[Sca-cooks] raw milk

[Stefan li Rous]

Euriol commented:
<<< I can only echo some of Sir Maythen's sentiments. There are a lot of bacterias, etc... that we need in order to live a healthy life. Not to mention, enjoy many tasty cheeses.

A couple of years ago I ended up with a Staph infection on my skin. My doctor told me to stop using the anti-bacterial soaps because it was killing the bad bacterias that kept the bad bacterias away.>>>

I also agree with these comments.

My own opinion is that in a hundred years we will look back on disease fighting techniques of this time much as we do upon much of period medicine. Right now, if we find something that is bad for us, be it e.coli or polio or bacteria, our response is to wipe it out.

Unfortunately, nature/ecology/evolution doesn't work that simply. When you eliminate something in a niche, if the niche remains, something will move into it. And sometimes the replacement is worse (for us) than what was there originally. Thus we develop anti-bacterials and what develops are bacterials that are resistant or immune to that anti-bacterial. Or as Euriol mentioned, you wipe out the good bacteria that are filling the niche and something else that happens to be worse moves in. 

I suspect that what we need to do is stop trying to kill everything and put something in the niche of the bad critter with something that survives better but doesn't have the bad (for us) side effect that the bad critter did. 

Certain human diseases appear to have been worse when they first appeared, but as they evolved the ones that could coexist better with their host and not kill the host survived and evolved and the diseases became less of a problem as time went by. Perhaps in a hundred we will be manipulating this disease evolution rather depending upon the environment to do it over hundreds or thousands of years.

Stefan
--------
THLord Stefan li Rous    Barony of Bryn Gwlad    Kingdom of Ansteorra
   Mark S. Harris           Austin, Texas          StefanliRous at austin.rr.com
**** See Stefan's Florilegium files at:  http://www.florilegium.org ****