Fire and Knowledge

Google can now “accurately estimate current flu levels one to two weeks faster than published CDC reports” based on search terms. Take a look at Google Flu Trends to see the results.

By any rational measure, this world belongs to microbes. They were mastering the subtleties of evolution three billion years before the first multicellular organism appeared. They continue to evolve and adapt in a tiny fraction of the time it takes us to reproduce once. They flourish in polar ice caps, in boiling water, and amid radioactive waste. We exist only because some of them find us useful. Ninety percent of the cells in our bodies are bacteria. The entirety of human evolution has taken place in an environment saturated with microbes, and humans are so firmly adapted to the routine of sheltering allies and rebuffing enemies that the removal of either can devastate our defense systems.

—Nathanael Johnson, “The Revolution Will Not Be Pasteurized“

I enjoyed reading “The Revolution Will Not Be Pasteurized.” The article is of particular interest to me because my family drinks unpasteurized milk. We have a milk cow that my mom and wife milk twice a day. We run the milk through a filter, cool it quickly, but do not pasteurize it.

There’s a debate about whether it should be legal or not to sell unpasteurized milk. Currently it’s illegal in half of the US states. Many people I know think it’s outrageous for the government to enforce that law. If people want to drink it, why should the government stop them?

Here’s the problem: dairys are dirty. I mean really dirty. The larger the dairy, the dirtier it is. Cows go to the bathroom at the most inconvenient times. They kick over the pail. They step in the pail. The pail or machine or milk jar may not have been sterilized properly. The teats may not have been washed thoroughly. The cow may have ate something diseased or become sick and passes tainted milk.

If the government allowed the sale of unpasteurized milk, more people would get sick. That’s the entire reason we started pasteurizing it. According to Nathanael Johnson, “Between 1919, when only a third of the milk in Massachusetts was pasteurized, and 1939, when almost all of it was, the number of outbreaks of milk-borne disease fell by nearly 90 percent.” The FDA claims that raw milk can be dangerous to health and is not healthier as claimed by raw milk advocates.

Yes, there might be healthy bacteria that are killed with pasteurization. (I’m sure we kill healthy bacteria when we cook meat, too.) Yes, there are some small farmers who are meticulously clean and could keep most of the harmful pathogens out of the milk. But what happens when one of their employees fail? And how could it be guaranteed as safe as pasteurized milk? How many people can get sick before they shut a dairy down?

I can see both perspectives. It makes sense to make selling unpasteurized milk illegal. It also makes sense to allow people to drink what they want, even if it ends up hurting them. Which is why they let they let us drink the raw milk from our own cow, but don’t allow us to sell it.

So, should the government make it legal to sell unpasteurized milk even though there is evidence of increased health risks? Or is the current system necessary to protect public health, even though people want to do it? Or is the government plain wrong, raw milk isn’t dangerous at all, and is actually more healthy than pasteurized milk? (If making that last claim, please cite a reputable scientific study, as I am interested.)

An unsanitised history of washing is more interesting than it sounds. I’ve never thought of cleanliness as being inherently cultural until now.

You mean all these vitamins I’m taking may actually shorten my life? Health science is so confusing if you try and follow it.

[According to statistics,] you are five times more likely to contract lung cancer from your pet parakeet than you are from secondary smoke.

—Bill Bryson, I’m a Stranger Here Myself (Broadway Books: 1999), p. 88.

Are we supposed to drink eight glasses of water a day? Slate has a story about the history of that myth.

Look Me in the Eye by John Elder Robison, 304 pages.

John Elder Robison has Asperger’s Syndrome, but didn’t know until his thirties. Asperger’s is a form of autism that wasn’t labeled or understood until 1981. Those with Asperger’s are usually smart but have a difficult time understanding social cues and thus establishing relationships. They don’t express emotions like most people do, and when they do, they often appear to express the wrong one (like smiling when someone dies). It is often a lonely life.

John decided to write about his life with Asperger’s as a way to deal with his father’s death. His home life was tragic. His mother was crazy and his father an abusive drunk. He dropped out of school at 16. He had a genius for electronics and began an accidental career fixing and improving musical equipment. He did so well that he worked with KISS making their dazzling (and dangerous) guitars that smoked, lit on fire, shone hundreds of lights, or flew in the air and exploded.

Describing John as eccentric is gracious. He gives a nickname to those close to him that he insists on using. (His brother starts out Snort, then becomes Varmint. His parents are Slave and Stupid.) He seems to think of his brother, and eventually his son, as pets. He delights in elaborate pranks and tricking people. He rambles on for pages about “mate selection” and how to know if you’ve really selected the best sister (or, as he calls them, “unit”). And sometimes I wondered if his main point in the book was to show what an awesome guy he was.

It’s a bit disturbing, and many things struck me as wrong. Maybe some of it was. But after thinking more about it, I think most of it is just different. John Elder doesn’t think like I think, and if I was like him I would probably think the same way. He’s certainly unconventional and isn’t as culturally aware as most of us, but different isn’t always wrong.

And in many ways, I sympathize. I too had trouble relating to other children. I had few friends and many enemies, even though I was a nice kid. I was also diagnosed with a form of autism, though different from his, called sensory integration dysfunction. John’s story made me want to learn more about sensory integration, something I have never researched on my own.

I’d recommend this book. Be warned, though, that it is often profane. But it is a rare glimpse into a mind groping to understand the world around it. It just may cause you to do the same.