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General : Syphils/Tuskegee - what really happened?
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From: MSN NicknameHansSelyeWasCorrect  (Original Message)Sent: 6/27/2007 6:56 AM
The facts are well established, almost everyone agrees. This is true of much of the scientific evidence I read (and I read through a lot of studies and reports). The "facts" are usually beyond question, but I have found a great deal of inconsistencies in the interpretations of the facts obtained. Let's look at the raw numbers from the "Tuskegee experiment," in which 399 poor and mostly illiterate African-American men who were said to have "syphilis" were not "treated" for it:

"By the end of the experiment, 28 of the men had died directly of syphilis, 100 were dead of related complications, 40 of their wives had been infected, and 19 of their children had been born with congenital syphilis." (source: http://www.infoplease.com/spot/bhmtuskegee1.html). Note that 201 apparently healthy men were studied as controls, but I have not found information about how many of them died in that 40 year period (1932-1972), and of them, how many died of syphilic-like problems, if any.

I have also been unable to find evidence about the actual physical condition of the 399 men at the start of the experiment. Assuming that many already had symptoms of ill health, is it surprising that 128 were no longer alive 40 years later? And did others die, but not of "syphilis?" If "syphilis" is so contagious and deadly, why did only 40 of their wives become "infected," and of them, how many were said to have died of "syphilis?"

Using one's reasoning capacity at the most basic level, one has to question what we've been told about "syphilis." When I investigated this "infectious disease," it appeared to me that there is no one "syphilis" (similar to "HIV/AIDS") and that so much about it seems to be more about the problems of applying the scientific method to "disease" than anything else. Others have made this kind of point, some a very long time ago. For example, in 1938, the book, SYPHILIS: Werewolf of medicine: Is it a Mischievous Myth or a Malignant Monster, written by Herbert M. Shelton, was published. Below is a passage that is worth considering in the context of infectious diseases considered deadly or potentially deadly, yet which supposedly take long periods of time to kill the person:

QUOTE: When Pasteur announced his theory that disease is due to microbes, Dr. Robert Koch, a German scientist, laid down four conditions that must be met before the theory could be regarded as scientifically proven. "Koch's postulates," as these are called, which were incautiously accepted by Pasteur and his subalterns and echoes, as reasonable, are:
1. The germ must be present in every case of the disease.
2. The germ must not be present except in connection with the disease.
3. The germ must be susceptible of cultivation in proper media outside the body, for several generations.
4. The pure culture thus obtained must be susceptible of re-transplantation into the healthy human or animal body, where it must infallibly produce the same disease, and the same microorganism must again be found in the tissues, blood, or secretions of the inoculated animal or man.
There is not a single germ that is held responsible for a single so-called disease that fully meets a single one of these conditions, nor one that ever meets all four of them.
It is claimed that "syphilis" is caused by a germ. Two German investigators, Fritz Schaudinn and Erich Hoffmann, announced the discovery of the germ of "syphilis" in 1905. Because of its spiral form they called it "spirochaeta" and because it was difficult to stain they attached to it the descriptive classification "pallida." Later the "spirochaeta pallida" was identified with a previously discovered organism named "treponema".
Every ten cent mind in the medical profession has accepted this cork-screw shaped germ as the cause of a disease called "syphilis" and the public has been told frightful stories of its ravages by such promoters, with six cent minds, as Parran, de Kruif, Becker, Palm, Wenger, Cox, Pusey, Fishbein, Stokes, Munson, Wile, Moore, Schamberg, O'Leary, and that aggregation of syphilophobes, the American Social Hygiene Association, headed by Dr. Walter Clarke. However, even these men have misgivings about the office of this germ in causing hundreds of pathological conditions which they gather together and label syphilis �?indeed, their doubts are so great that they cannot keep them wholly inarticulate.
In a booklet issued by The American Social Hygiene Association, under the title, The Social Hygiene Program �?Today and Tomorrow, C.- E. A. Winslow says of the treponema pallidum, "Koch's postulates have never been fulfilled here and we are not certain whether this organism is the sole cause of syphilis, or a symbiont, or a related saprophyte; yet its value as a practical index is quite clear."
To the writer, "its value as a practical index" is not "quite clear." For, Dr. Becker says in Ten Million Americans Have It, "It is not always possible to find spirochetes, even in lesions that are proved to be syphilitic. *** Failure to find the germs on a dark field examination does not necessarily mean that the lesion is not syphilitic."
Here, then, it fails to meet one of Koch's postulates �?it is not always present where the disease is.
In his Shadow on the Land, Dr. Parran says: "During 50 years many investigators, among them the late, great Noguchi of Rockefeller Institute, have attempted to cultivate the spirochete outside the human body. Several have reported success with an organism which looks like the syphilis germ. Invariably it has proven nonvirulent. Experimental animals cannot be infected with it, only with human virus. This has led several workers, among them Levaditi, discoverer of the curative value of bismuth, to suggest that the visible spirillum is but one phase in the complicated life cycle of the spirochete, during part of which the organism exists in an ultramicroscopic stage, too small to be seen by the most powerful microscope."
Here, then, it would appear not to meet two more of Koch's postulates �?(1) It does not seem to be susceptible of cultivation outside the body; and (2) if it is susceptible of such extra-somatic cultivation, it does not produce the disease it is supposed to cause when inoculated into the body. In all probability it is actually cultivated outside the body. Its non-virulence when inoculated into animals is the thing that causes physicians and bacteriologists to try to doubt that they are cultivating the right organism. They don't want to be forced to admit that their cause is no cause at all.
Dr. Becker tells us that the "syphilis germ" "itself has little tenacity except when well entrenched in the human body. * * * The germ probably never has been grown in virulent form in test tubes, although it is possible to infect certain laboratory animals, such as rabbits, mice, and apes, *** the spirochete of syphilis is not tenacious outside of the body, it dies quickly when it is allowed to dry, *** The germ of syphilis gives off little or no toxin (poison), *** It is no mere repetition of a trite expression to say they live in more or less complete harmony �?the germs of the disease and the human body *** In connection with this, let us call attention to the fact that there is some evidence to support the theory that spiral form (spirocheti) is not the only form of the germ. *** It is possible that the germ of syphilis in other than the spiral form some day may be discovered."
There is not the slightest evidence that the spirochete exists in any other than the "cork-screw" form. The assumption that it does is essential to save the theory. No physician who values his professional standing would dare question this fallacy. Well does Dr. Tilden say, "The whole thing is Fool's Paradise. Why doesn't the profession know it? Because it is awed into worshipping authority; and into believing that to question the hallucinations of a moth-eaten laboratory professor is a sacrilege deserving of eternal damnation."
Dr. Becker says: "Already we have pointed out that syphilis is a disease peculiar to human beings. Animals in the natural course of existence do not have syphilis, although it has been found possible to infect certain species with the disease for research purposes. The course of syphilis in these animals is milder than in humans, and the infected animals slowly cure themselves without treatment."
Here is another of Koch's postulates the "infection" does not comply with; when the "human virus" is used to infect an animal, the resulting disease follows an entirely different course, recovers without treatment, as it will always do in a healthy human, and thus fails to provide any evidence of specificity.
The fact that animals, when "infected" with "syphilis" do not develop a virulent form of "the disease," as did sixteenth century Europeans, would suggest that the infection is not devastating in new soil. The absence of such virulent forms in so-called primitives to which "syphilis" has been carried during the past century suggests the same thing. Syphilographers make use of this subterfuge merely because they are hard-put to account for the vast difference between the sixteenth century form of "syphilis" and that of the twentieth.
Sir Wm. Power, British Medical Officer of the Local Government Board, was asked before the Royal Commission on Vivisection what he meant by "a definite specific organ-ism". He replied: "A definite organism which will react always in a certain way to a series of culture tests." He was then asked what diseases are associated with organisms for which such a test has been established. He replied: "I cannot say that we have got to that stage with any one of them."
They certainly have not reached that stage with the spirochete. It meets none of Koch's postulates and "syphilis," as described by medical authorities, never reacts the same in the human body. There is not a physician or a bacteriologist living who can honestly affirm that the spirochete has been definitely proven to cause "syphilis." If there is such a disease as "syphilis," its cause is simply not known. UNQUOTE.

Internet Source: http://www.whale.to/a/shelton_sy.html#Chapter_7.__WHAT_CAUSES_SYPHILIS_




Replies to This Message The number of members that recommended this message.    
     re: Syphils/Tuskegee - what really happened?   MSN NicknameHansSelyeWasCorrect  6/27/2007 6:58 AM
     re: Syphils/Tuskegee - what really happened?   MSN NicknameJamieDH4  6/30/2007 7:21 AM