I haven’t had a chance to get back to this since my first post. Imagine my surprise when I went on to HawaiiStories and saw my post front and center. Ahhh - now I’m self conscious. I think I am shyer on line than I am in person. I’ve been told I walk to the beat of a different drummer. Yes, I see the irony in that statement. One way that I am different is in my views on health care. In particular, I am very much against the use of ultrasound on unborn fetuses.
My views on health care could be described as controversial. I grew up in a chiropractic family. MD’s are for emergency care only. We never take medicine of any kind. The word “immunization” was a dirty word in our house. This is going back 30-40 years or more. It’s amazing some of the research that’s coming out today. There are indications that immunizations given at such young ages are linked with the spike in autism. I’ve talked about this at length on Hawaii Threads so I kind of feel like I’m repeating myself here. When my son was born in 1976 I actually had to fight with the authorities not to have him immunized. They actually threatened to take him away if I didn’t. I had to claim religious reasons. That made it ok. So our official religion is the Church of the Living Sea. I did end up having him immunized when he was 6 years old because of school. But at least I didn’t have to do it when he was 3 months old an his immune system still undeveloped. Is it even younger that they do it? I don’t know.
Most of what I believe with regards to health care came from my upbringing. But years of studying physics and acoustics have solidified that belief. Teaching general physics to pre-med students has taught me to be terrified of MD’s. Disclaimer here - I apologize to all of you who have studied medicine - nothing personal, I know many of you got into the field for all the right reasons. For those of you (and I know you are out there) who got into medicine just to make money, well, shame on you.
Two observations: 1) the other sciences such as biology and chemistry (the core of pre-med) are taught through a process of memorization. This makes problem solving a very difficult task for most science majors. Which is why most science majors hate taking physics. It is the science of problem solving. Actually, music majors have a much easier time in physics than science majors. 2) pre-med students are only required to take 2 semesters of physics at most. Generally, pre-med students can get away with taking algebra based physics (known in our circles as “baby physics”). Some schools even offer a course specifically for pre-med students. These courses teach the test. That is, students memorize specific responses to specific questions. That is not problem solving. This is one of the biggest issues in physics education. Think about it. These future doctors, who are taking your life in their hands, have virtually no idea how to solve problems. In most cases they are guessing. They look at the symptoms, prescribe a drug that the drug company told them will get rid of the symptom and send you on your way. The art of figuring out why you have those symptoms and treating the cause is completely lost. Take a simple headache for example. If you haven’t eaten for a while, one way your body tells you that you need nourishment is to give you a headache. Eating something makes it go away. Cause and effect. However, if you take aspirin or any other over the counter headache “remedies” your symptoms will go away. The cause however, has not been addressed. Your body still needs nourishment. But the symptom is gone. Now this is a very simplistic example. But what about more serious conditions? Like allergies or asthma. No one seems to question why they have these ailments. They simply take whatever medicine the doctor tells them because it gets rid of the symptoms. These are not natural conditions. Something is causing them.
The ideas expressed above are not unique. They are questions and concerns of a steadily growing group. Many are turning to alternative healing methods. There is one thing, however, that very few have questioned. That is the use of ultrasound on unborn fetuses. And it is one of my own pet projects, or should I say pet peeves.
Sound is a wave and as such is defined by a frequency and an amplitude. If you imagine waves on the ocean then the amplitude is how high the wave is and the frequency is how many waves break in a second (or minute, or hour). The number of waves in one second is called hertz (or hz for short). Sound waves that we hear have a frequency range from 20 hz to 20,000 hz. Below 20 hz we refer to as infrasound and above 20,000 hz we refer to as ultrasound. All sound waves carry energy. If you’ve ever been to a rock concert then you have felt the beat of the drums. Low frequency sounds that are very loud will literally vibrate through you. You feel it. This is because the low frequencies are vibrating your body as a whole. However, the higher the frequency, the more energy the sound wave carries. But when the frequency is higher, its wavelength is smaller. This means that instead of vibrating our whole body, it is vibrating individual molecules. When you get to ultrasonic frequencies, the molecules can vibrate so much that they can actually come apart. Imagine a water molecule made of an oxygen atom and two hydrogen atoms. Now, imagine shaking it so hard that the atoms come apart. When you get to really high frequencies something strange happens. The atoms themselves begin to expand. This expansion pushes the outer shell of the atom out until it does one of two things. It will either explode outward (aka fission - the stuff of nuclear bombs) or it will implode, causing the atoms to come together so fast that they actually fuse together (aka - fusion - the stuff of solar thermonuclear reactions). Experiments in physics labs all over the country are trying this. At least one has succeeded. A group at RPI has caused a fusion reaction using ultrasonic frequencies in water.
Here is the kicker folks. The frequencies used in these experiments are lower than those used on unborn fetuses! What is ultrasound doing to our unborn children! Ask any doctor how they calibrate the machines. They hold it up to a container of water and if the water boils, the ultrasound machine is calibrated! And what is embryonic fluid made mostly of? Water! Now the reality is that the babies are not exposed long enough for the fluid to actually boil. But it is heating up. How much heat does it take to affect developing cells? No one knows. No one in the medical community in this country has looked into this. What about cumulative effects? Again, unknown.
Last year I had a student do a research paper on this. Her results were startling. Investigations in the UK, Germany and Australia all show indications of harmful effects. Several studies on human infants show an unnatural number of left-handed babies born in the last 20 yrs. Other studies on rats indicate that it just may be ultrasound causing the sharp increase in autism. Autism has increased by 1500% over the last 20 yrs. 1500%!!!!
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