A few days ago Dr. Karen Becker put up this post warning folk that a recent peer-reviewed study by Judy Morgan and co revealed the side effects to many of the most used flea and worm treatments are multiples higher than the insert suggests (bringing estimates in line with the much higher European figures). Simple as that – be careful with these pesticides in your pet and please watch our video that explains all the ways you can prevent these parasites without using neurotoxic ingredients, simple home remedies that, when you check out Google Scholar reveal they are not only very effective but safe and cheap. For E.g. crushed pumpkin seeds are not only safe AND more effective than the most popular chemical anti-wormer Fenbendazole, a gut wormer that pets and horses are now becoming immune to, but worms do not develop resistance to the active ingredients therein (kainic acid). Or geranium oil on the neck which inhabits the dermal layers just like regular flea drops, repelling fleas and ticks alike. It’s basic stuff for natural vets like Becker but fantastically useful to her 2.4mil followers (the most popular vet in the world?).
Can’t wait to tune in guys, thanks for all the FREE info. And we did. 19k reactions. 8k comments. 24k shares. It went down a bomb. Then the problems started.
Many conventional vets saw this message and, versed only in their conventional drugs see this warning message (peer-reviewed study) as a direct threat to their way of doing business. Smelling blood, conventional vets flocked to her page and, using their own names and veterinary degrees as shields, began slinging self-righteous abuse at Becker which resulted in Karen days later feeling she had to post this up to explain herself to her detractors.
This has made me really, really mad. It is unbelievable the level of ignorance out there. I don’t mean dumb or stupidity, that suggests a lack of mental faculties. I mean ignorance, ignorant to the facts. With today’s access to information – a quick Google Scholar would tell these vets that natural methods are well worth a try, they easily compete and are completely safe – it’s staggering that a fellow professional, armed with not a jot of natural information themselves, feel within their rights to come on to another professional’s public page, a business page, one of a natural grandmaster, and throw unsubstantiated muck and vitriol at her in public (they all too rarely present science of their own, media sound bites are the weapon of choice for the troll).
Can you imagine Becker doing something like that? Swamping a vet clinic with studies every time they tried to sell their shit products?!
It’s an utter disgrace.
While 99% of people on your page are great, there is always the 1% of those unhappy, poorly versed and often slightly inebriated few who want a row. They need verification in their lives and will not stop until they feel they are shown to be right. Dogs barking through a fence.
But the fact that poorly versed professionals, people who rarely if ever debate a subject in public, let alone offer out FREE advice on a subject of their choice to help their clients AVOID sickness, now feel entitled to attack a well-trained, highly-qualified and deeply respected practitioner of a subject in this manner is truly shameful on the industry.
How did it get to this? Section 3 of my book “Feeding Dogs” explains. In short, debate is good, it’s essential to science. Is my hypothesis better than yours? Lay out your argument for all to see, compare it to mine and we’ll see what the general scientific public think. In this time of covid, it is this process that is almost completely lacking largely as it has to be said, it would reveal the gross scientific malfeasance currently occurring from the top down. In war, debate and public discourse are the first things to go. Whether you realise it or not, you are now at war. As dark it sounds, with 1 in 2 of peer-reviewed studies published in our top journals (Lancet and NEJM) absolutely false (not incorrect, misleadingly false, refs available on request), Big pharma has not only infiltrated but completely overrun the defences. Our knowledge centres are now occupied. Most of our “science” now happens behind closed doors. Even the editors of our top journals are not permitted to view or critique the data the industry gathers to support their products. Instead, the results of their studies are handed down to us on stone tablets, presented more often than not by our ever-wise, ever-trusted elected officials and it is upon this science our doctors, vets and humans alike, conduct their business. And upon this science ONLY.
So, I understand more than most that our vets were dealt a shitty hand by learning their licks in a vet university heavily infiltrated with pet food and drug money. We get it as it’s so plain to see – high-carb junk food made by candy companies for meat-eaters? Annual boosters for already vaccinated pets? Neither without a single study in support?! It’s so telling of corporate corruption that it’s nearly laughable… if it wasn’t for the harm caused.
Today, our smartest kids are coming out parroting the lessons of big pharma and candy companies, unable, it seems, to think for themselves, to debate, to research a subject for themselves. Minds closed, they are worked to the bone and now, more often than not, are actually paid by the same companies (Mars has more than 50,000 vets on the payroll). We get all that. They love animals (undoubtedly). They work so, so hard (absolutely, don’t we all). They want the best for their pet (I don’t doubt it for a second). That it is the industry that produces them. All fair points. It’s not the average vet’s fault.
OK.
But to suggest that the plummeting trust and rising anger in the public stemming from this situation is unjust on our behalf, is also completely unfair. At some stage, you have to make an effort to understand our side too. We are today too well educated to keep picking up what you’re putting down. We see what’s going on and your continued, poorly informed and belligerent bullshit is making us mad.
Sadly though, it’s unlikely to stop without a fight and here’s why. The evidence is ALREADY out there. Feeding Dogs, for just one example, is written. It’s there. Using just the science in front of me (and therefore in front of every vet on the planet) it clearly reveals the true wrath of bad pet food on our pets and why it is occurring. 1200 references. #1 best-seller in small animal veterinary medicine. Not a single point contested by the other side. All the science they have been calling for and yet… they won’t read it. Can’t bring themselves to. Because, just like those vets on Becker’s page, to calmly read and ingest the evidence in front of you is to pull back that curtain and reveal that you are absolutely wrong. What you thought was once the mighty Oz is in fact nothing more than a clever illusion. To simply listen to the other side of the debate risks destroying who you are. Your raison d’être. What you have worked so hard to become. What your mortgage and kids depend on. It would make you sit back and think “dear god, what have we done?”
It takes real guts to do something like that. Sadly, it seems most vets and doctors stumble at this hurdle. Giant egos, confused by corporate nonsense in a profession where admitting culpability is absolutely not the norm, combine to fuel the truly terrible amounts of cognitive dissonance required to ignore the very obvious facts (the state of having inconsistent thoughts, beliefs, or attitudes, in the face of the most obvious and prudent course of action. For more here I very strongly recommend you read “Black Box Thinking” by Syed that compares the medical and aviation industries. Brilliant read).
But Becker has guts. Did you see that video she made on neutering back in 2013? The one where she publicly breaks down thinking of the pets she has harmed in the past by neutering them early?
With just one video, this incredible vet changed the health-course of millions of pets worldwide. We all saw. We all learned. Not one of us criticised. We thanked her. Now, most well-read pet owners KNOW that to neuter before fully grown is a massive mistake but it took the courage of one great vet to get us there.
That’s a real medical practitioner. Equipped with the same bad start as the rest of them, Becker has studied intensely BOTH sides of the divide. Learning. Adapting. EVOLVING. And now teaching.
Sadly, it seems, such practitioners are critically endangered, a rarity hunted to extinction by a bunch of ignorant, self-righteous dick heads.
And you want us to just stand back and let you do it???
So I DO blame the vets, at least in this case. I’m not going to keep letting you rob my house just because you had a poor start in life. It has to STOP some time and the sooner the better. The public have no real access to the powers that created the situation. The only people we can really access are the vets disseminating the corporate message. This is how it changes and it’s going to be painful for some for a while (just not as painful as the sickness and deaths incurred by so many pets having consumed so many needless junk food and drug products dished out by your industry today).
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As always, please think carefully about the vets you are financially supporting. Seek out the vets you want to support, and support them. If your Irish/UK pro-raw vet is NOT on the list below, please let me know.
https://rfvs.info/find-a-vet/
