Doctors on the oayroll

Subject: Doctors on the payroll

Our lives are jam packed with assumptions. Preconceived assumptions that we pick up as we grow and develop, ideas which surround us in our different environments concepts we absorb as if through osmosis.
Religion is just one such idea. We when young hear the story of Jesus and dependent on the force of the telling we become Christians. For some the revelation of Jesus is enough for him to become our life's calling and the construction of our lives begins to revolve around the meaning of Christ.
It's a chance happening of course since if you grew up in a remote corner of the globe where Christianity hadn't been revealed you would be oblivious of this force of conviction which rules your every waking hour.  Born in India you may well be a follower of Hindu. Born in China, perhaps the philosophical determinism of Confucius, and depending on your household you may even become addicted to a New Age Religion tied up in Spirituality.
What ever the influence you become a devotee even an obsessive as the truth in your life reveals a way of life and a way of living your life which makes absolute common sense to you.
Unfortunately or fortunately, depending on your point of view we are not all the same. One of the intriguing things about the human race is it's diversity, its range of beliefs and hopefully our ability to get along, even though we don't all have the same belief.

Last night I had an argument about Veganism with my son Andrew who is a Vegan. It became quite robust at times as I fought for my prejudice as he did his. Veganism came into being in England in 1944. It abhors the killing of animals for our consumption and they argue that dairy products such as eggs and milk are harmful to us. Like Christianity it has its surety supported by its followers who almost ideologically become servants to the cause. Vegan claims are wide and many. Films have been produced to high life their claim that "big business" is behind a blanketing of their claims that products we eat everyday are harmful to our bodies. 

It was a film which kicked off our somewhat heated discussion as I became somewhat irritated by the vegan 'surety' extenuated by the plethora of American doctors who provided, somewhat glibly, claim upon claim that the food I have eaten all my life was bad for me. I was hearing the claims of a new industry, a new messianic which would no doubt become beneficial to the marketeers.
There is no doubt that the killing of animals is barbaric. I think if anyone of us were to spend an hour in an abattoir, a slaughter house as they were called before we became squeamish, we would be shaken by the experience. Killing on an industrial scale is a ferociously awful sight and one wonders at the mentality of those who do it daily. That perspective of the slaughter house should clearly be enough to put us off eating meat but often it doesn't. Our meat is packaged when it gets to us in such a way that children have to be taught where the food on the table comes from. There is a disconnect between the reality of the slaughter house and the sizzling steak served in a restaurant.
This disconnect comes in many shapes and sizes. We buy clothes made in the sweat shops of China or Bangladesh without a thought to the awful conditions and paltry wages the people making our clothes receive and if we were ideologically connected we would insist on paying more for clothing perhaps even made by our own people, paid wages in line with those we ourselves receive but of course we don't.
The health aspects of  Veganism which were hammered home like verses from Mao's Little Red Book, brooked no dissent. All the food I have consumed in my near to be 77 years has been bad for me. This is of course no different than the claims and counter claims made by the food industry as they seek to revive consumption of some product which a year ago we were told scientifically was bad for us.
It seems doctors will say what ever is asked, so long as there is a pay cheque at the end of it.