>>-As anti-vaccination pundits often point out, the drop in many illnesses
>cannot be correlated to immunization jabs -- even polio had dropped off
>dramatically before the Salk vaccine was widely available.
>
>Oh, crap. Maybe people were boiling their water and had realised not to swim
>at the beach- polio virus doesn't mind salt water, and summer epidemics were
>common in coastal cities...

...supporting my statement that awareness, e.i. hygiene, plays a large role
in the avoidance of organisms associated with illness. But the above
"oh, crap" is full of maybes, whereas anyong willing to let the
information enter their brain could bring up 100 pages of evidence
supporting my statement.

>
>>-Any improvement in longevity due to antibiotics is/was purely
>temporary, as the equilibrium shifts and the bugs stay ahead of
>the pharmo's products.
>
>Untrue. If you get pneumonia, they will give you an antibiotic that will
>kill the germ. Also, people rarely die of urinary tract infection these
>days, but early in the century it was a big killer of otherwise healthy
>people. We are still a long way ahead of the germs...

Untrue right back. The pharmos are all in a lather about the drug-
and vaccination-resistant strains of everything from tuberculosis
to pertussis. In 1996 I had a bacterial pneumonia that *laughed
off* Zithromax/azithromycin, the latest whoopee-shit antibiotic.
What it *did* do was give me massive hives requiring more medicine
with its own side-effects. The pneumonia cleared when I started
dropping about 100g/day ascorbic acid.

What the pharmos fear is lost profits as the entrenched, profitable
"germ-are-bad, we-have-the-drugs-you-need" model gives
way to the dietary-immunologically-centered viewpoint.
Having unwitting support by blowhards on mailing lists
only keeps these dead notions still kicking.

>
>>-Aseptic surgery has been around for quite some time,
>
>What, since Pasteur?

Stop being silly. Modern surgical technique was formed mostly
in the 1940's & 50's, but the antisepic procedures were embraced
rather earlier, after bitter resistance by disbelievers
in germ theory. Look it up!