Just a few days ago I read an account of Farrah Fawcett’s life and death.
She died of anal cancer, did you know that? Anal Cancer, I thought to myself, I can almost just imagine how miserable that might be. She could have gotten a colostomy, but as her partner Ryan O’Neal said, how could the girl in the swim suit have a colostomy bag, how could such a thing be possible? So seeing no other option, she traveled the world, trying different alternative therapies looking for a cure.
“Oh my god!” I thought, “Was she mad?” Was she some kind of weak minded faith healing nincompoop?
Then I remembered myself, and how just days before I’d admitted to Dr.M. that my main objection to colostomy all these years was vanity. And that the FDA just deported the father of the strange therapy that I was attempting instead, involving human parasites from Africa, as an alternative to having my anus cut off.
Yes indeed, on the face of it I am as deluded as the next nut job. But although I have said some harsh and sarcastic things here, about the Food & Drug Administration, (They are not to be forgiven for being manipulated by big Pharma and the medical industrial complex) I believe that each individual agent is trying to do his or her best, with the little money and the huge restrictions given them, to keep us safe. I can not imagine what the agent who found themselves in Jasper’s lab thought, realizing that Jasper himself was the growth medium for helmenths sent out all over the world, for truly sick people to infect themselves with.
If there is a precedent, I can not imagine what it would be. For a very long time insulin was extracted from horse urine, but those were special horses, sequestered horses, horses that lived isolated and privileged lives. Jasper got himself the worms so that he no longer had to live the sequestered life of a profound asthmatic, so that he could step out the door and live out among the pathogens. But here in the paranoid 21st century, we have gone so far as to try to turn pregnant women into physiological “clean rooms, ” to control what they eat, breathe, & even hear, to prevent contamination of the fetus by the “host.” How is a culture that has deteriorated to that point going to wrap its bureaucratic mind around the idea of a free range homo sapiens hosting an organism with which to infect other people.
But what if, despite the fragmented scientific evidence, and the anecdotal information, and the bizarre laboratory conditions we have presented them with, the FDA actually thinks there might be something to this therapy. What if they wanted to give it further consideration, but it flew in the face of every guideline they’d constructed for themselves and had imposed upon them in the last 40 years? Tied and gagged how could they seek to investigate a thing so. . . beguiling? Here’s a thought. In the couple of weeks before the FDA descended upon AutoImmune Therapies, the hygiene hypothesis and worm therapy had been in the major media twice. There is no doubt that people were going to begin to ask their doctors questions.
I humbly submit that from the standpoint of the patient it is less effective, at this juncture, for the doctor to pretend to know nothing, or say cryptically, “look around on the internet I’m sure you’ll find something.” than to say: “the FDA just outlawed that therapy two weeks ago, contact them and they may be able to give you some information.” The fortunate truth is that the socio-economic status of those who watch House, or listen to Radio Lab makes them likely to contact their Senator or Congressman if they don’t like what the FDA tells them. People won’t officially complain unless you give them something concrete to complain about. “My therapy is being ignored by big pharma” just doesn’t quite cut it. Yet it is entirely possible that the FDA may have troubled its own waters to give our boat a wave upon which to float. I’m going to take advantage of this ridiculous set of circumstances, even as I am no more sure of Helminthic therapy than I am of string theory. I’m going to write a few letters, make a few phone calls, and hope and expect that others will be doing the same thing right along with me. Because there are apostates in fox holes, I am one.
