There is a tendency to think that lead pathology has been dealt with, as in largely eliminated. Unfortunately that’s far from the case. While it is true that lead levels in the environment are less than, say, 50 years ago, it is sill incredibly persistent and is carried in human tissues almost permanently. We do not shake off lead so easily and IT’S DEADLY!

You may had read the theory that lead poisoning is probably what sank the Roman empire. They had lead in their plumbing, lead in their baths, lead cookware, even wine sweetened with lead acetate (sapa), and obviously large amounts of the metal has been found in their bodies: over 70 times higher than pre-Roman populations. They were once a brilliant and advanced civilization but maybe they died of being somewhat weakened, relatively infertile and perhaps deranged!¹

CHRIS73/CREATIVE COMMONS

Geochemist Clair Patterson (1922 – 1995) published that in our time we are born with 1000 times more lead in our bones than was found among our ancestors centuries ago! Patterson was a strong advocate for the removal of toxic lead from our environment. He also used a uranium-lead isotope to determine that the earth was 4.5 billions years old and he received the Nobel Prize for his great contribution to human knowledge… Oh, no, wait a minute. No he didn’t. Actually he was IGNORED by the Nobel committee, who awarded it instead to two independent workers on the chemistry of organometallic “sandwich” compounds!²

(Yawn)

Here’s something critical you may not know: lead levels in your bones (bone lead) is a perfect monitor for your risk of dying from all causes. 

This startling fact is from The Harvard bone-lead mortality study (?2007–2009).³

You have unsafe levels of lead in your bones even if you have had 100 IV EDTA infusions (aka. IV chelation), slow with sodium EDTA or rapidly with Calcium EDTA.  Rapid Calcium EDTA infusion is proven to take out more lead than the slow but slow infusion is better for those few patients where the primary issue is pathologic calcification, as in vascular calcification or high calcium coronary score.

Remember: hair, blood and urine levels tell you almost nothing about your bone lead score!

From “Safe” to None at All 

There was a time—not very long ago—when a child could carry a measurable burden of lead in their blood and still be considered “fine.” Not healthy, not thriving—just not yet alarming enough to trigger concern. That illusion has been steadily dismantled over the past half century, piece by piece, study by study, until today the conclusion is stark:

There is no safe level of lead exposure in children.

That statement, now widely accepted, represents one of the most profound reversals in environmental health science.

The CDC’s Turning Point (2012)

In 2012, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) formally lowered its reference level for blood lead in children from 10 micrograms per deciliter (µg/dL) to 5 µg/dL, effectively doubling the number of children considered at risk.

This decision, reported by John Gever in MedPage Today, was more than a numerical adjustment—it was a philosophical shift. The CDC also abandoned the term “level of concern,” acknowledging that it falsely implied safety below a threshold.

The agency stated plainly:

“No level of lead in the blood is safe.”

This position was based on recommendations from the Advisory Committee on Childhood Lead Poisoning Prevention, which emphasized that even low-level exposure is associated with measurable harm. The new 5 µg/dL benchmark was not a safety cutoff, but a statistical marker—the 97.5th percentile of U.S. children’s blood lead levels at the time.

The implication was unsettling: what had once been considered “acceptable” exposure was now recognized as biologically active and potentially damaging.

To understand how dramatic this shift was, we have to rewind.

In the mid-20th century, lead poisoning was recognized primarily as an acute condition. Children with very high blood lead levels—often above 60 µg/dL—presented with seizures, coma, or death. These were unmistakable cases.

Chronic lead poisoning, I learned at med school, was characterized as “The dangles and dry colic”, meaning abdominal pains and peripheral nerve damage, leading to weak wrists and difficulty walking.

Lower levels were largely ignored.

This paradigm began to crack in the 1970s, largely due to the work of Herbert Needleman, a pediatrician and psychiatrist who asked a radical question:

What if lead harms children even when it doesn’t cause obvious poisoning?

In a landmark 1979 paper published in the New England Journal of Medicine, Needleman and colleagues measured lead levels in children’s shed baby teeth and compared them with cognitive and behavioral outcomes.

Herbert Needleman. The kid’s hero!

They found that children with higher lead burdens—even at levels far below those causing acute poisoning—had:

• Lower IQ scores

• Reduced attention span

• Increased behavioral problems

This study was explosive. It suggested that lead was not just a poison—it was a neurodevelopmental disruptor at levels previously considered harmless.⁴

By the 1990s and early 2000s, a new generation of studies confirmed and extended Needleman’s findings.

One of the most influential came from Bruce Lanphear and colleagues:

They found something deeply counter-intuitive: the largest drop in IQ occurred at the lowest levels of exposure! Children whose blood lead rose from 1 to 10 µg/dL experienced a greater IQ decline per unit increase than those at higher levels.

In other words, the dose-response curve was steepest at the low end—exactly where previous standards had assumed safety.⁵

This pooled analysis of multiple international cohorts revealed something deeply counterintuitive:

Why Are Children So Particularly Vulnerable?

Lead interferes with multiple biological systems central to brain development:

• Synapse formation (disrupting neural connections)

• Calcium signaling (essential for neuron communication)

• Neurotransmitter release

• Gene expression and epigenetic regulation

So much so that a major review by the National Research Council concluded:

Lead exposure during early childhood can cause permanent alterations in brain structure and function, with effects that persist into adulthood.⁶

Behavioral and Social Effects

• The impact is not limited to IQ.

• Longitudinal studies have linked childhood lead exposure to:

• Increased impulsivity and aggression

• Reduced academic achievement

• Higher rates of delinquency and criminal behavior

Reyes demonstrated that reductions in environmental lead—particularly after the phase-out of leaded gasoline—were strongly associated with declines in violent crime decades later.⁷

From Treatment to Prevention

By the time of the CDC’s 2012 decision, the scientific consensus had shifted decisively:

• There is no threshold below which lead is harmless

• Effects occur at levels once considered negligible

• Damage is often irreversible

The Advisory Committee emphasized that policies should move away from reacting to elevated blood levels and toward primary prevention—eliminating exposure before it occurs.

The Quiet Reality

The most unsettling aspect of this story is not that lead is toxic—that has been known for centuries.

It is that for decades, “acceptable exposure” was defined not by biology, but by what was economically and politically convenient.

Each time the threshold was lowered—from 60 µg/dL, to 30, to 10, to 5—it wasn’t because lead became more dangerous.

It was because we became more honest about what it was doing all along.

What You Can Do

My old pal the late Garry Gordon was a big activist with lead: he said we older ones should undertake daily chelation for the rest of our lives. He was thinking of oral or rectal chelation with EDTA (which tires after a while, let’s be honest!)

He also used zeolite and found some benefits from daily ingestion of high dose vitamin C, 10 grams or more, plenty of fiber, and other natural chelators (such as pectin and parsley). Garry’s point being that there is new lead coming in daily from water, food and air and from lead released by bone turnover.  

Calcium is the simplest, most underrated intervention. Lead and calcium compete for the same biological pathways. So…

• Low calcium ? more lead absorption

• Adequate calcium ? less absorption + less bone release

Calcium doesn’t exactly “chelate” lead—it prevents it from getting in and coming out of bone.⁸

Iron status matters more than people realize. Iron deficiency dramatically increases lead uptake. Children with low iron absorb significantly more lead.⁹

So eat red meat, liver (if you’re open to it), or iron supplementation if deficient. But do NOT take iron supplements without first getting your doctor to measure your serum ferritin levels. Overdosing with iron can be dangerous. No kidding.

OK, that’s it for this week! Not too “heavy” a topic, I hope (joke).

To your good health,
Prof. Keith Scott-Mumby 
The Alternative Doctor

References:

1. https://www.chemistryworld.com/news/londinium-romans-blood-lead-levels-so-high-they-may-have-lowered-birth-rates/4010808.article
2. Patterson, Clair C. Contaminated and Natural Lead Environments of Man. Archives of Environmental Health, 11(3), 344–360 (1965)
3. Circulation. Volume 120, Number 12: https://doi.org/10.1161/CIRCULATIONAHA.108.827121
4. Needleman, Herbert L., et al. Deficits in psychologic and classroom performance of children with elevated dentine lead levels. New England Journal of Medicine, 300(13), 689–695 (1979)
5. Lanphear, Bruce P., et al. Low-Level Environmental Lead Exposure and Children’s Intellectual Function: An International Pooled Analysis. Environmental Health Perspectives, 113(7), 894–899 (2005)
6. National Research Council. Measuring Lead Exposure in Infants, Children, and Other Sensitive Populations. National Academies Press, 1993
7. Reyes, Jessica Wolpaw. Environmental Policy as Social Policy? The Impact of Childhood Lead Exposure on Crime. The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy, 7(1), 2007
8. Gulson, Brian L., et al. “Dietary calcium supplementation reduces mobilization of lead from bone in lactating women.”Environmental Health Perspectives, 112(3), 2004
9. Wright, Robert O., et al. “Association between iron deficiency and low-level lead poisoning in an urban primary care clinic.”American Journal of Public Health, 89(7), 1999

But as usual, the truth is 180 degrees around: if you want to feel miserable, die young and really be a loser, don’t show respect and kindness to others. Researchers are now finding that it can prolong our lives as well.

A new study at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill has recently found that kindness may help slow the effects of aging.¹ While this study is not conclusive, it makes sense. If negative emotions affect us negatively, positive emotions should affect us positively. 

In this study, 150 middle aged volunteers were separated into three groups. One group did mindfulness meditation training, the second group learned about loving kindness meditation, and the third group served as the control group. The researchers measured each volunteers’ telomeres (caps on the end of your chromosomes that protect your DNA) at the beginning and end of the study. As we grow older, our telomeres get shorter. The shorter they get the shorter your life expectancy is, so they are a good marker for longevity. 

At the end of the experiment all three groups had shorter telomeres, but the group that had practiced loving kindness had less shortening than the other two groups.  The control group’s telomeres were the shortest. The researchers concluded that practicing kindness for just a few weeks slowed aging slightly, prompting hopefulness that we can slow our own aging process by doing the same thing in our daily lives. 

This is good.

Who remembers Ann Herbert’s glorious phrase Random Acts Of Kindness And Senseless Acts Of Beauty (1982)?

Written on a restaurant placemat by author Anne Herbert in 1982 as a direct counter-phrase to “random acts of violence and senseless acts of cruelty”, which we used to hear a lot. What a subversive idea, to be kind, especially in such a hostile world. It became a movement, which flourished for a time. I’m sorry to say it’s not so much in public consciousness right now. Everyone is so nervous about their own safety and the world’s future, there doesn’t seem to be time to worry about others.

It’s the wrong approach. If you look after and care for others, they will look after you. You need to be in a community that is bonded by shared humanitarian views.

Ann Herbert’s movement was FUN – playful – and encourages creating positive, unexpected moments without expecting anything in return, fostering a world focused on care, impish playfulness and joy rather than selfish gain. 

Random Acts of Kindness were small, unselfish, unexpected, and often anonymous acts of help or goodwill.

Examples: Buying coffee for a stranger, leaving a kind note, helping someone with a task, smiling at a stranger, or donating to charity.

Senseless Acts of Beauty: Creating or appreciating beautiful things that serve no practical or rational purpose, emphasizing the value of wonder, nature, and joy over utility.

Examples: Placing flowers in a neglected spot, creating public art, or creating artful surprises that serve no functional purpose.

But while you are busy doing good, don’t forget BEING KIND TO YOURSELF. This is a version of Tal Ben-Shahar’s “platinum rule”: treat yourself as you would want others to treat you! (a step beyond the “Golden Rule”: treat others as you would want them to treat you).²

Acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) is an action-oriented approach to psychotherapy and self-healing where you learn to stop avoiding, denying, and struggling with your inner emotions and, instead, accept that these deeper feelings are appropriate responses to certain situations that really do not prevent you from moving forward in your life. Only your attitude about these tricky emotions is what sticks you in place.

With this understanding, you can begin to accept your hardships and commit to making necessary changes in your behavior, regardless of what is going on in your life and how you feel about it.

ACT was developed in the 1980s by psychologist Steven C. Hayes, a professor at the University of Nevada.³ The ideas that coalesced into ACT emerged from Hayes’s own experience, particularly his history of panic attacks. Eventually, he vowed that he would no longer run from himself—he would accept himself and his experiences.

His words are very telling:

“We as a culture seem to be dedicated to the idea that ‘negative’ human emotions need to be fixed, managed, or changed—not experienced as part of a whole life. We are treating our own lives as problems to be solved as if we can sort through our experiences for the ones we like and throw out the rest.” 

That’s just a kind of denial that never really works well. In other words a HOAX.

Truth is, practicing kindness to SELF and OTHERS can be rewarding in many scientifically determined ways:

• Kindness releases endorphins in our brain which help alleviate pain.

• People who practice kindness age slower and have less stress than average.

• Kindness improves mood and helps with depression and anxiety. It stimulates the production of serotonin, which heals, calms and increases happiness.⁴

• Kindness also releases oxytocin, which aides in the release of nitric oxide which dilates blood vessels to reduce blood pressure.

• Kindness stimulates dopamine in the brain causing your pleasure centers to light up.

• Practicing kindness improves our self-esteem.

• Being kind to others helps people bond.

Thing is, kindness is a version of love. It’s tolerance. It’s harmony. It calms and relaxes. There is abundant science showing that loving and being loved is healing, soothing and prolongs life.

It’s good for us!

This week I challenge you to willfully practice kindness. Make a point of being kind to others and being kind to yourself.  Not only will you slow the aging process, you’ll feel great about yourself while making others feel good too.  If you need a hand getting into the proper mindset for being kind to others, multi-media sensory stimulation, MMSS as I call it, can help.  Listening to a positive, motivating creative visualization audio session will help you release stress, sleep better enabling you to be kinder to yourself and others.  

Here’s the link: alternative-doctor.com/electronic-meditation

There is a lovely book which speaks admirably to this theme: The Power of Kindness: The Unexpected Benefits of Leading a Compassionate Life by Piero Ferrucci.

Ferucci argues that kindness is a fundamental key to personal happiness and a thriving world, not a mere luxury. The book, written by a transpersonal psychologist (he was a pupil of Roberto Assagioli), explores various facets of kindness like honesty, forgiveness, and empathy, presenting them as essential virtues that lead to a more fulfilling life, counteracting the coldness of modern society. It combines philosophical depth with practical advice, using stories and exercises to show how small acts of decency can transform individuals and the world.

Ferucci is a staffer at the Psychosynthesis Institute in Florence, Italy.

Be kinder and more loving!

Prof. Keith Scott-Mumby
The Official Alternative Doctor

References:

1. Loving-kindness meditation slows biological aging in novices: Evidence from a 12-week randomized controlled trial. Psychoneuroendocrinology, 108, 20–27. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.psyneuen.2019.05.020
2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_C._Hayes
3. https://www.mayoclinichealthsystem.org/hometown-health/speaking-of-health/the-art-of-kindness

Now we live here, of course, we have a better perspective. There are some WONDERFUL Americans: sincere, caring, jovial and of outstanding integrity and spirituality and it is to these people Vivien and I entrust our future.

Since we’ve arrived, the HORRIBLE political polarization we have found very disturbing. Take the last couple of years: Democrats seem to consider it their duty to bring down Trump, even though he was elected by a sweeping majority. The Dems. are actively working against democracy, despite their very name. The governor of California, Gavin Newsome, publicly announced he was stealing $50 million of Californian taxpayers money to bring down Trump (he didn’t call it stealing, of course, he’s too self-righteous). But since it’s to be used to oppose the will of the majority of Americans at the vote, it is surely not legal.

Don’t think I’m Republican either. The way they fight women’s rights over their  bodies with such fury is chilling to behold. It’s as if they think they OWN yet-unborn babies. And large numbers of Rep. senators are heavily invested in the pharmaceutical industry, so they oppose natural healing in principle. We all know about the corrupt lobbying in Congress (read bribes). But enough: as I said, Americans are the problem, not this lovely country.

And, I repeat, not all Americans.

We are lucky to live out West, in the desert. Apart from the good weather, within a few hours drive we have such spectacles of natural beauty as Yosemite, the Sierras, Zion Canyon (surely the most beautiful of all?), Bryce, Grand Canyon, Lakes Meade and Powell, Sedona and the California coastal drive (Highway 1). Vivien and I love whale watching from the clifftops in California. Blues are very common!

It’s like living in Heaven!

Yosemite National Park (yo-semmity for those of you who have never been)

As for Las Vegas, we love boasting! I remember an event one time years ago when we were up in the hills above Lake Como, Italy. It was late and we still hadn’t secured a bed for the night. We called on one hotel, which still had the lights on late. The moment they learned we lived in Las Vegas, they couldn’t do enough for us! They had been the previous year and LOVED it! Unfortunately, they had no beds left but called every other hotel in town, till they found a vacancy for us!

Spoiler Alert: we don’t like the Strip and very rarely go there! We live in a leafy suburb, up the north-west mountain slopes!

Seemingly little things: I am back writing my epic novel on whales and whaling. And it makes me proud that the USA, of all the nations on earth, forced the whaling moratorium in 1982, using her economic power and immense clout to force other nations to comply. It still holds today, though the Icelanders, Norwegians and Japanese have never honored it and continue their senseless slaughter out of sheer arrogance and stupidity.

It’s a fact that US farmers are, collectively, raping the land for greed and profit. But it has been a delight to learn of the many small family concerns that are trying to oppose Big Ag(riculture). The slow food movement and the farm-to-fork campaign relies on them, as does the future of the land. They have it tough because, far from helping them, the Washington bureaucrats seem determined to make it unprofitable for small farms. But we have first-hand knowledge of courage and tenacity and occasional spectacular successes of very bright individuals, who are more of credit to the nation than the numerous jumped-up political nobodies who are harassing them.

And as for courage of the ordinary soul; do not doubt it. Almost weekly we see reports of hurricanes, floods, tornadoes and other natural disasters, where people are rendered homeless and struggling. But the neighbors come forward, often showing great courage, putting themselves in danger to effect rescues. And helping each other rebuild too, without recompense, simply because that’s the right thing to do!

Decency you might think is a rarity these days. But in fact it is not so. The media love to report tales of death, loss and misery and will often do so while deliberately omitting any instances of goodness and compassion. Ugh!

We find the average American to be caring, sincere and honest. It’s just the few who tarnish the image of the many (Hollywood is pretty good at tarnishing the average American too!)

Healthy? No! Americans eat very badly on the whole. It’s virtually forced on them by greedy commerce which wants to sell you far more than you need. Supersize everything! They can sell you 20% extra for virtually no extra cost, so guess what? They push and push till it’s very annoying to keep refusing. Here taking home a doggy bag of left-overs is virtually the norm!

A note about our firemen: we love them! They are so dedicated and courageous. Their job is exacting and very dangerous; wild fires, when they get going here, can wipe out whole hillsides and acres of communities, sometimes in a matter of minutes. In fact 60 – 100 US firemen die every year, protecting people and properties. Because of their calling, it is not uncommon to have the customers in a café burst into spontaneous applause when a fire crew walks in to get themselves a morning coffee!

Not so the police. They do themselves no credit, with unnecessary killings and deadly beatings, often racially motivated. Many black people know that if they are pulled over, they are immediately in danger of their lives. The officer will often have a serious attitude problem and try to provoke trouble. The apparent police approach is shoot first and ask questions later (or just skip the questions…)

All this started at coffee this morning, when Viv suggested that it would be nice to make everyone aware of just what is good about the USA. For instance the magic of Monterey marine aquarium. We only learned via a British TV program (Blue Ocean, I think it was called) about the marvelous conservation and recovery program that was being conducted offshore there. The blue whales are back! There are now several THOUSAND blue whales at large off the California coast.

And on a similar tack, have you heard of the marine 100% “no take” zones? It was an idea first launched by marine biologist Bill Ballantine in New Zealand. But the idea has caught on and now the USA has the largest marine fully-protected zone in the world. It’s off the Hawai’ian chain. The Papahanaumokuakea Marine National Monument covers roughly 583,000 square miles of the Pacific Ocean; actually larger than all U.S. national parks combined, as of its 2016 expansion!

These zones are to be totally 100% free from human interference. That means no  trawling. No line fishing. No spearfishing. No hooking a lobster out of its lair. No prying off a clump of rock oysters… 

The great thing is it’s working and within an astonishingly short space of time marine animals are back in sufficient numbers to spill out into the nearby ocean and thus benefit local fishing noticeably.

I’m sure you’ll be delighted to know there has been a call to make 30% of the world’s oceans “no take” by 2030!

Gotta love it! Thank you Vivi!

Prof.

If you ever get a genuine dose, you’ll know it. You won’t need a lab test to tell you it was the real deal!

But here’s the shocking truth: these days “flu” so-called is just a tool, used to manipulate the public and stampede them into getting loaded with flu shots. Plenty of lies and flim flam go into the pot, just in case there is hesitancy. That wouldn’t do. We need those nationwide vaccination campaigns; it’s part of the annual Big Pharma budget!

There are, in fact, over 200 viruses (and even some bacteria) that cause influenza and influenza-like illness (ILI), all producing the same or similar symptoms (fever, headache, aches and pains, cough and runny noses). Without laboratory tests, doctors cannot tell real flu from ILI. Both last for days and only rarely lead to death or serious illness. At best, vaccines might be effective against only Influenza A and B, which represent about 10% of all circulating viruses.

Unfortunately, flu shots are just about worthless. Oh sure, they can trot out reams of spun figures to show how crucial it is to get your annual shot. But does it really do any good? And is it really as safe as they claim; that even children and babies should get “harmless” flu shots?

I’ll start by addressing the second question first:

“… the swine-flu vaccination program was one of its (CDC) greatest blunders…It all began in 1976 when CDC scientists saw that a virus involved in a flu attack outbreak at Fort Dix, N.J., was similar to the swine-flu virus that killed 500,000 Americans in 1918. Health officials immediately launched a 100-million dollar program to immunize every American. But the expected epidemic never materialized, and the vaccine led to partial paralysis in 532 people. There were 32 deaths.”¹ So much for the continuous chant that vaccines are “safe”. So what about “effective”? 

The provisional results are in for last season’s flu vaccine effectiveness (winter 2025-2026). It was RUBBISH! Though of course that’s not what they told us.

Based on U.S. surveillance network data from September 2025 to February 2026, estimated vaccine effectiveness (VE) rates against influenza A- and influenza B-related outpatient visits for adults ranged from 22% to 34%, which is absolutely dismal, and 30% to 41% for those ages 65 and older. That’s the group they claim that the vaccine is most needed for and does the most good! 30 – 40% effective? Nah. I don’t think so.

Among children and adolescents ages 6 months to 17 years, VE rates against outpatient visits ranged from 38% to 41%, hardly impressive. “These findings support CDC’s recommendation for annual influenza vaccination,” they concluded.²

No they absolutely do NOT! 22-30% protection? That’s not effective in my book.

Did you know that science says that it takes 71 people to be vaccinated against flu, to prevent even one case and 29 healthy adults need to be vaccinated to prevent one of them experiencing an ILI? No, I suppose not, since the medical industry doesn’t WANT you to know!

Add this…

In adults ages 65 and older, with standard-dose inactivated influenza vaccines, the effectiveness was just 16%. And that’s the age group they claim it does the most good!

The whole thing remains a sham because they make no attempt to differentiate influenza infection and other viruses and bacteria that cause an influenza-like illness. The truth when you get right down to it is that rates of influenza are not measured, just claimed.

Most famously, in the 2009 outbreak of H1N1 flu, journalist Sharyl Attkison discovered that the CDC was exaggerating and then finally faking their results. The CDC stopped recommending lab tests for H1N1 in the summer of 2009, advising doctors to count any “flu-like” illness as swine flu, which led to ridiculously high inaccurate counts. 

Attkisson quoted experts like Dr. Bernadine Healy, who noted the pandemic was “among the mildest, rated a category 1, similar in ferocity to ordinary seasonal flu,” rather than the high-mortality pandemic originally projected.

It is widely held that stopping actual lab testing for flu was because the results were coming back largely negative, thus contradicting the official (government and Big Pharma) narrative of a massive and dangerous H1N1 flu pandemic.

So who do you trust? Follow the science, they say. But where’s the science?

Try this: a recent study showed that getting a flu shot likely increased your chances of getting a flu-like illness. I’ll write that again:

GETTING A FLU SHOT INCREASED YOUR CHANCES OF GETTING A FLU-LIKE ILLNESS.

This was pre-published in a 2025 Cleveland Clinic report on a cohort of 53,402 employees. Researchers found vaccinated workers had a statistically significant 27% higher risk of contracting influenza! You won’t find that being read out by the news anchors on CNN or CNBC!³

This had already been shown in an earlier study among Canadian workers, in which receiving a flu shot in 2009 INCREASED your chances of getting the H1N1 flu!⁴

The Bottom Line

The truth is that science does NOT support mass flu vaccination. The Cochrane database, which is the fundamental tool of scientific statistical analysis, does not contain EVEN ONE well-run, industry standard research paper showing unequivocally that the flu shot works well.

On the contrary, digging into these reviews exposes a conspicuous absence of conclusive evidence as to the effectiveness of influenza vaccines in either children under 2, healthy adults, the elderly, or healthcare workers who care for the elderly. 

For example, here is the conclusion of the review titled, “Vaccines for preventing seasonal influenza and its complications in people aged 65 or older.” 

“The available evidence is of poor quality and provides no guidance regarding the safety, efficacy or effectiveness of influenza vaccines for people aged 65 years or older. To resolve the uncertainty, an adequately powered publicly-funded randomized, placebo-controlled trial run over several seasons should be undertaken.”

Your science is lousy and the product doesn’t work? No problem, hold a national media fest!!

Not what you hear from the media, is it? Such a trial has never been carried out! Well, of course it’s easier and cheaper to scare people with stories than run an expensive scientific study (especially if you know in advance your treatment doesn’t really work!)

Your science is lousy and the product doesn’t work? No problem, hold a national media fest!!

Notably in the Cochrane database, there was only one study of safety and effectiveness in children under two, which showed the efficacy of inactivated vaccine was similar to placebo. In terms of safety an analysis of safety outcome data was not feasible, the writers said. “Extensive evidence of reporting bias of safety outcomes from trials of live attenuated vaccines impeded meaningful analysis.” 

Despite that, the industry still calls for children to be vaccinated from the age of 6 months.⁵

Ker-ching!

This is deliberate misinformation on a vast scale, perpetrated by the government lackeys in cahoots with Big Pharma.

I’m not anti-vax, as my readers know, but I am anti-B*S*, especially when it’s official spinning. Snake oil merchants lie to sell their wares. We all know that. But the government should never be in the position of helping them to do so.

Was that a sniff? Yes, a sniff of disdain, not the start of a flu!!

To Your Good Health,
Prof. Keith Scott-Mumby
The Official Alternative Doctor

References:

1. U.S. News and World Report, Joseph Carey, October 14, 1985, p. 70, “How Medical Sleuths Track Killer Diseases.”
2. https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/75/wr/mm7509a2.htm
3. Shrestha, Nabin K., et al. “Effectiveness of the Influenza Vaccine During the 2024–2025 Respiratory Viral Season.” Preprint, Cleveland Clinic, 2025. https://doi.org/10.1101/2025.03.20.25324343
4. PLoS Med. 2010;7(4):e1000258. Epub 2010 Apr 6. PMID: 20386731
5. Altern Ther Health Med. 2009 Sep-Oct;15(5):44-6. PMID: 18425905

Researchers at the Center for Hospice and Palliative Care in Cheektowaga, New York interviewed 66 patients in the weeks leading up to their deaths about the content of their dreams and found that almost all experienced dreams and visions involving deceased and living friends and relatives.  Virtually all were described as feeling intensely real; about one third of the visions occurred while they were awake.¹

The majority of these dreams and visions were described as comforting and reassuring, especially those involving deceased friends or relatives.  Some described encounters with childhood friends, others with long-dead parents and grandparents. One 91-year old woman dreamed of meeting her mother in a garden who reassured her that “everything will be okay;” others dreamed of parents and siblings who hugged and told them they loved them.  Still others dreamed of angels, God, or a beloved dog from childhood.

A common theme of many dreams was that of preparing for a journey. Some of those interviewed spoke of wanting to die and to join their loved ones, and of having been told it wasn’t their time yet.

The researchers found that the closer the dreams were to the person’s death, the more comforting they became. Likewise, the presence of end-of-life dreams and visions was predictive of a peaceful and calm death.

This study helps us to better understand the final stages of death, and encourages us to be reassured—rather than alarmed—by the presence of these kinds of vivid dreams and visions in the dying.  By understanding and being able to talk openly about these dreams with the dying, it becomes possible to share in their acceptance of death as the natural conclusion to life that it is, to comfort them, and to be comforted.

In a 2015 TED talk, a clip was shown of a lucid, terminally ill patient discussing her deathbed visions. “My mom and dad, my uncle, everybody I know that was dead was there,” she said. “I remember seeing every piece of their face.” Other hospice nurses have related similar experiences with dying patients claiming to be surrounded by large groups of “ghosts.”

A small but important 2014 study of hospice patients concluded that “most participants” reported such visions and that as these people “approached death, comforting dreams/visions of the deceased became more prevalent.”

This visitation phenomenon is even becoming commonly accepted in the mainstream medical field, as illustrated by this entry about dying that appears on the website WebMD: 

“Hallucinations and visions, especially of long-gone loved ones, can be comforting. If seeing and talking to someone who isn’t there makes the person who’s dying happier, you don’t need to try to convince them that they aren’t real. It may upset them and make them argue and fight with you.”

Of course what’s really stupid about this advice is the article did not even entertain the remotest possibility that a long-dead person could actually be present, in a non-material sense. The real reason you shouldn’t argue is that YOU may be wrong and the patient is right.

Modern science is far too narrow-minded and arrogant!

Calling You Home

I have seen this visitation phenomenon countless times on the wards; the patient is finally being beckoned over to the other side by a friendly spirit. Nurses know this, of course; they see it often but don’t mention it to the doctors… at least not the male doctors! But obviously there is a presence there. It’s a ghostly immaterial apparition that is calling the patient over at the moment of dying.

You witness the terminal patient making gestures, apparently talking to someone at the end of the bed, some specter; someone who isn’t there. Sometimes there is a friendly smile of recognition, as if the patient already knows this being.

And then, next thing, he or she is gone from us.

According to an article in The Miami Herald, July 23, 2017, these visitations are very common among dying patients in hospice situations,” Rebecca Valla, a psychiatrist in Winston-Salem, N.C., who specializes in treating terminally ill patients, wrote in an email. “Those who are dying and seem to be in and out of this world and the ‘next’ one often find their deceased loved ones present, and they communicate with them. In many cases, the predeceased loved ones seem (to the dying person) to be aiding them in their ‘transition’ to the next world.”²

I suspect this happened with my Mum. She and her ex-husband, who died within a day of each other (their obituaries were only an inch apart in the local rag!), probably went through this ritual.

I wasn’t there. I’d flown home to Las Vegas. But the nurses say that Mum was fine when they went round to do her vitals at 2.00 am, laughing and joking, and yet when they came again, at 3.00 am, she had passed. I can imagine it easily, having seen it so often. The non-material presence appears and beckons… it might even have been her first husband, my own Dad, saying “Come on Flo, it’s time.” By then she would be halfway to the other side anyway, having left our world and was already peeping into the next.

I think she would have found it comforting to find someone she knew and trusted, to help her make that final, eventful step!

It’s part of what’s called Nearing Death Awareness. I call it the “Mrs. Muir Effect”, after a wonderful sweet movie called The Ghost and Mrs. Muir. It starred Gene Tierney, as Mrs. Muir, and Rex Harrison as the cantankerous ghost of Captain Daniel Gregg, who originally owned Gull Cottage, the house Mrs. Muir has bought for herself and her daughter. At the end of her life Mrs. Muir is called for by the ghost of Daniel Gregg, who escorts her into the afterlife! Hence my expression, The Mrs Muir Effect.

There’s not a scary moment in the whole story; just love, courage and reverence. It turns out in the end that even the daughter (played by a young Natalie Wood) had seen the ghost and talked to him often, without the least fear.

Death Visions

There is no question that patients find these encounters comforting. It’s not really surprising, that evidence of some part of us surviving should lessen the fear of dying or oblivion. In other words, these dreams are therapeutic. However, end of life visions are not confined to just meeting dead friends and relatives; arguably this is just one aspect of a larger transformation, which centers around end of life dreams and visions (EOLVs). 

Sometimes patients dream of heaven or the afterlife. Others dream of starting out on a journey. Some patients are ready to die, even want to pass over, but they get a message from the other side that their time is not yet.

Though many people have reported this phenomenon, a study out of Canisius College in New York in 2014 was one of the first pieces of serious research into the subject. Researchers interviewed 66 patients who were receiving end-of-life care and said they saw at least one vision per day, mostly through dreams.³ 

 “As participants approached death, comforting dreams/visions of the deceased became more prevalent,” the researchers wrote. “The impact of pre-death experiences on dying individuals and their loved ones can be profoundly meaningful. … These visions can occur months, weeks, days or hours before death and typically lessen fear of dying, making transition from life to death easier for those experiencing them.”

50 to 60 percent of patients experience these visions — though that number may actually be higher since “families and clinicians knowingly under-report these experiences for fear of judgment, ridicule and embarrassment,” according to Nursing Times.

No question, ELDVs are therapeutic. 

“They bring about a sense of peace, a change in perspective or an acceptance of death, suggesting that medical professionals should recognize dreams and visions as a positive part of the dying process,” according to Scientific American.

Of course there is always the implication by dyed-in-the-wool scientists that these dreams and visitations are mere delusions. It never occurs to them that non-material events can be quite real. Non-material does not mean not real; just not in the material world frame. Indeed, some are and there are stories of two or more people seeing a non-material specter at the same moment. That makes dismissing them as delusions more difficult. You have probably read they have come up with the term “mass delusion” when an event is so real that many people can see it!

Most “miracles” documented by the Catholic Church would qualify as mass delusions (Lourdes, for instance; Knock in Ireland). That doesn’t mean they are not real, does it?

Really, we don’t need to concern ourselves with “explanations”. The fact is that visitations and dreams are so vividly real to the patient, that family and carers should assume the terminally-ill patient is having a real experience and talk with them as though it were totally real and perfectly natural, which is it.

Be happy for the patient!

To your health,Prof. Keith Scott-Mumby
The Official Alternative Doctor

References:

1. J Palliat Med. 2014 Mar;17(3):296-303. doi: 10.1089/jpm.2013.0371. Epub 2014 Jan 11
2. https://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/national/article163172878.html
3. Kerr, Christopher W., James P. Donnelly, Scott T. Wright, Sarah M. Kuszczak, Anne Banas, Pei C. Grant, and Debra L. Luczkiewicz.
   “End-of-Life Dreams and Visions: A Longitudinal Study of Hospice Patients’ Experiences.” Journal of Palliative Medicine17, no. 3 (March 2014): 296–303.

Good job. No arguing. Doctors like me were not surprised at the finding, given that the patients studied were asked to take a mixture of equine estrogens (extracted from horse urine) and synthetic progestins (fake progesterone). Pharma shills and underperforming doctors have always argued that these fake hormones are exactly the same as Mother Nature’s version!

But it is not so. 

The women taking the active drug combination were being hurt. On May 31, 2002, after a mean of 5.2 years of follow-up, the data and safety monitoring board recommended stopping the trial of estrogen plus progestin vs placebo because the test statistic for invasive breast cancer exceeded the stopping boundary for this adverse effect and the global index statistic made it clear that the risks exceeded any potential benefits.

In more precise wording, the researchers stated: The risk-benefit profile found in this trial is not consistent with the requirements for a viable intervention for primary prevention of chronic diseases, and the results indicate that this regimen should not be initiated or continued for primary prevention of CHD (coronary heart disease).

In other words even the trial was dangerous and too many women were being hurt by the hormone combo, so any further investigation was stopped. The findings were quite clear and you can read them here, published in JAMA:

https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/195120

It’s all very obvious and straightforward. The FDA issued warnings, Big Pharma howled with protest that the game was rigged (obviously) and, in due course, the dangers of these drugs were added to black box warnings in the package insert.

I remember watching with relief as prescribing of these drugs fell and fell and fell, BECAUSE WOMEN REFUSED TO TAKE THE MEDICATIONS. They were rightly frightened of blood clots, breast cancer and other complications, which had been deliberately played down.

Prescriptions dropped from 22.4 million prior to publication of the study, to 15 million at the beginning of 2003 (32% decline) and eventually down to 12.7 million by the end of 2003 (nearly halved).

This decline was particularly dramatic for Prempro (combination conjugated equine estrogen + medroxyprogesterone acetate, exactly as used in the trial), which fell by 80% by the end of 2003.

This HRT reduction persisted over the long term, changing clinical practice and lowering hormone therapy prevalence among menopausal women.

And you know what? There was a sharp drop in deaths due to breast cancers in women the following year!

[https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMsr070105]

Hooray!

So you can imagine my surprise when the FDA walked back on all this. The FDA in late February approved label changes for six hormone replacement therapies (HRTs) that remove boxed warnings for cardiovascular disease, breast cancer, and probable dementia.

One way or another, you’ve got to admit the FDA are stupid or crooked: either they were wrong to say there was a problem and there wasn’t, or there is a problem and they are wrong to say there isn’t!

[Never mind the science, which shows conclusively there IS a problem]

Notwithstanding, following what they claim was a comprehensive literature review (they always say that and it’s meaningless), the agency initiated the process for the labelling change in November 2025.

The FDA has received criticism for how it approached the change. Over the last year, the agency has convened fewer advisory committee meetings while holding a handful of what critics call “look-alike” panels. In this case, rather than convene a typical advisory committee of thoroughly vetted experts, Commissioner Marty Makary, MD, MPH, handpicked a panel of experts who largely already agreed on removing the boxed warnings. 

These panels have been criticized a being improper, unbalanced and possibly even illegal.

“The public needs to understand that these are not true advisory committees like the FDA has held in the past,” C. Joseph Ross Daval, JD, and Aaron Kesselheim, MD, JD, MPH, both of Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School in Boston, told MedPage Today in an email. “True advisory committees make recommendations the FDA doesn’t know in advance. Sometimes FDA overrules them, which can be controversial. The system isn’t perfect, but on balance it works pretty well. It promotes transparency and accountability. These expert panels offer none of that.”

It appears that expert panels may be failing to meet requirements of the Federal Advisory Committee Act (FACA), such as opening meetings to the public, publishing relevant documents, and announcing meetings in advance, Daval and Kesselheim noted. FACA also contains language aimed at ensuring that committee membership is fairly balanced and that advice “will not be inappropriately influenced by the appointing authority or by any special interest, but will instead be the result of the advisory committee’s independent judgment.”

[https://www.medpagetoday.com/washington-watch/fdageneral/119868]

What’s even more disturbing is that 29 drug companies have (so far) submitted proposed changes to HRT safety labelling at the FDA’s request!

I mean, what’s going on? Didn’t we all believe Makery was sympathetic to the MAHA cause? Now we should worry has he been “hacked” by Big Pharma. It’s an old story: the commissioner passes all sorts of bad judgements or even patently criminal approvals and then goes to a highly paid sinecure with one of the drug companies.

The move to ease the restrictions is apparently backed by the Menopause Society (TMS), which said the boxed warning “may have been a deterrent to the use of the low-dose vaginal estrogen, which is a safe and effective therapy for a condition that affects most menopausal women.”

But this is not about low dose vaginal estrogen; the concern is doctors going back to ladling out powerful and dangerous synthetic HRT. Out of 41 million eligible women ages 46 to 65, only an estimated 2 million received an HRT prescription in 2020, according to the FDA. Big Pharma obviously wants its profits back. They don’t waste money on research; they spend it on bribes to get what they want.

So the FDA produced a wimpy excuse: 

“Today’s action will allow women, working with their healthcare professionals, to make better-informed decisions about their treatment plan for menopause symptoms.” Which is a bald manipulative lie; women are now less well-informed, by deliberate intention. 

Oh yes, the warnings will still appear in the drug’s labeling, but lower down in the prescribing information where they probably won’t be seen!

What’s Better?

Bioidentical hormones, of course. That means hormones which are EXACTLY what your body secretes, nothing tricky, no added side chains, and NOT patented. There are lots of people swimming in the market and trying to sell you “bioidenticals”!

But a better idea, in my view, is my own “HRT” – herbal remedy from Thailand! (joke)

It’s called Pueraria mirifica. Mirifica means miracle, and it is! On Vivien’s suggestion I labelled ours as “PurificaTM” (very clever Viv) and you can check it out here.

To your good sense and good health,Prof. Keith Scott-Mumby
The Alternative Doctor

True to its ridiculous history of attacking anything they didn’t think of first, medical orthodoxy has always viciously impugned any suggestion that electrical healing has validity and it’s been labeled charlatanism for the best part of a century. Now they are having to eat humble pie and admit that claims, all along, had some validity albeit in a rather hit and miss fashion until the advent of modern scientific trials.

We’re now learning to speak the electrical language of the body – and using it to develop treatments for diseases from arthritis to diabetes and possibly even cancer.

It’s no surprise to me, of course, nor should it be to anyone who knows of Robert O. Becker’s classic book The Body Electric. He first wrote vividly about experiments with salamanders, in which correctly applied electrical currents could stimulate the remarkable regrowth of whole limbs.¹ 

I predicted in the first edition of Virtual Medicine that this is the direction healing would be going and introduced the revolutionary Russian SCENAR device, which swept the world as a result. We’ll see more about that device in a subsequent chapter.

Cell migration and multiplication plays a key role in development and healing. Most research in this area, true to form, has been on chemical factors, totally ignoring the energy element (bioelectromagnetism). Now several studies have shown that applying electric fields can affect cell migration and division as well. 

Cells and tissues essentially function as chemical batteries, with positively charged potassium ions and negatively charged chloride ions flowing across membranes. This creates electric field patterns all over the body. When tissue is wounded this disrupts the battery, effectively short-circuiting it. 

Take, for example, a Scottish study, at the University of Aberdeen in Scotland, looking into repair of the cornea (in the eye).

In a healthy eye, cells pump positively charged ions into the cornea and push negatively charged ions out, creating an electrical potential of 40 millivolts. But in damaged areas this voltage disappears, setting up an electric field between the damaged area and the surrounding corneal tissue. By enhancing or diminishing this electric field, scientists found they could speed up or slow down the rate of healing.² 

The conclusion: the electric field is the primary driver of the healing process. As one of the researchers stated, it’s a big step forward to realize that fields play an important part in healing. They are just so far behind the pioneers in this! ³ 

Nowhere is the old adage more true than in this domain of bioelectromagnetic fields and healing, that discovery goes through four stages; 

1. It’s quackery and nonsense 

2. There might be something in it 

3. There might be something in it but where’s the proof? 

4. We knew that all along!

A Little History

Electrotherapy has a long history. William Gilbert, the Cambridge mathematician who later read medicine and became Queen Elizabeth’s court physician in 1600, experimented with static electricity.

In 1757 John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, wrote in his diary of prescribing treatment with a specially made electrostatic machine for people “ill of various disorders: some of whom found an immediate, some a gradual cure”.

In 1882 James Wimshurst invented the machine bearing his eponymous name. 

By the end of the 19th century, the work of Faraday and many others had produced a host of convenient ways of generating electricity of various kinds: electrostatic, direct current and low-frequency and high-frequency alternating currents. Each had its advocates and to each was ascribed marvelous healing powers for every conceivable medical situation.

Magnetos proved more convenient to use than the Wimshurst and other electrostatic machines, which tended to be temperamental and intolerant of dust. Catalogues of the General Electric Company in the late 19th century had a number of such devices. Its 1893 catalogue illustrates nine magnetos, ranging from one 20 centimetres long, boxed in pine, to the Phoenix, boxed in mahogany with a dial “to measure strength”. Assorted electrodes “for foot, tooth, and ear, with plated handles” were available for the device.

Crank the handle and it generates a low-voltage alternating current. Instructions inside the lid claim that, when wound at the speed “most agreeable to the patient”, this magneto will treat no fewer than 50 ailments, from weak eyes to spinal and nervous diseases, debility, fits, paralysis and gout.

Another type of device was the induction coil, originally developed to detonate explosive charges. By 1888, GEC was offering induction coil apparatus for medical use, complete with bichromate battery, in a wooden case. By 1890 their range had grown to 10 models, with many variants, and electrodes engineered to treat particular parts of the body, from eye muscles to the spine. 

Early in the 20th century so-called “hydroelectric baths” became fashionable. A wooden or porcelain bath was fitted with plate electrodes. Sometimes medicines were added to the bathwater in the belief that the patient would thereby receive whole-body treatment through the skin, cataphoresis as it was called. Knowing what I know now, all these devices make sense and although they were not subject to modern-style scientific trials, there is little question they had benefit to some, at least equivalent to today’s pharmaceutical drugs.

I was pleasantly surprise in my research to find that the famous Mayfair chemists John Bell and Croydon, just around the corner from my former Harley Street clinic, at one time carried a range of electrotherapy devices. They even had their own workshop, making induction coil machines tailored to what the doctor wanted for his patients in terms of output, portability and price, and the electrodes necessary to deliver the current where it was needed.

Historically, as far back as 1890, the American Electro-Therapeutic Association conducted annual conferences on the therapeutic use of electricity and electrical devices by physicians on ailing patients.

The effect of an electrical current on the body depends on its intensity. At 25 milliamps, the current, if it lasts for about 20 seconds, can stop the heart beating, so they are not inherently safe (the electric chair operates on this principle). But below 10 milliamps, whether direct current from a battery or an alternating current at ordinary mains frequencies (50 to 60 hertz), the current can create a rather pleasing tingle.

Writing in New Scientist, David Fishlock, an avid collector of these early devices, tells us that in the 1920s, a version of the Tesla apparatus (see below), known as Roger’s Vitalator, began to make its appearance in barbers’ shops as a way of treating minor ailments, including bald patches and dandruff. The barber would fit one of a number of glass tubes into an ebonite holder and switch on, whereupon sparks sizzled from the tube to scratch and tickle the pate. The maker recommended it for 127 conditions, including sexual debility, impotence and breast development. That’s barbers for you!⁴ 

Fishlock asks the question: do black boxes emitting electricity or rays have a serious place in medicine? There is no doubt that the early inventions attracted the “snake-oil merchants”. As early as 1882, Silvanus Thompson, a fellow of the Royal Society and president of the Institution of Electrical Engineers, warned of the “gross impositions of the quacks and rogues who deal in the so-called magnetic appliances and disgrace alike the science of electricity and medicine while knowing nothing of either”. 

We shouldn’t worry. Don’t forget Lord Kelvin (1824-1907), the greatest scientist of his day, declared that x-rays were a hoax!

To learn about one of the most remarkable modern electronic healing devices available in the modern world (the Avazzia) go here.

[We’ll try and get the old purchase link, with its special discount, in case you want to purchase one]

And for amazing psychological transformations, again due to modern electronic wizardry, go here.

To your good health (and superior wisdom!),Prof. Keith Scott-Mumby
The Alternative Doctor

References

1. Robert O. Becker, The Body Electric, Morrow, New York, 1985, pp. 994-102
2. Nature, vol 442, p 457
3. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (DOI:10.1073/ pnas202235299)
4. New Scientist, 1957, 24 December 1994, p.58

The correct position, of course, is “We are going to do a study to find out the truth about….” Then at least there is a chance for the facts to emerge!

Sometimes, in reverse, the bias is that “We are going to prove that the cause isn’t (whatever)…” or “We are going to establish once and for that there is no connection between [X] and [Y].”

So all of that careful stuff exists within my mind and it was there, in the back of my head, when I read of an interesting study looking at causes of food allergies. This, you may remember, is my long suit, my wheelhouse! I was not called the world’s “Number One Allergy Detective” for no reason (Sunday Mail 1991).

The headline that caught my eye was “US, Australia Lead the World on Kids’ Food Allergy Rates.” The research was certainly interesting.

In a nutshell (no pun intended):

• The global incidence of food allergy among children by age 6 at 4.7%.

• Risk factors included early antibiotic use, Black race, early allergic conditions, parental migration before birth, delayed solid food introduction, and family history.

• Findings supported the concept that food allergy development is multifactorial, the researchers said.

Some 4.7% of children have at least one food allergy by age 6 years, according to a meta-analysis that spelled out an extensive list of credible risk factors. I disagree with that fundamentally but you need to bear in mind they are ONLY thinking of antibody-antigen mechanisms, completely ignoring what Arthur Coca described as “non-reaginic familiar food allergy”.

Arthur F. Coca (1875 – 1959), a top allergist-immunologist of his day, founder of The Journal of Immunology and was its editor from 1916 to 1948—so no lightweight—was well aware that food allergies sometimes run in families (without necessarily meaning it’s a genetic thing). But that very often there was no obvious chemical mechanism or pathway, like the antigen-antibody response.

The former is easily explained by the fact that meals tend to be identical in families, just by nature of habit: Moms, Grandmoms, Sisters and Aunties all tend to cook and eat the same way! It’s frequent exposure to foodstuffs that tends to build up this kind of food allergy or intolerance, so this is a very plausible mechanism for transfer. Hence “familial”.

Non-reaginic is a bit more technical but Coca was recognizing something I encountered daily: that without even recognizing WHY or HOW, it was demonstrable that certain foods would seriously upset an individual. There may be no obvious chemical mechanism; no reagents.

The rift grew to a gulf and now orthodox allergists deny there is any such phenomenon, a stupid view which leaves the poor patient without any effective help. He or she eats beef twice a week, gets migraines often and is told “It can’t be beef, you’re not allergic to beef.” It soon follows that the patient is therefore mistaken or making it up, then he or she must have a mental problem, a delusion that food gives him or her the migraines and then, next thing you know, “It’s all in your mind. I’m sending you to see a psychiatrist.”

[This is exactly what happened to me with a bitter public enemy of mine, who was an immunologist; he “tested” a patient for beef sensitivity by giving her a capsule of beef, double blind and when she didn’t react told her it was all nonsense. She needed psychiatric help. AND he tried unsuccessfully to get my license revoked or “struck off” as we say in Britain, because I subsequently helped her find out what was really wrong.]

Anyway, here goes with the recent published study, if you are still interested!

It was a meta-analysis which means they grouped a whole bunch of studies together

Across the 16 studies that confirmed allergy by direct food challenge, U.S. and Australian children appeared to face elevated risk, with incidence at 6.7% and 10.2%, respectively, Derek K. Chu, MD, PhD, of McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, and colleagues. 

Risk factors associated with at least a doubling in risk or 5 percentage point greater risk included:

Early life antibiotic use, Black race, early onset of allergic conditions like atopic dermatitis or wheezing, elevated skin transdermal water loss, parental migration before birth, delayed introduction of solid foods, and family history of food allergy or related allergies.

Arthur Coca had picked up on the transdermal water loss, calling attention to a condition called hyperhydrosis, which means sweating excessively. The treatment of the day was to open the neck and sever the sympathetic nerve plexus, which is to wreck the autonomic nervous system. How unbelievably crude.

The value of the study is that it advances the concept that the development of food allergy is multifactorial rather than solely driven by eczema or timing of allergen introduction.

The “strongest and most certain factors” precipitating food allergies included prior allergic conditions:

• Eczema within the first year of life 

• Allergic rhinitis 

• Wheeze 

• Severity of atopic dermatitis 

• Increased skin transepidermal water loss 

• Filaggrin gene sequence variations. Filaggrin is a skin protein and loss of competence is the cause of many allergic skins conditions, such as eczema.

Also important were oral allergen exposures. Delayed solid food introduction, such as peanut after age 12 months, was associated with more than double the odds of food allergy in childhood and a 6.8 percentage point risk difference.

Infant antibiotic use in the first month of life also strongly predicted food allergy development. In fact antibiotics anywhere in the first year or during gestation also predicted 32-39% higher relative risk.

Social and genetic risk factors did have an impact but relatively minor:

• Male sex

• Firstborn

• Family history of food allergy

• Parental migration (immigrant status)

• Black African descent

While cesarean delivery had a modest association with food allergy onset by age 6, associations weren’t significant for low birth weight, post-term birth, maternal diet, and stress during pregnancy.

And just to finish, Coca argued that hidden food allergies are the cause of almost every disease and disorder including heart attacks, asthma, constipation, diabetes, epilepsy, hypertension, indigestion, migraine and many others. Of course he was derided by colleagues but I know he was correct.

He also gave us the word atopy (atopic).

AND WHAT WAS THE MISSING QUESTION THEY DIDN’T ASK? Oh yes, I forgot that. Well, they did not look to see if vaccination is a trigger for developing food allergies, which it is. Or whether eating junk processed foods leads to food allergies, which it does!

They could have had the answer by asking me direct and saved a lot of money! Or Ted Randolph, Herbert Rinkel, Michael Zeller, William Rea, Jean Monro, Albert Rowe and a host of other pioneer doctors from the 50s, 60s and 70s.

To your good health,

Prof. Keith Scott-Mumby

The Official Alternative Doctor

SOURCE DOCUMENT: 

https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapediatrics/fullarticle/2844828

The study was funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) and the American Academy of Allergy, Asthma & Immunology/American College of Allergy, Asthma & Immunology Joint Task Force on Allergy Practice Parameters.

Note that Dr. Chu disclosed no relevant relationships with industry. Co-authors disclosed a wide range of conflicts of interest. How wide?

“Daydreaming” is such a dismissive little word, isn’t it? Sounds like the mind wandered off, tripped over a cloud, and came back with glitter on its face and nothing useful to report. But that’s only the verdict of a culture obsessed with bang-clunk surfaces. What if the so-called daydream isn’t a malfunction of attention… but a shift of location?

Because something very strange happens when you imagine.

Your body stays in the chair, sure. But your physiology changes. Your heart can speed up, slow down, tighten with fear, melt with love — all in response to something that is supposedly “not here.” The nervous system does not roll its eyes and say, “Relax, this is fictional.” It responds as if events are occurring. That alone should make us pause. The organism behaves as though experience is real. Maybe because, in some layer of reality, it is.

We act as though reality is a single stage set — one room, one timeline, one physical scene. But consciousness does not behave like it’s confined to a room. The moment you imagine, awareness relocates. You are no longer primarily identified with the chair, the walls, the clock. You are in the conversation, the landscape, the memory, the future scenario, the other person’s face. Your sense of “where I am” moves. And wherever awareness goes, experience unfolds.

Suppose you nod off in a comfortable chair and get the feeling your are drifting off, out of the window, across the lot and out into the forest. You can almost smell the pines! But then, it’s all imagination, isn’t it? But what if it isn’t? What if you really have gone “out of body” and doing a walkabout in spirit? 

Night dreams get more respect because the body is offline. Eyes closed, muscles still — fine, we’ll call that “another world.” But in the daytime, because the eyes are open, we assume the inner scene is fake. That’s an arbitrary rule. The only difference is bandwidth allocation. At night, almost all perceptual input comes from the inner field. By day, we run a split-screen: physical sensory data on one side, imaginal reality on the other.

But imaginal does not mean unreal. It means accessed through a different interface.

When you rehearse a conversation in your head, you’re not just pushing symbols around. You feel the tension. You sense the other person’s reactions. You try different responses and watch different outcomes ripple. That’s not nothing. It’s exploration. A kind of subtle travel. You’re navigating probability, relationship dynamics, emotional landscapes that exist as real patterns — just not made of wood, brick and plastic.

People say, “It’s all in your head,” as if the head were a trash bin of illusions. But the head is not a container of fantasies. It’s more like a receiver–transmitter, tuning into layers of experience that are not limited to the visible room. When you daydream, you may be touching memory, future potential, symbolic realms, shared emotional fields, or aspects of other minds. The inner world is not sealed off from the rest of existence; it’s another doorway into it.

And here’s the kicker: daydreams change outer life.

Ideas born in “just imagination” become buildings, books, relationships, revolutions. The so-called unreal scene shapes decisions, emotions, behaviors, and therefore the physical world. If something consistently reorganizes reality, calling it unreal is a stretch. It’s more like a subtle layer that precedes the dense one — a blueprint level.

So is daydreaming really dreaming?

Maybe both night dreams and daydreams are forms of travel through the same vast interior cosmos — only with different lighting conditions. In one, the outer world fades and the inner becomes the main stage. In the other, the inner slips between the cracks of the outer, like a second dimension woven through the first.

In Kreisonnetics we have a concept of the Three Universes. In brief there is the physical universe, your own universe and the others’ universe. We suppose the physical universe is the “real” one. We are taught that. But actually it’s an illusion, a completely delusory universe, held together by little more than tacky-tape and everyone’s agreement: it’s that way because we all think it is (we’ve been told that). That’s advanced physics!

But the only universe which is ACTUAL for each of us is our own private universe. It is unique to us and all true, to the degree we uphold it. Our own personal universe is actually sovereign, though we are taught we must subsume it to the common agreement (so-called reality)!

People dismiss internal truth because it can’t be measured with a ruler. But neither can love, meaning, intention, or identity — and these run the show. The imaginal realm may be one of the primary theaters of creation, where possibilities are touched before they harden into events.

You probably know the story that Albert Einstein came up with the basis for his remarkable theory or relativity by imagining himself riding on the end of a beam of light. It happened only in his universe. Yet we all now kowtow to his view of things and it is structural in the agreed universe (I balk at calling it the real universe, since cracks in his model are already appearing).

The inscription on the stand reads: “Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited whereas imagination embraces the entire world” (1929)

So think about this: next time the mind drifts, maybe it’s not drifting at all. Maybe awareness just slipped out the side door of the room and went somewhere else for a while, another dimension, another but equally real place!

“Of course it couldn’t have,” someone says. “It’s only pretend.”

Only.

That word has ruined more understanding than ignorance ever did.

Because pause for a second. Something did just happen. A situation formed. A person appeared. An action unfolded. Emotional tones attached themselves to it — curiosity, fear, desire, amusement, whatever came with the image. Your body may have shifted slightly. Your breathing may have changed. Muscles may have tightened or relaxed.

All from something that is supposedly “not happening.”

But what if the mistake is assuming that “happening” only applies to things made of furniture and skin?

The dismissal of daydreams happens because we’ve equated physical with real, and imaginal with fake. But the imaginal realm behaves less like fiction and more like a subtle layer of reality we dip into constantly. And I’ve already explained that what is “real” (physical) is just a quantum illusion; when you touch a table, there is almost nothing there!

So when someone says, “It’s just imagination,” they are really saying, “It’s not happening in the narrow band of dense physical matter we’re currently focused on.” That’s a much smaller claim than they think.

To your good health,Prof. Keith Scott-Mumby
The Official Alternative Doctor

This piece was started 60 years ago! I was at med school in a tutorial class with the professor of psychiatry. He had us suppose a man was lying in bed and found himself drifting out the window, and down a drain outside. He began talking about the man’s “delusion” and when I said “Maybe it wasn’t a delusion but he really was drifting off,” the mediocrity of the professor’s response so disappointed me, I walked out of the class and never went back!

Have you noticed when people start banging on about some theme or quality it’s because they are abusing it? It’s like that is their attention-awareness but not necessarily because it’s their torch or standard but they are pushing the issue, to try and compensate.

I’d worry that an old folks home calling itself “dignity” retirement or similar would be the LAST place the old ones would be treated with dignity. Instead they would be feeding patients unsustainable food; cutting their freedom to zero, to make them easily manageable; and pumping them with drugs to keep them quiet and docile. The corporation is pushing the word to try and compensate, as I say.

Well, so it is with these people. A recent article in the medical press made it clear. A number of lawsuits have been filed against California’s Dignity Health for allegedly not notifying families of patient deaths. But worse: that its contracted storage facility failed to maintain appropriate temperatures, leaving unembalmed bodies to decompose for months or even years.

The latest lawsuit focuses on a man called Charles Wesley Harvey, who died June 2, 2022 at Dignity’s Mercy San Juan Medical Center, a 384-bed hospital in Sacramento. Harvey was transported to Mortuary Support Services of Northern California (MSSNC) and “sat decomposing in improper storage for years,” the lawsuit said, “like dozens of others before him and potentially hundreds after him.”

His family was not informed of his death until Nov. 28, 2025, the lawsuit said. OVER 3 YEARS LATER!

The suit, which refers to more than a dozen patients, also alleges that MSSNC stored the remains at temperatures over 45°F, the legal state-required threshold for a morgue.

Rachel Fiset, the attorney representing families in the class action suit, told MedPage Today she has seen pictures of bodies as they were stored, and that “none of these bodies were embalmed. You can’t believe it.”

Fiset said she doesn’t understand why MSSNC kept the bodies so long. Allegedly, Dignity was only paying for their storage for 60 days at $15 a day, she said.

“I have no idea what the incentive was for keeping all these bodies,” in one case for 3.5 years, Fiset said. “Something is going on, and I don’t know what it is yet.”

Lost In Physical Purgatory

It all made me think of Robin Cook’s exciting thriller Coma (made into a movie of that name), in which bodies of deliberately created brain-dead patients were being stored secretly in a deep facility, in order to harvest their organs for huge profits.

Some of the patients in the complaint are identified only with their first name and first letter of their last name. The complaint alleges that the hospital where they died failed to file death certificates within 8 days of the patient’s death as required by state regulations.

It also specified that the hospital failed to complete “the medical and health section data and the time of death … attested to by the physician and surgeon last in attendance” within 15 hours. The hospital entities in custody of the human remains are required to “prepare the certificate and register it with the local registrar, which also was not done.”

Dignity and MSSNC also failed to obtain an appropriate storage permit for any of the bodies named in the complaint, which is also required by state regulation.

“As a result, Mr. Harvey’s body as well as the body of every individual in the Decedent Group was lost in physical purgatory…” A bit melodramatic but listen, “They were no longer a patient of Dignity, and without the registration of a death certificate, they could not be found in any database of deceased at the county or state level.”

Yikes! 

Dignity operates six hospitals in the Sacramento area, and it is not clear in which hospitals, other than Mercy San Juan, the other patients named in the lawsuit died.

The lawsuit charges Dignity and its parent company Common Spirit Health with breach of contract, intentional infliction of emotional distress, negligence, and negligent hiring and supervision, and demands a jury trial.

MSSNC (owner Michael Robert Lofton) did not reply to a request for comment. Dignity Health’s spokesman William Hodges said in an email with the usual fudging that its “goal is to provide the best care and support possible for patients and their families. Unfortunately, we are unable to comment on pending litigation.”

Even more startlingly State officials have filed disciplinary actions against Mercy San Juan three times already, in 2022, 2023 and 2024, for mishandling deceased patients’ bodies. This latest lawsuit alleges that Dignity failed to implement many of the corrections required.

In other words these are a couple of vile corporations, cynically ignoring complaints, disciplinary action or any sense of care or concern for patients and families. I hope this all goes on record and when the executives die, their bodies are left out on a hillside to rot, denied burial.

Previously, the families of three patients sued the hospital system in separate complaints. The family of Jessie Marie Peterson, 31, said they were told Jessie left Mercy San Juan against medical advice when in fact she had died, and was sent to storage “on Shelf Number Red 22 A and forgotten.” 

The mother of a Michael Gray claims in different lawsuit that she was never contacted about her son’s death on July 10, 2021, from an accidental overdose at Mercy San Juan, “despite having his cell phone, wallet, and identification with his current home address.” Gray’s body also was sent to the storage facility “where it was neither autopsied nor preserved.” 

This case was settled for an undisclosed amount. Bet you it would come out of the shareholder’s portion of profits, not the top executives’ ill-gotten gains.

A third lawsuit filed in April 2025 alleges that another Dignity Hospital, Mercy General in Sacramento, “did not take any action to notify” the family of Tonya Walker, who died Nov. 2, 2023, and did not issue a death certificate that would have triggered official notices to the police and government authorities.

“Walker’s body sat decomposing in improper storage for 7 months while Ms. Walker’s family scoured Sacramento’s darkest recesses hoping to find her,” according to the lawsuit.

Rachel Fiset, the attorney representing families, said her case includes findings “so egregious, with appalling violation after violation, with so much damage to these families. Whatever your belief in the afterlife is, this certainly is not part of it. This is not the way you envision going.”

Well said, Rachel.

Too bad most ghost stories are apocryphal. It would be lovely to think of these rascals been haunted and driven out of house and home by enraged phantoms, screaming for dignity in their nightmares.

Ooops. Am I being too harsh? Nah, just put it down to my quirky sense of humor!

To your health,Prof. Keith Scott-Mumby
The Official Alternative Doctor

SOURCE REFERENCE:

Dignity Health Mismanaged Patient Remains, Lawsuit Claims

— After years, one body was “unrecognizable” due to alleged high temperatures

By Cheryl Clark, Contributing Writer, MedPage Today, January 30, 2026