3 More Questions:

[pberggren1]

Glad to see you have that good Brit humour Jim.

[Michael Dean]

David,
I saw my gastroenterologist??? I have no idea if that's right.
I saw him yesterday he put me on 2 Omeprazole pills (instaed of 1) he said take 1/2 hr before breakfast and 1/2 hr before dinner. he said they only work on an empty stomach.
I was told not to take any vitamins expect what my Rhuemy prescribed? Citrical and vitamin D3???

Good Luck, I'm off the pred but still dealing with the weight I gained.

[Al]

Some years ago I took part in a survey of trees and how they were coping with pollution from aircraft (I can see the landing beacons at Gatwick airport from my bedroom window). I was given two areas to check each area being one square kilometere in size, one area was under a flight path the other was not. In the area that was under the flight path I found about twenty dead or badly deformed trees and surprise, surprise in the othert area all the trees were growing nice and healthily. The finding were published but ignored by government and the air industry because we were all amateurs and not qualified arborologists. Clearly I do not know what a dead tree looks like.

Jim

Interesting, Jim. Philosopher Daniel Dennet once opined that life is too short to entertain unsolicited hypotheses. By this, I am supposing that he means that he never answers emails from anyone he doesn’t already know. On the other hand, a large amount of progress is owed to the insights of “outsiders”, who often have a fresh viewpoint compared to specialists who are vested professionally, socially, and, in some cases, financially in what turns out to be a dead-end road. In your case, your opinion was solicited, more or less. But that was probably for show; the conclusions had surely been drawn up before your actual participation.

This history if medical science is replete with stories where vested interests trump truth. Consider one of personal interest to me: In the 1940s and 50s, a lot of researchers looked for, and found, extrinsic carcinogens and mutagens (usually, a substance that is one is also the other). Tobacco is a famous example. Another: Willhem Hueper was a scientist hired by DuPont to study the relationship between aromatic amines and bladder cancer. However, his findings were not in line with DuPont’s marketing needs, so he got the axe. Hueper then joined the National Cancer Institute, studying industrial carcinogens. No doubt embittered from his previous employment experiences, he found his sometimes harsh contributions at the NCI often censored by bureaucrats who had other fish to fry. The matter of environment carcinogens was surely pushed back a number of years. Here’s the personal part: My father was an industrial cabinet maker, consorting with what were even then known (but not widely known) carcinogens--in large part those very aromatic amines. There was no OSHA then; he died in 1959.

Don’t get me wrong: I believe in scientific discovery, and I trust the collective integrity of science even as there is room to suspect the motives of individual scientists. Yet, I realize that a world of evidence often does not stand a chance against twin tides of political and economic expediencies. Sometimes, the truth will out, though it may take decades. Sometimes, even the bureaucrats have to admit that a dead tree is a dead tree.

Al