From the desk of John Duskey '63

In the January 2024 issue of Campion Forever, I included a copy of a brief note from Dean Bill Cullinan of Marquette’s College of Health Sciences, in which he expressed his intention to start a program in nutrition and dietetics. He identified that as a weak spot in medical education. I believe that is true.

I found an article that stated that the food pyramid is no longer taught in schools. That, in itself, may be a good thing, but nutrition should be taught in schools. But if it is a weak spot in medical education, it is understandable that it is not taught in schools. There is a vast field of knowledge that is not accessible without extended research using books, periodicals, and internet resources.

In rhe course of my reading, I regularly examine books, letters and websites that list the foods that should be included in a healthy diet. I am not a medical doctor; what I convey here are ideas I have taken from medical doctors who have done research in the pertinent areas of nutrition and health. They all seem to say the same, or almost the same thing: A healthy diet includes oatmeal, flaxseed, berries, cinnamon, nuts, dark chocolate, beets, green leafy vegetables, carrots, beans, sweet potatoes, chicken and turkey, fatty fish, like salmon, and, additionally, apples, citrus fruits, and green tea, This is not a totally comprehensive list.

Troublesome statistics abound: We, in the USA, spend the most per capita on health care, yet we are far from the healthiest country. There has been a growing subculture among those who are interested in natural alternatives in diet and health care. Now that subculture seems to have exploded into mass culture, and as we would expect, this has caused a lot of strong conflict. The trouble is that there is so much information to take into account that is difficult even for healthcare personnel to keep up with it all. Frustrations arise that are directed at those who are, somehow, “caught in the middle” between standard prescriptions and procedures that have government approval and the desire of patients for an effective cure for their ailments, and not just costly treatments that alleviate symptoms.

Such frustrations should not be directed at health insurance agencies, who have had to act as referees between the cost of service provided by doctors and hospitals and the ability of people to pay those costs. Recognizing all that, an assassination isn’t going to help solve the problem. It could make things worse, but, in any case, it should open our eyes to the problem.

How could a graduate of an elite prep school, with a high quality college education, stray this far from the path that leads to a solution? We Campion alumni ought to think about this, given our high school and college experiences and the lives we have lived since graduation. We should know how to look at both sides of the issues, define the real problem or problems, and come to suggest effective solutions.

There are three major areas that deserve our attention: (1) Pollution and toxic substances; (2) The providing of both natural and chemically synthesized treatments to ailing patients; and (3) Flaws in research methods used to seek approval of treatments for general use as prescribed or recommended for particular ailments.

(1) We can all recognize that we have harmful substances, like pesticides and some chemical fertilizers that sometimes enter our atmosphere and the soil from which food crops are grown. Also, with modern methods of farming, the soil gets depleted and no longer supplies some of the good elements and compounds we need to stay healthy. We don’t need aluminum, lead or mercury. We do need iodine, magnesium, and zinc. Ingesting a compound that includes a toxic element can have the same effect as ingesting the element itself.

We need enough Iodine to avoid goiter and some thyroid disorders. On the periodic table of elements, look at the next to last column on the right side. If we take in a lot of Fluorine and Bromine, those elements are more reactive than Iodine. They can prevent Iodine from doing its job. (Chlorine is among those elements on the periodic table, but we need Chlorine, as it is one of the components of stomach acid, which helps us digest our food.)

Aluminum presents a particular problem. We have no need for it in our bodies, but sometimes we get it anyway, as acidic foods in aluminum containers can absorb it from the surface of the container. When such toxic elements are injected or ingested, careful testing is necessary to prevent ailments.

I was involved in promoting aluminum during my years as an engineer and business owner. From the 1950s, powerful business interests promoted aluminum in several companies. Even in the early 1950s, I remember visiting the Ekco plant on Cicero Avenue with my father, as aluminum foil containers were being developed. Then came the advent of TV dinners, pie plates and aluminum roaster pans. I worked in my father’s company in the 1970s, and, in the 1980s I worked for Ekco Products. By that time they were in a new plant in Wheeling, IL, and were a major manufacturer of aluminum foil containers. Lots of aluminum particles were flying around that plant. I regret that I was ever involved with aluminum.

Whenever toxic elements are involved in food products, we need fair and impartial testing to be sure no harm would be caused. The same thing pertains to chemical compounds that contain toxic elements or toxic combinations. Recall that carbon and nitrogen are not harmful by their very nature, but cyanide is poison. We need fair and impartial work by the CDC and the FDA and the National Institutes of Health to perform and evaluate this research and testing. There should be no shortcuts on safety.

(2) When I worked for Ekco, it was owned by American Home Products. The corporation owned several other companies, including Ekco Housewares and Chef Boy-ar-dee foods. While I was in management there, I attended meetings and learned that American Home management recognized that our costs were between 70 and 80% of the sales price. They could not accept that we had to work so hard for such a small profit margin, especially when they could make much larger profits selling aspirin tablets. (that was the expression they used for their work in pharmaceuticals.) In later years, Ekco and the other companies were sold off, and American Home products re-branded itself as Pfizer, now one of the leading pharmaceutical companies.

These companies are collectively known today as “Big Pharma.” They develop drugs they can patent and insure their rights to the income these drugs generate. In many cases these drugs can help alleviate symptoms, and maybe even improve some health conditions. Big Pharma, in recent years, has been allowed to advertise on TV and we’ve all heard about their products, even with all the required warning notices. Because of their size and profitability, Big Pharma can influence government agencies. The drugs they develop need to have the approval of those agencies before they can sell them. The October 21, 2024 Chicago Sun-Times had an article stating that Big Pharma had made substantial donations to certain Illinois congressional representatives. If they are making these kinds of contributions to government agencies like the CDC and FDA, that could affect the agencies’ ability to come up with fair and impartial evaluations. They could, for example, insist on fast approval of a drug while natural remedies, which are not patentable, would have to wait a while to get recognized as safe and effective.. Doctors might suggest, but not prescribe, natural supplements because they don’t require a prescription. Without the expensive process of testing, doctors may tend ro avoid suggesting natural remedies, when they are not sure they will work on any given patient.

(3) Flaws in research methods are easy to detect for one who has studied research methods in graduate school. There is a big difference between an absolute comparison and a relative comparison. If you have a condition and an active program to correct it which is effective 90% of the time, you may be searching for an alternative that will provide a higher level of correction. If a new method is effective 93% of the time, then one might claim that the new treatment gives a 30% increase in effectiveness. However, this calculation represents only the relative change. To get a proper evaluation, you need to look at absolute effectiveness, which in this case would be simply the 3% increase in effectiveness. Bold claims about the effectiveness of some new treatments need to be reevaluated. Ultimately there are two sides to most of these situations, and both sides should be evaluated.

Natural methods won’t be approved by the CDC unless extensive testing is done, which would cost a lot of money. But word is spreading among the people. This is how a subculture comes into contact with the main culture. We can expect a lot of conflict, particularly from those who are influenced by Big Pharma. But people are buyng supplements. Nowadays we even see ads on TV for natural supplements, like Magnesium, Turmeric, and Coenzyme Q10.

There are a lot of problems facing the incoming administration. Right now it seems that Big Pharma controls the government agencies, who control the doctors and hospitals. Big Pharma is simply protecting their business interests.

When a drug is fast-tracked for approval, it must be continually reevaluated. A Chicago Sun Times editorial on January 21, 2024, stated “Feds must ensure that doctors get the word about drug risks” Sometimes the Feds fast-track the approval of a drug and find out later that it has serious side effects. The editorial stated that when government agencies send a warning to doctors, there are some who don’t get the message. Doctors have to spend a lot of time to keep themselves up to date. New information is being added every day; it is impossible for every doctor to keep up with it all. That is why they have fields of specialization.

A few years ago I spoke with my classmate Dr. Joseph Corrigan (Campion ’63) and asked him about what he learned in medical school, and how relevant that knowledge is today. He stated that he had found out over many years that about 90% of what he was taught in the 1970s was wrong. I know from my own experience that some doctors are simply not up-to-date in their own field of practice. So, change is coming. We would be in a lot of trouble if change weren’t coming. Let us all hope that it will be change for the better, for all of us.