Amish in Morrison Tn.

Christian ethics and theology with an Anabaptist perspective
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Valerie

Re: Amish in Morrison Tn.

Post by Valerie »

Eloise wrote:I would like to see the statistics showing how many people who were treated for cancer by conventional means, became cancer free. And how many were not cured and passed away after the cancer treatment. And more importantly I'd like to know how many died because of the cancer treatment.
My mother had chemo and radiation treatment for cancer. It destroyed her intestines. She had to live with a colostomy bag for years after the radiation treatment. And grew weaker and weaker because she did not have enough intestines left to absorb enough nutrients. She eventually died from an infection she contracted at the hospital from being fed through an iv. And yes she lived over 10 years after the treatments. But was constantly sick, and had to take high doses of pain medication for the remainder of her life.
So in the end the conventional therapies killed the cancer, but the treatment eventually killed the patient. Im guessing that the government statistics would only show that she was cured by conventional cancer treatments, while not ever mentioning how many patients suffered in terrible pain for years afterward until they finally died because of the treament.
I am so very to hear your story with your mom (and these kinds of stories I have heard/witnessed often)
It was suggested catching cancer in the earliest state is key.
Some cancers don't reveal symptoms until the late stages- preventative measures seem to be key, such as colonscopies and endoscopies for instance- can help prevent cancer.

It must have been heartbreaking to witness your mom going through this as well as John Hurt's parents journeys with cancer- I think when you have personally walked along side someone going through the worse it gives you more reason to defend natural methods. I would not recommend my mom going through chemo/radiation- instead perhaps do the best she could in the natural and accept God's appointed time at this point- and to accept whatever relief medication to get her through.
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Eloise

Re: Amish in Morrison Tn.

Post by Eloise »

It's always heart breaking to see those we've known all our lives, have their lives change so drastically for the worse. But it was her choice to use chemo / radiation. At least she had a choice.
What bothers me are the so called do gooders who think they know best what is good for us. And if we don't do it their way, they will use the power of force through government to force us to have our children or parents take so called medical treatments that we don't agree with. And if we don't obey their edicts, we go to jail, or our children or parents wind up being put into state custody, and we're forced to pay the bills.
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JohnHurt

Re: Amish in Morrison Tn.

Post by JohnHurt »

Eloise wrote:I would like to see the statistics showing how many people who were treated for cancer by conventional means, became cancer free. And how many were not cured and passed away after the cancer treatment. And more importantly I'd like to know how many died because of the cancer treatment.
My mother had chemo and radiation treatment for cancer. It destroyed her intestines. She had to live with a colostomy bag for years after the radiation treatment. And grew weaker and weaker because she did not have enough intestines left to absorb enough nutrients. She eventually died from an infection she contracted at the hospital from being fed through an iv. And yes she lived over 10 years after the treatments. But was constantly sick, and had to take high doses of pain medication for the remainder of her life.
So in the end the conventional therapies killed the cancer, but the treatment eventually killed the patient. Im guessing that the government statistics would only show that she was cured by conventional cancer treatments, while not ever mentioning how many patients suffered in terrible pain for years afterward until they finally died because of the treament.
Eloise - you hit the nail on the head asking to see the actual statistics, for they are very well hidden, and the National Cancer Institute, American Cancer Society have vested interests in showing that their cancer treatments work. So their data is not "unbiased" as it would be from an uninterested 3rd party. That is the only reason they appear "successful".

Both of my parents died from cancer (1989, 1993) and they lived in Smyrna, TN - just outside of Nashville TN. After my mother died, my father noticed how many of my mother's friends had died from cancer, and how many people in their church there in Smyrna had in some way, been affected by cancer. Much more than any other place we have lived.

Around 1979, a waste disposal company had pumped an industrial degreaser into a privately owned well near Smyrna, about 5 miles from our house. The State of Tennessee had shut down all of the drinking water wells around the the polluted well for about 4 miles, but our well was supposedly "not affected." I did notice the water was greasy tasting, but I was mostly living in the dorm at college at this time. About a year later, our dog died from cancer, and our horses got arthritis, so we got rid of them. We did not know this chemical could be slowly building up in our own bodies.

There is cause and effect for everything. Stauffer Chemical in Columbia TN did deep well injection of their toxic wastes into the aquifer around this time.

If it rained hard, then they would also have a "fish kill" in the Stones river at Smyrna from the overflow of the sewer system in Murfreesboro where many of the industrial wastes were dumped. The drinking water from Smyrna also came from the West Fork of the Stones River, downstream from Murfreesboro at this time. The State of Tennessee said there was significant amounts of Chromium and Barium in the Stones River and suggested that fishing should be curtailed there. I suppose things are better now, but it was a very toxic place back then.

I wanted to research how many people were dying from cancer in Smyrna, TN. I saw a pattern, and wanted to get statistics. But I could not find any.

The reason the statistics for cancer are not there, is when you die from cancer, it is not listed on the death certificate as the primary cause of death. At the top of my parent's death certificate, the cause of death was pneumonia, then heart attack, then liver disease, and about 20 different causes of death, with cancer being listed as the last cause on the list.

Yet, the cancer they had is what caused these other ailments, but it was not listed as the primary cause of death. I think the medical profession does this on purpose to hide the scope of the cancer problem in this country, and that there could be cause and effect.

In my computer job, I worked with GIS, or Geographic Information Systems, which can be used to make a map with a pinpoint for every address where someone has an illness, like cancer. This would show that there are clusters where people that have cancer live, and other places that are cancer free. I think if you saw a GIS map for cancer for Flint Michigan, you would be astonished. There is another city in Alabama near the Monsanto Roundup plant where everyone is sick.

The National Cancer Institute will not publish this type of information as it would show cause and effect, or they can't do it, as the death certificates with their bogus causes of death obfuscates the real data.

They also won't tell you how many people survive the chemo treatments, but just barely, and have to live with a colostomy bag or worse. This is not a successful outcome, and should not be reported on their statistics as a "success". But it is. So their statistics are really, just another phoney lie they tell to keep the game going.

If you want to stay healthy, the number one thing you can do is to filter your drinking water, or drink distilled water. Number two is to eat only organic food that is GMO and pesticide free. Number three is to keep your eyes open.

But Number Zero is to pray that God will open our eyes to health. Here is His Promise to us:

Exodus 15:(26) And said, If thou wilt diligently hearken to the voice of the LORD thy God, and wilt do that which is right in his sight, and wilt give ear to his commandments, and keep all his statutes, I will put none of these diseases upon thee, which I have brought upon the Egyptians: for I am the LORD that healeth thee.

God wants us to be healthy. It is up to us to listen to His Voice, to do what is right in His sight, to give ear to His commandments, and to keep all His statutes. If we will do our part, then He will do His. I have never known my God to lie to me. He has always been faithful to me, even when I have not been faithful to Him.

Blessings,

John
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Eloise

Re: Amish in Morrison Tn.

Post by Eloise »

John
I agree with you. I wonder why we don't hear about new toxic waste sites being discovered.
They always seemed to be in the news years ago. I remember hearing that tennessee had a large number of sites where they had discovered nuclear waste materials.
I'm not exactly what type of nuclear waste it was. But I'm assuming the reason it was there was because tennessee was such a rural state back then and whoever dumped it thought no one would run into it for decades.
It's not so rural anymore. I'm surprised they aren't finding anymore toxic waste sites.

I also try to keep God's statutes. I don't eat pork or any meat from an unclean animal. Although we don't always know what type of meat is in some of the foods at restaurants. I believe God's statutes were given to us for our benefit. Not just arbitrarily. God created those animals. He should know which ones are for our consumption and which were created for an entirely different purpose.
I'm also curious what church you attend. I don't think mennonites try to keep God's statutes. Maybe a few do.
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JohnHurt

Re: Amish in Morrison Tn.

Post by JohnHurt »

mike wrote:
JohnHurt wrote:I understand iridology was discovered by a mortician who kept careful notes over a 30 year period. Whenever a cadaver was brought in, he noted that there were spots on the eyes in certain locations if the liver was diseased, spots in other locations of the iris if the heart or kidneys had diseases, etc. He noticed this pattern for many different diseases, wrote down his notes and distributed them, then others have used this knowledge as a diagnosis tool.

The real "test" of a hypothesis is to put it into practice and verify the results as predicted.
I agree with this last statement.

And tests that have been done have demonstrated repeatedly that iridology is nonsense.

https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/iridology/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10213874
https://www.quackwatch.org/01QuackeryRe ... sions.html
https://www.spaceandmotion.com/health/iridology.htm
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamaop ... cle/412789

I expect you to discount these sorts of studies, but I just wanted to point out a few anyway.
Thank you for the links. I appreciate you backing up your statements / opinions with actual resources.

So here is my "discount", which I hope you find interesting, even if from a different viewpoint than your own.

I think a lot of what might influence the perceived success or failure of a technique is based on the practitioner.

For example, if you had a person that had read a few books on acupuncture and then opened an acupuncture clinic, his chances of success would be less than an acupuncture clinic operated by a person from China who was from a family with several generations where they had devoted themselves to to providing the most excellent acupuncture care possible.

The level of expertise of the practitioner can be used to build or discredit any discipline.

So if someone wants to prove Iridology doesn't work, they go to someone that doesn't know how to do it correctly. The same is true of chiropractors. If you want to prove chiropractors are useful, then get a good one, if you want to prove that chiropractors can't help you, get a lousy one. Then publish your study as "statistics" backed by "proof". This is a common problem that our own biases influence the outcome of what we study.

The JAMA articles came the closest to scientific "proof" against Iridology, but it is hard to prove a negative. JAMA is not an uninterested 3rd party when it comes to the evaluation of naturopathic physicians in the USA. They did say that outside the USA that " In Germany, for instance, 80% of the Heilpraktiker (nonmedically qualified health practitioners) practice iridology." This is telling. 80% of the health practitioners would not practice Iridology in Germany if it did not work in at least some of the cases. Which means Iridology does work in Germany, at least some of the time.

So, just inside the USA, where JAMA is "supreme" somehow, Iridology is absolutely useless. Other parts of the world think otherwise. Perhaps it depends on the quality and experience level of the practitioner.

The "quack watch" articles really are just "hit pieces" made up out of thin air. I believe the person running the web site writes all of them. The person that supposedly wrote the article's name you listed is "Joshua David Mather Sr. When I do a Google search on this name, all I can find are quotes from Quackwatch itself. There is no other indication that this person ever existed or has a clinic or some address or location where he works, other than the original article on Quackwatch. No address, no state, no clinic he is associated with, just some random "name", and it is a genuine article. The article is 15 years old, which is a long time to be on the internet. The guy that runs "Quackwatch" (and 23 other websites) is a retired psychiatrist named "Stephen Barrett" - with no formal training in the medical areas like nutrition that he "oversees". The man is just a "shrink" - someone that give you drugs if you are depressed, and not a nutritionist or iridologist. He also accepts donations via a link at the bottom of every page, which should be a "red flag". This guy looks like a duck, walks like a duck, acts like a duck - he is a quack, and really needs to "watch" himself.

A lot of crazy people become psychiatrists hoping to cure themselves. The longer I live, the more I know this is true. That is the basis of "quackwatch". Physician, heal thyself!

So what is a medical "quack"? I believe it has to be someone that proposes to "hurt" you with medicine. Here is my own experience:

When my 3rd child was in the womb, at my wife's checkup, the doctor told us that the blood work indicated that she had been exposed to a virus carried by a cat which could create a birth defect in our unborn child. The doctor told us that many people abort the baby when this happens and try again. I told him abortion was against our religion. And I asked him how he could tell if there was an exposure that caused a birth defect was actually in the baby and not just the mother. He said the only way they could tell is to insert a needle into the umbilical cord, draw some blood and do some more tests. Can you imagine what that would do to an unborn baby, to have the blood extracted from his umbilical cord? It would kill him, or at least damage him in some way.

Our third son, Caleb, was born a few months later very healthy and with no birth defects at all, but only after we got away from this quack doctor that wanted to kill him. Not only did the quack doctor try to get us to kill our own son, but his diagnosis was completely wrong.

And I wonder, to this day, how many children this nut has killed through his bogus diagnosis? Probably a lot more than have died from Iridology. Or have died from a herb hike walking with the Amish to find herbs.

In another day and time, any doctor that acted in this manner concerning an unborn child would have, at the very least, been covered with hot tar, dumped with a load feathers over the hot tar, tied to a strait rail post, and carried to the edge of town and dropped there to wait for whoever would help him. Or Exodus 21:22-25. But today a doctor like this lives in a mansion and drives a sports car. It is really sad to see all of these quack doctors that are succeeding financially in the medical profession.

At the time I did not know how to handle these quacks. Now I do. I warn everyone I can about them.

Thank you for your comments, and I value your perspective.
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JohnHurt

Re: Amish in Morrison Tn.

Post by JohnHurt »

Eloise wrote:John
I agree with you. I wonder why we don't hear about new toxic waste sites being discovered.
They always seemed to be in the news years ago. I remember hearing that tennessee had a large number of sites where they had discovered nuclear waste materials.
I'm not exactly what type of nuclear waste it was. But I'm assuming the reason it was there was because tennessee was such a rural state back then and whoever dumped it thought no one would run into it for decades.
It's not so rural anymore. I'm surprised they aren't finding anymore toxic waste sites.

I also try to keep God's statutes. I don't eat pork or any meat from an unclean animal. Although we don't always know what type of meat is in some of the foods at restaurants. I believe God's statutes were given to us for our benefit. Not just arbitrarily. God created those animals. He should know which ones are for our consumption and which were created for an entirely different purpose.
I'm also curious what church you attend. I don't think mennonites try to keep God's statutes. Maybe a few do.
Eloise,
The nuclear waste is around the Y-12 plant in Oak Ridge, where the first atomic bombs were created. It was rural in the 1940's, but not now. So people are being affected, years later.

I did not keep the food laws of Leviticus 11 until I met someone at work that challenged me on this. He said to go without eating pork for two weeks, then eat pork all day and see how you feel. I got sicker than a dog.
He also pointed out what Christ said in Matthew 5:17-20, and that Peter quoted Leviticus 11:44 in 1 Peter 1:16, that we should be holy in all that we do, even in what we eat.

And about the same time, I saw both of my parents die from cancer. Just by avoiding scavengers, like the pig, shellfish, crabs, catfish, etc. this has made my health much better than my friends that eat whatever they want.
God wrote the "Owners Manual" for us and knows what is "food" and what is not. Eating a dead buzzard on the side of thhe road will make you sick, no matter how you pray over it. God said a dead buzzard is not "food" regardless of what men say.

We home church with a few other friends, but do not fit in a mainline church. When we started keeping a 7th day sabbath, that really narrowed our fellowship with others down to Messianic churches or 7th Day Adventist, and both have a lot of problems. Ellen White made a false prophecy about the return of Christ in 1844 and should not be worshiped as they do her and her teachings in her church. The Messianics follow the traditions of men, or Jewish rituals that are added to the Bible, that Christ warned us against in Matthew 15:9. So no, we don't fit anywhere now.

We visit on Saturday with just with a few friends we have known for years. I will be seeing them later today.

The Mennonites are closer to the truth in that they follow more of Christ's direct commands than other groups, like turn the other cheek, not serve in war, etc. The Amish are even closer, I think, as they preserve a Christian community, abstain from accumulating wealth, separate from the world, and take non-violence to the next level.

Early Mennonites like Andreas Fischer and Oswald Glait kept the 7th day as a rest day, just a Christ did. And they were killed for it too, just like their Master.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andreas_F ... nabaptist)

https://gameo.org/index.php?title=Sabba ... nabaptists
http://www.sabbatarian-anabaptists.org/

I thought about starting a study group or fellowship, but I have to apply Christ words not to take payment for teaching the gospel (Matt 10:8), no church titles (Matt 23:8-10), no church hierarchy (Luke 22:24-27). So really, Christ said no "church" at all, at least not the way we think of "church".

Church should be more like a party where we get together and eat and discuss the Bible. Totally informal. Church is the way you live your life, the people you help along the way, the friendships you build.

What is the real meaning and purpose of life? It is all about love.
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Wade

Re: Amish in Morrison Tn.

Post by Wade »

Conventional doctors told my in-laws that my wife's youngest brother was handicapped and pushed for them to abort. They do not support alternative medicine but said no to killing their son. When he was born the doctors said, "Look at his big tongue he must surely be handicapped as our tests show."

Today he is a normal 19 year old with no handicaps and alive because of them not following the pushed instructions of conventional doctors and their tests.
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ken_sylvania

Re: Amish in Morrison Tn.

Post by ken_sylvania »

JohnHurt wrote:
mike wrote: The "quack watch" articles really are just "hit pieces" made up out of thin air. I believe the person running the web site writes all of them. The person that supposedly wrote the article's name you listed is "Joshua David Mather Sr. When I do a Google search on this name, all I can find are quotes from Quackwatch itself. There is no other indication that this person ever existed or has a clinic or some address or location where he works, other than the original article on Quackwatch. No address, no state, no clinic he is associated with, just some random "name", and it is a genuine article. The article is 15 years old, which is a long time to be on the internet. The guy that runs "Quackwatch" (and 23 other websites) is a retired psychiatrist named "Stephen Barrett" - with no formal training in the medical areas like nutrition that he "oversees". The man is just a "shrink" - someone that give you drugs if you are depressed, and not a nutritionist or iridologist. He also accepts donations via a link at the bottom of every page, which should be a "red flag". This guy looks like a duck, walks like a duck, acts like a duck - he is a quack, and really needs to "watch" himself.
That's interesting that you can't find anything.
Whitepages lists a Joshua David Mather Sr. with a current address of either Vestavia Hills, AL or Montrose, PA. His father, Dr. Thomas Mather, used to live in Apalachin, NY where he practiced as a naturopathic doctor, including iris evaluation.
http://byregion.byregion.net/cgibin/use ... rtommather
Dr. Thomas Mather now practices in Montrose, PA.
That would seem to match what the Quackwatch article says. Maybe this guy is real after all?
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silentreader

Re: Amish in Morrison Tn.

Post by silentreader »

JohnHurt wrote:
mike wrote:
JohnHurt wrote:I understand iridology was discovered by a mortician who kept careful notes over a 30 year period. Whenever a cadaver was brought in, he noted that there were spots on the eyes in certain locations if the liver was diseased, spots in other locations of the iris if the heart or kidneys had diseases, etc. He noticed this pattern for many different diseases, wrote down his notes and distributed them, then others have used this knowledge as a diagnosis tool.

The real "test" of a hypothesis is to put it into practice and verify the results as predicted.
I agree with this last statement.

And tests that have been done have demonstrated repeatedly that iridology is nonsense.

https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/iridology/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10213874
https://www.quackwatch.org/01QuackeryRe ... sions.html
https://www.spaceandmotion.com/health/iridology.htm
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamaop ... cle/412789

I expect you to discount these sorts of studies, but I just wanted to point out a few anyway.
Thank you for the links. I appreciate you backing up your statements / opinions with actual resources.

So here is my "discount", which I hope you find interesting, even if from a different viewpoint than your own.

I think a lot of what might influence the perceived success or failure of a technique is based on the practitioner.

For example, if you had a person that had read a few books on acupuncture and then opened an acupuncture clinic, his chances of success would be less than an acupuncture clinic operated by a person from China who was from a family with several generations where they had devoted themselves to to providing the most excellent acupuncture care possible.

The level of expertise of the practitioner can be used to build or discredit any discipline.

So if someone wants to prove Iridology doesn't work, they go to someone that doesn't know how to do it correctly. The same is true of chiropractors. If you want to prove chiropractors are useful, then get a good one, if you want to prove that chiropractors can't help you, get a lousy one. Then publish your study as "statistics" backed by "proof". This is a common problem that our own biases influence the outcome of what we study.

The JAMA articles came the closest to scientific "proof" against Iridology, but it is hard to prove a negative. JAMA is not an uninterested 3rd party when it comes to the evaluation of naturopathic physicians in the USA. They did say that outside the USA that " In Germany, for instance, 80% of the Heilpraktiker (nonmedically qualified health practitioners) practice iridology." This is telling. 80% of the health practitioners would not practice Iridology in Germany if it did not work in at least some of the cases. Which means Iridology does work in Germany, at least some of the time.

So, just inside the USA, where JAMA is "supreme" somehow, Iridology is absolutely useless. Other parts of the world think otherwise. Perhaps it depends on the quality and experience level of the practitioner.

The "quack watch" articles really are just "hit pieces" made up out of thin air. I believe the person running the web site writes all of them. The person that supposedly wrote the article's name you listed is "Joshua David Mather Sr. When I do a Google search on this name, all I can find are quotes from Quackwatch itself. There is no other indication that this person ever existed or has a clinic or some address or location where he works, other than the original article on Quackwatch. No address, no state, no clinic he is associated with, just some random "name", and it is a genuine article. The article is 15 years old, which is a long time to be on the internet. The guy that runs "Quackwatch" (and 23 other websites) is a retired psychiatrist named "Stephen Barrett" - with no formal training in the medical areas like nutrition that he "oversees". The man is just a "shrink" - someone that give you drugs if you are depressed, and not a nutritionist or iridologist. He also accepts donations via a link at the bottom of every page, which should be a "red flag". This guy looks like a duck, walks like a duck, acts like a duck - he is a quack, and really needs to "watch" himself.

A lot of crazy people become psychiatrists hoping to cure themselves. The longer I live, the more I know this is true. That is the basis of "quackwatch". Physician, heal thyself!

So what is a medical "quack"? I believe it has to be someone that proposes to "hurt" you with medicine. Here is my own experience:

When my 3rd child was in the womb, at my wife's checkup, the doctor told us that the blood work indicated that she had been exposed to a virus carried by a cat which could create a birth defect in our unborn child. The doctor told us that many people abort the baby when this happens and try again. I told him abortion was against our religion. And I asked him how he could tell if there was an exposure that caused a birth defect was actually in the baby and not just the mother. He said the only way they could tell is to insert a needle into the umbilical cord, draw some blood and do some more tests. Can you imagine what that would do to an unborn baby, to have the blood extracted from his umbilical cord? It would kill him, or at least damage him in some way.

Our third son, Caleb, was born a few months later very healthy and with no birth defects at all, but only after we got away from this quack doctor that wanted to kill him. Not only did the quack doctor try to get us to kill our own son, but his diagnosis was completely wrong.

And I wonder, to this day, how many children this nut has killed through his bogus diagnosis? Probably a lot more than have died from Iridology. Or have died from a herb hike walking with the Amish to find herbs.

In another day and time, any doctor that acted in this manner concerning an unborn child would have, at the very least, been covered with hot tar, dumped with a load feathers over the hot tar, tied to a strait rail post, and carried to the edge of town and dropped there to wait for whoever would help him. Or Exodus 21:22-25. But today a doctor like this lives in a mansion and drives a sports car. It is really sad to see all of these quack doctors that are succeeding financially in the medical profession.

At the time I did not know how to handle these quacks. Now I do. I warn everyone I can about them.

Thank you for your comments, and I value your perspective.
...and our perspective is this...if it had not been for prompt diagnosis and quick and proper medical treatment by caring and dedicated medical professionals, our oldest daughter would be crippled, or dead.
...and so the world turns...
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JohnHurt

Re: Amish in Morrison Tn.

Post by JohnHurt »

ken_sylvania wrote:That's interesting that you can't find anything.
Whitepages lists a Joshua David Mather Sr. with a current address of either Vestavia Hills, AL or Montrose, PA. His father, Dr. Thomas Mather, used to live in Apalachin, NY where he practiced as a naturopathic doctor, including iris evaluation.
http://byregion.byregion.net/cgibin/use ... rtommather
Dr. Thomas Mather now practices in Montrose, PA.
That would seem to match what the Quackwatch article says. Maybe this guy is real after all?
How did you link Joshua David Mather with his father, Thomas Mather? How do you know they are related?

It looked like, from the article, that Joshua David Mather was still a practitioner of natural medicine, but was no longer using Iridology. Did you see a clinic associated with this name?

Alabama and Pennsylvania are quite distant, these could be two different people.

Thanks,

John
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