Suppressed Inventions and Other Discoveries (3 page)

Now, neither the British nor the American Indian performed any double-blind, cross-over studies to arrive at their discovery. In their respective ways, they learned that it worked very well for their needs. James Lind had conducted empirical studies (based on observation) to determine that a citrus fruit could save naval forces from certain death. Ridiculed by their rivals for this use of lime juice, the British were derisively referred to as "limeys." Had they never conducted their simple experiment, or had another sea power done so, world history could have been altered.

Dr. Jenner, a British doctor, discovered in the early 1800s that milkmaids who had previously contracted cowpox were protected against smallpox. Jenner scientifically developed a vaccine from the crusty lesions of smallpox patients to inoculate others against smallpox. It took more than fifty years for the medical power structure to endorse his simple remedy for a killer disease.

In 1848, Dr. Semmelweis, a graduate of the prestigious University of Vienna Medical School, introduced a revolutionary idea while assisting in the Vienna Obstetrical Clinic: he required medical students to wash their hands in chlorine water before entering the clinic. There was an immediate and dramatic decrease in the high death rate from puerperal (childbirth) fever. The good doctor became an outspoken advocate, pleading with obstetricians to tend maternity patients only after proper hand washing. After a vicious attack on his personal and professional integrity, he was fired from the hospital where he had just eradicated a cause of death.

This courageous, principled doctor then spent ten years gathering evidence to prove that hand washing would prevent terrible misery and death from childbirth fever. He published his research in 1861 and distributed the medical text to the major medical societies throughout Europe. It was completely ignored. In one of those years, 40 percent of the maternity patients in Stockholm, Sweden, contracted the fever; 16 percent of those new mothers died.

The deadly fever continued to ravage women while the hand washing prevention/cure was "put on hold" by Organized Medicine. The poor doctor could no longer cope with the preventable death and misery of so many women. In 1865 he died after a mental breakdown; such tragedies still occur among gifted researchers whose great discoveries are ignored. So, from the safety of the next century, Dr. Semmelweis can be credited by the medical profession with his lifesaving discovery—hand washing.

In 1867, Dr. Joseph Lister introduced sanitation in surgery, but not without a big fight England. His paper, Surgery," was read before the British Medical Association in Dublin, Ireland. His noteworthy summary concluded:
with the leading surgeons of "On the Antiseptic Principle nineteenth-century

in the Practice of

Since the antiseptic treatment has been brought into full operation, my wards though in other respects under precisely the same circumstance as before, have completely changed their character, so that during the last 9 months not a single instance of pyemia,* hospital gangrene or erysipelas** has occurred in them.

*Blood poisoning c a u s e d by pyogenic microorganisms (pus).
** A disease of the skin and underlying tissue caused by hemolytic streptococcus, a bacteria that destroys red blood cells.

Dr. Lister's contribution outraged the leading surgeons of the day. An 1869 conference of the BMA devoted the surgery address to a scathing attack on the antiseptic theory. What presumptuous London surgeon would believe a lowly provincial from Scotland who was telling them how to improve surgical protocol?

As evidence of similar incredible intolerance in the United States, U.S. Senator Paul Douglas related the following story, which was recorded in the Congressional Record in 1963:

I spent a part of 1923 with Dr. W. W. Keen. In the Civil War he was a surgeon and had seen many men die from the suppuration of wounds after he had operated.

He went to Scotland and studied under Lister. Dr. Keen came back from Scotland. He was referred to as a crazy Listerite. He was denied an opportunity to practice in every hospital in Philadelphia.

Finally there was one open-minded surgeon in the great Pennsylvania General Hospital. He said, "Let us give this young fellow a chance!" So they let him operate.

No one died from infection under Keen. Keen began to chronicle the results in statistical articles. He was threatened with expulsion from the Pennsylvania Medical Society.

This was in the 1890s. Finally he was accepted as the greatest surgeon in the United States.

Next came Dr. Louis Pasteur, a chemist. His germ theory for infectious diseases provoked violent opposition from the medical community of the late 1800s. How could a mere chemist poach upon their scientific turf?

Dr. Harvey's monumental work on the theory of blood circulation was forbidden to be taught at the University of Paris Medical School twenty-one years after Harvey published his findings. And it doesn't end there.

Austrian botanist Gregory Mendel's theory of genetic composition was generally ignored for thirty-five years. His pioneering work was dismissed as that of an idle, rich dilettante by the leading scientists of his day.

Dr. Fleming's mid-twentieth-century discovery of the antibiotic penicillin was ridiculed and ignored for twelve years before this life-saver was admitted into the medical circle. Once scorned, Dr. Fleming was eventually knighted and received the Nobel Prize in Medicine for what had once been denounced.

As a final example, Dr. Joseph Goldberger unraveled the mystery of pellagra, a disease which ravaged especially the poor in the American South. Pellagra was at first thought to be an infectious disease causing the three Ds of dermatitis, diarrhea and dementia. Goldberger discovered that, like scurvy, pellagra was a vitamin-deficiency disease. The milling or refining process of corn removed important vitamins and minerals from the husk. Those people dependent on corn-based foods such as grits, corn bread, etc., became deficient in vitamins and minerals. Goldberger's recommendation—to re-fortify corn flour—is now a routine practice in refining most flours. But the foot-dragging over this minor business expense by the greedy flour barons of the time dragged on for fifty years.

These examples are just a handful of so very many courageous doctors and scientists who braved a battle with Organized Medicine on behalf of what could help patients. They have the honor and distinction of representing "The Enemy of the People" that was portrayed in Ibsen's drama of that name.

The role of deficiency in causing disease is carried a step further by Dr. Max Gerson in his text for doctors, A Cancer Therapy—The Results of Fifty Cases. He exposes the depletion of farm soil from chemical fertilization as early as the 1930s and concludes that the depletion subsequently affects nutritional levels in the plants growing in depleted soil.

IT'S THE SAME IN SCIENCE

Throughout the course of Western Civilization, there has been a strong resistance to new information in the other scientific fields. There is so much evidence of this bigotry that only a few brief examples are offered here.

Thomas Kuhn's book The Structure of Scientific Revolution (2nd Edition, University of Chicago Press, 1970) relates the typically bitter conflict between an independent science researcher who discovers something important and the current power structure which fights to maintain the status quo.

German biologist Hans Zimmer wrote, "Academies and learned societies are slow to react to new ideas, this is in the nature of things . . . The dignitaries who hold high honors for past accomplishments do not like to see the current of progress rush too rapidly out of their reach!"

In his 1966 book, DeGrazia recounted the mistreatment of scientist Immanuel Velikovsky for his theories in astronomy. Velikovsky had proposed that the catastrophic events recorded in the Old Testament and in Hindu Vedas and Roman and Greek mythology were due to the earth repeatedly passing through the tail of a comet during the fifteenth to seventeenth centuries, B.C.

DeGrazia wrote,

What must be called the scientific establishment rose in arms, not only against the new Velikovsky theories but against the man himself. Efforts were made to block dissemination of Dr. Velikovsky's ideas, and even to punish supporters of his investigations. Universities, scientific societies, publishing houses, and the popular press were approached and threatened; social pressures and professional sanctions were invoked to control public opinion.

The issues are clear: Who determines scientific truth? Who are its high priests, and what is their warrant? How do they establish their canons? What effect do they have on the freedom of inquiry and on public interest? In the end, some judgment must be passed upon the behavior of the scientific world, and if adverse, some remedies must be proposed.

Philosopher and professor of physical chemistry Michael Polanyi commented in 1969, referring to the persecution of Velikovsky, that new ideas in science are not accepted in a rational manner, based on factual evidence, but instead are determined by random chance, the ruling economic/political powers, or the ruling ideology.

A recent paper by sociologist Marcell Truzzi, "On the Reception of Unscientific Claims," delivered at the annual American Academy for the Advancement of Science, proposed that it is even harder today for new discoveries and ideas to break through, due to the escalating economics of research. Truzzi wrote, "Unconventional ideas in science are seldom positively greeted by those benefitting from conformity." Truzzi predicted that new forms of vested interest will emerge from today's programs that must compete for massive funding. He warned, "This has become a growing and recognized problem in some areas of modern science."

There is another reason for resistance to scientific discoveries. Many of the major advances have come either from a scientist in another scientific discipline or from researchers who just don't qualify for membership in the scientific elite (as in high school "in crowds"). No wonder advances so often come not from the "in crowd" who are blinded or corrupted by prevailing dogma.

ORGANIZED MED IGNORES SUCCESS

Currently there exists impressive statistical and clinical (case study) data on alternative approaches to reversing or controlling some cancers without the use of chemotherapy, radiation and surgery. But covert politicking and overly rigid systems of testing and approval suppress these biological approaches that Americans are increasingly accessing. Desperate cancer patients rarely learn about all their medical options; in fact, a full 80 percent of those who travel outside the U.S. for alternative cancer therapies are so terribly advanced in their diseases that it is too late, even for alternative approaches. This fact alone obscures the value of these therapies when they are promptly applied under competent medical supervision and not tried as a last resort, following, for example, chemotherapy. Chemotherapy alone can destroy a patient's immune system, and biological methods usually require a functioning immune system.
Sadly, in this supposed age of enlightenment, the ridicule of the medical orthodoxy and a rigid system of testing and approval (calcified by the same suspicions of alternative therapies that plagued discoveries for centuries) keeps these treatments from ill patients who might benefit from them, as De Felice, Director of the Foundation for Innovation in Medicine, in 1987, lamented:

One of the tragedies of our times is that over the past 20 years, a pervasive and aggressive regulating system has evolved that has effectively blocked the caring clinical innovator at nearly every step. Let there be no doubt that we have quietly, but effectively, eliminated the Louis Pasteurs of our great country.

DR. HORROBIN'S CALL FOR AN END
TO THE SUPPRESSION OF INNOVATION

The Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) in March, 1990, published selections from the first International Congress on Peer Review in Biomedical Publications. Dr. David Horrobin presented "The Philosophical Basis of Peer Review and The Suppression of Innovation," a classic presentation. Dr. Horrobin stressed that the ultimate aim of peer review in biomedical science cannot differ from medicine—"to cure sometimes, to relieve often, (Believed to be a French folk saying of medieval origin, this beautifully simplistic description of medicine's intent is inscribed on the statue of Edward Trudeau at Saranac Lake, New York.)

Dr. Horrobin stated that the purpose of peer review should be nothing less than to facilitate the introduction of improvements in curing, relieving and comforting. Even in the fields of biomedical research that are remote from clinical practice, the peer reviewer should always ask whether the proposed innovation could realistically lead to improvements in the treatment of patients.

He notes the necessity for a creative tension between innovation on the one hand and quality control on the other. The innovators who generate the future are often impatient with the precision and systematic approach of the quality controllers. On the other hand, the quality controllers are often exasperated by the seeming lack of discipline and predictability of the innovators. If either side dominates, research progress falters.

The public is the ultimate source of money for medical research. They agree to this use of their money for the sole purpose of improving their medical care. When improvement does not progress satisfactorily, support for medical research (and medical journals) will dwindle. The public wants satisfactory progress; if such progress is not forthcoming, the prethe ultimate aim of to comfort always." sent medical research enterprise will crumble. For satisfactory results, quality control must comprise only one side of the editorial equation. There must also be an encouragement of innovation. Presently, quality control is overwhelmingly dominant, and encouragement of innovation receives very little attention. Without appropriate balance, peer review fails its purpose.

Dr. Horrobin notes that, in the last six decades, the accuracy of medical articles has improved substantially but so has a failure to acknowledge innovation. Between 1930 and 1960, patient care improved dramatically. Many infectious diseases were controlled by drugs and immunization. Prototypes of drugs used today were discovered during that time. However, by 1960 (despite major developments, especially in the field of diagnosis), patients increasingly felt dissatisfied, and we must accept the fact that their dissatisfaction stems from our trading innovation for quality control.