The A Cappella Handyman: War on Crohn’s Disease

Only a concerted war of intelligent action will eradicate Crohn’s Disease from this planet…What else would you expect? This is the open letter I sent to seven in April 2012 and later included in my column in the Benicia Herald.

Open Letter to Seven: Sen. Barbara Boxer, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, Congressman George Miller, Dr. Mehmet Oz, Oprah Winfrey, TV program “60 Minutes”, President Barack Obama (Only President Obama and Sen. Feinstein responded with a polite letter of condolences)

Dear all:
On February 24th, 2012, our daughter Cathy Lynn Bray, 44, died from Crohn’s Disease after a courageous battle of 24 years. She underwent the full program of Western Medicine’s “anti-inflammatory” and “symptom-suppressing and immuno-suppressive drugs”: Sulphasalazine, Prednisone steroids with repeated psych ward hospitalizations for steroid psychosis, ASACOL, MP-6, and 5 years of Remicade infusions. She refused to undergo the next plateau of questionable, immune system-suppressing drugs, the self-injecting Humira, but sought the possibility of more natural, non-immuno-suppressive remedies.
She began with a perianal fistula at age 20, 24 years ago…another recto-vaginally, 23 years later, with subsequent temporary, looped ileostomy and recto-vaginal surgery on 4/2011, with external waste bag and stoma, and a third suspected in her urinary tract during her final weeks. Her life was spent bound to her home, bathroom, and toilet…typical of all Crohn’s patients, globally…
I am writing to you all to protest the medieval and archaic state of the art of Crohn’s research and medicine in the United States. While she was in County Hospital Martinez, California (Contra Costa Regional Medical Center) in April of 2011 for her surgery, no less than five other Crohn’s patients were on that same floor with her…five! A senior citizen with recurring ileostomy surgery problems, a 19-year old with a Remicade tube up her rectum, a 27-year old, forced to drop out of college due to a fecal-producing abscess in her front stomach wall…Five, male and female, in one hospital in one city, one county, one state, one country…is anyone keeping track?
I refer you to two papers I have included herewith in their entirety: one by Professor John Hermon-Taylor of King’s College, England (Available online: http:// www.gutpathogens.com/content/ 1/1/15), the other by Dr. Michael Greger of Cornell University, United States, also available online: http:// www.www.notmilk.com/drgreger.html. Both address the growing epidemic proportions of the Crohn’s human tragedy. Note that Dr. Greger’s work is dated January 2001, a full 11 years ago! Fifty pages in length with no less than 425 cited references…Professor Hermon-Taylor’s has 56 cited references…
I implore you to follow the anti-MAP work of Professor John-Hermon- Taylor of England, Drs. Rod Chiodini and William Chamberlin of Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center, El Paso, and Dr. Tom Borody of Australia, and initiate and support major funding for massive clinical trials of anti-MAP programs, Mycobacterium avium paratuberculosis, a pathogen in Johne’s Disease-infected dairy cattle, which travels into the human food chain and is NOT killed by pasteurization. Nor is it killed when infected dairy cows are NOT culled from the herd and destroyed independently, but are turned into ground beef and returned to the human food chain.
The prevalence of MAP, Mycobacterium avium paratuberculosis in the US and global human food chain is further noted in the closing remarks of the 11th International Colloquium on Paratuberculosis held this past February in Sydney, Australia, readily found on the Internet (http://johnes.org/ presentations.shtml# ). If I can find this kind of information, where are the rest of the public health leaders of this planet? How many irate family members of Crohn’s victims and/or patients will it take to initiate real progress in the US and on planet Earth?
My daughter Cathy, 44 is gone forever, never to return. How many others await her fate while “immune system – suppressing drugs” lower the resistance of the human immune system while allowing suspected pathogens to destroy internal organs of the unwary? When did the medical profession “succumb” to the “convenience” of “symptom- suppression,” and turn their backs on real “cures?” Who benefits? Big business? Big Pharma? Big Surgery? The dairy industry? Are “Chronic illnesses really THAT importantly GOOD for business?”
Where is the NIH? The FDA? The USDA? Are we a Predator Nation or a Predator Species and is this the BEST we can do? Please initiate and support anti-MAP drugs to remove this pathogen from the human food chain…I am in this for the long term and will not let this issue pass away…Too many lives and qualities of lives are at stake…

Peter Bray
Dad and medical historian/lay advocate
for Cathy Lynn Bray, (9/10/67 – 2/24/12)