Hi All
 
I recently read an article in fortune 500 about the medical
fraternities treatment of ulcers and it set me thinking about the bee
allergy industry. (Anybody with ulcers check out www.fortune.com and
search for ulcers - one can find out how to treat the cause rather
than the symptoms - it costs many $1000 to treat symptoms and about
$50 to treat the cause - of course treating symptoms is the popular
choice of doctors!!)
 
The body has a natural response to most foreign objects that enter
the body, namely the production of antibodies to them. It produces
antibodies so as to kill the foreign object, and not the body itself.
Hence any system that could potentially kill the body instead is
ralatively well regulated and hardly ever actually kills the
individual.
 
In africa we have honey gatherers. I have peronally spoken to many
many honey gatherers and have asked them if they know of anybody who
has died from bee stings. Very few even have heard of such a death.
These are usually primative people, using little medication who are
exposed to many stings on account of the fact that bees are racist
animals and sting black people in a higher proportion to white.
 
Howcome then if in the same country I ask any white, and they, or
their nearest family member are allergic??
 
Because they have money to spare and any old doc can prescribe an
epipen and 60 cellestamine tabs to them, tell them they will die next
time they get stung if they don't eat the cellestamine (which does
nothing except cause some rather serious mental side effects in some
individuals that can only be cured by treatment by knowledgeable GP's
who will prescribe expensive pills again and so on.) Here doctors
will tell a person who gets a minor welt that they are  allergic -
Medical aid pays for the medication and the doc makes a few hundred
more to pay for his beach mansion and private schooling for kids.
 
I was diagnosed as allergic - since that diagnosis I have had in
excess of 5000 stings (often more than 70 a day with a record of 180)
and never had the slightest side effect other than a lack of flu and
colds and occasional rattyness after bad stinging events.
 
There is a myth that the effects of bee stings are cumulative and
that the number of stings taken to reach allergic status is finite.
 
A bit of research in scandinavia somewhere (wow bees up there!)
showed that beekeepers who got more than 130 stings a year were
reasonable safe, but that the 30 a year and lower cetegory were in
the risky region.
 
Hence my belief about the whole bee allergy thing is that it is just
another happy example of how a fad orientated culture can be hijacked
by money making companies to the detriment of an agricultural
industry. (pretty much like salmonella in eggs - levels are now ten
times higher than when it was fashionable not to eat eggs because of
salmonella - mad cow disease and so on. Notice how mad cow disease
arrived just after it became impossible for britain to export mutton
to france??)
 
So sure, if you get a funny bump from a sting take precautions
(practice safe beekeeping - no holes in gloves etc) - but - the best
medication after a bad bee sting is another one - this will boost the
bodies population of regulator t cells - the ones that block the
histamine response preventing anaphylaxis better than anything else.
(And it will be much faster than gimmicky and money spinnerish venom
therapy - another example of bad medical practice)
 
And as a last little thing - the only place capitalism should not be
directly applied is in the medical field. It is open to too much
corruption.
 
Just my two cents.
 
Keep well
 
Garth
 
Garth Cambray           Camdini Apiaries
Grahamstown             Apis mellifera capensis
Eastern Cape Prov.
South Africa
 
Time = Honey