Activism Change

Article on BioImperialism

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Comments?

Terrific article. I would like to see it more widely published. It would be interesting to know what sort of feedback you had.  John — "The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence whatever that it is not utterly absurd; indeed in view of the silliness of the majority of mankind, a widespread belief is more likely to be foolish than sensible."                           Bertrand Russell 1872-1970

Response:

Terrific article. I would like to see it more widely published.

That was printed in the first issue of what is soon to be a close-to-monthly publication of the Traditional Naturopathic Students’ Association. The audience for it was something like a whopping 150 people, plus whomever they gave their copies to. More of the same attitude is set to be published in the next issue, and hopefully distribution will be going up when/if I can get the school to fund my printing costs. As for publication elsewhere, don’t know what it would be, but if anyone would *like* to publish it elsewhere just let me know. The thing is that it is obviously written to the naturopathic community. It would have to be revised/generalized to go elsewhere, and I’m not sure I have the time. I have lots of other tragedies to scream about. It would be interesting to know what sort of feedback you had.

Students that I talked to were very glad to get the info. One in particular was made "frightened," not just by what the article itself was saying, but by the fact that that sort of information is not *standard* teaching at our school. I’ll post future articles once the print edition has come out. And I’ll pass along any noteworthy responses. Peace Greg

Response:

At the National College of Naturopathic Medicine where I am a student, a friend and I have recently started publishing a newsletter. The purpose is to have fun with it, but it is also an opportunity to challenge the naturopathic profession. The thread on "AZT in Pregnant Women" made me think about this article, which I wrote and published in the last issue of our little zine. While the audience I’m writing to is obviously the naturopathic student/faculty/professional community, I think the topic itself might have relevance to those outside the profession. I certainly hope so. Peace Greg The March 22 issue of the British Journal of Medicine has an excellent editorial on the issue of what it termed "scientific imperialism." This is the process whereby scientific experimentation which is deemed too dangerous to conduct on populations here at home is being exported to Third World countries. There, swarms of unwitting, uninformed and unprotected subjects are dosed, injected, probed, tracked, and otherwise experimented on by the West. That essay comes shortly after the revelation that in June of 1990 about 1,500 mostly Black and Hispanic infants in South and Central Los Angeles were given an experimental measles vaccination. The experimental nature of the vaccine was not told to the parents. In fact, the very same experimental vaccine had already been injected into Haitian infants, where the results were immune suppression, brain inflammation and death up to three years after administration. In the Wonderful World of Late-Stage Capitalism, the Third World is closer than we like to think. It is important to note that the essay questioning the ethics of scientific imperialism did not appear in any alternative medicine journal. In fact, one has to look long and hard to find any alternative medicine journals that discuss any politics outside of the ho-hum "allopathic medicine’s success is political, not empirical" blahblahblah. Participation in state licensing is about as political as most naturopaths and naturopathic students get. Even that is limited to a few concerned souls. Political involvement at this level means approval of a budget that allocates some dollars to a lobbyist, a process which is the very embodiment of the system against which we claim to be rallying. For the rest of us it is as though participation in the naturopathic profession is itself social activism.  When the definition of our profession states, "Naturopathic medicine asserts that one cannot be healthy in an unhealthy environment and is committed to the creation of a world in which humanity may thrive," we are supposed to be confident that simply working toward personal healing is work enough, and the politics will all fall into place as a result. Biological imperialism, or "scientific imperialism" as the BJM describes its evil Godfather,  is happening all around us. As Nation-States lose their sovereignty in the violent and putrid wake of neoliberalism and force-fed structural readjustment programs, perhaps naturopaths could be forgiven the obligations of their commitment "to the creation of a world in which humanity may thrive." After all, Third World countries are so, well, dirty. Sovereignty is no longer a right that can be taken from Nations; it is now freely available to take from individuals. Invasions of the State into the realm of the biological, into the veins, fluids and fears of contagion of its subjects are everyday events. Genocidal programs carried out specifically against minorities, women, and uneducated populations under the guise of "Public Health" are almost surreal in their degree of planning and calculation, their service to capital, and their efficiency. And where are the collective voices in opposition to this unprecedented invasion of privacy, this unparalleled program of social control via biological intimidation and coercion? Naturopaths as a whole seem as concerned as pretty much everyone else. That is, little or not at all. Pregnant HIV+ women, mostly poor, minority, under- or uneducated, inner-city women, are being strongly advised to take AZT in order to prevent transmission of HIV to their children. "Strongly" is a key word here; one physician working on a Neonatal Intensive Care Unit in Phoenix described it as women being told by physicians, essentially, "this drug is the only hope for your child not dying of AIDS." Both the scientific and social logic behind this recommendation is absolutely insane, and a full education in the matter is not practical here. A short summary, though, is in order. AZT was found in the European Concorde Trials to be completely ineffective in delaying the onset of AIDS, and the side-effects were found to be worse than the disease in many cases. This is to be expected of a drug that inhibits DNA synthesis. In the wake of Concorde, the drug maker Burroughs-Wellcome (now Glaxo-Wellcome) did a PR and research blitz to resurrect their star drug (that drug grossed the company $338 million in 1992 alone). One of the studies that was done was to see if it would be good to give it to pregnant women. The study, which was halted early due to "ethical reasons," found that AZT lowers the chance of transmission of HIV from mother to child from approximately 25% to approximately 8%. This means that 75% of HIV+ women would not pass HIV on to their offspring anyway, even without treatment. Thus, a drug that prevents DNA synthesis was given to virtually all pregnant HIV+ (read: minority, inner city) women who would (and will) take it in order to reduce the overall transmission rate from 25% to 8%. The spin doctors at Wellcome billed this as a 300% reduction in transmission conferred by AZT, and the scientific and mainstream media repeated the news without critique. Of the many things that scream injustice, here are a few: 1) The trial was halted early, just like the original 1986 Phase II trials which approved AZT for HIV+ AIDS patients. Those original trials, it was later revealed, were completely fraudulent, as documents released through a Freedom of Information Act Request demonstrated. The documents were published in the New York Native  (30 March 1992) by John Lauritsen. When trials are halted early and drugs are suddenly released amidst great fanfare, sensible skeptics take note. 2) AZT works by preventing DNA synthesis. Chiu and Duesberg (Genetica 1995 vol. 95, 91-101) demonstrated that AZT does not preferentially inhibit HIV-infected cell division, as the drug-maker’s initial study had claimed. When it was approved as a drug to give to HIV+ pregnant women, it was fully acknowledged that absolutely no one knew the long term effects it might have on the children born to those women. Now, of course, it is known. The effects include higher cancer rates, higher still-birth rates, growth failure, opportunistic infections and neurological and neurodevelopmental deterioration, etc. A panel of "ethicists" convened recently to decide if the drug should still be given to those women. It must be torturous deciding if those are unavoidable casualties in the War on AIDS. 3) Semba et al. (Lancet 343(8913):1585-6, 1994) have demonstrated that vitamin A prevents HIV transmission more effectively than does AZT: reduction to 7.2% vs. reduction to 8%. This is outrageous, and naturopaths should be screaming it from the rooftops. All of this is happening in a world that is inexplicably removed from natural medicine, from the hypothetical world in which "humanity may thrive." 4) The decision to halt this trial early happened in response to (mostly liberal, well-intentioned) AIDS activists who have demanded that drugs become available sooner, that trials proceed faster. This sentiment is echoed throughout most leftist writings on AIDS. Dr. Donald Abrams, AIDS Program Director at UC General Hospital, stated regarding the public pressure to speed up or entirely dismantle the clinical trial process for AIDS drugs, "Somebody should write a book about the impact of that decision … because everything changed because of that demand." That change, in Dr. Abrams’ view, is entirely negative. AIDS and HIV politics are inherently scientific issues, yet there are relatively few within the AIDS activist communities who are savvy with science, who are getting second, third and fourth opinions. This doesn’t mean second opinions about the usefulness or appropriateness of this or that test or medication, but rather second opinions about the very foundation of the data itself: the validity of research methods and conclusions drawn, the biases inherent in the research methods, the use (or not) of Gold Standards during testing, the limitations of the new machines being employed to churn out new facts. AIDS requires more than good intentions, it requires skepticism, it requires the acknowledgment that all proclamations about this disease are emanating from a massive medical-industrial complex, and have to be regarded as such. This is not to say that all information is wrong or deceitful, but it means that it is all far from devoid of the economic motivations that produced the research in the first place. And if naturopaths, who are schooled in the science and have a (hypothetical) commitment to the creation of a healthier, safer, more hospitable environment, are not willing or able to collectively oppose the oppression and coercion going on under the rubric of "controlling AIDS," then who? AZT as a tool for biological imperialism is only one example that is ignored by the naturopathic community. AIDS has opened up avenues for social control and intervention that were previously only dreamed of by the State. Deborah Sontag, writing recently in the New York Times, describes how "New York hospitals quietly began the open mandatory testing of newborns for HIV … in the first such program in the … read more »

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