Homestead mailing list

[Clansgian AT wmconnect.com]

> This is fine if you're looking at large populations, but it doesn't
> address individual cases,

This has been a good thread.  It hasn't changed my mind but it has changed my 
range of views.  The new view is appalling and disturbing to me, but it's one 
I hadn't actually achieved before.


Marie's comment above was the catalyst.  That's right.  At the point you are 
facing and accident of disease, all bets of odds are called off.  If you are 
heading at highway speed toward the car that has just run a stop sign, you 
ARE 
going to have an accident and statistics suddenly lose all meaning.

We are viewing, I'd say, the population as a triage in it's original useage, 
not just the prep room in a clinic or such.  During war the medical teams set 
up the preliminary examinations to divide the wounded into three groups  1) 
Those who would likely survive even if they didn't get immediate attention  
2)  
Those who were unlikely to survive even if they did get immediate attenton 
and 
3)  Those for whom immediate attention meant living or dying.  The first two 
groups waited while the doctors worked on the third so as to best use the 
limited medical capacity on large numbers of people.

Similar to that, there are problably some people who just aren't going to get 
this or that disease no matter what.  Some who are going to get a disease no 
matter what they do.  And the third group, just like the third triage group, 
might get the disease but prevention is likely to avoid that.

How big are those groups?  The literature I read and the examples I know 
would tell me that the third group is quite large, I'd say over 99% of the 
population for any given condition.  My suspicion is that many participating 
in this 
thread would put the number much lower.  But that's of no real importance to 
my point.

What about individuals?  What about the person who despite of taking every 
precaution and making very prudent choices still falls victim to some malady? 
 
Likewise what about the person who flaunts all caution to the wind and yet 
lives a charmed life?  And that's were I had such a boggling time focusing on 
the 
point because it is so foreign to me.

The thing is, there's no accounting for it.  It happens, we all know it and 
have witnessed it.  Who hasn't, as way of comparison, planted some beans or 
cabbages in the garden and one day several of them just die.  Can't tell why, 
they just die.  Who hasn't gone to their coop to find a chicken, young and 
doing 
fine the day before, just keeled over dead.  Likewise we have a cat that 
early 
this year got into (and lost) so many fights he was nothing but a mass of 
open sores, swelled and inoperative joints, and could not stand.  We made him 
comfortable to let him die in peace and gave him no treatement of any kind.  
He's 
fine now and besides a small notch in one ear, you'd never know he'd ever 
left the porch.  Things happen for no reason and things happen in defiance of 
all 
the stats and rules.

But in what way do those events speak to how we raise cabbages or chickens in 
our normal season to season operation of a farmstead?  

Likewise when looking at, and I own it a good thing that a body does look at 
it, the things that contribute to the prevention of accidents and disease, 
what does the exception that defies the precautions have to say to us?   It 
seems 
(and this is the view of which I was speaking)  that there is one view that 
if an individual has the misfortune of some malady, suddenly all the 
precautions for preventing or worsening that malady are called off, null and 
void, not 
to be considered.

Yes Marie is right, the things I've been citing apply to large populations.  
I happen to be a member of a large population, that is, a human being.  At 
least one who so far as he knows does not have any of those predispositions 
nor 
maladies.   But noting, for example, that colon cancer is more prevalent in 
people who eat a lot of red meat by few vegetables, and yet I knew a strict 
vegetarian who got colon cancer, would I throw another steak on the grill 
.... 
because of his individuality?   But more to the point here, if I found that I 
had 
the precancerous condition for colon cancer, would I then throw two steaks on 
the grill because ..... I'm an individual case and all the stats are suddenly 
called off?

That's the view I am struggling to focus on.   But here's my view:  For 
people who really try to promote their health and make all the right choices 
and 
still get sick, I have all the sympathy and support possible.  I am truly 
sorry. 
 But those who wreck their health and flare up in indignation that they 
contributed to their sickness ... and (this is the part) refuse to give up 
the bad 
choices because after all they are an individual and the prevailing wisdom 
doesn't apply to individuals ... I have .... less sympathy.