My mentor Murray Rothbard spent the last years of his life discovering lost knowledge in the field of economics. He started in the ancient world, revisiting original texts, and going through to the late 20th century, with the intention of writing a short book.
Two volumes later, Rothbard had barely reached the 19th century. Then he died but before he could complete the third.
In these years, he often challenged me. He would point to how much lost knowledge there was in economics and then inquire: “Jeffrey, what are some other fields in which we’ve lost knowledge?”
I was in no position to answer, obviously, but I’ve never forgotten the question.
In the COVID-19 years, it’s become clear that we’ve lost massive knowledge about immunity, therapeutics, disease spread, masking, and all the proper approaches to dealing with pandemics.
We aren’t supposed to panic and put the whole population in quarantine! How stupid could our leaders be? Instead of traditional wisdom, our elites simply believed the Chinese Communist Party and wrecked liberty.
This problem of lost medical knowledge needs to be explored. There is the famous case of scurvy. It was solved in the ancient world with citrus readily available, especially on big journeys.
But once solved, people forgot both the problem and the solution. The cure had to be “discovered” again. This kept happening as one generation led to another and the problem would reemerge in a generation that had failed to absorb lessons from the past.
That’s just one case, but what if this problem is hugely pervasive in the entire medical sector?
In the early days of lockdown, someone wrote me a note that said that Chinese medicine had a much better record in dealing with COVID-19 than Western pharma. He knew this because, he said, he is an American doctor who practices according to Chinese tradition.
I thanked him but didn’t take his comments too seriously. I was in enough trouble as it was, being what felt like a lone voice against all the insanity. Still, I did take a few seconds to look up his claims. To my amazement, I found very robust support for them. Indeed it was true: Chinese medicine had proven very effective in dealing with this respiratory infection.
I filed that information away for four years. Again, I’m not a doctor, I’m not a scientist, and I know a bit but not nearly enough to weigh in on such serious matters. Plus, again, I was in enough trouble without pretending to know what’s what about medical issues. It was enough that I knew that tyranny could not possibly be the right answer to a coronavirus.
Years have now passed, and I, like most everyone these days, sit here in stunned shock at how the public has been so utterly betrayed by government, tech, pharma, media, public health agencies, and even conventional medicine.
Even now, it is hard to get any medical appointment for anything without being hounded for one’s vaccine status. No one is even allowed to apply for citizenship or attend many schools without getting the shot that we know for sure does not work and is unusually dangerous.
How could this still be going on? It has something to do with the stubborn unwillingness to admit error. It also has to do with profits on investments: The vaccine makers are determined to win this one.
Maybe, just maybe, it’s time we broaden our understanding of medicinal and therapeutic basics from different traditions in history and around the world. We certainly cannot depend solely on the conventional wisdom in the United States and European countries because it has revealed itself as captured entirely by corrupt pharmaceutical interests.
Something about the experience of these past four years has caused me to be all ears when it comes to alternative treatments and approaches. Many friends say the same.
It so happens that I was in a superstore that caters mainly to customers of Chinese descent. It’s a fascinating experience for me, as I know nothing of this food beyond what I get at my favorite takeout restaurants. At this store, I found a vast range of plants and vegetables with odd names and in shapes I had never seen before.
The fishmonger ran a counter of a special experience. I will spare you the details of buying a stingray wing and attempting to skin it at home. If you have ever done that by hand, you know what happened next.
In any case, the aisle that intrigued me the most was the tea aisle. There was every sort there you could imagine. Many had English labels suggesting various remedies: for men, for women, for hair growth, for sore feet, for pregnant women, for colds, for pimples, for stress relief, for digestive regularity, for kidney and liver fixes, and for many other maladies.
Do they work? I have no idea, but it suddenly occurred to me that I couldn’t rule it out. I stood back from this aisle, which had many other natural curatives, too, and just asked myself a hypothetical question. What if this one grocery aisle turns out to be more valuable for human health than every product approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in the past half-century?
Can we say for sure that this isn’t true? At this point, I don’t think so. It seems to be the time to look more broadly outside of Western pharma. Let’s face it: Many of us have found more value from books and sources of traditional home remedies than we have from conventional allopathic doctors. Every time I’ve found the fix for something and then asked a U.S. specialist about it, I get nothing but doubt and debunking. I’ve grown weary of this approach.
Let’s face it: These people do not have all the answers. And the real answers might be elsewhere, including from traditions of healing that include herbs, natural foods, and approaches that are more consistent with the fullest range of human experience in many countries.
It’s not as if sickness and the human body were invented alongside the internet. The body is not hackable like a piece of hardware. We have the same bodies we did ten thousand years ago. Why can’t we learn from the long experience rather than rely solely on potions cooked up in a lab last year and then approved by the FDA?
The wisdom of the ages applies in ethics, manners, art, and so many other areas, so why not in medicine, too? It’s a question worth asking. In any case, from what we have learned over the past several years, alongside the enormous screwups of the science and medical cartel, Rothbard’s question might indeed have an answer. We might find it in unusual places such as stores and strange books.
I’m willing to learn. How about you?
