<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN">
<HTML><HEAD>
<META http-equiv=Content-Type content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1">
<META content="MSHTML 6.00.2900.2722" name=GENERATOR>
<STYLE></STYLE>
</HEAD>
<BODY bgColor=#ffffff>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial>Filiz -- I don't know that you read what you quoted in my
book, "The Practice of Peace," but you could have, 'cause I said it. And Paul --
the fact that medicine (and even more so Public Health) does some good, (and it
does) I don't think changes things that much. Some years ago I was at
the National Institutes of Health with basic responsibility for patient, public,
and professional education in the area of heart lung and blood diseases. That in
itself does not make me a medical expert, for sure -- but it was a generally
accepted "fact" at the Institutes and in the world of Public Health that just
about 95% of all disease is self-limiting -- which means you will either get
better or die, but that in any case medicine won't help that much. In the
remaining 5% of the cases medical practice and public health does help -- but
the way they help is instructive, I think. They assist the body until such
time as it can take over -- and the actual healing process, if healing does
occur, is a function of the body. The basic issue is that as much as we may
know about the body, its complex interconnections vastly exceed our feeble
understanding. And even when we have it right in general, each individual is
unique. It is the old problem of putting Humpty Dumpty together again --
which as you will remember -- neither all the King's Horses nor all the King's
men could pull it off. And I don't think we are in much better shape. But
healing does occur, more often than not, and the hero is our old friend
self-organization, or so it seems. It is a dictum among many physicians that
he/she who practices best, practices least. Minimal intervention. Do as little
as possible, and just enough to get the old body kick started. Anything more
only invites massive doses of unintended consequences which often have lethal
consequences. </FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial>In writing what I did, my intent was not to provide
information about medical and public health practice, which is obviously beyond
my competence. My purpose was to use the physical body as a metaphor for the
body politic -- and make the same point: He/she who practices least, practices
best. Otherwise known as thinking of one more thing not to do. I believe this
has been our experience in Open Space and I was suggesting that the same
approach (minimalism) works well in the larger open space of our
lives. </FONT></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial>Harrison</FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial> </FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Harrison Owen<BR>7808 River Falls Dr.<BR>Potomac,
MD 20854<BR>USA<BR>301-365-2093<BR>207-763-3261 (summer)<BR>website <A
href="http://www.openspaceworld.com">www.openspaceworld.com</A></FONT></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<BLOCKQUOTE
style="PADDING-RIGHT: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; BORDER-LEFT: #000000 2px solid; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px">
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial">----- Original Message ----- </DIV>
<DIV
style="BACKGROUND: #e4e4e4; FONT: 10pt arial; font-color: black"><B>From:</B>
<A title=EVERETT813@aol.com
href="mailto:EVERETT813@aol.com">EVERETT813@aol.com</A> </DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>To:</B> <A
title=OSLIST@LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU
href="mailto:OSLIST@LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU">OSLIST@LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU</A>
</DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>Sent:</B> Monday, August 15, 2005 1:49
PM</DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>Subject:</B> Re: Open Space - a
minimum?</DIV>
<DIV><BR></DIV><FONT face=arial,helvetica><FONT face=Geneva color=#000000
size=2 FAMILY="SANSSERIF"><BR>In a message dated 8/15/05 9:03:24 AM, <A
href="mailto:filiztelek@yahoo.com">filiztelek@yahoo.com</A>
writes:<BR><BR><BR>
<BLOCKQUOTE
style="PADDING-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; BORDER-LEFT: #0000ff 2px solid; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px"
cite="" TYPE="CITE"></FONT><FONT face=Geneva color=#000000 size=2
FAMILY="SANSSERIF">I once read somewhere that body does the most of the
healing process itself...all those medicine we take has just such a little
role to activate certain actions, chemicals, interactions to happen in the
body. but eventually the body heals itself...what a fascinating
thought!<BR></BLOCKQUOTE></FONT><FONT face=Geneva color=#000000 size=2
FAMILY="SANSSERIF"><BR><BR>Filiz:<BR><BR>Well, you haven't lived when there
were none of those drugs and the body didn't heal itself. You never had
to not go swimming in the summer because of the wild polio virus living in the
water could make you sick or kill you or paralyze you for life. An iron
lung is no place to live. Leg braces are no fun. Joelle
experienced that. <BR><BR>You never saw a child die from coughing
(Whooping cough) or from a staph or strep infection that ran wild in the body
which wasn't healing itself. Before simple forms of cleanliness, ONE
THIRD of all women who delivered babies in the hospitals of the time died of
"childbirth fever". Think about that FACT. <BR><BR>People forget
really fast that we are healthy because of those drugs and practices that have
saved millions of lives and allowed people to remain healthy.
<BR><BR>That's one of my 'hot buttons', the idea that modern medicine doesn't
prevent disease, that the body does all the healing, etc. It's all
baloney. Life is immeasureably better now because of vaccinations,
immunizations, drugs, etc. Immeasureably better here where we are safe
from the malarial mosquito but we refuse to allow the rest of the impoverished
world to use a marvelous mosquito killer called DDT. We think it is
better for people to die, or be horribly sick, than to use, effectively and
carefully, a chemical that has been proven to work very, very well. It
has side issues, but compared to human life, they are side issues.
Silent Spring was a cannon blasting a brush covered machine gun nest, total
overkill that has negatively affected the lives of tens of millions of
people.<BR><BR>Now, I'm almost off my soap box.<BR><BR>Be well and be thankful
for medical science.<BR><BR>Paul</FONT><FONT face=Geneva color=#000000 size=2
FAMILY="SANSSERIF"></FONT> * *
==========================================================
OSLIST@LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU ------------------------------ To subscribe,
unsubscribe, change your options, view the archives of
oslist@listserv.boisestate.edu:
http://listserv.boisestate.edu/archives/oslist.html To learn about
OpenSpaceEmailLists and OSLIST FAQs: http://www.openspaceworld.org/oslist
</FONT></BLOCKQUOTE></BODY></HTML>
*
*
==========================================================
OSLIST@LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU
------------------------------
To subscribe, unsubscribe, change your options,
view the archives of oslist@listserv.boisestate.edu:
http://listserv.boisestate.edu/archives/oslist.html
To learn about OpenSpaceEmailLists and OSLIST FAQs:
http://www.openspaceworld.org/oslist