The Casablanca Factor
At the end of the classic movie, Casablanca, the police captain orders his men to "round up the usual suspects." And in other movies as in real life, cries of "scapegoat" are found in many situations. The phenomenon of rounding up the usual suspect and at time even convicting them has been observed in every period of human existence. Keeping the windows closed at night (bad air), the letting of bad blood and witch hunts are among some examples.
Today, we are no better, as finding a "culprit" is still an obsession, regardless of whether the right one is really found. Our social response to a health dilemma is often a rounding up of the usual suspects such as fat, sugar, salt and a variety of others. And, as is often the case, in twenty or fifty years from now, educated people will laugh at what seemed bizarre barbaric reasoning. The seemingly stable culprits of today, and their quandary, such as dietary cholesterol causing heart disease, salt inducing hypertension and calories causing obesity, will eventually seem bizarre enough to find a place in the time honored Ripley's Believe It or Not!
Is there a solution to this ongoing parody? Can we break this seemingly endless cycle which has existed since the Iceman? The answer is yes, but will we? And the answer is information and education. Today, more than ever, the right information is there, but too few are aware of it. It's the responsibility of doctors, schools and, yes, even the media to supply accurate up-to-date information. But what do we get? Just the usual suspects rounded up. It's certainly easier that way. Let's look at some examples.
Many Americans are aware that recently the ill effects of drinking milk, especially for youngsters, was spilled all over the newspapers. Due to milk's uncanny ability to cause allergies and induce havoc in the intestines for many kids, more professionals, including Dr. Benjamin Spock, have issued warnings about drinking milk. Were these details just discovered? No, we've known them for years, actually decades. But the information has been hidden in medical literature and the few voices from that world have been muted by the dairy industry's influence on the media.
Another ongoing travesty is salt (sodium chloride), and its evil capacity to incite hypertension. When we look at sodium with an objective eye we see that the minority of hypertensive patients worsen when their salt intake is more than a small amount. But the majority of hypertensives aren't effected, and those people who have normal blood pressures are not effected by salt either. The usual suspect: salt.
But can there be only one factor which causes a disease process or condition to develop? In most cases there are multiple reasons. We've been taught from an early age that there is this single causation factor in seemingly everything in life: what (one thing) causes cancer, headaches, AIDS, colitis? And researchers often look, sometimes blindly, up and down, in and out for that one cause. Suppose there were five phenomenon which had to be present to get cancer, and they're looking for the "one"? I suspect that because of the research methods in use, that's why the billions of dollars spent on finding a cure for the common cold has failed. But that germ can't allude the scientists too much longer, or can it?
One of the most common suspects, a favorite of many, is the germ. This is usually a virus or bacteria. These suspicious little "bugs" are well known to be the culprit in many diseases. But from the time these suspects were discovered more than a hundred year ago, there were many who said we're blaming it on the wrong culprit. It was Louis Pasteur who discovered and promoted the germ theory, which says that germs cause disease, period. Since then, many heated debates have ensued, with some people consuming or injecting deadly germs to prove that an unhealthy body was the culprit. They believed that a healthy body could not succumb to disease since these germs did not have the proper "soil" to grow. Indeed, Pasteur argued hard for his germ theory, but on his death bed admitted "it's not the seed but the soil." Today we know that most people exposed to a bacteria or virus will not get sick. But most people still have the vision that there are these germs out there, hiding in a dark alley just looking for you to walk by and bang, they get you. The usual suspect: the germ.
There is another element in this picture. It is, perhaps, the most important one—we are all unique individuals. Each person has a body which responds a little different, sometimes a lot different, to the same stimulus. Some are more efficient at handling emotional or physical stress, others more capable of eating foods which are not compatible with others, and some seemingly are immune to colds and flu. With rare exceptions, one culprit can't be used for the whole population. In reality, we each have our own suspects to round up in any situation. And it's up to each one of us to be aware of our own weaknesses, with the help of accurate information. Unfortunately, we are bombarded by misleading information from the media, advertising and even our own doctors at times.