# Should raw milk be illegal? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [January 22, 2014, 2:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-raw-milk-be-illegal/679449 "2014-01-22T14:18:55Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 9
**Author:** ![kaylasdad99](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kaylasdad99/32/3398_2.png) [@kaylasdad99](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kaylasdad99)\ **Post date:** [January 31, 2014, 9:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-raw-milk-be-illegal/679449/161 "2014-01-31T09:26:05Z")
😕 I thought the rich man was ALSO named Lazarus. ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [January 31, 2014, 9:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-raw-milk-be-illegal/679449/162 "2014-01-31T09:42:47Z")
Different rich mans. The one **dougie** is talking about is the Parable of the Shrewd Manager, you’re talking about the rich man whose crumbs were eaten by a poor man. ---
**Author:** ![kaylasdad99](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kaylasdad99/32/3398_2.png) [@kaylasdad99](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kaylasdad99)\ **Post date:** [January 31, 2014, 10:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-raw-milk-be-illegal/679449/163 "2014-01-31T10:20:41Z")
Missed the edit wimdow: WRT your “right” to reliable information “from whatever source derived”: besides taking issue with your phrasing, which I find stilted, affected, and obfuscatory, I have to tell you that you have no such right. You are free to ascribe reliability to the output from “whatever” source, but absent you assuming the responsibility to determine whether the source itself tends to be more a purveyor of reliable or of unreliable information, it is your own credibility that you put on the line when you use the source as your cite. Don’t feel too badly about how late in life you may be learning this. Remember L. M. Boyd’s trivia feature in [i{The Daily Breeze\*? It took me AGES to learn to stop citing HIS “little-known facts” as gospel. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![kaylasdad99](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kaylasdad99/32/3398_2.png) [@kaylasdad99](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kaylasdad99)\ **Post date:** [January 31, 2014, 10:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-raw-milk-be-illegal/679449/164 "2014-01-31T10:26:35Z")
> [@Nava](#): > > Different rich mans. The one **dougie** is talking about is the Parable of the Shrewd Manager, you’re talking about the rich man whose crumbs were eaten by a poor man. So is he, AFAICT. The parable of the Shrewd Manager (I heard it as the Dishonest Steward but Shrewd Manager is probably a less confusing title) doesn’t have any poor guys named Lazarus who want to eat table scraps. ---
**Author:** ![DSeid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dseid/32/20194_2.png) [@DSeid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSeid)\ **Post date:** [January 31, 2014, 12:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-raw-milk-be-illegal/679449/165 "2014-01-31T12:51:16Z")
**dougie** your perspective is (unfortunately) not an uncommon one, so I would appreciate your explaining it to me. Why is it that you are apparently more likely to rate information from dead nutrition quacks, and people who claim they are something they are not, as “reliable” than information from large expert professional bodies? People _did_ believe that Adelle Davis was a source of reliable information and took her word for what she said. It was dangerously false information and killed at least one person. You illustrate a willingness to rate the information you read from what almost the vast majority of the rest of us would rate as highly questionable sources as high value and reliability, and onformation from the CDC, the FDA, various professional organizations, all as low value and low reliability in comparison. You are not alone in this world doing that. Again, please explain why. And, oh … the [literary reference](https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/56441-seven-pillars-of-wisdom-a-triumph) made by Jackmanni. ---
**Author:** ![Jackmannii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jackmannii/32/311_2.png) [@Jackmannii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jackmannii)\ **Post date:** [January 31, 2014, 1:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-raw-milk-be-illegal/679449/166 "2014-01-31T13:03:01Z")
Who would’ve thought that after all these years, I’d be helping drive up T.E. Lawrence’s book sales? Too bad he’s dead. It is of course a Pillar of Woo to cite Experts Who Agree With Me, either individually or in the form of lists of people who’ve signed a petition about something. Unfortunately, most of these “experts” have little to no training or experience in the fields on which they expound, or if they do, they represent a minute fraction of their colleagues.\* \*see the climate change debate, water fluoridation or vaccination for examples of this phenomenon. ---
**Author:** ![dougie\_monty](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/439d5e/32.png) [@dougie\_monty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dougie_monty)\ **Post date:** [January 31, 2014, 6:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-raw-milk-be-illegal/679449/167 "2014-01-31T18:56:01Z")
> [@kaylasdad99](#): > > Missed the edit wimdow: > > WRT your “right” to reliable information “from whatever source derived”: besides taking issue with your phrasing, which I find stilted, affected, and obfuscatory, I have to tell you that you have no such right. You are free to ascribe reliability to the output from “whatever” source, but absent you assuming the responsibility to determine whether the source itself tends to be more a purveyor of reliable or of unreliable information, it is your own credibility that you put on the line when you use the source as your cite. > > Don’t feel too badly about how late in life you may be learning this. Remember L. M. Boyd’s trivia feature in [i{The Daily Breeze\*? It took me AGES to learn to stop citing HIS “little-known facts” as gospel. 🙂 WRT: explain, please. You are entitled to your opinion about my phrasing. But please explain 1) which phrasing you are complaining about and 2) how _you_ would have written it so it would not be “stilted, affected, and obfuscatory.” My point was that the nature of a source should be irrelevant as long as the data is correct. Granted the larger, organized, professional body would more likely give out correct information; but it does not automatically follow that a single person or a small entity is _ipso facto_ unable to do so. Otherwise, only police officers and professional detectives would be allowed to give testimony in court–and, indeed, policemen would not be allowed to question anyone but other cops, and professional detectives, in criminal investigations. ---
**Author:** ![dougie\_monty](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/439d5e/32.png) [@dougie\_monty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dougie_monty)\ **Post date:** [January 31, 2014, 7:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-raw-milk-be-illegal/679449/168 "2014-01-31T19:10:43Z")
> [@DSeid](#): > > **dougie** […] > Why is it that you are apparently more likely to rate information from dead nutrition quacks, and people who claim they are something they are not, as “reliable” than information from large expert professional bodies? > > People _did_ believe that Adelle Davis was a source of reliable information and took her word for what she said. It was dangerously false information and killed at least one person. You illustrate a willingness to rate the information you read from what almost the vast majority of the rest of us would rate as highly questionable sources as high value and reliability, and information from the CDC, the FDA, various professional organizations, all as low value and low reliability in comparison. > > […] Again you are putting words in my mouth. Where did I say that I preferred the information from “dead nutrition quacks”? I mentioned the fact that Adelle Davis was dead, only in passing. And I had no hint that she was any kind of dishonest until you people brought it up–she was just another nutritionist to me. I don’t know the names of very many nutritionists, of whatever stripe. And I don’t go looking for “quacks.” And, while we’re on the subject, was I supposed to assume that she was a “quack” automatically, becausue she was not a “large expert professional body”? Is that your reasoning? OK, so I accept the info promulgated by Dietitians from Canada (I am not a Canadian, but that is not relevant), and I’ve been drinking run-of-the-mill pasteurized, homogenized 2% milk sold at Ralphs for about 30 years now. As I’ve posted elsewhere, I want the maximum benefits from milk and I don’t care where the best information comes from, or where the best milk comes from. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![DSeid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dseid/32/20194_2.png) [@DSeid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSeid)\ **Post date:** [January 31, 2014, 7:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-raw-milk-be-illegal/679449/169 "2014-01-31T19:44:19Z")
WRT = with regard to. Correct that the larger professional organization’s facts are likely to be correct. The person wearing underwear on the outside of his pants might be correct but perhaps some additional verification before believing it, especially if it contradicts that which the large professional organizations claim, is reasonable. Citing that outside the pants underwear man as a source of information that holds at least as much weight as the facts as reported by those professional organizations without independent confirmation would be a bit … imprudent. Mockable even. Or to stick with your analogy - two policemen and an independent professional detective all witness something and describe the same thing while one person who claims to be a spaceman receiving orders from Trafalgalore states he saw something completely different. Do you equally weight that testimony to the other three put together? Some would because they believe that the police are not be trusted and that the professional detective could be threatened or bribed to be in on the conspiracy. Some seem to believe that the CDC, the FDA, the AMA, a variety of other medical organizations and expert bodies, those who publish medical journals, Big Pharma, and others, are all in on a conspiracy, and the brave few who publish blogs and books claiming to be nutritionists and independent scientists oppressed for their iconoclastic views are speaking truth to power. Your posts here give the impression that you are one of those people. It is hard to conclude otherwise when you question those experts by quoting people who are all of that ilk and using one of that ilk as your example of the sort of source you want to hear from\*. If you are not then please correct that misperception. If you are then I would appreciate understanding why you think so. \*Your sources were Carlton Fredericks, some claims to have training he does not have and presents very false information (but that doesn’t mean that he says can’t be true, you responded); a diary that lied about the facts and lost in court over it … which when each was pointed out you responded back with some hostility and implying that we were acting like a lynch mob … and wanting to know how the issue stands with better known “nutritionists” specifically naming one, a dead quack. ---
**Author:** ![Budget\_Player\_Cadet](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/budget_player_cadet/32/205_2.png) [@Budget\_Player\_Cadet](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Budget_Player_Cadet)\ **Post date:** [January 31, 2014, 7:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-raw-milk-be-illegal/679449/170 "2014-01-31T19:50:04Z")
> [@Jackmannii](#): > > It is another hallmark of woo for a handful of pseudo-experts to be cited in support of a claim (while ignoring the vast majority of actual experts who have opposing views). A bit off-topic as it were, but is it just me or is it really hard to actually qualify this claim? Like, if there is a consensus that goes back a few decades… how do you show it? Everything nowadays takes that as a given. It’s like with HIV/AIDS - finding actual peer-reviewed papers establishing the link is difficult, because all the groundwork was done so long ago. > [@dougie\_monty](#): > > I don’t care if it is. I like research and can always consult a “scholarly journal” to verify what’s in the _Book of Lists._ > McLuhan notwithstanding, the medium is **not** the message. No, but at a certain point you have to look at the medium, then look at the medium of the competing evidence, and think “Huh, why is _this_ reliable?” If one source cites a wide discipline-wide consensus with regards to the issue, and the other cites… well, a popular book with little backing… ---
**Author:** ![kaylasdad99](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kaylasdad99/32/3398_2.png) [@kaylasdad99](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kaylasdad99)\ **Post date:** [February 1, 2014, 1:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-raw-milk-be-illegal/679449/171 "2014-02-01T01:53:24Z")
> [@dougie\_monty](#): > > WRT: explain, please. As mentioned above: **W** ith **R** espect/ **R** egard **T** o > [@dougie\_monty](#): > > You are entitled to your opinion about my phrasing. But please explain 1) which phrasing you are complaining about and 2) how _you_ would have written it so it would not be “stilted, affected, and obfuscatory.” I think I’ll pass on the invitation. To begin with, I don’t believe your belief bears a one-to-one relationship with reality (this one: –\> _“I believe I have the right to reliable information–from whatever source derived.”_), so I wouldn’t make the statement in any type of phrasing at all. Also, even if I did agree with your belief I’m not entirely certain I understood it (I did call your phrasing obfuscatory); I would hesitate to attempt to rewrite it for clarity. Please do not take the above as a request that you try to make it clearer to me. I’m about 80% confident that I caught your drift. The remaining 20% disturbs me a little, but not enough to make me interested in parsing it further. > [@dougie\_monty](#): > > My point was that the nature of a source should be irrelevant as long as the data is correct. SHOULD BE; AS LONG AS; IS CORRECT; those are key words. It’s likely they are even valid. But once you begin passing along information from that source, it behooves you to pay more attention to what ACTUALLY IS. > [@dougie\_monty](#): > > Granted the larger, organized, professional body would more likely give out correct information; \*\*but it does not automatically follow that a single person or a small entity is _ipso facto_ unable to do so. \*\* Clearly. Here’s where that line of reasoning runs into a problem though: It is exceptionally rare that the single person or small entity will be the ONLY source of correct information on a topic, while the larger, organized professional body is giving out INCORRECT information. ---
**Author:** ![dougie\_monty](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/439d5e/32.png) [@dougie\_monty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dougie_monty)\ **Post date:** [February 1, 2014, 4:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-raw-milk-be-illegal/679449/172 "2014-02-01T04:53:41Z")
> [@DSeid](#): > > WRT = with regard to. > > Correct that the larger professional organization’s facts are likely to be correct. The person wearing underwear on the outside of his pants might be correct but perhaps some additional verification before believing it, especially if it contradicts that which the large professional organizations claim, is reasonable. Citing that outside the pants underwear man as a source of information that holds at least as much weight as the facts as reported by those professional organizations without independent confirmation would be a bit … imprudent. Mockable even. > > Or to stick with your analogy - two policemen and an independent professional detective all witness something and describe the same thing while one person who claims to be a spaceman receiving orders from Trafalgalore states he saw something completely different. Do you equally weight that testimony to the other three put together? > > Some would because they believe that the police are not be trusted and that the professional detective could be threatened or bribed to be in on the conspiracy. > > Some seem to believe that the CDC, the FDA, the AMA, a variety of other medical organizations and expert bodies, those who publish medical journals, Big Pharma, and others, are all in on a conspiracy, and the brave few who publish blogs and books claiming to be nutritionists and independent scientists oppressed for their iconoclastic views are speaking truth to power. > > Your posts here give the impression that you are one of those people. It is hard to conclude otherwise when you question those experts by quoting people who are all of that ilk and using one of that ilk as your example of the sort of source you want to hear from\*. If you are not then please correct that misperception. If you are then I would appreciate understanding why you think so. > > \*Your sources were Carlton Fredericks, some claims to have training he does not have and presents very false information (but that doesn’t mean that he says can’t be true, you responded); a diary that lied about the facts and lost in court over it … which when each was pointed out you responded back with some hostility and implying that we were acting like a lynch mob … and wanting to know how the issue stands with better known “nutritionists” specifically naming one, a dead quack. Your first-paragraph analogy is both confusing and insulting. What is there about Carlton Fredericks and Adelle Davis–two people I wouldn’t know from Adam except that I see their books in healt-food stores (including the chain General Nutrition), that I would notice at the outset which would be a counterpart to underfwear on the outside or a claim to be extratrerrfestrial? To give you your due, however, when I read Fredericks’ book I found a few things I found hard, if not impossible, to swalllow. Acne, he says, cane be treated in part with a “B-Complex syrup”; he also claims that “heredity is controlled by the glands.” Now I don’t accept either of these claims (Acne is chiefly a manifestation of a Vitamin A deficiency or a hormone imbalance–this last statment by my dermatologist), and heredity is the bailiwick of the genes, not the glands. As for your second analogy, if I were a policem an gathering statements from eyewitnesses and one civilian gives me a statement…suppose I don’t find out until the next day or the next week that he solemnly claims to ’ be a spaceman receiving orders from Trafalgalore’? What do I do then? I’ll tell you what: I would try to verify what he has told me by other evidenced, eomdf his mother, or whomever. ---
**Author:** ![dougie\_monty](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/439d5e/32.png) [@dougie\_monty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dougie_monty)\ **Post date:** [February 1, 2014, 5:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-raw-milk-be-illegal/679449/173 "2014-02-01T05:00:05Z")
Excuse me–my computer laid an egg. My reply should have appeared thus: Your first-paragraph analogy is both confusing and insulting. What is there about Carlton Fredericks and Adelle Davis–two people I wouldn’t know from Adam except that I see their books in health-food stores (including the chain General Nutrition), that I would notice at the outset which would be a counterpart to underwear on the outside or a claim to be extratrerrestrial? To give you your due, however, when I read Fredericks’ book I found a few things I found hard, if not impossible, to swalllow. Acne, he says, can be treated in part with a “B-Complex syrup”; he also claims that “heredity is controlled by the glands.” Now I don’t accept either of these claims (Acne is chiefly a manifestation of a Vitamin A deficiency or a hormone imbalance–this last statment by my dermatologist), and heredity is the bailiwick of the genes, not the glands. As for your second analogy, if I were a policeman gathering statements from eyewitnesses and one civilian gives me a statement…suppose I don’t find out until the next day or the next week that he solemnly claims to ‘be a spaceman receiving orders from Trafalgalore’? What do I do then? I’ll tell you what: I would try to verify what he has told me by other evidence, from his mother, or whomever. ---
**Author:** ![DSeid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dseid/32/20194_2.png) [@DSeid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSeid)\ **Post date:** [February 1, 2014, 1:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-raw-milk-be-illegal/679449/174 "2014-02-01T13:14:03Z")
> [@dougie\_monty](#): > > … What is there about Carlton Fredericks and Adelle Davis–two people I wouldn’t know from Adam except that I see their books in healt-food stores (including the chain General Nutrition), that I would notice at the outset which would be a counterpart to underfwear on the outside or a claim to be extratrerrfestrial? … Pretty much exactly that. Books in health food stores are not reknown as reliable sources of accurate information. More often than not they are written bu outside the pants underwear wearers. Again, that does not mean that something they say cannot be correct … “Even the blind squirrel find a nut.” as they say. But when such is your source it behooves you to do as you stated would be appropriate in the analogy for any random source: > [@](#): > > I would try to verify what he has told me by other evidence Accepting information from books by authors whose only authority to you is that you’ve seen their books in the health food store before you’ve done that … will get you your due, which is being given the doo (oops, potty mouth :)) you’ve been given here. ---
**Author:** ![Jackmannii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jackmannii/32/311_2.png) [@Jackmannii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jackmannii)\ **Post date:** [February 1, 2014, 4:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-raw-milk-be-illegal/679449/175 "2014-02-01T16:18:52Z")
> [@Budget\_Player\_Cadet](#): > > A bit off-topic as it were, but is it just me or is it really hard to actually qualify this claim? Like, if there is a consensus that goes back a few decades… how do you show it? Everything nowadays takes that as a given. It’s like with HIV/AIDS - finding actual peer-reviewed papers establishing the link is difficult, because all the groundwork was done so long ago. Thankfully there are reviews (for instance, the Cochrane reviews on medical issues) that are relatively easy to find and which document all the painstaking research that was conducted on the subject. You don’t have to go back and dig up all the original articles (though thanks to the wonders of PubMed that’s fairly simple too). There’s a common human tendency to zero in on views that harmonize with one’s own opinions and to cite the few “experts” who express them, while dismissing the overwhelming body of professionals who believe otherwise based on ample evidence. Another common tendency is to harp about occasions when consensus views turned out to be wrong - but typically those examples occurred long ago (when science/medicine was far less rigorous) or are flat-out misrepresented. Case in point - the discovery that Helicobacter pylori was the overwhelming cause of peptic ulcers, instead of diet or “stress”. To hear the woo-sters talk, you’d think the poor guy most responsible for advancing the Helicobacter theory (Barry Marshall) was ignored, ridiculed, and practically stoned by the medical community. The [reality](http://www.csicop.org/si/show/bacteria_ulcers_and_ostracism_h._pylori_and_the_making_of_a_myth/) is that a number of researchers quickly began efforts to reproduce his findings, and within a few short years (amazingly fast for a paradigm-changing discovery) physicians were widely accepting the new evidence. The same cannot be said for nutritional woo, and I submit the reason for that is not blind acceptance of the status quo, but that the nonsensical quality of the woo has been apparent for a very long time. ---
**Author:** ![Surreal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/eada6e/32.png) [@Surreal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Surreal)\ **Post date:** [February 1, 2014, 8:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-raw-milk-be-illegal/679449/176 "2014-02-01T20:16:44Z")
> [@Jackmannii](#): > > Case in point - the discovery that Helicobacter pylori was the overwhelming cause of peptic ulcers, instead of diet or “stress”. To hear the woo-sters talk, you’d think the poor guy most responsible for advancing the Helicobacter theory (Barry Marshall) was ignored, ridiculed, and practically stoned by the medical community. The [reality](http://www.csicop.org/si/show/bacteria_ulcers_and_ostracism_h._pylori_and_the_making_of_a_myth/) is that a number of researchers quickly began efforts to reproduce his findings, and within a few short years (amazingly fast for a paradigm-changing discovery) physicians were widely accepting the new evidence. I’m inclined to trust Nobel laureate Barry Marshall’s own description of how his ideas were received by the medical establishment over that opinion piece with no real data that you linked to. [http://discovermagazine.com/2010/mar/07-dr-drank-broth-gave-ulcer-solved-medical-mystery#.Uu1UTj1dUue](http://discovermagazine.com/2010/mar/07-dr-drank-broth-gave-ulcer-solved-medical-mystery#.Uu1UTj1dUue) > [@](#): > > I presented that work at the annual meeting of the Royal Australasian College of Physicians in Perth. That was my first experience of people being totally skeptical. To gastroenterologists, the concept of a germ causing ulcers was like saying that the Earth is flat. After that I realized my paper was going to have difficulty being accepted. You think, “It’s science; it’s got to be accepted.” But it’s not an absolute given. The idea was too weird. > > … > > The microbiologists in Brussels loved it, and by March of 1983 I was incredibly confident. During that year Robin and I wrote the full paper. **But everything was rejected. Whenever we presented our stuff to gastroenterologists, we got the same campaign of negativism. I had this discovery that could undermine a $3 billion industry, not just the drugs but the entire field of endoscopy.** Every gastroenterologist was doing 20 or 30 patients a week who might have ulcers, and 25 percent of them would. Because it was a recurring disease that you could never cure, the patients kept coming back. And here I was handing it on a platter to the infectious-disease guys. > > … > > You published a synthesis of this work in The Medical Journal of Australia in 1985. Then did people change their thinking? > > \*\*No, it sat there as a hypothesis for another 10 years. Some patients heard about it, but gastroenterologists still would not treat them with antibiotics. Instead, they would focus on the possible complications of antibiotics. \*\*By 1985 I could cure just about everybody, and patients were coming to me in secret—for instance, airline pilots who didn’t want to let anyone know that they had an ulcer. ---
**Author:** ![DSeid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dseid/32/20194_2.png) [@DSeid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSeid)\ **Post date:** [February 1, 2014, 10:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-raw-milk-be-illegal/679449/177 "2014-02-01T22:30:24Z")
No question scientists and physicians can both hold on to established pardigms and generally require very solid evidence before they give up on an extant model. Still, ten years from a new data set being presented to completely changing paradigms in a specialty? Honestly not bad. That may have seemed glacial to Dr. Marshall but for a complete paradigm shift, really that _is_ (IMHO) a few short years. That said the Helicobacter pylori story is not yet over. Now the resistance is to the idea that eradiating it [might not](http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/19/magazine/say-hello-to-the-100-trillion-bacteria-that-make-up-your-microbiome.html?pagewanted=all) always be such a good idea after all. Maybe those concerns about the possible complications of antibitotics were at least a bit justified. > [@](#): > > One bacterium commonly found in the non-Western microbiome but nearly extinct in ours is a corkscrew-shaped inhabitant of the stomach by the name of Helicobacter pylori. Dominguez-Bello’s husband, Martin Blaser, a physician and microbiologist at N.Y.U., has been studying H. pylori since the mid-1980s and is convinced that it is an endangered species, the extinction of which we may someday rue. According to the “missing microbiota hypothesis,” we depend on microbes like H. pylori to regulate various metabolic and immune functions, and their disappearance is disordering those systems. The loss is cumulative: “Each generation is passing on fewer of these microbes,” Blaser told me, with the result that the Western microbiome is being progressively impoverished. > > He calls H. pylori the “poster child” for the missing microbes and says medicine has actually been trying to exterminate it since 1983, when Australian scientists proposed that the microbe was responsible for peptic ulcers; it has since been implicated in stomach cancer as well. But H. pylori is a most complicated character, the entire spectrum of microbial good and evil rolled into one bug. Scientists learned that H. pylori also plays a role in regulating acid in the stomach. Presumably it does this to render its preferred habitat inhospitable to competitors, but the effect on its host can be salutary. People without H. pylori may not get peptic ulcers, but they frequently do suffer from acid reflux. Untreated, this can lead to Barrett’s esophagus and, eventually, a certain type of esophageal cancer, rates of which have soared in the West as H. pylori has gone missing. … > > … H. pylori also does us a lot of good. The microbe engages with the immune system, quieting the inflammatory response in ways that serve its own interests — to be left in peace — as well as our own. This calming effect on the immune system may explain why populations that still harbor H. pylori are less prone to allergy and asthma. Blaser’s lab has also found evidence that H. pylori plays an important role in human metabolism by regulating levels of the appetite hormone ghrelin. “When the stomach is empty, it produces a lot of ghrelin, the chemical signal to the brain to eat,” Blaser says. “Then, when it has had enough, the stomach shuts down ghrelin production, and the host feels satiated.” He says the disappearance of H. pylori may be contributing to obesity by muting these signals. … What’s the point? Science is indeed sometimes messy. Conenses change. Not sure that jumping on Blaser’s bandwagon is yet indicated or not. Changing a way of thinking takes some accumulation of evidence. Still the nature of the beast is that science is open to re-evalution of even strongly held ideas, given new information accumulating, whether it is modifying a model or completely tossing out an extant one. Consensus views are based on the best evidence available with some lag time for new evidence to be evaluated, processed, and replicated. It is not revealed truth (in the spirit of some analogies made in this wide ranging thread, it is not Gospel truth). It is however pretty likely to be a pretty damn good guess based on what is known to date. ---
**Author:** ![Guinastasia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guinastasia/32/5751_2.png) [@Guinastasia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Guinastasia)\ **Post date:** [February 1, 2014, 11:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-raw-milk-be-illegal/679449/178 "2014-02-01T23:56:20Z")
> [@dougie\_monty](#): > > My point was that the nature of a source should be irrelevant as long as the data is correct. Granted the larger, organized, professional body would more likely give out correct information; but it does not automatically follow that a single person or a small entity is _ipso facto_ unable to do so. Otherwise, only police officers and professional detectives would be allowed to give testimony in court–and, indeed, policemen would not be allowed to question anyone but other cops, and professional detectives, in criminal investigations. True, BUT, we’re not talking about criminal investigations here. It depends on the subject. Look at it more like this – if you’re doing a project on the Holocaust, who are you going to trust to give you correct information: a local rabbi, or the Grand Wizard of the KKK? I mean, the point is, how do you know if the information is actually correct? That’s why people are so suspect of these people – they have a track record of giving out incorrect and sometimes dangerous advice. Think about it. ---
**Author:** ![Jackmannii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jackmannii/32/311_2.png) [@Jackmannii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jackmannii)\ **Post date:** [February 2, 2014, 12:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-raw-milk-be-illegal/679449/179 "2014-02-02T00:13:17Z")
> [@Surreal](#): > > I’m inclined to trust Nobel laureate Barry Marshall’s own description of how his ideas were received by the medical establishment over that opinion piece with no real data that you linked to. I’m inclined to think Dr. Marshall’s memory is faulty. From my previous link: \*"One might expect that if scientific medicine had dogmatically rejected Warren and Marshall’s hypothesis, there would be scant references to their reports for the several years after the initial publications. The opposite is the case: the biomedical world was abuzz with Campylobacter (later renamed Helicobacter) pylori from the start, as is demonstrated in the figure. It shows the number of papers listed on PubMed, the online database of the National Library of Medicine, as a function of the calendar year throughout the 1980s and early 1990s. The rate of increase after 1983 is nearly exponential… Within a couple of years of the original report, numerous groups searched for, and most found, the same organism. Bacteriologists were giddy over the discovery of a new species. By 1987—virtually overnight, on the timescale of medical science—reports from all over the world, including Africa, the Soviet Union, China, Peru, and elsewhere, had confirmed the finding of this bacterium in association with gastritis and, to a lesser extent, ulcers. Simpler and less invasive diagnostic methods were devised (Graham et al. 1987; Evans et al. 1989). The possibility of pyloric campylobacter being the cause of gastritis or ulcers was exciting and vigorously discussed, even as it was acknowledged by all, including Marshall and Warren, to require more evidence… Here is a typical opinion, in this instance from the Netherlands: “There is an explosion of interest in the role of Campylobacter pylori as a cause of active chronic gastritis. . . . To what extent this intriguing microorganism is causally related to peptic ulcer disease remains to be elucidated, but all the evidence which is available so far supports a pathogenetically important role” (Tytgat and Rauws 1987). The New England Journal of Medicine, the most widely read medical journal in the world, offered this editorial: “Further unfolding of the details [of the possible etiologic role of C. pylori in peptic ulcer disease] will be enhanced by the development of an animal model, by epidemiologic studies, and by identification of the source and the virulence properties of specific serotypes of C. pylori. The prospects are exciting, intriguing, and promising” (Hornick 1987)."\* Somehow that doesn’t jibe with Marshall’s claim that “it sat there as a hypothesis for another 10 years.” Marshall is quoted as saying that “Whenever we presented our stuff to gastroenterologists, we got the same campaign of negativism. I had this discovery that could undermine a $3 billion industry, not just the drugs but the entire field of endoscopy.” Sounds plausible - unless you consider how upper G.I. endoscopy has thrived in the years since Marshall propounded his theory. I get multiple gastric biopsies collected on endoscopy daily in my practice, with a major reason being to rule out the presence of Helicobacter. ---
**Author:** ![DSeid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dseid/32/20194_2.png) [@DSeid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSeid)\ **Post date:** [February 2, 2014, 12:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-raw-milk-be-illegal/679449/180 "2014-02-02T00:19:59Z")
By the way … the possible _beneficial_ role of H. pylori and the risks that might be associated with its widespread eradication are [not new](http://cancerres.aacrjournals.org/content/58/4/588.short) either, that one from 1998. Nevertheless the evidence is [not currently conclusive](http://synapse.koreamed.org/DOIx.php?id=10.5056/jnm.2011.17.3.209). The hormonal links go back [at least 10 years](http://gut.bmj.com/content/52/5/637.short). [A detailed more academic review](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2735910/) by Blaser of the beneficial role for H. pylori by Blaser. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-raw-milk-be-illegal/679449.md?page=8) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-raw-milk-be-illegal/679449.md?page=10)