The Politics of the Immune System
Through the internet investment in human downgrading has led to a huge amount of dubious solutions to the pandemic. These of course get labelled as fake news although they were accepted by some, yet at the same time scientific truth gets labelled as fake news by vested interests. In this way government justify failure to invest in solutions that heal their own people, spend taxpayers money in bolstering the economy by giving to corporations, in much of daily life more people die than have to, and rich people continue to get relatively richer. With the greed of the 1% and the leaders they have invested in, this has to happen. Many people have given up. We have a huge amount of global support for the compassionate heroes of the health services but in many economies the health service is private and in the UK has been slowly underfunded since 1979. Even in the pandemic there were not sufficient funds to heal the people with spurious excuses offered as to why not.
Part of the strategy for increasing the wealth of the wealthy has been the undermining of confidence in science – as illustrated in non-scientific public responses to the pandemic and more blatantly the funding of climate denial that allows puppet-leaders to deregulate ecology. Confidence in science is being financially manipulated because, mainly with climate science but elsewhere as well, science is standing in the way of resource exploitation.
With Mandtao I completely accept proper science but am exploring the boundaries of science. This formal investigation of boundaries makes me a sceptic, and in normal circumstances I would be comfortable with that term. But unfortunately scepticism in science has been financed in order to decrease confidence in science. This is an intentional profit-making strategy where scientists offering scepticism are funded destabilising public confidence in science – yet another way in which the funding of science is used to direct science in the direction corporations want scientific enquiry to go.
Rupert Sheldrake is a sceptic. He is a proven scientist who has started asking questions about the boundaries of science, I assess although I don’t know for sure that science mostly ignores him. One reason for his being ignored is that there are no funds to investigate the truth of his 10 dogmas. If his knowledgeable 10 dogmas are ignored, my limited questioning is whistling in the wind but that doesn’t stop me. But let me absolutely clear I am not offering science to backup what I say, I am questioning the boundaries of science. This introduction is a summary of hidden axioms of science and what I have written so far in The Path of Scientific Enquiry, the contents of the blog assumes the approach I have discussed in this intro.
How are the problems of science and its boundaries connected to the pandemic and the immune system? Most obviously the biggest problem with the pandemic is that it requires governments to put people before profits. In the US the pandemic requires that all people become immune rather than just those who have health insurance, and in the UK it requires government to fund the NHS to heal all people as opposed to winding down NHS in favour of private insurance following the US model. If the pandemic only targetted the “rich gene”, the response would have been completely different. This is a purely political answer not a question of the boundaries of science.
So far I still have not addressed the scientific question that is the purpose of this blog:-
What is the immune system?
“Definition of immune system
: the bodily system that protects the body from foreign substances, cells, and tissues by producing the immune response and that includes especially the thymus, spleen, lymph nodes, special deposits of lymphoid tissue (as in the gastrointestinal tract and bone marrow), macrophages, lymphocytes including the B cells and T cells, and antibodies.” [Merriam Webster]
This is a proper scientific definition that initially broaches no questions, this is a definition that completely places the immune system within well-established scientific norms. I am going to call this without any disrespect the biological model.
In terms of boundaries I now ask “Is the immune system limited to the biological?” I offer no scientific justification for the following, it is about questioning, any attempt to place what I say as science as opposed to scientific enquiry is an attempt to confuse.
I am not specifically discussing the Covid pandemic as yet. As a teacher I was frequently subject to classrooms full of flu. I did not always catch what was going round because of my immune system. If I was stressed I argue that my immune system was weakened. How does stress affect the biological model? I don’t know, maybe science can explain the connection of stress to this model. But I take a broader view. I suggest that stress affected by vitality; if I was feeling vital, all of me not just the biological model, then I feel that I was less vulnerable. No science just a question of boundaries, assuming stress affects the immune system is it just biological or is it the whole being?
Another thing that affects my vitality is chi. Chi is not accepted as part of the biological model. Chi underlies the medical system of acupuncture, and from personal experience there are treatments that improve my vitality and ability to withstand disease. I would therefore put forward that chi improves the immune system. I have also done chi exercises that I contend improves my vitality – Chi Gung and Tai Chi. This chi is similar to the system of sen lines that underlies Thai massage, again a treatment that is argued improves vitality and arguably the immune system. And equally not dissimilar in Ayurvedic medicine prana exercises (breath) can be used to improve vitality and arguably the immune system.
Can the immune system be explained by the purely biological? Does vitality, broadly a holistic description of the whole being, not impact on the immune system? Does the immune system also consist of an energetic component as suggested by chi, prana and sen?
These are questions that have been asked ever since the allopathic western system was taken up. Allopathic:-
Definition of allopathic:
relating to or being a system of medicine that aims to combat disease by using remedies (such as drugs or surgery) which produce effects that are different from or incompatible with those of the disease being treated.[Merriam Webster]
This again is influenced by the financial question. Corporations, collectively termed BigPharma, gain profits from an allopathic system, where do they get profits from practitioner-based systems such as acupuncture, massage or Ayurveda?
Why hasn’t science invested in experimentation that confirms or denies the claims of acupuncture, massage and Ayurveda? My answer is BigPharma will not finance it because they fear the truth and will lose profits. Am I wrong? This is a boundary of science that has not been investigated for reasons of potential loss of corporate profits. As a corollary it has increased the lack of confidence in science as more and more experience these medical systems and find benefits.
These questions concerning the broad nature of the immune system enable political manipulation of those disenchanted – mainly the populist right. (Note however my politics would probably be described as extreme left-wing, and yet I have doubts.) As part of the populist right package, the propaganda encourages strong egotism, not egotism based on science or knowledge but egotism based on conviction. These egotists then claim they have the constitution of an ox, and that they will be immune.
So in the specific case of the Covid pandemic, the response in western countries was very slow as their governments who did not wish to invest in the people tried the propaganda concerning the strength of the immune system – herd immunity and others. Sadly this has led to many deaths not of these egotists – although Bojo was in ICU, but of deaths mostly of the vulnerable. In countries that invested in all their people, deaths were proportionately less even if there was limitation of freedom and a worsened economy.
We must next consider two aspects of covid – cure and vaccine. If it were up to science ie if the understanding of science dictated, there would be no issue. We would find a cure and vaccine if possible, and putting people before profits we would apply what science through proper scientific method has discovered. Historically we have applied science to cure many pandemics backed up by vaccines for prevention. But with profits before people these issues are now not clear.
Let us start with a Covid cure. Here I am not sure of the science. Flus cannot be cured. We catch a flu, we rest and build up our immune system to “fight off the flu”. With my very limited understanding it is possible that Covid is like the flu, it is possible we can only fight it with our immune systems. Given the number of deaths from Covid at present that sound frightening, am I suggesting that there will always be that number of deaths? Far from it. I have no science to back this up but I believe it is scientific, but the longer Covid is around the more the species immune system will be able to fight it. It is my view that even in isolation we build up immunity to Covid so that as we go through the pandemic eventually as we get to the end of the curve there will be immunity. I would like to have science references that back this up but I am not knowledgeable enough.
What is however totally reprehensible is the postulating of cures that have no scientific basis. Trump is doing this. People question this, examine his personal assets, and find limited connections to BigPharma. Therefore they don’t conclude self-interest. However the Trump-puppet has a strong vested interest in promoting the profits of BigPharma especially in election year. As their profits increase they will then fund his re-election campaign. His words resonate for a proportion of the population who will then buy the drugs he mentions. From others there is only disdain, but the profits have increased as will the campaign funding.
The truth of a vaccine lies in science. Before Covid I examined the vaccine controversy, and came to a clear position – if the government requires a vaccine I will be vaccinated. In the Covid situation a vaccine might well be discovered. However I have concerns if my comparison between flu and Covid holds up. In the US the CDC says that flu vaccines are 50% effective, yet there are companies requiring the use of vaccines under punishment of sacking – discussed here. Will we be forced to take a Covid vaccine that is 50% effective? There is natural pressure to find a cure and vaccine, only science can know. With the power and influence of the 1%, that pressure will be used to disseminate a vaccine that increases the 1%-profits. Will the science backup the vaccine? Will science be strong enough to demand control?
There is another aspect of vaccines and immunity that casts doubt on science. The principle used in a vaccine is that of homeopathy. Through vaccines we build up immunity to the disease, we give a small dose of disease and the immune system creates antibodies for protection; this is the homeopathic principle I mean. And it works – has worked, I vaccines are universally applied. Now there are people who advocate vaccines yet decry homeopathy as fake. Reasonable criticisms are that the homeopathic remedies contain too small a proportion to create antibodies. With acupuncture as I said above I am convinced because it works for me, sadly homeopathy hasn’t. If the principle is the same why hasn’t science taken on and developed homeopathic remedies? If the dose is too small make it larger, use scientific method to determine useful dosages. Because the principle works for vaccines I think such dosages can be found, but if they can’t be found why hasn’t science completely dismissed homeopathy? Again there is no funding to do this, maybe again BigPharma feels threatened? Yet again science is not able to defend itself because of funding control by the corporations.
Health is a human right but because corporations are run for profits not people governments do not accept this human right. In the US universal health care is continually being blocked by the insurance industry. In the UK the NHS was created post second world war, and it seems that ever since then, particularly post 1979, there has been a conscious effort to run it into the ground through defunding.
The pandemic has shown us that health has to be global, there have been plenty of warnings concerning this. This came from Occupy Democrats today(15/4/20), but it is only one of many. I listened to Sonia Shah, I first heard her on Real News, there is a TED talk but I preferred this Google talk of hers. What sensible people have been pushing for has been a “global pandemic response force”, and the obvious organisation to do this is WHO. In one of the questions at the end of the Google talk she talks about the state of WHO funding, and today I see Trump is now blaming WHO. Laughable except that he is in power, backed up by the WEGemony with Bojo and Scomo. With the apartheid nature of the WEGemony I don’t see how there can be such a “global pandemic response force”, and this is scary.
I offer no substance to the following claim but as I believe (know) that we are all part of Mother Earth and Gaia I don’t need to offer substance – just to state that sadly there is limited science to back this up. Would that science was trying to understand Gaia! This pandemic is a Gaia warning. Because there is limited science does not mean it is not true, where are the profits in funding research to say the corporations through resource exploitation are destroying Mother Earth. There are endless indigenous predictions (voices of Gaia) that are dismissed as the resource exploitation destroy their lands. The power and influence in this world, the 1%-satrapy, are not listening to her. This frightens me for the future - I just selfishly pray it is not a future of my lifetime. The young people who supported Greta Thunberg have to turn round and recognise that what they have done is nowhere near enough. They cannot sit back and blame the older conditioned people who have been propagandised into submission. It is their life they need to fight for. But of course a “global pandemic response force” would have to come from today’s 1%-puppets. Such hopelessness.
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