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Grant's May 2022 Update
Quote from lil chick on May 20, 2022, 2:15 pmI think Wavy crosses the line a lot, and a good example is when he said "if I had a nickel for every time... ". A "fair fighting" way of conveying the same info would be from his side of things, perhaps "I often don't agree with Smith".
@Jude I'm not sure I should wade into the discussion of whether pharmaceuticals (and OTC's) ever have there place, LOL. But I think you are a very smart young person if you've already realized that you have to pick and choose them VERY CAREFULLY. You need to use them with surgical precision.
Some of the most important ones, that I've seen, have been pain relievers and antibiotics. The less often you use them, the better they work.
But it doesn't make sense to be a hero. Take this from someone who has had a lot of pain.
I've heard that ivermectin works by allowing more zinc into the cell, and that the cell can fight against invaders better when it has more zinc? But gosh I can't even remember where I read that. I have heard that it helps rosacea, and zinc and rosacea seem to have a meeting place, so if that is ivermectin's method, maybe it is true. Farm animals can die of parasitic infections, and it does appear that ivermectin has been used as often as aspirin has in this world, it's side effects are well known, and it probably does have some usefulness when used with precision!
Now and then I get an infection starting on my face (impetigo). A dab of antibiotic early on saves me a lot of trouble down the line. When I was getting a lot of headaches, it was getting to the point that (normally cheery) me was getting rather depressed due to pain. Pain relievers are better a better choice than slipping into depression.
I myself tend to avoid long-term meds for chronic conditions, and feel like lifestyle changes are more of what's needed when it comes to long term-things. For acute conditions I use them sparingly.
@lil chick
@wavygravygadzooks
Let me first respond to Lil Chick. I haven't found any articles talking about how ivermectin affects zinc. But if most if not all the ivermectin studies you have in mind involve simultaneously using ivermectin and zinc (as most of the studies of zinc plus ivermectin show up as in google searches), then ivermectin is useless and covid-19 patients would be better of taking zinc supplements. Orthomolecular medicine is something that exists and I think far too many people jump to pharma drugs as the go to quick fix solution and they could permanent results with orthomolecular treatments for recurrent medical conditions.
I'm sure drugs are fine for one-time acute illnesses. But for recurrent illnesses such as flus (covid-19 or whatever you want to call it) and chronic conditions, I think all drugs except for pain killers, are practically useless.
If an antibiotic can help lessen impetigo, then I don't see why you shouldn't occasionally use it, Lil Chick. But if you have to keep taking antibiotics for impetigo and your impetigo is a recurrent or chronic condition, then I would expect you to develop additional health problems and I would expect that you to never resolve your skin condition.
To answer Wavy's question, I don't know what the cause of sepsis is, but if I had sepsis I would be very reluctant to accept any antifungal or antibiotic "medicine" for its treatment until the doctor thoroughly explained how he thinks the antibiotic is going to make a difference. Antibiotics and antifungals are obviously poisons. If I were dying from sepsis, I wouldn't want my death to be hastened by the use of antibiotics or antifungals. Maybe the bacteria and fungal overgrowth of the sepsis might disappear, but I don't know if I would die in the process of killing off those micro-organisms.
I would have to read a lot of the literature on the treatment of sepsis to develop an opinion on this subject. Unlike Wavy, I'm doubt everything that everyone says regardless of their level of education or how convincing or how confident they sound. Anyone could be wrong for any reason. The only time I take a leap of faith when it comes to medicine is when I take pain killers (out of desperation) or when I sign up for a painful medical examination e.g. having a catheter stuck up my penis for an MCU scan (a micturition X-Ray scan).
I don't have colds anymore so I don't have to experiment with anti-flu medications anymore.
Nowadays, I only trust doctors to make a diagnosis. I don't trust normal doctors to treat any condition except pain and maybe a soar throat or running nose (I have often had bad results with medication for running noses, so I'm still quite skeptical). And sometimes pain killers don't work at all and stronger and more addictive pain killers are needed for something as trivial as chronic gum pain or tooth pain.
There was a time that my pain medication was failing to solve my gum pain when I ate meat deep fried in ghee. Not only did the ghee give me gingivitis (over several months), but the deep fried meat hardens to the point that eating the meat becomes a serious exercise for my weak jaw.
In the book called What Really Makes You Ill, Dawn Lester and David Parker argue that diseases cause germs to proliferate rather than the other way around. In other words, whatever metabolic or nutritional or chronic poisoning problem that causes the disease is likely the cause of the increase in the number of germs, fungi and yeast in the body. If I had more time, I would directly cite their studies in this forum, but in the meantime I'm going to invite everyone to read their book.
Type 2 diabetics are famous for having foot fungi, gangrene and yeast overgrowth, but I don't think anyone in this forum is going to argue that Type 2 diabetes is caused by fungi and yeast instead of carbohydrates, industrial seed oils and environmental toxins. Is Wavy daring enough to argue that gangrene causes Type 2 diabetes and not the other way around? I don't think so, but I'm fairly sure he will continue to believe germ theory for whatever reason.
If you briefly read Wikipedia's description on Sepsis you will see that there is a lactic acid build up in cases of sepsis. Sepsis clearly involves some kind of problem with human metabolism. I would like to read up on the subject of Sepsis one day, but in the meantime I'm earnestly waiting for Wavy to provide evidence to support germ theory. And I won't accept rhetorical arguments from Wavy such as "it would be idiotic to not do x when one has an 'infection'".
Wavy, you rely too much on rhetorical arguments and when you do it looks like emotional manipulation. Where are the facts needed to support your contentions? You come off as manipulative whenever you use what looks like rhetorical arguments and you are actively hurting your reputation every time you make those kind of arguments.
I don't care if someone on this forum is condescending or rude to me. I'm used to being verbally abused by my family members. But I can't ignore illogical arguments.
I'm sure Wavy is not trying to manipulate anyone here. I've had serious emotional problems arguing with my family about their health problems and my own health problems. I would prefer not to have the same kind of arguments I have with my emotionally abusive family in this forum, with Wavy or anyone else.
Grant is probably 20-30 years older than me, so it's easier for him to ignore illogical or irrational arguments (arguments based on cognitive dissonance or wishful thinking) than for someone as young as myself.
And lastly, I'm sure Wavy can contribute better ideas to this community, if only he was more willing to re-examine some of his older beliefs.
I am a scientist. The entire framework of my existence is based on integrating new evidence with existing theories and hypotheses and re-evaluating what I know. When I continue to stand by my previously held beliefs, it's because that's what I think the scientific evidence best supports. When I reject the notions of people like the authors of "What Really Makes You Ill", it's because I think their argument lacks scientific validity...quite possibly because they are not scientists. Anybody can write a book. Anybody can play at being a "researcher". Hardly anybody understands how to properly interpret scientific data though...that requires a thorough training in statistics and scientific methodology, and a good deal of experience, things which I can barely start to claim myself even though I've published a few peer-reviewed manuscripts in recognized journals. If I have to rely on people like Bret Weinstein to pick apart the nuances of subjects and studies I am not familiar with, then it is clearly ludicrous for you to try to overturn germ theory based on some random book written by non-scientists.
How do people like you not understand that you are attempting to negate the diligent work of thousands and thousands of scientists by citing absolute shit like "What Really Makes You Ill" and Wikipedia entries? Skepticism is great, but you are practicing denialism. You are asking for a much higher level of proof for a well-functioning established theory than you are for the alternative you're promoting (I still haven't seen a single refutation of any of the points I made about Grant's blog post).
If you don't see why you should put more trust in someone like Bret Weinstein in matters of biology than Grant or the authors of the books you're promoting, then there's little I can do to reach you.
I'm a sucker for getting into arguments here, but I really need to back away from this shit...it's summer where I am and I've got a million more productive things I should be doing than arguing with random people on the internet. So with that, I wish you good luck in your attempt to disprove an entire academic field of study.
@are
I'm going to write a proper response to Arena's question with some direct citations from research journals disproving the viral theories of Influenza and Covid-19 in about 2 weeks.
There are many so-called infectious diseases and I'm not about to disprove them all in this forum. What I will do, is pick these 2 diseases and provide a bit of evidence against their supposed viral origins.
A scientific consensus is only proof that there is a consensus among scientists, but the scientific consensus is not proof of the scientific validity or correctness of any scientific theory. Science is not about achieving a consensus opinion. Organized religion is all about achieving a consensus opinion. Appeal to the majority is a logical fallacy. Science is by definition a logical method of inquiry and, therefore, cannot by definition have as one of its founding principles a logical fallacy such as the appeal to the majority.
A consensus is useful for building upon old scientific theories and it's helpful for scientific research. But it's illogical to assume that a consensus among scientists is the same thing as scientific truth, that would be a false equivalence, which is yet another logical fallacy.
I'm not a scientist, but that doesn't mean that everything I say about science, nutrition or any scientific topic is automatically wrong. Scientists don't have a monopoly on human knowledge.
I want Wavy to keep in mind that I cited another book called Virus Mania, which is written by 2 medical doctors and one science journalist. The main author, Claus Köhnlein, is a doctor from Germany. One of the co-authors, Samantha Bailey is a medical doctor from New Zealand and her husband, Mark Bailey, is also a medical doctor from New Zealand.
The authors of What Really Makes You Ill are not scientists, but they cite Virus Mania as a reference and they cite hundreds of medical doctors in their references. There is also a key medical doctor that is often cited by the authors of these books called Dr. Stefan Lanka, who is an actual virologist. Even actual virologists think that viral theory is wrong.
What Really Makes You Ill adds more information and more depth to Virus Mania, even though its not written by scientists.
I also want to add that Wavy is using logical fallacies to argue that alternative theories to germ theory and viral theory are not worth investigating. Well, that's what I think he is doing. I'm not entirely sure.
Wavy is also using the character assassination fallacy to argue that What Really Makes You Ill is not worth reading, because its authors are not scientists. But just because its authors are not scientists does not mean that its scientific claims are false or have been disproven nor does it mean that they have misinterpreted the hundreds of scientific journal references they cite.
Regardless of how trustworthy and sincere Bret Weinstein is and regardless of how good he is at interpreting and clarifying mainstream viral theories of Covid-19, he can still be entirely wrong about the true causes of so-called "infectious" diseases. I'm not interested in trusting Bren Weinstein's personal opinion just because he is a scientist and happens to support the consensus opinion.
I want to see concrete and easy to understand evidence from Bret Weinstein proving that Covid-19 is caused by a replicating viral particle that is transmitted through the air. It's important that scientists don't lie about their findings, but that doesn't mean that they don't mistakes nor does it mean that they have carefully investigated all of their beliefs about medicine and nutrition.
Before I provide evidence against germ theory and viral theory, I want to ask Wavy if he has read Grant Genereux's books. If so, then why would he be willing to read Grant Genereux's books when Grant is neither a research scientist, medical doctor, or trained nutritionist. If you're willing to read Grant's books on vitamin A toxicity, which flies in the face of mainstream nutrition science (the consensus among nutrition scientists), then why aren't you willing to read books attempting to disprove germ theory and virology?
I'm not going to personally disprove Germ Theory. The authors I have cited have already done so. I will just show some snippets of their arguments in this forum in my next post.
You sound like someone who just took a college course on logic and are all hopped up to use your new toolset.
Correct, science is not explicitly about reaching a consensus, but a consensus tends to form around hypotheses that have the greatest explanatory and predictive power. Hypotheses that gain such support and remain disproven are termed theories. No theory is implicitly guaranteed to stand forever, nor is it immutable, but it does typically represent the best model available at the time. Thus, germ theory represents the best model for infectious disease that we currently have.
I never said that being a non-scientist automatically invalidates your ideas, or that being a scientist automatically validates one's ideas. But it's quite clear that someone trained in a particular field is more often than not better equipped to make judgements about topics in that field. I would expect Grant, for example, to be better equipped to solve particular engineering problems than myself.
I scanned through one of Grant's e-books a couple years ago. They are quite long and meandering and what I saw was a ton of speculation based on correlation among data. So, no, I have not read any of Grant's e-books thoroughly or to completion because what I saw did not justify my time...not to belittle his own difficult experiences, I just didn't find it that relevant to my own experience and I didn't find the analysis very compelling.
I think you're misrepresenting my statements and looking for an excuse to name logical fallacies. I never said that "What Makes You Ill" isn't worth reading because its authors are not scientists, I said their supporting evidence is not scientifically convincing. Any idea deserves attention if there's enough time to give it attention, but some ideas can be dismissed pretty quickly based on the available evidence.
The Virus Mania book sounds like a better read...maybe I will pick that one up and see what it says.
Nevermind about reading that book, I think I just saved myself some wasted time...
This person's assessment of the situation is perfectly in line with my own, and they offer a number of resources for you to peruse.
Logic is well and good, but it doesn't get you anywhere without knowledge with which to pair it. There's a reason science is divided into disciplines and subdisciplines comprised of specialists...any given field of study is extremely complex and nuanced and is not something you learn overnight by reading a book you bought on Amazon.
I read the specific blog post by Frank Visser that you linked to. The anti-virus folks like Cowan, Kaufman and Lanka have spent tons of time poring over the same academic articles that Visser links to, in the context of the blog post by Mackay that Visser mentions. Merely linking to academic articles by one side or the other is not enough, you have to go over the articles line by line to see where the disagreements are.
Visser's entire site on the existence of viruses is useful in that he is at least attempting to parse what the anti-virus commenters are saying and to refute the points. So Visser is going a lot farther than just citing academic credentials and mentioning the importance of peer review, which are useless arguments when the entire allegation is that a scientific field like virology is completely fabricated, although Visser unfortunately does make all those appeals to authority as well.
I actually think the points of useful scientific debate are much narrower than most blog posts than dramatic blog posts and videos by those for or against the existence of viruses (or some intermediate view on viruses like Grant's) suggest. For example, Visser's attack on Lanka's unpublished control experiment in point #11 of the article linked to below states the following:
But here's the catch: these mock-infected cells also (often, but not always) show cell damage over time, like the virus-infected cells do, but different both in quality and quantify. So it requires a trained eye to spot the difference. Just showing a couple of cells with some damage won't do here.
To me this is Visser agreeing with 75% of the details of what Lanka is saying. Lanka says that using the experimental setup to culture a virus without any sample from a sick person or animal produces cell damage and Visser agrees with him! Then Visser writes that a trained expert can tell the difference between cell damage from a virus and cell damage from the experimental setup without any virus. Maybe, but to me the need for trained experts to distinguish types of cell damage is saying that using the cell damage from culturing viruses to prove the existence of pathogenic viruses is a lot subtler than most "appeal to authority" virologists writing for a mainstream audience would have us believe.
Another theme of Visser's writing on the existence of viruses is about the power of modern sequencing techniques. It would be good to put these newer sequencing techniques in historical perspective. Have these new sequencing techniques ever been used to disprove claims by earlier generations of virologists who were forced to use less advanced techniques? Disproving earlier claims, especially those claims with public policy implications, would go a ways to indicating that virology as a field is open to intellectual debate and is not only about pushing one world view.
Here is the blog post by Visser with the discussion of Lanka's control experiment as point #11.