Reply #35: As far as mechanisms of health and illness

[truedelphi]

I think most people on DU would agee that the immune system is an important element in
terms of a human being's health.

In 1982, I acquired a syndrom that manifested as patchy uneven areas of pigmentation across my entire body. Concerned about what this was,and what it would do, I entered Stanford Hospital.

Three of the best of the dermatology dept descended upon me. "You have vitaligo" they announced. "Vitaligo is an immune diorder" said one doctor.

"Have you ever been around industrial cleaning products?" queried another.

I had been one of the first women construcion workers in the state of Colorado, and in addition to paint thinners, varnishes, epoxies etc, I had used industrial cleaners.

But my concern was about having an immune disorder.

"Please tell me about the immune disorder that I have? What part is my immune system playing in this disease?" I asked. The dotors all offered a brief expalnation - vitaligo is an immune disorder and it meant that the immune system had decided for whatever reason that it needed to kill of my skin pigment.

"Can't you folks tell me something more about the immune system? I have an immune disorder - I'd like to know more." The woman doctor looked at me sympathetically and then announced, "We don't know much about the immune system. There is almost NO reserach monies available for the immune system and its disorders. We just don't know a lot."

Remember this is the calendar year 1982. It is a full year before another doctor will mention to me in a whisper that there is a mysterious type of pneumonia felling large numbers of men in the Castro, the gay area of San Francisco. Within several years of that mystery disease, which first began as mass pneumonias and other strange disease phenomena, large chucks of the government's monies would flood the coffers of any researchers interested in taking apart the immune system and deciphering its manner and methods of operation.

So basically in 1982, we were in the Dark Ages of the field of research in terms of the human immune system. Meanwhile, our chemists were pouring out thousands of products a year. Even ten years ago, fewer than five hundred chemicals had been seriously studied in terms of what they do to our bodies. Read or watch the book or movie "The Civil Act" and you will see how unenlightened science was. Many scientists and researchers dismissed the clusters of leukemia that decended upon a town in Massachusetts were as just so much random occurrence. It took a lot of hard work for the lawyers involved in "The Civil Act" to bring forth and establish the connection between the leukemia and the chemicals that had been present in the drinking water wells of the families who suffered the leukemia deaths. So less than three decades ago, we did not know much.

And we still don't know much. As an anti-pesiticde activist, I cannot tell you how many times people have responded to the concept of pesticides being harmful with the glib "I use pesticides, and they don't bother anyone in this family. Now if you would just excuse me, I need to go and get the kids' asthma inhaler prescriptions filled." Sad to say, many adults are more careful about chemicals when you explain to them that their pets will be harmed by the chemicals they use. Their kids are just supposed to suck it up and be strong.