WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:06.440 The following episode of Politics and Science features an interview with Dr. Raymond Peat, 00:00:06.440 --> 00:00:10.360 endocrinologist and physiologist from Eugene, Oregon. 00:00:10.360 --> 00:00:15.680 It was recorded on July 24, 2008. 00:00:15.680 --> 00:00:20.680 At that time we were struggling with a, how shall I say, a not very well functioning phone 00:00:20.680 --> 00:00:25.480 interface machine at WMRWLP Warren. 00:00:25.480 --> 00:00:27.000 And so the sound is a little funky. 00:00:27.000 --> 00:00:33.400 I've put it through some sound modifying programs and it sounds a little echoey now, but the 00:00:33.400 --> 00:00:35.340 buzz is gone. 00:00:35.340 --> 00:00:38.220 And I hope it's listenable. 00:00:38.220 --> 00:00:47.440 More information about Dr. Raymond Peat can be found at RayPeat.com, that's spelled R-A-Y-P-E-A-T.com, 00:00:47.440 --> 00:00:51.280 where you'll find many fascinating articles. 00:00:51.280 --> 00:00:56.440 And if you enjoyed the show or didn't catch all of it and wanted to hear the rest, you 00:00:56.440 --> 00:01:02.560 can browse your way on a computer to radionumerall4all.net. 00:01:02.560 --> 00:01:06.280 That's radionumerall4all.net. 00:01:06.280 --> 00:01:13.000 And once you get there, search for Politics and Science and you'll find a number of episodes 00:01:13.000 --> 00:01:18.920 ready to download to your computer to listen to at your convenience. 00:01:18.920 --> 00:01:21.440 All right, and now to the interview itself. 00:01:21.440 --> 00:01:24.440 Raymond, can you hear me? 00:01:24.440 --> 00:01:25.440 Okay. 00:01:25.440 --> 00:01:29.440 Let me hang up the phone. 00:01:29.440 --> 00:01:34.440 All right, thanks for joining us again. 00:01:34.440 --> 00:01:38.440 Let's see if I can get my knobs adjusted here correctly. 00:01:38.440 --> 00:01:45.960 All right, you're on the air and we're speaking with Dr. Raymond Peat out in Eugene, Oregon. 00:01:45.960 --> 00:01:52.560 He's an endocrinologist and physiologist who's written a lot of books about health and nutrition 00:01:52.560 --> 00:01:57.360 and science and has a newsletter called Ray Peat's Newsletter and you can find him on 00:01:57.360 --> 00:01:58.360 the web at raypeat.com. 00:01:58.360 --> 00:02:02.360 Raymond, can you hear me? 00:02:02.360 --> 00:02:03.360 Oh, good. 00:02:03.360 --> 00:02:04.360 Okay. 00:02:04.360 --> 00:02:08.960 I thought I'd lost you for a minute. 00:02:08.960 --> 00:02:13.400 Just yesterday we were doing a sound check and we sort of picked up where we left off 00:02:13.400 --> 00:02:19.440 last week talking about fats, fats in our diet and the use of fats by humans over the 00:02:19.440 --> 00:02:22.840 years and also as animal feed. 00:02:22.840 --> 00:02:30.600 And yesterday you were talking about cholesterol and you mentioned a fellow named Chris Masterjohn 00:02:30.600 --> 00:02:35.240 and I thought perhaps we could -- one of the things you said yesterday that kind of shocked 00:02:35.240 --> 00:02:42.680 me was that for years we've heard that cholesterol is something you get from fat, from butter, 00:02:42.680 --> 00:02:51.320 from especially beef fat, any of those meats that are full of supposedly saturated fats 00:02:51.320 --> 00:02:56.760 and that's why we're being so poisoned by cholesterol and it turns out that perhaps 00:02:56.760 --> 00:02:59.360 cholesterol isn't the boogeyman we always thought it was. 00:02:59.360 --> 00:03:02.680 It's actually something we need to function. 00:03:02.680 --> 00:03:10.280 Yeah, but eating cholesterol, if you're healthy, you have to eat a tremendous amount like the 00:03:10.280 --> 00:03:19.400 experiment where they had healthy, I think they were young men, eat eggs until they could 00:03:19.400 --> 00:03:27.000 see an increase in blood cholesterol and that took 22 eggs before they saw a rise in the 00:03:27.000 --> 00:03:34.640 day's cholesterol and it does rise if you're very sick and can't compensate. 00:03:34.640 --> 00:03:42.880 But in a practical situation where a person might want to raise their cholesterol, you 00:03:42.880 --> 00:03:49.120 can usually do it just by eating lots of fruit because for several reasons. 00:03:49.120 --> 00:03:57.240 The minerals and sugar in the fruit give the liver the energy it needs to make adequate 00:03:57.240 --> 00:04:08.240 cholesterol and there's, they call it a U-shaped curve of mortality. 00:04:08.240 --> 00:04:16.880 You have an ideal range of cholesterol for a given age and when you're below that range, 00:04:16.880 --> 00:04:22.160 your mortality increases. 00:04:22.160 --> 00:04:25.160 What are those ranges? 00:04:25.160 --> 00:04:36.080 Oh, the published, the people who talk about the curve usually put the bottom of the U 00:04:36.080 --> 00:04:48.560 around 160 to 180, but when you look at the figures, the bottom really varies with age. 00:04:48.560 --> 00:04:58.400 Like one study looked at people in a nursing home situation and saw that the ones who had 00:04:58.400 --> 00:05:06.960 the highest cholesterol, I think in that group, those with 270 lived the longest. 00:05:06.960 --> 00:05:16.040 So you have to think about the relation of the cholesterol to the stress you're under 00:05:16.040 --> 00:05:20.760 and consider it an anti-stress hormone. 00:05:20.760 --> 00:05:26.440 My father recently was told that he has to start taking statins and a lot of people are 00:05:26.440 --> 00:05:27.440 on statins. 00:05:27.440 --> 00:05:29.720 What's your opinion? 00:05:29.720 --> 00:05:40.080 Years ago, they started seeing increased mortality as they used drugs to lower cholesterol and 00:05:40.080 --> 00:05:49.320 there was one, I think it was Hungarian in the 1980s that showed a great increase in 00:05:49.320 --> 00:05:58.680 cancer mortality as they lowered cholesterol and that somewhat accorded with a Veterans 00:05:58.680 --> 00:06:08.200 Administration study in the 1960s that they stopped when they saw that people on the so-called 00:06:08.200 --> 00:06:15.120 heart protective low-fat diet were dying at a higher rate from cancer. 00:06:15.120 --> 00:06:27.240 But there are still some lingering data showing that the statins might increase total mortality, 00:06:27.240 --> 00:06:37.560 but the marketing is so intense that they managed to place articles convincing people 00:06:37.560 --> 00:06:39.480 how good it is. 00:06:39.480 --> 00:06:49.520 A recent book by Melody Peterson, I think the title is Our Daily Meds, gives a lot of 00:06:49.520 --> 00:06:58.620 information about how the drug industry manipulates the culture, paying doctors, well, writing 00:06:58.620 --> 00:07:05.380 articles for doctors and just getting them to sign their names and then publishing them 00:07:05.380 --> 00:07:12.640 in prestigious journals promoting their products. 00:07:12.640 --> 00:07:21.240 It gives a little bit of the inside information about how they're actually buying the medical 00:07:21.240 --> 00:07:22.240 literature. 00:07:22.240 --> 00:07:32.240 And Marcia Angel, seeing it from an editor's viewpoint at the New England Journal of Medicine, 00:07:32.240 --> 00:07:44.680 emphasized that the editorial decisions can completely bias the results of a topic if 00:07:44.680 --> 00:07:51.000 people choose not to even submit their data because it doesn't support the efficacy of 00:07:51.000 --> 00:07:54.140 a drug or the safety. 00:07:54.140 --> 00:08:02.140 A lot of studies will simply not get submitted, and then if the editors introduce more bias, 00:08:02.140 --> 00:08:09.700 you might have 50 studies showing a drug is harmful and useless and one that gets published 00:08:09.700 --> 00:08:13.580 showing that it's beneficial. 00:08:13.580 --> 00:08:23.460 Increasingly, Melody Peterson shows how the drug industry is not only modifying the research 00:08:23.460 --> 00:08:33.580 that gets done and how the universities treat their research, but how the journals publish 00:08:33.580 --> 00:08:38.020 it and then finally how the doctors use it. 00:08:38.020 --> 00:08:42.740 So the system is pretty well sewed up. 00:08:42.740 --> 00:08:51.660 Now, anything relating to drug therapy, you just simply can't trust the Anglo-American 00:08:51.660 --> 00:09:04.820 literature, and increasingly it has spread into Italy, Chile, France, Japan, as the industries 00:09:04.820 --> 00:09:08.020 become influential in those countries. 00:09:08.020 --> 00:09:19.140 India and Russia were relatively outside the commercial pharmaceutical influence, but now 00:09:19.140 --> 00:09:22.820 they're moving in that direction, too. 00:09:22.820 --> 00:09:25.860 So it's an effect of globalization, I suppose, is it? 00:09:25.860 --> 00:09:26.860 Yeah. 00:09:26.860 --> 00:09:27.860 Same corporate policies. 00:09:27.860 --> 00:09:37.220 Yeah, still some of the more backward economies still manage to do some real research. 00:09:37.220 --> 00:09:43.740 So yeah, I've heard it said that we have one of the most effective propaganda systems in 00:09:43.740 --> 00:09:48.700 world history, basically, in this country at this time, with access to the media pretty 00:09:48.700 --> 00:09:57.140 much sewn up by the corporations and alternative voices only heard on stations like ours, which 00:09:57.140 --> 00:10:01.660 are community stations, which there's quite a few of them around the country, but there's 00:10:01.660 --> 00:10:03.060 a lot of space in between them. 00:10:03.060 --> 00:10:09.700 So how's the media situation out in Oregon? 00:10:09.700 --> 00:10:21.780 Oh, well, in my lifetime, the Pacific stations have been the outstanding exceptions, but 00:10:21.780 --> 00:10:33.180 the university public radio station, about, I guess, 10 years, 15 years ago, it changed 00:10:33.180 --> 00:10:39.660 its format so that students don't have the access they used to, and now it sounds like 00:10:39.660 --> 00:10:45.700 one of those big city furniture advertising classical music stations. 00:10:45.700 --> 00:10:48.780 It used to be more of a community station? 00:10:48.780 --> 00:10:58.420 Yeah, it used to be a really good station, but the donors made it sound like one of those 00:10:58.420 --> 00:11:01.980 upper class, nothing but classic music stations. 00:11:01.980 --> 00:11:08.060 Yeah, that's, we're having, we tried to, we have a pretty small range here, but we do 00:11:08.060 --> 00:11:11.780 have an affiliation with Pacifica and with other community stations around the country, 00:11:11.780 --> 00:11:18.180 so we try to network our programming and share it between us all. 00:11:18.180 --> 00:11:28.220 Well, getting back to cholesterol, and there was a guy, you said the last time you were 00:11:28.220 --> 00:11:31.020 on the air, you spoke about somebody named Chris Masterjohn. 00:11:31.020 --> 00:11:35.860 Yeah, I've read several of his articles that are very good. 00:11:35.860 --> 00:11:43.620 My only disagreement with him is that he persists in believing in essential fatty acids. 00:11:43.620 --> 00:11:51.660 Yeah, that's something a lot of alternative, quote, alternative health people believe in. 00:11:51.660 --> 00:11:57.980 And what's, in a nutshell, what's your view on the essential fatty acids, just so everybody 00:11:57.980 --> 00:11:58.980 knows? 00:11:58.980 --> 00:12:10.180 Well, the first claim was that it was linoleic acid, then maybe linoleic was added, but already 00:12:10.180 --> 00:12:20.180 after the Burr's studies of the late '20s and early '30s, by the 1940s, their disease 00:12:20.180 --> 00:12:25.380 was shown to be nothing but a vitamin B6 deficiency. 00:12:25.380 --> 00:12:34.180 And at just about the same time, the agricultural researchers were showing that linoleic and 00:12:34.180 --> 00:12:44.860 linoleic acid were the causes of brain degeneration, testicular degeneration and infertility, and 00:12:44.860 --> 00:12:54.500 muscle degeneration, and fish oils, about the same time, were causing mink degenerative 00:12:54.500 --> 00:12:55.500 disease. 00:12:55.500 --> 00:13:04.260 And then the yellow fat disease was showing up in more and more animals as they were fed 00:13:04.260 --> 00:13:13.180 fish waste because of an excess of the polyunsaturated fats in the fish fats. 00:13:13.180 --> 00:13:26.740 And so the linoleic acid finally was recognized to be essential for cancer, but not at all 00:13:26.740 --> 00:13:30.140 essential for nutrition. 00:13:30.140 --> 00:13:39.860 And the publicity coming out that the original essential fatty acids were essential for cancer 00:13:39.860 --> 00:13:47.860 kind of discouraged the marketing in that direction, and that's when it shifted to marketing 00:13:47.860 --> 00:13:54.260 fish oil as the new version of the essential fatty acids. 00:13:54.260 --> 00:14:03.700 And that's where we are now at pretty much the peak of the fish oil promotion as the 00:14:03.700 --> 00:14:16.620 new fatty acids that are being recommended at higher intake levels to actually function 00:14:16.620 --> 00:14:23.100 as drugs to supposedly cure a lot of diseases. 00:14:23.100 --> 00:14:32.260 But in fact, the old research going back 40, 50 years shows that it is simply a temporary 00:14:32.260 --> 00:14:40.980 suppression of inflammatory symptoms while in the long run increasing the inflammatory 00:14:40.980 --> 00:14:44.020 degenerative processes. 00:14:44.020 --> 00:14:49.660 So the reason people have a subsiding of their symptoms is just their immune system has been 00:14:49.660 --> 00:14:50.660 knocked down? 00:14:50.660 --> 00:14:51.660 Yeah. 00:14:51.660 --> 00:14:58.700 David Horobin, who was a big promoter of polyunsaturated fats and who died of brain cancer and was 00:14:58.700 --> 00:15:06.740 trying to treat himself with his own fats, he published work showing that fish oil is 00:15:06.740 --> 00:15:10.540 very immune suppressive. 00:15:10.540 --> 00:15:23.540 And others looking at why fish oil is anti-inflammatory found that it wasn't the original long chain 00:15:23.540 --> 00:15:30.900 polyunsaturated fats that are found in the fish, but when they are processed and hit 00:15:30.900 --> 00:15:41.380 the hot organs of a mammal, they break down and it's the breakdown products, the aldehydes 00:15:41.380 --> 00:15:48.820 and free radicals that are decomposed from the fish oils, which are actually the anti-inflammatory 00:15:48.820 --> 00:15:49.820 substances. 00:15:49.820 --> 00:16:01.100 So it's the deterioration of the material that produces temporary relief, but it's also 00:16:01.100 --> 00:16:08.180 those things which contribute to the serious long range problems such as brain damage and 00:16:08.180 --> 00:16:11.140 vascular damage and so on. 00:16:11.140 --> 00:16:15.740 And you were saying last week that fish oil does have some good properties about it. 00:16:15.740 --> 00:16:17.460 It has lots of vitamin A and D. 00:16:17.460 --> 00:16:27.380 Yeah, it depends on how it's made, but in its crude form, it does come with a lot of 00:16:27.380 --> 00:16:28.380 vitamin D and A. 00:16:28.380 --> 00:16:29.380 I see. 00:16:29.380 --> 00:16:33.140 So if there was some way to get those vitamins out without... 00:16:33.140 --> 00:16:42.620 Yeah, there have been a lot of products on the market extracted from fish liver oil in 00:16:42.620 --> 00:16:49.500 which they concentrate the vitamin D and A a lot so that you can get your daily dose 00:16:49.500 --> 00:16:53.340 in a couple of drops of the oil. 00:16:53.340 --> 00:16:55.980 And some people are taking fish oil for anti-depression. 00:16:55.980 --> 00:17:00.500 I think they're called omega brights or something, some such. 00:17:00.500 --> 00:17:06.580 Yeah, there have been studies even in the published literature. 00:17:06.580 --> 00:17:13.940 The ones I've seen were just about an equal number saying it isn't effective as say it 00:17:13.940 --> 00:17:15.340 is effective. 00:17:15.340 --> 00:17:21.260 Same with using it as a supplement to baby food. 00:17:21.260 --> 00:17:27.260 There are studies that show that it retards iron brain development even though they don't 00:17:27.260 --> 00:17:29.500 get discussed very much. 00:17:29.500 --> 00:17:30.500 Is that the DHA? 00:17:30.500 --> 00:17:31.500 Yeah. 00:17:31.500 --> 00:17:36.340 And they've started adding that to baby food? 00:17:36.340 --> 00:17:37.340 Yeah. 00:17:37.340 --> 00:17:38.340 Oh dear. 00:17:38.340 --> 00:17:42.020 How did we get on fish oil, Raymond? 00:17:42.020 --> 00:17:44.580 Do you remember? 00:17:44.580 --> 00:17:48.020 Well it's being promoted as an essential. 00:17:48.020 --> 00:17:49.020 Oh, that's right. 00:17:49.020 --> 00:17:50.540 Thank you. 00:17:50.540 --> 00:17:53.220 And so flaxseed oil has gone out of fashion. 00:17:53.220 --> 00:17:54.700 I didn't realize that. 00:17:54.700 --> 00:17:59.820 And now they're promoting mostly fish oil in the alternative medicine field? 00:17:59.820 --> 00:18:02.140 I think so, yeah. 00:18:02.140 --> 00:18:13.340 The literature in the 1980s just became overwhelming showing that linoleic acid in particular is 00:18:13.340 --> 00:18:18.420 really the basic motor for pushing cancer excess. 00:18:18.420 --> 00:18:21.820 And linoleic isn't quite as bad. 00:18:21.820 --> 00:18:28.180 So flax isn't as bad as some of the others. 00:18:28.180 --> 00:18:29.620 We're talking to Dr. Raymond Peat. 00:18:29.620 --> 00:18:34.620 If anybody would like to ask Dr. Peat a question, there's no other phone line here, but I can 00:18:34.620 --> 00:18:46.100 receive emails at info@wmrw.org. 00:18:46.100 --> 00:18:56.060 So if essential oils are only essential for creating disease, how is it that they're so 00:18:56.060 --> 00:18:58.420 heavily promoted by the government? 00:18:58.420 --> 00:19:05.820 Well, several years ago the FDA had a warning not to use more than, I think it was three 00:19:05.820 --> 00:19:12.940 grams a day of those one chain unsaturated fats from fish oil. 00:19:12.940 --> 00:19:16.300 And I think they've dropped that warning. 00:19:16.300 --> 00:19:20.700 At least it isn't prominent like it used to be. 00:19:20.700 --> 00:19:29.460 And I think right from its very beginning the FDA was captured by the food industry 00:19:29.460 --> 00:19:32.380 and then the drug industry. 00:19:32.380 --> 00:19:43.540 And now they really are working primarily as a corporate defense system. 00:19:43.540 --> 00:19:50.300 Yeah, it always seems like they absorb the liability for the corporations by if they 00:19:50.300 --> 00:19:52.380 approve it, then you can't sue the corporation. 00:19:52.380 --> 00:20:00.620 Yeah, the same thing as government protecting the nuclear industry by saying you can't collect 00:20:00.620 --> 00:20:07.620 more than a certain amount of damage if you have a reactor explode in your neighborhood. 00:20:07.620 --> 00:20:14.620 Right, so basically the oil industry is underwritten by the government. 00:20:14.620 --> 00:20:25.100 Yeah, the public health service has a worse record than the FDA itself. 00:20:25.100 --> 00:20:33.620 The FDA interfaces with the consumers and tries to keep them happy. 00:20:33.620 --> 00:20:47.100 But at higher levels the agencies of the government have been more defensive of the power structure 00:20:47.100 --> 00:20:53.020 and pretty much ignoring the consumer level. 00:20:53.020 --> 00:21:02.020 Like in the years of the fallout from atmospheric bomb testing, the public health service was 00:21:02.020 --> 00:21:09.300 destroying data and putting out false data about the safety of radiation. 00:21:09.300 --> 00:21:17.540 Yeah, that is very telling of how the government can work at its worst. 00:21:17.540 --> 00:21:23.860 Maybe you could talk about radiation for a minute and how the government's bias towards 00:21:23.860 --> 00:21:29.580 that has made it more widespread. 00:21:29.580 --> 00:21:40.020 Well for 50, I guess 60 years I've been hearing from dentists and doctors that the dose we 00:21:40.020 --> 00:21:45.140 give you in examining you is very small and harmless. 00:21:45.140 --> 00:21:52.300 And then they reduce it tenfold and they say exactly the same thing. 00:21:52.300 --> 00:22:01.900 And the words are the same in 1940 and 1950 right down to the current. 00:22:01.900 --> 00:22:06.100 They claim they have digitalized machines. 00:22:06.100 --> 00:22:13.780 People think it's just bits of information coming through their bodies, but it's still 00:22:13.780 --> 00:22:16.500 the same old x-rays. 00:22:16.500 --> 00:22:19.500 They're exciting their cells. 00:22:19.500 --> 00:22:31.300 And even Linus Pauling took a less than adequate biological view. 00:22:31.300 --> 00:22:38.380 He was the one warning about the dangers, but he was looking only at the DNA damage. 00:22:38.380 --> 00:22:47.460 But the damage is much subtler than breaking strands of DNA. 00:22:47.460 --> 00:22:58.980 The excited electrons cause chemical and physiological changes that linger completely distinct from 00:22:58.980 --> 00:23:06.620 the immediate reaction of radiation with the DNA. 00:23:06.620 --> 00:23:16.060 So that for example, you can give a dose of radiation to cells in a dish and then add 00:23:16.060 --> 00:23:24.140 new cells that weren't exposed to radiation to that dish and the new cells will start 00:23:24.140 --> 00:23:34.820 mutating a day or more later from something emitted by the exposed cells. 00:23:34.820 --> 00:23:44.060 And that process lingers in the tissues and the blood serum and it's called the bystander 00:23:44.060 --> 00:23:46.940 effect that you can demonstrate in the lab. 00:23:46.940 --> 00:23:53.380 Cells that weren't exposed start behaving as if they were exposed by contact with the 00:23:53.380 --> 00:23:55.660 damaged cells. 00:23:55.660 --> 00:24:03.820 And people exposed from the Hiroshima bomb have been studied 60 years later and they 00:24:03.820 --> 00:24:10.940 still showed essentially excited electronic states in their tissues. 00:24:10.940 --> 00:24:18.660 And the same with people, I guess about 20 years after the Chernobyl exposure, their 00:24:18.660 --> 00:24:21.300 serum is still toxic. 00:24:21.300 --> 00:24:30.340 It can be removed from their blood and added to healthy cells and the healthy cells begin 00:24:30.340 --> 00:24:31.340 mutating. 00:24:31.340 --> 00:24:42.420 So it's the bystander effect which lingers and might continue causing mutations but it's 00:24:42.420 --> 00:24:46.140 a completely separate process from mutation. 00:24:46.140 --> 00:24:58.740 And so the safety assumptions were based on the model of how a beam of radiation will 00:24:58.740 --> 00:25:01.860 affect a molecule. 00:25:01.860 --> 00:25:10.700 And so it was worked out in terms of direct interaction between a molecule and radiation 00:25:10.700 --> 00:25:16.340 but in the organism that simply isn't how it works. 00:25:16.340 --> 00:25:26.460 And the Russians way back in the 60s were showing that where the Western paradigm was 00:25:26.460 --> 00:25:37.940 that if you irradiated an animal's brain it would go into estrus causing supposedly something 00:25:37.940 --> 00:25:45.100 was altered in the pituitary causing the ovaries to produce more estrogen. 00:25:45.100 --> 00:25:52.660 The Russians did a control experiment in which they irradiated the animal's foot instead 00:25:52.660 --> 00:25:57.620 of its brain and it went into estrus. 00:25:57.620 --> 00:26:08.820 And so they called them some kind of radiation toxin that was emitted by the exposed tissue 00:26:08.820 --> 00:26:13.540 but it's the same thing that happens in the bystander effect. 00:26:13.540 --> 00:26:22.460 There's some physiological biochemical change that is started by the radiation but then 00:26:22.460 --> 00:26:31.420 spreads and continues and the increased estrogen happens to imitate these processes started 00:26:31.420 --> 00:26:32.580 by the radiation. 00:26:32.580 --> 00:26:40.820 So there are probably many levels from the single cell which emits the bystander acting 00:26:40.820 --> 00:26:48.340 substances to the whole organism in which estrogen becomes one of the bystander activating 00:26:48.340 --> 00:26:49.340 substances. 00:26:49.340 --> 00:26:56.380 So you're saying a little bit of radiation causes this cascading effect throughout the 00:26:56.380 --> 00:26:57.380 body? 00:26:57.380 --> 00:26:58.380 Yeah. 00:26:58.380 --> 00:27:08.540 Two or three years ago in Seattle they were using low level fancy latest well calibrated 00:27:08.540 --> 00:27:16.500 x-ray equipment and covering the patients with lead aprons and so on. 00:27:16.500 --> 00:27:25.060 And they found that a full set of dental x-rays if the woman was pregnant at the time even 00:27:25.060 --> 00:27:34.460 though her body was shielded thoroughly her baby turned out underweight showing that basically 00:27:34.460 --> 00:27:39.300 the same effect as taking a dose of estrogen while pregnant. 00:27:39.300 --> 00:27:48.460 It spreads a stress influence that malnourishes the developing fetus and causes its brain 00:27:48.460 --> 00:27:58.060 to develop less fully than an unexposed fetus. 00:27:58.060 --> 00:28:02.860 Now the method you used to describe how the government assessed the dangers of radiation 00:28:02.860 --> 00:28:13.540 poisoning where they just sort of had a hypothetical theory that one molecule being affected by 00:28:13.540 --> 00:28:19.900 ionizing radiation but they didn't take into account the living being. 00:28:19.900 --> 00:28:26.340 I think you've said before that that's common in how science is conducted in the West. 00:28:26.340 --> 00:28:31.300 They do a lot of experiments in test tubes basically. 00:28:31.300 --> 00:28:38.460 Yeah and worse than that rather than if you look through PubMed you see lots of abstracts 00:28:38.460 --> 00:28:44.300 described as in vitro but now they have the concept in silico. 00:28:44.300 --> 00:28:47.300 What does that mean? 00:28:47.300 --> 00:28:53.220 It means they didn't have anything living at all it was all done in a computer. 00:28:53.220 --> 00:28:59.780 But people read the article and they're used to seeing in vitro and they think real cells 00:28:59.780 --> 00:29:04.940 were involved but in silico means in the computer. 00:29:04.940 --> 00:29:10.060 I've never heard that before in silico. 00:29:10.060 --> 00:29:14.500 So what's wrong with that Ray? 00:29:14.500 --> 00:29:18.220 What's wrong with doing I guess that's modeling basically isn't it? 00:29:18.220 --> 00:29:27.580 Yeah it's like the medieval arguments about angels. 00:29:27.580 --> 00:29:32.900 How much force base does an angel need to dance and how many can get on the head of 00:29:32.900 --> 00:29:33.900 a pin. 00:29:33.900 --> 00:29:36.860 You mean it's meaningless unless it's... 00:29:36.860 --> 00:29:37.860 Worse than meaningless. 00:29:37.860 --> 00:29:49.700 It is a way of amplifying your favorite hypothesis or assumption. 00:29:49.700 --> 00:30:00.180 It'll actually promote some absolutely wrong theory if you do your modeling right. 00:30:00.180 --> 00:30:07.380 So in studying science I think a lot of people are a little bit confused that we just figure 00:30:07.380 --> 00:30:12.220 it's empirical and they're testing theories all the time and of course the best theory 00:30:12.220 --> 00:30:20.180 will end up on top because it'll get the most positive results. 00:30:20.180 --> 00:30:26.980 How come that isn't the way it works? 00:30:26.980 --> 00:30:36.140 Lots of reasons but probably the basic thing is that it's all filtered through the culture 00:30:36.140 --> 00:30:53.100 and the system of assumptions and the assumptions if you look at different cultures the whole 00:30:53.100 --> 00:31:03.740 background of philosophy and religion influences what you think can be taken seriously as an 00:31:03.740 --> 00:31:13.900 assumption and because in the medieval times people believed in alchemy and the influence 00:31:13.900 --> 00:31:27.260 of the planets and astrology ordinary chemists and physiologists think it's absurd to consider 00:31:27.260 --> 00:31:33.940 the phase of the moon when you're doing a chemical or biological study but several people 00:31:33.940 --> 00:31:45.420 have looked at lab results done over a period of time and have seen that the phase of the 00:31:45.420 --> 00:31:54.900 moon does influence many experiments in the lab and for example I worked in the hamster 00:31:54.900 --> 00:32:05.860 lab at the university where the indoor temperature was kept constant and the light was artificially 00:32:05.860 --> 00:32:17.940 controlled so a person would not have any cues indoors whether it was winter or summer 00:32:17.940 --> 00:32:26.020 but somehow the hamsters knew what was going on outside the walls because their thymuses 00:32:26.020 --> 00:32:33.420 would atrophy in the winter season and come back in the spring just like they do when 00:32:33.420 --> 00:32:48.260 they're exposed to changing day length and that was investigated. 00:32:48.260 --> 00:32:58.900 Professor Brown in Indiana did many tests with potatoes, oysters and flowering plants 00:32:58.900 --> 00:33:09.740 and he had noticed that his experiments varied with the moon and he got some oysters from 00:33:09.740 --> 00:33:19.900 the east coast and studied their metabolism in Indiana and if it had been genetically 00:33:19.900 --> 00:33:27.980 determined the way the paradigm said it must be because hamsters can't know when it's winter 00:33:27.980 --> 00:33:33.180 if you're controlling their life cycle so it must be some kind of a genetically operated 00:33:33.180 --> 00:33:37.300 clock in their brains. 00:33:37.300 --> 00:33:48.100 Brown took his oysters to Indiana and they were still metabolically cycling as if the 00:33:48.100 --> 00:33:57.220 tides were coming into Indiana and he did the same thing with potatoes which aren't 00:33:57.220 --> 00:34:05.700 susceptible to tides and so no one knew about monthly cycles in potatoes but he saw a similar 00:34:05.700 --> 00:34:17.300 metabolic moon cycle in potato metabolism and flowering plants that he saw that he could 00:34:17.300 --> 00:34:25.260 take one of these plants that opens its petals at dawn and closes them at sunset taking it 00:34:25.260 --> 00:34:35.220 indoors they still kept up the same cycle and so he took it into a big building where 00:34:35.220 --> 00:34:43.980 no cues from the outside apparently reached and they still did it so he took his plants 00:34:43.980 --> 00:34:50.900 into a mine shaft and they kept cycling until they got down I forget I think it was hundreds 00:34:50.900 --> 00:35:02.420 of feet below the surface the plants finally didn't receive a cue and no longer cycled. 00:35:02.420 --> 00:35:12.660 So he demonstrated that something lunar or planetary influence was able to penetrate 00:35:12.660 --> 00:35:22.900 hundreds of feet of shielding and his plant showed that when properly shielded they no 00:35:22.900 --> 00:35:33.380 longer cycled disproving the idea that it's a genetic clock and other people were able 00:35:33.380 --> 00:35:41.580 to train plants to move their leaves at different times of day by giving them cues that over 00:35:41.580 --> 00:35:52.780 rode the environmental cues again disproving that it's all controlled by an abstract genetic 00:35:52.780 --> 00:35:53.780 clock. 00:35:53.780 --> 00:35:59.780 I see so you're saying that genetics is a dogma that's been pretty much accepted by 00:35:59.780 --> 00:36:01.940 the culture as the. 00:36:01.940 --> 00:36:20.620 Yeah it really is primarily a kind of religious belief that remember the Lamarck Cuvier controversy 00:36:20.620 --> 00:36:30.420 the person who took over the museum that Lamarck had been the director of for years when Lamarck 00:36:30.420 --> 00:36:37.100 was doing his work showing the inheritance of acquired traits the man that took over 00:36:37.100 --> 00:36:45.380 was a Christian catastrophist who basically said there was no evolution it was accounted 00:36:45.380 --> 00:36:52.740 for by a flood destroying the ancient species and so on. 00:36:52.740 --> 00:37:08.380 So in history the genetics as an anti-environmental approach was strictly a biblical orientation 00:37:08.380 --> 00:37:17.020 against the whatever the Lamarckian environmentalist orientation was. 00:37:17.020 --> 00:37:24.740 Yeah I always thought the genetic orientation always is very convenient for liability in 00:37:24.740 --> 00:37:29.540 terms of you know anybody causing environmental damage whether it be you know to your own 00:37:29.540 --> 00:37:35.580 body in terms of pollution or to the environment in general they can always if you can't directly 00:37:35.580 --> 00:37:41.500 link them you know in a simple cause and effect they can always just say it's genetics and 00:37:41.500 --> 00:37:42.500 you were genetic. 00:37:42.500 --> 00:37:49.380 It's been very convenient for the medical profession for the last 50 or 60 years if 00:37:49.380 --> 00:37:59.060 it's either genetic or it's a virus and there's nothing you can do to expect a cure and especially 00:37:59.060 --> 00:38:12.980 with cancer the government was very influential in reinforcing that interpretation and that's 00:38:12.980 --> 00:38:18.380 closely related to military medical research. 00:38:18.380 --> 00:38:30.780 The germ warfare people were getting government subsidies and they were inclined to the it's 00:38:30.780 --> 00:38:44.980 your own fault for having bad genes theory and much of the research was done to say that 00:38:44.980 --> 00:38:52.820 the military didn't cause the problems. 00:38:52.820 --> 00:39:05.500 The environmentalism in cancer research simply couldn't get funding after about 1945. 00:39:05.500 --> 00:39:09.860 Is that right? 00:39:09.860 --> 00:39:13.340 Since 1945? 00:39:13.340 --> 00:39:14.340 Has all been genetic? 00:39:14.340 --> 00:39:21.460 It was persisting into the early 50s but it's pretty much at the end of the second world 00:39:21.460 --> 00:39:31.900 war that the whole school of biology simply was defunded and put out of existence. 00:39:31.900 --> 00:39:43.100 The idea that embryos develop according to a field, developmental field and gradient 00:39:43.100 --> 00:39:51.380 was that was the dominant theory along with the idea that cancer is a metabolic physiological 00:39:51.380 --> 00:39:54.820 field distortion. 00:39:54.820 --> 00:40:05.980 So embryology and cancer were related to these metabolic and pattern based ideas. 00:40:05.980 --> 00:40:21.340 The genetics and militaristic approach simply cut those off and the best research was done 00:40:21.340 --> 00:40:27.540 through the 30s and the war itself interrupted a lot of the research. 00:40:27.540 --> 00:40:35.940 When the government came out of the war having funded the Manhattan Project, that sort of 00:40:35.940 --> 00:40:44.700 money was then directed into germ warfare research and that gradually shifted to so-called 00:40:44.700 --> 00:40:47.380 cancer research. 00:40:47.380 --> 00:40:58.740 The Fort Detrick germ warfare lab simply changed its name while not doing very different research 00:40:58.740 --> 00:41:05.420 when it shifted over to the war against cancer. 00:41:05.420 --> 00:41:13.220 So these cultural beliefs that seem to be directing research and taking some theories 00:41:13.220 --> 00:41:20.460 for the truth and rejecting other theories regardless of the empirical evidence, they 00:41:20.460 --> 00:41:28.140 basically are also responsible for the misinformation we've heard about cholesterol? 00:41:28.140 --> 00:41:32.420 Yeah, in different ways. 00:41:32.420 --> 00:41:45.140 They talk about genetically determined tendencies towards high cholesterol that you can see 00:41:45.140 --> 00:41:49.380 in the form of cholesterol receptors. 00:41:49.380 --> 00:41:58.300 The whole idea of receptor is a genetic pharmacological idea. 00:41:58.300 --> 00:42:06.940 It's very much like the ads you see on TV where a drug zooms around in your body and 00:42:06.940 --> 00:42:12.940 goes right to the place where it's needed. 00:42:12.940 --> 00:42:22.660 The receptor idea is like a switch that turns on a gene and there are molecules that drugs 00:42:22.660 --> 00:42:31.580 and substances stick to and if they have any involvement in physiology, those are called 00:42:31.580 --> 00:42:33.420 the receptor. 00:42:33.420 --> 00:42:40.180 But that is promoted as a genetically determined thing. 00:42:40.180 --> 00:42:49.260 So one drug company was collecting genes from a village in the Mediterranean area where 00:42:49.260 --> 00:43:01.220 people didn't have heart disease and trying to promote a gene change as a drug product. 00:43:01.220 --> 00:43:13.300 But the environmental influences simply weren't of interest because if you can identify a 00:43:13.300 --> 00:43:21.860 problem as a permanent genetic feature of the patient and then work on that gene receptor 00:43:21.860 --> 00:43:25.340 with a drug, then you've got a product. 00:43:25.340 --> 00:43:33.100 But the cholesterol receptors are regulated by hormones such as the thyroid. 00:43:33.100 --> 00:43:41.180 So if a person doesn't have enough of the receptor so-called that takes cholesterol 00:43:41.180 --> 00:43:49.660 out of your blood, you can take thyroid and increase the amount of that receptor. 00:43:49.660 --> 00:43:56.820 But that doesn't please anyone but the thyroid industry. 00:43:56.820 --> 00:44:01.140 They haven't really taken advantage of it. 00:44:01.140 --> 00:44:27.700 In the 00:44:27.700 --> 00:44:35.380 1930s, the main product was made by the Armor Meat Company which became the Armor Pharmaceutical 00:44:35.380 --> 00:44:42.420 Company because they had a lot of beef and pork thyroids that they didn't know what to 00:44:42.420 --> 00:44:43.420 do with. 00:44:43.420 --> 00:44:50.380 So they would sell those or the ovaries or adrenals or whatever wasn't popular as meat. 00:44:50.380 --> 00:44:57.420 They would dehydrate and sell as a drug product. 00:44:57.420 --> 00:45:10.660 In the '30s, that was the standard treatment and the symptoms of hypothyroidism were identified 00:45:10.660 --> 00:45:19.100 and when they would give them the armor thyroid containing both T4 and T3, the symptoms would 00:45:19.100 --> 00:45:20.980 be alleviated. 00:45:20.980 --> 00:45:32.220 But after the war, a company came on the market with purified thyroxine which is only a fraction 00:45:32.220 --> 00:45:36.340 of a fraction of the armor thyroid. 00:45:36.340 --> 00:45:45.820 The thyroid contains a protein which is ejected and then it liberates the two thyroid substances 00:45:45.820 --> 00:45:47.860 T4 and T3. 00:45:47.860 --> 00:46:01.300 T4 is released by the gland about four times as much as the active T3 and the liver then 00:46:01.300 --> 00:46:07.900 when conditions are right, when the environment is right, the liver completes the activation 00:46:07.900 --> 00:46:14.380 so that most of your thyroid function is really coming from the liver which the liver is an 00:46:14.380 --> 00:46:21.460 interface with the environment so when your nutrition calls for it, then your liver produces 00:46:21.460 --> 00:46:27.420 70 or 80 percent of the active thyroid hormone. 00:46:27.420 --> 00:46:36.540 But after the war, the drug company had an interest in promoting a product and so they 00:46:36.540 --> 00:46:43.940 said the main substance and the easiest to make was thyroxine and they gave it to 25 00:46:43.940 --> 00:46:54.060 year old male medical students, very healthy people and said it works just like real thyroid 00:46:54.060 --> 00:47:01.540 in these healthy young men but they didn't test it in sick people or in women. 00:47:01.540 --> 00:47:11.620 Women's livers are much less active than men because of the effect of estrogen. 00:47:11.620 --> 00:47:18.820 A certain amount of alcohol takes longer for a woman to eliminate from the body than a 00:47:18.820 --> 00:47:30.100 man so the liver in general is less active than females but the drug product thyroxine 00:47:30.100 --> 00:47:37.220 was sold across the board even though it had only been tested in young men and it was more 00:47:37.220 --> 00:47:46.460 than 10 years later that the real active hormone T3 came on the market. 00:47:46.460 --> 00:47:57.260 It wasn't even known at the time that the thyroid supplement was being marketed as thyroxine 00:47:57.260 --> 00:48:10.060 and the tests that determined whether you were hypothyroid or not disregarded all of 00:48:10.060 --> 00:48:19.580 the symptoms that had been associated with hypothyroidism up until about 1945 and the 00:48:19.580 --> 00:48:27.340 tests at first measured only the iodine bound to protein which has very little to do with 00:48:27.340 --> 00:48:35.540 your thyroid function and according to those tests the thyroxine product would raise your 00:48:35.540 --> 00:48:46.300 protein bound iodine and so that was compatible with marketing the synthetic drug but after 00:48:46.300 --> 00:48:53.300 about 20 years they saw that the protein bound iodine test had almost nothing to do with 00:48:53.300 --> 00:48:55.340 your thyroid function. 00:48:55.340 --> 00:48:59.940 If you ate seaweed you would get a lot of protein bound iodine but your thyroid function 00:48:59.940 --> 00:49:07.820 would go down and so they started looking for new ways to test the thyroid but they 00:49:07.820 --> 00:49:13.820 had established over those 20 years that instead of half of the population benefiting from 00:49:13.820 --> 00:49:24.860 thyroid the tests suggested that only 5% of the people would benefit from thyroid so whatever 00:49:24.860 --> 00:49:31.740 new tests came on the market the assumption had been established in the culture that only 00:49:31.740 --> 00:49:42.220 about 5% would need thyroid and so any new test has been standardized to that paradigm 00:49:42.220 --> 00:49:51.580 of looking at a percentage of the population rather than whether the substance cured the 00:49:51.580 --> 00:50:01.980 symptoms and so now they are treating the thyroid stimulating hormone level and disregarding 00:50:01.980 --> 00:50:07.660 the actual effect of the hormone on the person's health and physiology. 00:50:07.660 --> 00:50:13.060 So they are basically treating one of the markers instead of the actual symptoms. 00:50:13.060 --> 00:50:14.060 Yeah. 00:50:14.060 --> 00:50:20.340 Yeah, that seems to happen a lot in medicine. 00:50:20.340 --> 00:50:24.700 They start mistaking the marker for the actual problem. 00:50:24.700 --> 00:50:37.620 Yeah, and they call it subclinical and don't even make it explicit what they mean by clinical. 00:50:37.620 --> 00:50:44.620 The AIDS test I think is something like that isn't it? 00:50:44.620 --> 00:50:45.620 Yeah. 00:50:45.620 --> 00:50:58.980 There have been several traditional drugs that alleviate symptoms but those tend to 00:50:58.980 --> 00:51:14.380 be suppressed or forgotten but the so-called virus has attracted very little attention. 00:51:14.380 --> 00:51:26.140 What they are doing now is using a lab process to amplify a substance that relates to the 00:51:26.140 --> 00:51:35.540 virus it isn't the actual virus but they call it the viral load but it is something they 00:51:35.540 --> 00:51:47.460 create in the laboratory and meanwhile they ignore the use or consider them simply additional 00:51:47.460 --> 00:51:55.100 therapies that could be added to the valuable and profitable drugs that they use to treat 00:51:55.100 --> 00:52:00.940 the AIDS people. 00:52:00.940 --> 00:52:06.740 I was going to talk to you about Chris Masterjohn's experience in cholesterol today but maybe 00:52:06.740 --> 00:52:11.980 we'll save that for another day. 00:52:11.980 --> 00:52:13.940 You were going to say something else about the AIDS drugs? 00:52:13.940 --> 00:52:19.820 Oh, there are a couple of very good books. 00:52:19.820 --> 00:52:28.860 One is "Impending the AIDS Virus" by Peter Guzburg and the other one is by Harvey Bialy 00:52:28.860 --> 00:52:36.780 about Peter Guzburg and the virus and disease. 00:52:36.780 --> 00:52:45.580 I've been following it now for I guess 20 years and the establishment people just don't 00:52:45.580 --> 00:52:47.420 want to talk about it. 00:52:47.420 --> 00:52:58.300 They won't let these people publish responses to articles in the major journals so the average 00:52:58.300 --> 00:53:04.820 doctor reading it thinks they have no answer but it's just that the editors don't want 00:53:04.820 --> 00:53:13.820 to hear their answer and the mainline virus theory of AIDS people have never answered 00:53:13.820 --> 00:53:22.900 the criticism of Peter Guzburg who basically says the virus is harmless. 00:53:22.900 --> 00:53:26.180 And that begs the question what's causing the harm? 00:53:26.180 --> 00:53:30.180 Yes, he thinks it's a drug. 00:53:30.180 --> 00:53:37.860 I'm inclined to the idea that it's the interaction of drugs, polyunpatriated fats, radiation 00:53:37.860 --> 00:53:42.540 exposure and other toxins in the environment. 00:53:42.540 --> 00:53:47.180 So that would be another case of an environmental problem. 00:53:47.180 --> 00:53:56.460 When you graph the incidence over the last 60 years of acquired immunodeficiency syndrome, 00:53:56.460 --> 00:54:02.660 it's a straight progressive increase since the bomb tests began after the Second World 00:54:02.660 --> 00:54:09.740 War and there was no sudden jump at the time AIDS became official as a disease. 00:54:09.740 --> 00:54:15.060 It's a steady increase going back 60 years. 00:54:15.060 --> 00:54:19.820 Well that's very interesting. 00:54:19.820 --> 00:54:21.500 Well we're just about out of time. 00:54:21.500 --> 00:54:24.660 We've been talking to Dr. Raymond Peat from Eugene, Oregon. 00:54:24.660 --> 00:54:29.260 He's a physiologist and an endocrinologist and puts out a newsletter called Ray Peat's 00:54:29.260 --> 00:54:37.100 Newsletter and you can find him on the web at raypeat.com where you have a lot of excellent 00:54:37.100 --> 00:54:38.100 articles. 00:54:38.100 --> 00:54:41.020 You're getting more and more articles up there I've noticed too. 00:54:41.020 --> 00:54:46.420 Yeah, I have another 10 or 15 that will go up in a couple of weeks I hope. 00:54:46.420 --> 00:54:47.420 Great. 00:54:47.420 --> 00:54:51.300 Well they're very interesting and even if you don't necessarily agree with everything 00:54:51.300 --> 00:54:57.860 that's said there, plenty of food for thought and a lot of medical history and scientific 00:54:57.860 --> 00:55:03.540 history that I certainly have never heard about before so I find it all fascinating. 00:55:03.540 --> 00:55:04.540 Thanks Ray for your work. 00:55:04.540 --> 00:55:05.540 Okay. 00:55:05.540 --> 00:55:08.940 And we'll talk to you soon. 00:55:08.940 --> 00:55:12.220 Bye bye. 00:55:12.220 --> 00:55:15.660 And that concludes today's broadcast of Politics and Science. 00:55:15.660 --> 00:55:17.860 I hope you enjoyed it. 00:55:17.860 --> 00:55:23.780 Other Politics and Science shows can be found at radionumeralforall.net. 00:55:23.780 --> 00:55:28.940 That's radio and then the number four, all, A-L-L dot net. 00:55:28.940 --> 00:55:33.780 And once you get there type in Politics and Science. 00:55:33.780 --> 00:55:38.540 I've been your host today, John Barkhausen and please tune in again next week for another 00:55:38.540 --> 00:55:40.780 edition of Politics and Science.