Book Reviews
by Richard Pitt
Out of the Woods: Healing Lyme disease, Body, Mind and Spirit- by Kim Makris CCH
Out of the Woods is an extraordinary personal story of the author’s struggle with Lyme disease and her exploration with finding natural ways to heal it. For the first 5 years with the disease she remained undiagnosed, as all the blood work, including conventional Lyme tests came back negative. Although using both conventional and various forms of alternative medical care, her condition swung between devastating exhaustion, headaches, paralysis and occasional remissions. However, it was only when an old friend and nutritionist suggested she had chronic Lyme disease that a light was really shone on her condition which was then corroborated by further blood tests. Her experience no doubt mirrors many other people who are given conventional Western blot and Elisa blood tests for Lyme and are told it is negative, without being informed of the fact that unless these tests are done in the first two months of infection, they will invariably come back negative. Kim’s story reveals this tragedy, revealing the fact that many, many people experiencing debilitating conditions, labeled from Chronic Fatigue, Epstein Barre, or various forms of paralysis, including Bells Palsy, vertigo and Parkinson’s disease type symptoms and even heart conditions may in fact be suffering from chronic Lyme disease.
After the diagnosis Kim embarks on a campaign to cure, using predominantly natural methods including homeopathy and also a fascinating therapy called Rife Technology, a machine based therapy created by Dr Royal Raymond Rife. He developed a powerful microscope, which enabled him to identify microorganisms that had not been seen before. He was then able to prove that exposing specific microorganisms to certain electromagnetic frequencies were able to kill them, and found that every organism has its own electromagnetic “footprint” or frequency. Kim also worked with using herbs and Acupuncture and her book outlines all the possible helpful therapies that can be employed to treat chronic Lyme disease. She goes into some detail of what happened to Dr Rife’s technology and the strange and tragic story of what happened to him, which is right out of the worst of medical conspiracy and the nefarious activities of government and business interests in suppressing radical healing technology.
Conventional medicine has still not fully accepted the connection between Lyme infection and many of the chronic conditions that Kim and others have had and there is an ongoing debate on the long term use of antibiotics to treat chronic Lyme, which is the main conventional therapy offered. Some doctors do not acknowledge this treatment of even the connection between Lyme disease and other debilitating conditions such as Epstein Barre and some states are even trying to limit MD’s using long term antibiotic therapy.
Kim’s book is therefore an amazing study into the nature of Lyme Disease. It is both an incredibly personal document of her struggle with the disease and its impact on her life and a broader study of what Lyme disease is, how it manifests, and the many health modalities available to help combat the condition. It is therefore an important contribution to the literature on this subject and for us as homeopaths, it is an important document as we explore the possibilities of homeopathic treatment for Lyme disease.
Dirty Medicine: The Handbook, by Martin J Walker
This book is a follow-up to his original book Dirty Medicine, published first in 1993. Martin has been one of the most diligent and active journalists and campaigners on behalf of all forms of alternative medicine and he has been dogged in uncovering the agendas of the people attacking homeopathy and other systems of medicine as well as being a major supporter of Dr Andrew Wakefield. Dr Wakefield was the medical researcher who made a tentative connection between autism and the MMR vaccine and for his troubles was taken to court by the General Medical Council (GMC) in the UK and subsequently lost his medical license in the longest and most expensive medical lawsuit in the country.
This book is crucial reading, especially for all practitioners and health care advocates in the U.K. but also in the United States. Those actively seeking to destroy all forms of Complementary and Alternative Medicine, as well as any dissent within conventional medicine, are connected and equally active on both sides of the pond.
This book reviews the original battles going back over 20 years and brings up to date what has been happening in the last few years, when a renewed campaign has been in full swing. Homeopathy has been one of systems most attacked, with the result of the closure of one homeopathic hospital and the takeover of the Royal London Homeopathic Hospital, even to the changing of its name. In the U.K. those against homeopathy are seeking to have it removed from the National Health Service, where it has been available since its inception in 1946. Furthermore, they are seeking to discredit the whole profession and remove having homeopathic remedies on sale to the public.
The people behind this campaign are an alliance of medical professionals, secular intellectuals, drug companies and much of the high browed media, in a grand collusion of misinformation, bullying and sheer lies. Under the rubric of “Evidence Based Medicine” they are seeking to dismiss any therapy that they deem not to have any evidence to support it, conveniently ignoring the actual evidence that does support it. The level of duplicity is extraordinary, revealing a deeply cynical policy to eliminate any discussion on the validity of alternative health modalities or even any dissent from a narrow allopathic concept of medical care.
Martin’s indefatigable journalism has allowed him to piece together all the important players in this campaign, revealing the fact that vested interests, including drug companies, politicians, the mainstream media and public figures have colluded in a deliberate and sophisticated manner. By reading the book, one gets a much clearer idea of what this has been about and why homeopathy and other therapies have been attacked in this way.
It is crucial that this fundamentally anti-democratic agenda is revealed and those responsible exposed. Without the work of people like Martin Walker, it would be much harder to understand the depths of what is going on and why in the 21st century, after nearly 200 years of homeopathy in the U.K., it is again being attacked by those who refuse to understand it and feel deeply threatened by its very existence.