Honeybees, health, and blinders on researchers

An article about a worrisome major problem has once again brought up a question in my thoughts, regarding processes of science. "Loss of bees could be 'a blow to UK economy'"
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science_and_environment/10371300.stm The article concludes with an urging to get the results of science into the hands of the "conservationists and to the agricultural community" as quickly as possible.

This is all important info. Yet, there is a pathway of communication that is missing, and it is typical of "science" nowadays. That communication pathway is from the "conservationists and to the agricultural community" to the scientists, especially from those in the fringe areas, commonly referred to as "alternative" or "holistic", the folks who habitually look at the whole picture, extending back from the health to the means for preserving or restoring health, and have had success at it.

For example, lists who share fringe knowledge in holistic alternative health, and health is clearly that of all living systems, not just limited to humans. Several times the thread has come up regarding the loss of honeybees, and some have made comments that suggested their own small beehives are having no problems and they have opinions as to why; many of these people are also quite knowledgeable about science in depth. Such data sets needs to be invited and explored by the scientists pursuing solutions to the decline of the honeybee population.

Ignoring sources of data does not seem very scientific to me; yet this seems to be a phenomenon quite frequently seen in recent years, maybe decades. Several times I have puzzled as to the why of this phenomenon, and found it to be a systemic problem with roots all over the place.

Some possible factors include that much of science is funded by grants from corporations that have a vested interest in the form of the outcome of the research; researchers tend to not offend their sources of grant money. Even moreso a similar effect of direct corporate provided research, which is directed by management instead of scientists, because management has only the responsibility for increasing their own business profit to satisfy the investors - who probably have no awareness of what the corporations is doing other than making money. So there is little feedback to solving the actual problems; people are so busy dancing to the tune of the system that provides them income and status.

Another factor I have noticed is what is called "credibility" but maybe sometimes more accurately called "intellectual snobbery" or simply unfamiliarity with the kind of points of view of the holistic folks. And often the scientists tie their own blindfolds even tighter by publicly labeling alternative holistic discoveries as "snakeoil and quackery" which is an automatic "stay away" to onlookers including scientists who then dare not explore those datasets for fear of losing their professional credibility. Quite a snare they have fallen into, and one for which I see no easy escape at this point. Anectdotal data is pertinent observational material that is not yet nicely packaged in the format familiar to most scientists, yet is data nevertheless and can contain the seeds of very useful pathways for research.

Similarly, the field of human health has the same weakness. Research, due to the above-mentioned factors, is mostly constrained to use of things which provide drugs, pills, shots, nuking, or the knife - all things that directly provide income to established business ranging from pharmaceutical manufacturers to GPs. If human health were the actual total goal, that itself would be the golden standard, instead of being limited to a limited set of potential avenues toward solutions which are controlled by special interests, often quite petty special interests.

So the suggestion implied by these thoughts is, in the search for honeybee health just like in the search for human health, if efficous means are actually sought (instead of selecting means that solely provide profit and ego) that the scientific researchers interview the holistic folks who explore these subjects not as a business but doing it for a personal desire to find solutions or to keep adequate wellbeing in a holistic way. Such folks often share such knowledge on lists via the internet, and that might be a source of such data for scientists actually devoted to solving the problems without regard to the sources of their money. Anectdotal data may seem somewhat obscure at first and involve many side issues, but insofar as it is observational data, it contains valid knowledge that might well lead to optimum research solutions.

Is it health care or is it health insurance money?

The American health care system is still up front much of the time, and it is indeed a thorny issue that can affect the lives of all of us.

The issue includes a lot of special vested financial interests, whose only interest in it all is that of making maximum money, with "health" only being the means of leverage. On the other hand, there are the folks who depend on the health care system to be able to recover from sickness or other injury.

The broader issue ought to be that of "staying healthy" which would include getting help when down with illness or injury, but would bring in a larger set of health means, and would include the prime responsibility for a person's health as being the person him/herself.

Currently this part is done haphazardly: some people deliberately seek ways to be more aware of their physical-emotional-mental-spiritual needs and study and try various means for improving and restoring health on each of those levels; but other people tend to have no deliberate effort in those areas, preferring to just press on with other life issues and when something breaks down, take it to the doctor to get it fixed.

Most likely those who have little awareness of and care for the various parts of themselves, will have more breakdowns that need fixing by somebody else; so part of a better health care system would be to teach these folks something about the being that they are and how to be responsible toward all parts of it. This would increase their quality of life and reduce the cost of health "repairs."

To assist people in keeping their physical-emotional-mental-spiritual selves in reasonably good functionality and health, there are many protocols and small businesses out there which have developed ways for doing that care for oneself, sometimes also assisting directly with that care. Some of it is done by conventional health medical establishments, but the vast majority of it is done by the folks involved with providing "Complementary Alternative Medicine" and "holistic well-being" protocols which have a huge diversity, enabling best fit for the various kinds of people and situations in which they live. The origins of much of this is from the Asian cultures who have had millennia to find things that actually worked, yet there are many new protocols and technologies originating in Western, American sources.

This seems to be the necessary approach to American health well-being, yet does not seem to be mentioned in the current healthcare debates, which seem to be more of providing insurance to pay for medical "repairs" for all Americans, not just those who currently have employment that pays for such things.

It is analogous to car insurance in some ways, yet we are not cars, not at all. Maybe what is happening is that the public can only understand car insurance type health care, the doctors and hospitals the repairmen for when things break down, but no user's prime responsibility for keeping it in shape and preventing damage in the first place. At best, there is standard medical advise to stop smoking, get more exercise, get your vaccinations, then you're done.

No mention of such things as avoiding foods that have Monosodium Glutamate in them to prevent over-eating's extra weight, or of determining wheat sensitivity so the person can avoid wheat-containing foods before their digestive system is too badly damaged, or learning the simple Emotional Freedom Technique tapping protocol to take care of their own emotional traumas before they can express as stress-related illness in some way.

With all the vested business interests who profit by keeping things just as they have been, keeping hordes of too-often sick people, getting vastly wealthy at the expense of America while public health deteriorates, perhaps the best that can be done now is to have the government provide some basic level of "health insurance" for all those who do not have such "health insurance" through an employer's help. This would raise the level of ability to cope with sickness and injury of the average American, and remove some of the leverage employers have over employees through the health insurance provision as part of the job, thus enabling some employees in intolerable jobs to seek a better job elsewhere, without major fears of loss of "health insurance."

Then becoming a national responsibility, paying for the medical "repairs," there could then be more emphasis on staying healthy in the first place, and putting the prime responsibility for conscious educated personal activities for well-being on the individuals themselves.

The key need of the ongoing health system voting

Reading http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-health-overhaul31-2009jul31,0,2426079.story my thoughts: the key need of the ongoing health system voting is for the nation to finance some baseline health level for everybody in the nation, none left out. That baseline health care could be quite low at first, specifying what can be administered to the patient, vs what is excessive cost for benefit for various health issues. Subsequent years could see increases in the baseline health level is specified to be, as the nation prospers more, due to a healthier more competent population. Private insurance options could be had to go above those basic levels to cover more catastrophic health problems; these health desireables could remain as employment incentives for employers and for the wealthy; they could get the heart transplant but the baseline citizen would not be able to do so, for example.

This seems to be compatible with the existing health care system's mode of "allopathic" stance. Then, to get the health level to rise and costs drop greatly, the wider viewpoints held by the whole-person "holistic" or "alternative-complementary" health protocols need to come to join the health system as a full partner, with the operational principle of maximizing the health of all, instead of maximizing the profit to the health businesses; the focus on providing the most efficous products and services for economical health of the whole person, would most likely become the mainstay of health systems when they are fully adopted, with the high-science form of allopathic, pharmaceutical & surgical focused, form of medicine becoming the health arm that handles the tough problems at comparable costs and business earnings.

One of the possible problems of a health system completely controlled by government is that some future administration could then use blockage of health care availability to make life miserable or even impossible to sustain, for politically undesireable foes as decided by that governmental administration, thus a terrible power over the people, democracy no more; much as the interrelated corporate worlds already can blacklist employees who are not of their preferred political stance or even exhibiting independent thinking. Or even more nightmarish scenarios could happen, say some authoritarian administration gets into power for the 4 years, then some catastrophy happens and the admin declares overpopulation and specifies who is to be terminated early, such as those who had not voted for them. Controlling health care availability is one means of doing that early termination thing.

Thus the nation, via government, providing some baseline level of health care to all, with private insurance available to be bought by the customer to take over where the baseline leaves off, seems to have inherent capability to defend against tyrannical militant administrations that happen to get into office at times, as has happened in the past and no doubt will again in the future, hopefully not too soon. The present health care system in America clearly is not working, since there are tens of millions of Americans without health services; it is a very dysfunctional health system, serving the few instead of serving the nation. (Perhaps it basically serves the sickness businesses earnings, which is quite different from serving the American customer.)

Tying wellness to employment (or independent wealth) needs to be seen for what it is; slavery modes are not necessary when the jobs are well matched to the employees to provide them a tolerable compatible job and comfort as the reward for doing the job well.

Again, the key need of the ongoing health system voting is for the nation to finance some baseline health level for everybody in the nation, none left out. That baseline health care could be quite low at first, specifying what can be administered to the patient, vs what is excessive cost for benefit for various health issues. Subsequent years could see increases in the baseline health level is specified to be, as the nation prospers more, due to a healthier more competent population. Private insurance options could be had to go above those basic levels to cover more catastrophic health problems; these health desirables could remain as employment incentives for competing employers, and for the independently wealthy.

Improved health along with vastly reduced health care costs to the overall nation

Continued ads in email re the need for public health reform now, brings my thoughtful experienced opinion: There needs to be a universal health system for all Americans.

This will presumably have the effects of better health and functionality for all Americans, enabling greater general prosperity. The extent of health care, however, most likely will vary from one person to another, including a wealthy person can have much augmented health care, as compared to the homeless person; yet all ought to have some baseline health system availability, as supported by the nation and not by their bank account or job-associated benefit.

One prime health system needed is a new education system, probably mostly internet-delivered without cost to the user, that teaches the basics and necessary details about the holistic human body and its needs and options for basic care of all body-mind functions, including homeostasis; this would hopefully teach people to be the first line of health care themselves.

The second line of health care needs to be the system of OTC medicines as now exists, along with their expanded vitamins, equipment and nutritional supplements commonly found nowadays and no doubt more added; additionally, an expanded awareness of the "if the shoe fits wear it" mode of the vast holistic alternative health protocols and products that have become available and proven through repeated customer usage along with their maintained health.

These levels of health care ought to reduce the conventional health care costs a huge amount. The case load per medical professional ought to go way down so each patient can receive better analysis and evaluation by them before administering specific health interventions, which would probably now focus mainly on the bigger problems like car accident trauma instead of people with sniffles waiting in the reception office. Prevention, actually ought to be better called maintenance, is a tremendous reducer of health costs, and awareness of one's own body and its ongoing needs and options for fulfilling them on a minute by minute basis, will probably take care of the majority of that which now fills the medical offices; they would be gone, and thus the doctors can then deal with the serious cases remaining. Even those patients, with the healthy body-mind education's background, will be able to describe much better that which ails them, to the medical staff.

Where does insurance fit into all this, I wonder; insurance is basically a pool of people paying into a system to flatten out medical costs among them; but if the nation takes this responsibility for its people, it would essentially be the "insurer" (and would thus have a stake in healthier people so as to lower the medical system costs.) Now the insurance industry is big business and very influential and would not like to lose its business, so it is reasonable that the nation - somehow - incorporate them into the national health system, giving them a reasonable salary, and buying out any investors in the businesses at fair prices.

With far fewer sick people showing up to the medical professionals, some of the health professionals might need to retrain, such as to support the expanded self-health support systems; but most health professionals and businesses would just take on a higher standard of work, easier hours and lower stress, and hopefully still quite adequate pay.

From all this I would expect a far healthier, more functional, better working America, along with vastly reduced health care costs to the overall nation; and healthier people from the youths to the retired folks would be expected to make far fewer mistakes in life, thus also adding to the overall prosperity of the nation. Acceptance of this scenario would be dependent on the ratio of those who see a competitive relationship with other Americans and the need to be "better than" the other folks in some way to show superiority; versus those who see a nation indivisible as a whole, all on the same ship together for survival and prosperity, all contributing to the ongoing value added and partaking of it proportionally, yet helping all others up so they too can contribute to their best abilities and live well.