Twenty years ago our family faced a health crisis. Our daughter, Ami, developed neurological symptoms and was referred to a neurologist (a medical expert). After the tests were made, his diagnosis was Multiple Sclerosis. After a short discussion, a selection of medications was offered and we chose one for our daughter. MS is a scary disease. It leads to steady decline in function. And the medication, at best, slows the decline down a little. When the doctor asked if there were any other questions, I asked if there were any naturopathic things that we could do to help our daughter. He ridiculed the question.
My wife and I were not satisfied with what was being offered to our daughter. Plus, my education in the natural health field taught me to ask broader questions about chronic illness. I began to do research into the area of natural health and chronic disease.
And, we decided to engage a naturopathic physician. Within this country’s medical system, naturopathic doctors are definitely a minority voice. When we met with the doctor and discussed the research I had found, he gave us his opinion. He said that, since Ami’s was a neurological disease, it made sense to test for neurotoxic, heavy metal poisoning. And, he prescribed an initial detoxification diet, among other things. When her test results came back, they showed mercury levels in her body that were literally off the chart. So, the doctor began chelation therapy, an I.V. treatment that gets rid of heavy metals that are trapped in the cells.
During this time, Ami was handed off to a new neurologist (another medical expert) for care. When we met with the new neurologist, we presented the heavy metal results. She took a cursory look at the graph, pushed the results back across the table, and reminded us that our daughter had MS.
After many months, during which Ami stayed on MS medication , continued chelation therapy, and had continuous physical tests and MRI’s to follow the progress of the disease, her symptoms began to dissipate. MRI exams began to show that the physical damage to her nervous system was beginning to clear up. Today, Ami has no MS symptoms and no active physical damage going on within her nervous system. This result is not predicted by any neurological expert. She lives a normal life today.
It is reasonable to conclude that Ami was mis-diagnosed by the experts. That her symptoms were due to heavy metal poisoning.
Even after all of this time, I sometimes wake up in the middle of the night thinking about those neurologists. They were so sure of their diagnoses. They were so dismissive of other views. I think: what if, out of extreme fear, we had blindly followed the MS experts as most people do? What if we had dismissed the naturopathic doctor’s opinion as being “dangerous”, or useless, as the neurologists indicated to us? Where would Ami be today? She’s be confined to a wheelchair for the rest of her life, or worse. We would be thinking that the experts did all that could be done for her.
I relate this to the current Covid crisis. People are very afraid right now. They are blindly accepting the decisions of the experts...doing everything that they are being told to do… because they’re being told to do so, by the experts. Meanwhile, a minority of doctors from around the world with a different perspective on the crisis are trying to be heard. They are getting ridiculed and even censored for their views. Why is it that the experts are necessarily right and that the minority perspective is necessarily wrong? Why is it that the minority medical input is not valued?
I came out of my family crisis with a healthy skepticism toward experts. If someone told me that their child was diagnosed with MS, my advice would be to look at the problem with a wider lens than that of a neurologists. And, whenever anyone asks me about the Covid crisis, I tell them to look at the problem through a wider lens than that of the experts. Don’t silence minority perspectives. Listen carefully to all voices. Then, use your native common sense and decide for yourself how you want to proceed. Medical experts can err. In fact, they've been wrong on many things throughout history. They are doing things today that may be judged worthless in the future. They are fallible human beings. They have the same prejudices, narrowness of vision, and political susceptibilities as anyone else.