about it. Most fear the Bill Marlers of the world, and are advised by their attorneys not to say anything because it could be held against them in a court suit. Mark is very much the exception, for any number of reasons.

The second obstacle is the privacy obstacle. Patient privacy is protected, as well it should be, and so it’s difficult for the media to locate victims of food-borne illness. Many of these victims don’t want to get in the middle of media debates about the topic. In the September 2006 California case, only two of the six have come forward—Mary, to the extent she shared many personal and painful details of her family’s ordeal.

The third obstacle is that our government officials and their scientific advisers refuse to be candid about the subject. So we are left with documents like those produced by California public health department and the CDC that raise more questions than they answer.

Now, why do the government officials and advisers—these lions of our scientific, public health, and medical establishment—resist being candid? As much as we want to blame conspiracies, I think the real reason is very simple: they don’t fully understand the problem of food-borne illness.

In fact, none of us fully understand it. If we did, we wouldn’t be having the debates we have here. Some of us think we understand it—I agree with those who see our obsession with pathogens and food sterilization as having created the unintended effect of weakening people’s immune systems. But I can’t prove it conclusively. The establishment view that we just need to tighten cleanliness up some more to completely rid ourselves of the pathogens holds sway. But they can’t prove their case conclusively either.

The government’s problem is that the officials are unwilling to admit they don’t have all the answers. There was an interesting exchange in Congress yesterday to this point, in hearings about the salmonella outbreak affecting tomatoes, reported by The Wall Street Journal. “Some lawmakers expressed exasperation with the (FDA). ‘The longer you sit on this committee, the more depressed you get, because the issues never get resolved and crop up again and again,’ said Rep. Diana DeGette (D., Colo.), who for years has urged the agency to develop a program to track food from the farm.”

We can argue about this legislator’s perspective all we want [just over the fact she wants a tracking system for all food], but the reality is she is frustrated because the scientists at the FDA won’t tell her/us they don’t fully understand the food-borne illness phenomenon.

The same frustration is spilling over onto this blog. There’s this feeling, I know I get it sometimes—why the hell don’t Marler and C2 and CP see the big picture? And they get frustrated with being labeled and mocked, and the beat goes on.

I’m not sure exactly why the scientific establishment can't bring itself to admit it doesn't fully understand what's happening. Maybe because Congress appropriates money and drug companies come up with highly profitable products and so on and so forth based on the conventional wisdom. To say you don’t know—as admirable a human trait as that might be--well, it doesn’t inspire the confidence that legislators and investors like.