The blind healing the blind

The medical profession is blind. Most Family Doctors today have had about two or three hours of University training on the topic of influenza and colds. These people rely on what they read just as much as we do. They have very little expertise unless they devote themselves to the research on this particular topic. So how do they decide what to give you to treat your colds and your flu.

Simple answer: They rely on the pharmaceutical companies who give them samples to promote their own goods.

Family Doctors are well meaning people in general and they care but they are mislead in so many ways that there is no possiblity for them to make the difference between what is truth and what is a hoax. The pharmaceutical companies put so much effort into the marketing of their products that doctors have no ability to resist the push for drugs. In addition, our society is so used to having a pill for every illness that doctors feel compelled to provide us with prescriptions. So they are being harrassed both ways, from the demanding public and from the pushy pharmaceutical companies.

Because of this attitude of the medical profession, the College of Physicians and Surgeons has always insisted on providing solutions to every situation they are faced with. I have yet to find a physician or family doctor that tells me he or she doesn't have a cure for my illness. If you show up at their clinic with something, you are almost guaranteed to come out with a prescription of some kind. Even if the doctor has no clue as to what ails you, he/she will give you a medication for it. If you don't belive me do the experiment yourself. Next time you are ill, go to your doctor. Once you are done with this doctor, go to another clinic and see what that doctor says. Go to three or four clinics. Chances are very strong that you will come out with three or four different diagnostic and three of four different prescription.

So how does this related to the Bird Flu Hoax? The way I see it, the medical profession knows that there is a risk of a widespread diseases for which they have no solution. However, because they are unwilling to admit that they can't do anything, they deny their limitations and try to invent a solution anyway. So when word of a possible Influenza Pandemic started based on its cyclical nature (there was no Bird Flu at the time), they quickly told everyone not to worry since vaccines would take care of the problem.

But people today are educated. Very soon that solution fell through when people learned that it will take four to six months from the onset of the disease to develop a vaccine and another four to six months to produce enough for the poopulation in "developed" countries. Since the virus itself will probably spread around the world in six to ten weeks, it means that everyone will have either died from the virus or recovered by the time the vaccine is even conceived. Oops! There goes that option.

Did the medical profession admit they had no solution then? Never. They now looked to "antivirals" of which Tamiflu was the main proponent. Of course the pharmaceutical was very obligating here but that will be the topic of a future blog entry. The problem with antivirals is that they don't prevent the disease, they don't cure the disease, they only reduce the lenght of the illness by a couple of days. If your body is strong enough to resist the virus anyway, when you take these antivirals you are only helping your body's own immune system work faster. But you are doing this at a very high risk.

For one thing you are using a mixture of chemical products. I believe every chemical product which is not obtained through organic food sources is potentially harmful. But even if you don't agree with this, you need to know that antivirals have been the object of very little long term testing. There are side effects that are now starting to crop but because of the strenght of the pharmaceutical companies, we don't hear about it. In particular, some research indicates that there are liver complications that can arise in over 10% of the population.

Do physicians worry about this? Probably not because they only read what they get from the companies that actually produce the medication. Since it gives them a possibility of handing out more prescriptions and it allows them to say that they do have a solution, they won't dare to do any further research.

In my book, "The Return of the Spanish Lady; The 1918 Influenza Virus is Back" I propose another solution. I suggest through my novel that natural medecines are the way to prepare for the Influenza Pandemic that may come - not from birds - some day soon. In particular, I researched on homeopathy and discovered that the rate of survival of people treated this way in 1918 was close to 90% in comparison to 35% survival rate for people treated in so-called modern medecine.

You decide. Will you trust you family doctor? Will you trust the money making pharmaceutical companies? Are you ready for more harmful chemical to be pumped into your body? Or would you rather find natural ways to enhance your body's immune system?

Remember, the medical profession is blind. It's the blind trying to heal the blind. I certainly don't trust them even if they are well-meaning, generally caring people. The Bird Flu is a hoax and they are playing right into it, trying to drag us along.

To your health.

Alain Normand

(For more information on Homeopathy, please go to my web site and find all the links on this page related to my book:
http://ca.geocities.com/alainnormand@rogers.com/spanish.html)

Life is fragile

I didn't write for a few days and my thoughts are jumbled right now. My next door neighbour was killed in a motorcycle accident last Thursday. He just retired three months ago and was finally enjoying life, living his dreams, after years of hard work. As I am trying to be objective about Avian Flu and all the media hoopla over it, I find that life is so fragile. One instant you are here and the next you are gone.

Why I am furious at the Avian Flu hoaxsters (if there is such a word) is because they turn the world's attention to a situation which is very minor even though tragic, when compared to the real pandemics of the world such as the HIV/AIDS in Africa, the famines and poor living conditions in more than half of the world. People who distract us from where the real needs are in order to make a profit are criminals and should be brought to justice just as Saddam Hussein is, for crimes against humanity.

Maybe, it's the death of my good neighbour leaving behind his wife and kids, that affects me right now. I'll try to get back soon to my thoughts on Avian Flu and the hoax I believe hides underneath it all, but I'm too shaken up.

See you soon.

Alain

Avian Flu, the real numbers

You may know the saying: numbers don't lie, but liars are good with numbers. Taken out of context, statistics can be very deceiving. So here are some of the numbers that we were given. Let's try to see what they really mean.

As of today (September 28, 2006), 251 cases and 148 deaths have been reported by the World Health Organization from Avian Influenza since 2003. Most of the cases were found in Vietnam (93), Indonesia (68), Thailand (25), and China (21) with Egypt (14) and Turkey (12) having started to report cases since early 2006.

This initially seems a frightening percentage of deaths per person infected; 59% death rate.

However, you need to know that these figures account only for the cases actually reported. You have to realize that in these countries the access to health services is very limited. People don't have money to pay for medical services and are often scared to go to hospitals and clinics. When they do resort to medical help, it's often too late to do anything, at least through modern medical methods.

So the real figures are probably very different from what is reported. There may be many more people infected with the virus but they get better on their own through resistance. To get the exact numbers we would have to test every person in those countries for antibodies that would show they had recovered from the disease. That option is simply not viable. Not only it would be very costly, but it would only give a picture of the situation at the time of the testing. The data could be obsolete a week later.

The realization that there are likely more human cases than reported has two implications. First, the bird flu may be much more prevalent in those countries than we think; poultry being much more affected than what is believed. There are two potency levels of the avian influenza virus referred to as a low pathogenic strain and a high pathogenic strain. The reason for the small number of avian flu cases reported in birds could be related to the fact that these birds are affected by a low pathogenic strain which doesn't kill them but can infect humans. Being a low pathogenic strain it is also milder in humans and therefore a small number of people actually get to a stage where they require hospital care.

The other implication is that although avian flu may be more prevalent than we think, the transmission from bird to human is still extremely limited. In the above countries a number of conditions exist that are not mirrored in North America:

• A large portion of the families have domesticated poultry particularly in rural areas
• Most the chicken are found in areas where they can intermingle with wild fowl and therefore susceptible to contracting wild avian influenza (remember, the influenza is native in wild fowl; it doesn't affect them)
• There are no widespread measures to test for presence of influenza
• People come in close contact with their poultry on a daily basis

This in principle should lead to a very high rate of avian flu in humans, but the numbers are actually very low. So either people have either been sick and recovered, or they have built an immunity to the virus. Or even more likely - based on research I alluded to previously - the avian flu has a very low transmission potential.

In the end we see that the numbers we are given by the WHO are actually no indication whatsoever of the reality when it comes to the extent of spread of the disease either in birds or in humans.

To continue with the idea of putting numbers in the right context, when these number are taken in comparison to population, the picture gets even more interesting. Let's examine each of the countries indicated above, the number of cases and the total population.

Vietnam: 93 cases/80 900 000 population = 0,115% or 1,15 person per thousand people
Thailand: 25 cases/63 080 000 = 0,04% or 4,0 per ten thousand people
Indonesia: 68 cases/213 720 000 = 0,032% or 3,2 per ten thousand people
Egypt: 14 cases/73 671 000 = 0,019% or 1,9 per ten thousand people
Turkey: 12 cases/70 710 000 = 0,017% or 1,7 per ten thousand people
China: 21 cases/1 266 838 000 = 0,002% 2,0 per one hundred thousand people

If we take an average for these countries, we get one 1,3 person affected for every ten thousand people. Even if this kind of situation would spread worldwide, it would still have a minor impact. I don't know the population where you live, but here in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, we are supposedly about 3 million people. If I take the same average and I apply it to Toronto, I get 0,4 person affected. Less than one person will actually get sick within our population. It actually takes about 8 million people in a City or area before we get one case of infection. To me that's a pretty low rate. This proves again that the Avian Flu is actually very difficult to spread.

So why are the medical authorities so much in an uproar over this.

Stay tuned. More to come on the financial benefits of creating an Avian Flu panic.

Alain Normand

P.S. I'm not being insensitive here. Every life is important and every death is disturbing; 148 deaths are tragic. I am simply trying to put this situation in the proper context. Later on I intend to discuss why the same kind of alarm isn't raised with regards to HIV/Aids. In my mind that is a much more tragic, real, and current pandemic than the Avian Flu. So why isn't the same kind of money allotted to HIV/Aids as what is now being provided towards fighting or preventing Avian Flu? A.N.

Research dispells myths

I said that there is no proof that Avian Influenza can mutate to become a virus transmissible from human to human. Actually every scientific experiment that was done so far prove exactly the opposite.

Avian Flu is not the cause of the historical pandemics, Swine Flu is. You don't believe me, then see the results presented in the medical journals for yourself:

Pigs are the usual mixing vessel
National Center for Biotechnology Information
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=8091678&dopt=Abstract
Journal of Virology
http://jvi.asm.org/cgi/content/abstract/73/10/8851

Research proves that without the inclusion of pigs in the equation the Influenza Virus does not get transmitted from human to human
Journal of Virology
http://jvi.asm.org/cgi/content/abstract/74/18/8502

Avian Flu does not mutate into a form that is easily transmissible from human to human. Here is the research on that:

Test on humans volunteers shows that humans are actually resistant to most avian influenza
Archives of Virology
http://www.springerlink.com/content/g5228123lv4n1145/

Avian Flu test on animals that have similar compatibility as humans actually fail to produce any kind of infectious propagation of disease. And the articles demonstrate that they tried very hard to make it happen. It just didn't because it can't.

Failure of avian influenza to replicate in ferrets
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences,
http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/abstract/0605134103v1
Centre for Infectious Disease Research and Policy
http://www.cidrap.umn.edu/cidrap/content/influenza/avianflu/news/jul3106reassort.html

Failure of avian influenza virus to replicate in primates
National Center for Biotechnology Information
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=6501928&dopt=Citation
Journal of Virology
http://jvi.asm.org/cgi/content/abstract/61/9/2857

So here it is. The only Influenza Pandemic that is likely to occur is the one that will start in swine, not birds. The Avian Flu Pandemic scare is a hoax.

Keep checking back for more proof and more data.

Alain Normand

P.S. My book "The Return of the Spanish Lady: the 1918 Influenza Virus is Back" presents the scenario of an Influenza Virus based on swine flu. The avian flu is not even in the equation. Get the book at Amazon.com or Authorhouse.com, also at Barnes and Nobles or Chapters-Indigo.

"Why a hoax?" You ask.

I will later get into the background on why this hoax started in the first place and why it is perpetuated, but for now I want to start with the scientific facts.

1 - There is absolutely no evidence that the current Avian Flu has any potential to turn into a Pandemic. The type of Influenza Virus that causes Avian Flu is native in wild fowl and it does not affect them negatively. Only when poultry comes in contact with wild fowl does the virus get transmitted and then becomes deadly. At that stage however, it is only transmissible from birds to humans. You literally have to sleep with an infected chicken to catch the virus.

2 - In North America, most if not all farmers have taken all the precautions to ensure their poultry does not interract with wild fowl. Of course nothing is foolproof but even then, in North America we don't usually sleep with our poultry so the risk of an Avian Influenza Pandemic here is almost nil.

3 - Never in history has there been a case of Avian Influenza turning into a strain transmissible from human to human. There have been three major Pandemics in the last century and some partial ones. The 1918 Spanish Flu, the 1957 Asian Flu, and the 1968 Hong Kong Flu all turned into full scale pandemics while the Swine Flu of 1976, the Russain Flu of 1977, and another version in 1947 were all much more contained. Most research suggest that the actual culprit for the origin of Influenza Pandemics is the swine. Certainly it was proven such in 1918 and in 1976, and generally recognised as the most probable source for all the others as well. The main reason for this is that when the pig is infected with Influenza, it's constitution is the most similar - at least at the microbiological level - to that of the human from among all the animals. This implies that an influenza virus is already transmissible from human to human once it spread from pigs to humans because of the similarities in constitution that enable a more rapid development.

4 - No research has ever been documented that would prove any theory of mutation of strains of Influenza in birds. Even in pigs there are a lot of theories about "mixing vessels" floating out there but no hard facts based on scientifally sound research. All the reports hold suppositions and assumptions based on other writings from previous unverified data. Every single person who reports on the probability of mutation of virus bases his or her data on someone else's and when you try to find the initial source, it is only based on possibilities that have never been verified. I have challenged others to prove me wrong on this and I am still waiting.

In future pages, I will provide you with the economic and political reasons behind the Avian Flu scare, as well as the benefits to the medical profession, but most of all the immense gains made by the pharmaceutical industry. I will tell you more on the fallacies related to vaccines and tamiflu (or other antivirals).

Now, I do want to clarify that I believe an Influenza Pandemic could occur. Certainly the fact that we have had three full-blown ones and three partial ones in one century tend to indicate that this is a recurring phenmomena. What I am saying is that the next Influenza Pandemic will have absolutely nothing to do with the current Avian Flu.

But even then, there are many things you should know about an Influenza Pandemic. I will share with you in future pages how the Influenza could really spread, how it would impact North America, what to expect from government, and what is the best way to protect yourself from the disease.

What I hope to do here is to give you a point of view based on three years of intensive research that will balance what you are being fed daily by the people who want you to believe that they have your best interest at heart.

I am not asking you to take what I say blindly. I encourage... no, I urge you to do your own research on this to see if what I am sharing here makes sense. I will try to give you places where you can find out more on the topics that I share.

More to come...

Alain Normand, BA, BSC, CAP, AdmA
Emergency Manager, Researcher, University Professor
Author of "The Return of the Spanish Lady: the 1918 Influenza Virus is Back"
http://ca.geocities.com/alainnormand@rogers.com