Fixed Viewpoints

Rajah is a delight. Chester is a bit solid, but very loving and dependable. He truly is Rajah's Big Brother.

I take both of them on walks every day, without a leash, along a sometimes busy road.

Now, Chester knows very well that it is not OK for him to dash out into the street.

He might, very infrequently, dash over to the other side to inspect another dog, but that only happens about once out of 30 walks.

But, Rajah, on the other hand, is still at the stage where he barks at his reflection in the mirror. He loves to bark, and he loves to dash.

He doesn't think much about that dashing!

When he dashes, he tends to make it into a game -- he pulls me into the game, trying to catch him. He will run in circles, barking at me -- it's his great joy, and my frustration!

Thus, the scene is set.

You would wonder what this has to do with doctors being so blind? Hang on.

A couple times Rajah ran out into the street when neighbors were driving by. Fortunately, we live in a neighborhood where they still are considerate of dogs!

Here's an excerpt from a letter I received from Marc S. of Dallas, Texas. He had purchased a copy of my Book, Life Flow One, The Solution For Heart Disease, and had announced himself as a graduate student interested in research in the health area. After he received the book, he sent me this letter.

Dear Mr. Loren,

Enclosed with this letter you will find all the material that I willfully purchased from you a short time ago. I have read the material carefully and have found the major theme of the entire body of work to be manipulative to a specific audience of which I am not a part.

Mixed in with the simple truth's you have stated (very inelegantly I may add) is a cleverly disguised attack on the ignorance of many people who depend on doctors to make informed decisions for them.

Marc

The scary thing is that Marc is undoubtedly an Opinion Leader to some number of people. THOSE people will take his opinion as their own when and if they come into contact with the concepts I present in that Book.

Of course Marc got the refund for the book he requested, and also got my letter letting him know that I would probably quote him in one of my newsletters.

Well, if your grandmother is YOUR opinion leader, the vitamin pusher won't get very far. If you happen to think that your grandmother is "behind the times," then her comments may actually make you more likely to believe that Vitamin A will improve your skin.

It's scary!

Do you realize that YOUR diet, or your smoking, could well be an enormous influence on SOMEONE?

Who?

Now, let's look deeper into this concept. Another way of saying "opinion leader" is to use the word "viewpoint."

When you have an opinion leader for some area of your life you tend to look at that area of life from HIS point of view -- viewpoint.

You may have no idea that it is HIS viewpoint you use, or you may know it's his.

For instance, the great philosopher Aristotle, who was so accurate on hundreds of scientific observations and reports, announced that an object would fall with a speed proportional to its weight.

That happens not to be true!

That datum was accepted as law for 2,000 years! It happens to not only be untrue but it can be disproved by anyone who tests it. In other words, thousands of "scientists" over thousands of years, were in the viewpoint of Aristotle when it came to a very basic law of physics -- the law which Aristotle said was that heavier objects fell at faster speeds than lighter objects.

You might even find YOURSELF thinking this is true -- so pervasive can be the viewpoint of a prominent authority figure.

Your own viewpoint can only be developed when you are free of the false viewpoints of others and then observe for yourself. Your observations, still, may be faulty, but at least it is your own viewpoint.

You see now one of the reasons I choose the word Viewpoint for the name of this Journal.

I'm giving you MY viewpoint of health matters. You already have many viewpoints on many different subjects. Here is the terrible truth of it all:

You will always be better off if you DON'T use someone else's viewpoint for a subject, but YOUR OWN viewpoint.

Even if your viewpoint is wrong, or is based on faulty observation, you'll find it easier to manage YOUR OWN viewpoint than to get rid of the viewpoint you THINK is yours, but really is your just assuming the viewpoint of another!

I write to you, inviting you to TEST your viewpoints against logic and my own observations.

If you find my viewpoint satisfactory, you can make it YOUR OWN. It is not, then, my viewpoint, but yours and we happen to share the same viewpoint. Two pe4rsons can have the same viewpoint!

Here I have presented some very important philosophy about health matters, and I'll be coming back to it in future writings.

It's the viewpoint you take on without much thought that gives you the problem. I call it a viewpoint which is fixed -- where you think it's yours without understanding it at all.

Actually, what you have done is to accept someone else's viewpoint without understanding it, and then you consider that it is "yours." It is not! It is still his -- because you did not understand it when you adopted it.

Understanding a concept depends upon understanding the words used to describe it. Never underestimate the importance of getting agreed-upon definitions of the words you use or read.

You can shed false viewpoints by looking critically at them -- comparing their view of things with the real world.

Had she told you that "eggs are bad because once I ate an egg and got sick," you could THEN judge that her reason was not adequate to support that viewpoint, particularly as your own.

If she said: "I am a research scientist, studying eggs, and my research shows me that eggs have harmful substances in them," you would have far more reason to understand her viewpoint. You might adopt this as your own. But, it still suffers from the possibility that SHE was basing her viewpoint on false data and false observations.

So, accepting someone else's viewpoint, without understanding completely the reason for it is a dangerous action!

You can get stuck in the viewpoints of your opinion leaders without even knowing it. It's like a brain washing operation to stick you in a viewpoint that isn't yours.

Whose viewpoints do you think doctors are stuck in?

They have been exposed to some of the most intense brain washing you can imagine, by drug companies particularly. Medical schools are places where gullible students are hypnotized into the millions of pieces of data they learn -- for instance all 205 bones in your body, by their Latin names?

Once they have this "superior knowledge," they assume the altitude of opinion leader and YOU fall for it!

I had a medical doctor write to me recently. He was commenting on some of my claims for the benefits of intravenous chelation therapy. This is a doctor who also happens to be a psychiatrist -- a breed of cat unusually prone to accepting the false ideas of others, and then being accepted as an Opinion Leader by many.

There is another doctor who wrote me the following, and amazing, concept about logic and the need to define terms, a medical doctor, Steve H.

Dr. H is a professor at UCLA, and has a basement full of mice on which he is doing experiment on longevity. He wrote:

I don't give a rat's posterior portion about the exact definitions! Reality is not chained by definitions. Most concepts in language are somewhat "fuzzily" defined and yet we still get along fine. In biology and medicine we have a lot of rather vaguely defined things, like "fever," "disease," "life," etc., and yet we still manage to do our jobs. It would be nice to have perfectly agreed-on definitions for some of these things, but the problem is that nobody can agree on where to draw lines, so we table the problem because there is no solution.

There! Out of the mouth of one of them is an admission of the problem -- they don't even try to get agreed-upon definitions of words. Therefore, they must be out of communication with one another, and, further, with us, as patients.

Oh! How easy it is for such a stupid fool to live off the viewpoints of others -- claiming them as his own, but never understanding any of them.

That is a man who is teaching YOUR future doctors! You have now seen a typical source of a truly dangerous viewpoint, which all too many medical students get exposed to.

The point of this Viewpoint is that you are probably very greatly influenced by some one or two gurus or opinion leaders. You are in their viewpoint. If you are stuck in the viewpoint of some doctor, he, in turn is stuck in the viewpoint of some drug company.

The drug company wants to make money selling "Zytek" (or whatever). They have false research reports showing that "Zytek cures ziticpathy." They visit the doctor and offer him a "research grant" if he will test Zytek in his clinic. They tell him they will pay him $100 for each patient visit where he, in all honesty (?) diagnoses a patient as "needing" Zytek, then giving it to him, and then having him return for many patient visits (at $100 per visit), and the doctor is to write up his observations and turn them in.

Perhaps there is an honest doctor here, somewhere, but most of the doctors will be glad to accept the $5,000 they can get from those 50 patient visits, where, usually, the nurse handles the entire affair.

Then, the doctor writes up his "report," "I have tested Zytek on 46 of my patients and it 'works.' " Or whatever he says -- just enough so that he can get another grant on the next drug.

You think doctors are honest?

Doctors love to share viewpoints, and accept one another's viewpoints. ]

Doctors certainly don't want to accept my viewpoint because I am not trained.

They will not accept YOUR viewpoint, no matter how correct it might be.

So, you accept the viewpoint of some doctor, and then you may well turn out to be a real opinion leader for a bunch of other people.

You understand that you did not understand how the doctor arrived at his viewpoint, and therefore when you accepted that viewpoint, you also don't understand how that viewpoint was arrived at.

Viewpoint: "Eggs are bad for you!"

Actually, of course, it is more likely to be: "Zytek is good for you!"

Same thing!

You might question the egg claim, because it goes against common sense, but you don't feel inclined to doubt the "Zytek" claim because you have accepted the doctor as YOUR opinion leader.

Opinion Leader: Someone whose viewpoints you accept without thinking!

So, there you are, an opinion leader for many of your friends. You have accepted this false viewpoint (about Zytek) and you now pass it on to your friends.

"John, I've just learned that Zytek is good for you."

John believes you because he trusts you.

We have this very common disease in our society -- the disease of willingness to accept viewpoints without investigation. We accept these viewpoints from those who we regard as opinion leaders.

You are a "Chester" to some "Rajah!"

First, it's too bad, but almost aut5omatic that any doctor, who has gone through the normal medical school, does NOT have his own viewpoint, even though he says he does.

You see I believe that man is basically good and that it is through mistaken observations that he assumes false rules and policies, which then lead him into evil ways. When we clear up his false data we can return a man to following his basic goodness. The trick is to get him to give up those false ideas, himself. You cannot force someone to accept data which is not his, except that you worsen his condition.

Unless he has recanted, or spoken out against some of the most obvious evils of modern medicine, a doctor is most likely to be stuffed with false viewpoints -- not his own, but taken from medical school and other bad experiences.

There are MANY good doctors and it's almost a test of faith to ask them what they think of the FDA. If they come out with epithets, and complaints, they are probably worth asking the second question of.

My good friend, Dr. Robert Mendelsohn, used to say that one way to choose a doctor is to ask if he would be willing to testify, honestly and effectively, against another doctor in a malpractice suite.

I don't want to leave doctors off the hook easily, as you may t5hink I have so far. How about those doctors who write BOOKS claiming to give you true data about the health of your heart?

How about the authors of the best seller, Fit For Life, Harvey and Marilyn Diamond?

The Diamonds wanted to promote a non-meat diet (which they could have done with intellectual honesty) but they choose the dishonest route of taking some lies that happened to suit their purposes and repeating them in their book.

"You may be wondering if eggs fare any better than flesh foods as a source for protein. Actually high-quality protein is not what we should search for. High-quality amino acids are what we need to produce the protein we must have. Unless eggs are eaten raw, the amino acids are coagulated by heat and thereby lost. Even if they are eaten raw, eggs are laid by hens that are fed arsenic to kill parasites and stimulate egg production, and you ingest some of that virulent poison. Also eggs contain much sulfur, which puts a heavy strain on the liver and kidneys. The beautiful human body does not require anything that stinks for its survival. Eggs stink. Just drop one on your driveway on a hot day and let it sit there for about eight hours, then take a good whiff of the effluvium. There's no difference between that and putting eggs in your body at 98.6 degrees for eight hours. The next bowel movement after the consumption of eggs will certainly bear this out. Excuse me for being rude, but the facts must be acknowledged."

The writing above, by the Diamonds, is such a pure lie that it's hard to imagine anything more harmful.

Yet, the Diamonds, and their Book, Fit For Life, are very popular Opinion Leaders for millions of Americans.

The status of an opinion leader depends only partially on his detailed knowledge of some health subject. He can bamboozle you with Latin terms and data you don't understand. But, there is a way to detect such frauds!

You can and should depend on your impression of his integrity. Does he give false data to you about something you know about, personally, so that he is probably giving you false data on a subject you don't know?

You can judge, also, based on his philosophy of wellness. That is the subject of these many Journals -- a philosophy of wellness. What does he think about the use of drugs?

Your opinion leader has, really, only two different ways by which HE gets his opinions.

Either he observes, personally and reports on his personal observations, or he takes his opinions from, in turn, some other opinion leader who may have made personal observations, or not.

You'd be amazed that most people you think of as opinion leaders really get their information and ideas from other opinion leaders.

There are really very few OBSERVERS in our midst.

Yes, you can and should ask questions of your prospective doctor. Here's that same Dr. Steve H., who teaches medical students at UCLA, the one I quoted earlier, in another chilling statement of our times!

"In short, I think that dead molecules do ever more complex things the more of them you assemble, and what we messily and not too decisively call "life" arises at some level of complexity -- but where, exactly, is fuzzy.

…

"Materialism has been gaining for hundreds of years simply because it is the simplest hypothesis, and there is not much need for additional theories to explain reality. All the evidence suggests that thinking is done by the physical brain, not by anything else.

…

"I've never been able to find cheer through believing in nonsense. All churches cannot be right, for they make contradictory claims. Therefore we already know there are a lot of people out there cheering up in churches with erroneous views. What's the point of that?"

When you think, again, that such a man is teaching YOUR doctor, you shouldn't be surprised at what you get!

An interesting opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal provides this data and opinion from the leader of The Christian Coalition:

"[After the last election] exit polls demonstrate that.. a remarkable 33% of all voters were self-identified born-again evangelicals -- the largest turnout in history.

…

"A recent survey conducted for the national Federation of Independent Business found that 43% of all small-business owners are evangelical Christians.

…

"Religious conservatives eschew efforts to replace the social engineering of the left with their own government-run Promised Land. Moses delivered the 10 Commandments, not a 10-point legislative program. The values we advocate are learned, not mandated. They are values taught around kitchen tables, on fathers' knees, during bedtime stories, and at midnight mass and Sabbath services. These values suffer when weighed down by the heavy hand of government. Therefore, anything that reduces the role of the Washington bureaucracy in the lives of families is a step in the right direction.

"Religious values in the United States are NOT in the minority. They are strong and getting stronger!"

In an earlier issue of Viewpoint I defined "life" to include a required acknowledgment of some non-material agent. I, personally, don't think you can define "life" or "wellness" or "natural death" without having some awareness of the necessity for a spiritual factor in these health areas.

Do we want atheists teaching our medical students? Can you see how a person who does not believe in God would have a limited view of wellness?

Dr. Steve H. teaches second year medical students about vitamins. This is what he wrote to me about vitamins:

"As for the question of whether 5,000 mg of vitamin C is better than (say) 1,000 mg, we look at the evidence and the disease on a case by case basis. I have not been able to find any evidence that does that high are of extra benefit for anything, with the possible exception that the antihistaminic effect of that much vitamin C may give you a bit more symptomatic relief form particularly nasty, watery colds. If you think such does are of benefit, let's see your evidence."

Would you like this person to be teaching YOUR doctor about vitamins?

Who do you think IS teaching your doctor?

Drug company oriented teachers who, themselves, believe that anything over 60 mg of vitamin C per day is a complete waste!

While the medical student is trying to memorize the 200 Latin names for the bones, and the thousand or their Latin words for diseases, and the long fancy names for drugs, all the while worrying about keeping his grades up so he can graduate -- while he's doing that, isn't he likely to see his teachers as Gods?

He is working 18+ hours per day to learn stuff you will never understand -- those Latin names.

Isn't he likely to be very dependent on the professors for the grades that provide his ticket to the Medical Degree, and a life of affluence?

Isn't he likely to accept what they say, in the midst of the confusion about those 200 bones, without question?

Isn't he likely to be stuck in the viewpoint of HIS opinion leader, the teacher in the medical school?

What criteria? You should ask a doctor about his philosophy of health?

You'll see these issues of philosophy being discussed in these pages of Viewpoints.

Does the doctor have an opinion whether a virus is alive, or not?

I wrote to Dr. H: if a virus is not alive, how can an "anti-viral" do anything to "kill" the virus?"

Dr. H replied:

"It can't. But it doesn't matter for the anti-viral works to eliminate virus production anyway -- no matter how you choose to think of how it does what it does. If you want to view a virus as non-life, but instead rather as a small complicated automatic molecular machine being given a funny part (the antiviral molecule) which monkey wrenches it so that it does not work mechanically and more, that's fine with me.

Life and non-life at this level are not well-defined (I don't care what your dictionary says)."

The entire research emphasis on the virus is a fraud, as far as I am concerned. But, I'd still listen to a rational argument in favor of it. Dr. H does not provide that rationale. He is a professor of medical students!

Can the doctor give you a definition of healthy death? Does he have a definition of "life," or "wellness?"

Is he, personally, in good health?

Does he tell you to avoid eggs and butter?

What is his opinion about the FDA?

Does he think chemotherapy might be "bad" but that there is no other choice? Does he think that 500 mg of daily vitamin C is a pretty large dose?

What view does he have of God and vitamins?

These questions seem too obvious to you, don't they. But, that's because you are already a prime candidate to BE an opinion leader for millions of Americans who foolishly think that the FDA is their friend, that eggs and butter are dangerous foods, and that bypass surgery is God's Great Gift to heart patients.

You see, you are already so far advanced over the "average guy" that you qualify as an important opinion leader. There are, literally, hundreds of people who probably look to YOU for information and opinions on health matters.

These issues of Viewpoint are helping you to construct a philosophy of health. It might start out looking as Karl Loren's viewpoint, but I invite you to make it your own!

To do that you would have to study it until you either understand it or reject it. Don't accept even my viewpoints blindly.

The philosophy is far more important to build than some knowledge about the difference between Cysteine and Ornithine!

Rather, you should have an opinion on the relative importance of toxins versus bacteria as a source of disease.

You should have a few cleansing programs that you can describe. WHICH ONE is not as important as knowing that cleansing is more important to pursue than Tylenol.