Denis:
>>I would not have written  this message had not Peter naively considered
>the lies of Comby  as an >>expression of his "frankness". I have tried to
>put up the case in a way that is as "unemotional",  >>as "detached",  i.e.
as >"american", as is possible for me to do , taking into account how dear
>>these ideas are to my mind, and how sad I'm to realize that these ideas
>hopefully hold much more >>positive prospects  than the self declared
>european leaders  of this movement .

KIRT :
>Don't worry, Denis, no one takes every post as Truth (especially not yours
I'd imagine). It appears to >me that you may be a greater victim of GCB
than you consider Mr. Cromby (or is Mr. Cromby simply >wayward IYO?).

Denis :
My dictionnary says wayward = stubborn, but it doesn't really make sense,
does it ?. Bruno is a partly a victim of Burger , and partly a victim of
himself, due to his loneliness .

Kirt :
>Obsessing for seven years with finding obscure historical precedents for
instincto as a way of doing >in GCB seems beyond reason.

Denis :
Actually it just started like you all, from a desire to obviously know more
than what just laid down in La Guerre du Cru....  When I first read about
Clara Davis (the US pediatrician) experiments on newly weaned children a
few months later,  I guess my little background in philosophy helped  me
believe harder than anybody else that it was not simply mere luck if these
experiments had taken place in the States, that there were necessarily
many more  people who had believed in instinct....What really set me on
work was reading the arguments of Clara's  contradictors : I 'm not really
prone to intellectual efforts, except in the face of contradiction.
 I was very proud of my discovery (if I had known...) and next time I went
to Montram?, I spoke about it to many people. Nobody was really interested,
except Bruno (who  didn't know about it, since Burger never  talked  about
it) and a woman working in a neurophysiology lab in Paris. She sort of put
me down with these words : " Clara Davis ? Of course ! I've mentionned it
to Burger several times, but he responded vaguely, asking me to send him
copies of what I 'd found".... Clearly Burger never showed any APPARENT
interest in the history of the idea to anybody. Which of course did not
mean  he was not interested at all. He just didn't want people to find
interest in the topic.

You know what I did afterwards ? I tried to find out if and where Clara
Davis was still alive. I wanted to tell her the good news about the
community in Montram? ...I wanted to know if the children she had taken in
her experiments  had lived on  some  instinctive semi-raw diet after the
end of the official experiment. I wanted to konw how they fared. That would
have made them the oldest known Raised-on-INstinct boys in the western
world. This I wanted to know, and many other things which apparently Burger
didn't care about...I soon found myself quite isolated in my dream of
uniting all  goodwill, except for  Comby, who, on the face of my research
and my growing  appetite for historical knowledge,  soon  asked me to write
books that we could sign together, since "he knew so many editors" ( that
was at the time I was reediting his books for free ).
The search lasted longer than I thought, but my initial intuitions proved
right. What had  started  as short, disinterested pursuit, it ended  up as
a private collection of  old science  and philosophy books, with their
faded  spine and their amber smell....
Clara Davis died in 1959, in the same way she had lived, unnoticed. But an
intimate friend of her died about eight or ten years ago. If only I had
known before...

I must admit however that I had quite a bit of luck  : I had already
abandonned both  research on Clara Davis whereabouts  and the history of
instinct in philosophy and science, when, looking for some other reference,
I found (in 1993) a small 50 page  book published a century ago, which
clearly stated that the change of taste was that feature which allowed us
to instinctively  select the right  quantity foods, provided these are raw.
This discovery was the one who set me on the right track (you should have
seen my excitement), and I never stopped buying books ever since, pulling
on the tiny thread I had. Travelling thru  my books  (I've always loved to
travel, and I've always loved old books ..) lead me from Kansas City, MO,
to Chicago, and New York, and back to Paris Academy of science and
medicine. This success encouraged me to start another quest for Clara
Davis. From scratch. My wife would surely smile at the recollection of
those afternoons we spent sending  100+  mailings to scads of  "Davises" in
the States....
Of course you are entitled to think this "high interest" for the idea makes
me a victim  of Burger.....I guess I did it because I wanted to be the last
victim ....

I remember, though,  one particular discovery in a french magazine  called
"Medecine" published in the  1950's, which I had bought in a garage sale at
a time when I thought I would never be able to prove the plagiarism . There
was a fascinating  article on the multiple use and processing techinques
of coca leaves in South America (amongst brazilian indians, amongst
bolivians...) : these anthropologists had found out that   the heavier the
denaturation, the more powerful the addiction. I remember having  thought
for the first time : "What's going on here  ? Are we  turning our back from
some truth already known long ago  ?".
Many discoveries I've made.  Such as this US anthropologist/archeologist
who argues about the origin of agriculture having taken place in  the
tropical forest  and not in the dry plains ( ie : out of boredom, and not
out of necessity ) an idea that is dear to my heart. I even have  books
debunking health instinct theories from the XIXth c. written by high
ranking  pharmacists. It's good to know what kind of  counter arguments you
are likely to face when defending an instinctive point of view. It is
always a killer when you reply : "Look here guy, somebody used the same
argument as you did in 1845. Time has passed since then.... "

But you are certainly wrong Kirt, regarding "obscure" historical
precedents. Unless of course top level academicians are, seen from your
modern ivory tower,  obscure personnages.  Your obsessive fear of
vegetarianism makes you forget that, throughout their grandiose history,
many of them made heavy pronoucements in favor of an undenatured diet.
Could it be that this fear of denaturation was also due to some instinctive
intuitions  ? There is so much diversity amongst vegetarians. Between
Shelley, who  did not believe in instinct, and Hitler, who  believed in
instinct, for example...

When it comes to instinct, scientists appear to have been  much more
intelligent, or rather than intelligent,   much more concerned about
"MORALITY" than before...  The question is therefore : is this appearance
supported by facts or is it the result of the "locking in" of scientific
thought by the big money ?  My opinion : both.
You know what Kirt? You make scientists look really stupid, thinking that
only at the end of the XXth c,  will they be  allowed to understand what is
going on here. Health Sciences are ideologically driven  since the
beginning of time, and ideology is marketing, and marketing is money.

Kirt :
>One could ask you the same question Peter asked Bruno: if you knew so
much, as you always seem to on >every issue, why didn't you go to the
authorities (instead of hiding in your love of history)?

Denis :
I don't understand what you mean by "hiding"... in your love of history.
Shall I understand that you need some more information on my personal
background ? "Ask and thou will be answered..."

As far as Burger is concerned, soon or later we knew somebody would speak
up.  Too many people knew about it and I was too far from the intimate
circle, not knowing any of the people involved. Better somebody else than
me. When Ficin (a former permanent who set the police straight on Montrame,
and who gave all the information to the journalist  ) met Comby at the end
of last year or very beginning of this year, Comby immediately called me
saying: "he knows everything I know, it is just a matter of weeks now".

Clearly Comby knew enough to put Burger in jail. Comby is a liar, because
he needs to lie to hide his total absence of ethics, in almost every
subject of his life, except, I guess, frienship. Did  he deserve to be
bothered by the police ? I decided he should not. Why ? May be because I
owe him to have told me the truth from the very beginning. May be also
because I feel pity for him more than anything else.  But that doesn't mean
I should let him lie to his readership.

Comby knew and he stayed in Montrame. He stayed well after he saw  Nicole
crawling in her blood, having just  been  thrashed a minut ago   by her
husband ( ask him precise dates and you'll see for yourself that it took
him months to make up his mind...) whereas he could have left the chateau
immediately and go back to his parents house where he now resides. When he
first told me   about this  incident (that was already some time  after it
took place, the day when he also told me  Nicole had a cancer ),  I called
him a  "con" if he didn't leave Montrame at once, but he prefered to stay .
I don't remember exactly what he answered. When cornered he always find
blabla to justify himself, like his master, Burger.
Comby never raised a finger against Burger, except sliding confidences to
selected people, like me and others, whose faithfulness he was eager to
secure. The least he should  have done, given his personal involvement in
the movement, and his future projects, was to leave. But the guy was in
clover. Living the life of Riley.  He left only when he was summoned  to.
Much after the incident and everything else.
And this is why his image in France is so low, he cannot even grab it on
the ground .


Cheers
Denis