​It's Awards Season again, and I've been quite cosy this winter watching screeners with my family. I think when we look back on a generation, we will always remember the kinds of films they made. There is something immortalised about the medium of film and how it can transcend cultures and be able to influence thought across many different national divides.
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I've received a lot of brilliant films throughout the years due to my membership and affiliation with the Producers Guild of America, but there will always be a few films that weren't nominated which have really made a lasting impression on me.

​A scene from Departure (2015) by director Andrew Steggall. His auteurist, nuanced vision depicts the human condition through the perspective of a teenaged boy.

This year, one of those films is from a debut director whose first feature film, Departure quietly swept through the film festival circuit earlier this year. There is something really deeply haunting and beautiful about this film. The structure of the film seems reminiscent of a Chopin nocturne as every scene has a specific kind of nuance and the characters are so detailed that one forgets that they were acting aside from the aesthetic navigation of its cinematography. When I first saw the Departure trailer, I was certain it would be one of those dull, predictable coming of age films, but I was quite surprised by the unusual composition of the storyline that unfolded like waves quietly rippling into the shore and its careful observation of human relationships. My analysis of the U.K. director, Andrew Steggall is that he will be one of the great auteurs of our era.

In the many screeners I received, there was definitely a united theme of historical precedents and the racial and class divisions faced by many Americans, in addition to the plight of the individual who rises up against all odds to follow their dreams. Films such as Moonlight, Hidden Figures, Loving and Fences paint different POVs of the African-American experience during the mid 20th century. I quite enjoyed Hidden Figures, and I think the story would resonate a lot with contemporary women working in male-dominated professions in the corporate and startup world today.
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Taraji P. Henson plays Katherine Johnson, a child genius in Hidden Figures (2016) who ends up working for NASA on its space programme and who is the only woman in her department.

La La Land, Touched With Fire, Florence Foster Jenkins and Café Society all follow the lives of people who struggled against working in traditional professions to follow their artistic endeavors.

20th Century Women, Jackie, Allied, Silence and Sully attempt to reconstruct the life-altering moments in our collective history through the perspective of multiple characters. Martin Scorsese's Silence depicts the politically driven persecution of Catholics in East Asian nations, specifically in Japan, during the turn of the century. Religion becomes a secret savior when the majority of the population is living in poverty and the wealthy control the people through who they worship. It is that need for people to believe in something when they are suffering that leads to expansion of religion in this historical depiction of Catholicism. There are some memorable scenes in the Scorsese film, but I think his direction seems almost from that of an outside observer watching these scenes unfold instead of being able to solely focus nor identify with the POV of the main characters.
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Adam Driver plays a bus driver who takes the same route every day and eavesdrops on the conversations of his passengers, perhaps as a metaphor for the role of contemporary politicians in the Jim Jarmusch film Paterson (2016). 

This is the first year that I received screeners from Amazon Studios, and a couple that I received, Manchester by the Sea and Paterson, focus on the lives of working class Americans. In the latter film, the monotony of life may not be so different than the lives of high profile politicians, who probably have a similar routine of their own. Queen of Katwe and The Eagle Huntress both depict strong female roles set in Africa and Kazakhstan and Lion is an interesting tale of an adopted man finding his roots in India. I also received several animations: Kubo and the Two Strings, the Secret Life of Pets and Finding Dory which were a hit with my little cousins.

There were also a few thrillers nominated this year: Hell or High Water, The Girl on the Train and Nocturnal Animals. The latter is the second film from Tom Ford, the fashion designer who re-invented Gucci in the 1990s and launched his own label, then came out with a debut film in 2009, A Single Man. Tom Ford is one of those spectacular people whom you can't help but endlessly admire.
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Tom Ford speaking at the Directors Guild of America about his second film, Nocturnal Animals (2016) last month.  

I remember when I first received my copy of A Single Man during the 2010 Awards Season. It was around Thanksgiving and I had received the full DVD copy with all the director interviews instead of the usual screener copy. Aside from the fact that the film was beautifully directed and shot, it was just an incredible offering from a man who previously had never been a director in Hollywood. A Single Man was released several years before gay marriage would eventually become legalised and at the time, my father, a fiscally conservative Republican, didn't have any views supporting gay marriage. My family was living in Silicon Valley, and my dad had worked in the oil industry before setting up his own business, but he never had any connection or even had known anyone who had been gay, so his knowledge at the time came from scant media sources and sensationalised tales of debauchery and promiscuity depicting the homosexual population. However, after watching A Single Man, my father completely changed his mind on gay marriage, and after subsequently viewing all extra scenes on the DVD including all the interviews with Tom Ford, my dad turned to me during that Thanksgiving holiday as we were discussing all the films we had seen and he said, "Tom Ford is a great director." I think that is what a legendary director does - he or she has the ability to influence people's thoughts, to bring new perspectives and to unify people against division.
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Colin Firth (left) on the set with director Tom Ford (right) in A Single Man (2009).

In any case, Nocturnal Animals, Tom Ford's second film is an intriguing, stylised journey that seems to be somewhat influenced by the films of David Lynch, with a graphic attention to sound; the turning of the page has a crisp, almost shrill attention to its pitch and resonance. The film veers between two perspectives - between the world depicted in the novel the main character is reading and the life of the main character. Quite frankly, I was more interested in the conversations occurring between people in the main character's life as opposed to the fictional thriller inside the novel one, which seemed to me a little grotesque. Although I don't think this film compares to monumental tone set by A Single Man, it is still an aesthetically interesting film to watch with beautiful cinematography by Seamus McGarvey, and I look forward to how Tom Ford will shape cinema in his next new series of films.
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Amy Adams plays Susan, an art curator in Nocturnal Animals (2016).
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For those of you who know me well, I am a huge fan of sci-fi, and two of the only sci-fi films for consideration for this coming year's Awards were Passengers and Arrival. I found the latter film very entertaining for many reasons, and the non-linear narrative had an interesting plot twist and showcases another strong female character. Like Nocturnal Animals, the Arrival features Amy Adams as the main protagonist who plays a doctor attempting to demystify an alien language that bends space and time. Although the plot seems like a compendium of many different unexplained phenomena, which may have not been entirely successful in its exposition, who doesn't like a movie with Amy Adams in it?

​By Sierra Choi

For those of you with pets, you know what a bureaucratic hassle it is to prepare your pets for travel during the holidays. Pets need to have vaccinations, booster vaccination shots of the same vaccination for a certain time frame, take deworming meds 24 hours before a flight and many EU countries have mandatory microchipping laws.
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Recently, the UK launched a new law that requires compulsory microchipping of dogs over 8 weeks old. 
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The UK recently passed a law making microchipping of dogs mandatory. Pet owners who do not microchip their dogs will be fined £500.

This is problematic for several reasons. Firstly, microchip implants are an outdated technology stemming from the 1990s. A microchip implant was initially considered advanced technology more than 30 years ago before evidence amounted of its safety and efficacy concerns. A microchip implant is an integrated circuit RFID (radio frequency identification) implant a bit larger than a size of a grain of rice that is usually injected under the skin.  Problems have been found with microchips, including cracking and leakage and becoming a health hazard inside the body of an animal.  Numerous studies have shown the ineffectiveness of microchipping for identification as many shelters were unable to locate the microchip or information from the microchip could not be read, leading to the euthanisation of many pets whose owners were looking for them. In the United States, mandatory laws for the microchipping of pets were defeated on both local and national levels for being invasive and potentially harmful. Lawsuits have been filed against Merck and Co. and HomeAgain pet microchips for possible cancer causing effects of its microchips. 
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Secondly, microchips often fail to be read - because when inside the body of a person or pet, scar tissue forms around the microchip and could also migrate to other areas of the body making it hard for technicians to locate the microchip. One pet owner found the microchip had migrated into the brain of her puppy, leading to a terrible health hazard. Many dog owners have reported that cancerous tumours had developed in the region of where the microchip had been implanted. 
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Lastly, all nations have different microchip readers, so there is a compatibility issue. If you are a world traveller, you will need to bring your own microchip reader or have your pet microchipped twice with two different kinds of microchips. This is ineffective, inefficient and a waste of time, since microchips often fail to be read after having been implanted for a long time, could migrate and leak contents into the body of your pet. 
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Instead, the better way to identify your pet is with an iris biometrics identification recognition. Although this iris biometrics technology had been used at airports in London from 2005-2012 to identify people, the technology had been soon abandoned after the 2012 Olympics when it was discovered by security experts that iris biometrics could be falsely verified through high resolution images or contact lenses, making it possible to impersonate another individual.

Currently, many cattle ranches in the US are utilising iris biometrics identification by scanning the unique patterns in the iris of an animal. Previous painful and invasive methods of branding the animal and marking or piecing the animal have long been criticised as being harmful and cruel. Iris biometrics identification is a non-invasive, inexpensive method to identify an animal. 

However, iris biometrics is currently being utilised to identify cattle,  and horses  and other animals, and most pet owners are probably not going to attempt to falsify the identity of their pet, especially since all pets pass through the airport via a manual inspection, hence no ability for animals to present false high resolution video images of another animal's eyes or to falsify identity by using fake irises present in contact lenses to pass the biometrics recognition. Currently there are also retinal eye scans, which differ from iris recognition scans by analysing the pattern of blood vessels in the retina as opposed to the unique patterns of the iris: 

​A biometric identifier known as a retinal scan is used to map the unique patterns of a person’s retina. The blood vessels within the retina absorb light more readily than the surrounding tissue and are easily identified with appropriate lighting. A retinal scan is performed by casting an unperceived beam of low-energy infrared light into a person’s eye as they look through the scanner’s eyepiece. This beam of light traces a standardized path on the retina. Because retinal blood vessels are more absorbent of this light than the rest of the eye, the amount of reflection varies during the scan. The pattern of variations is converted to computer code and stored in a database.

As a note, retinal scans are not routinely utilised due to the expense of the scanning procedure and the nature of light being directly projected into the eye compared to iris biometrics recognition technology which is non-invasive and portable and less expensive. In addition, as iris recognition technology becomes more advanced, there will be less ways for security experts to fool scanning devices. Carnegie Mellon University was recently able to demonstrate long-range iris recognition system by identifying people from 40 feet away. 

Another way to add a layer of security to biometrics identification is via the compendium of many different biomarkers. For pets, this could include any birth marks, or identifying characteristics listed in their pet passports or a database, in addition to the iris pattern recognition. This is much more preferable than an invasive and outdated procedure such as microchipping one's pet which has many negatives. Iris biometrics identification is also versatile and suitable for large populations of animals. 

Other high tech biometrics identification system includes voice recognition, handprint vein identification, brainwave identification and even biomarkers for unique odors.  These are technologies that could easily be calibrated for the pet population that could be used in the future in conjunction with iris biometrics recognition. 
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Iris biometrics identification of pets is currently the safest and most cost-effective and accurate method of pet identification in the world that is non-invasive and does not harm the pet. 


This is an area where UK legislation needs to catch up with the latest research and technology. Although lawmakers probably have the best interests in mind - in order to attempt to prevent abandoned animals and help owners find their lost pets, microchipping has not been effective in this regard. Although the makers of microchips assert that microchipping pets has lead to the reunion of lost pets and their owners by up to 20%, this statistic has not been verified by independent third parties, and at best is probably an overstated extrapolation without any credible proof. In fact, as mentioned before several cases have risen in which lost pets have been wrongfully euthanised due to the technicians at animal shelters not being able to locate the microchip. Microchip failures have also been routinely reported by the makers of microchips. 
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These kinds of compulsory laws forcing pet owners to microchip their pets actually hurt people and their pets, rather than give confidence to pet owners of the safety and efficacy of the technology being implemented that may potentially have harmful effects. 

The U.K. is a progessive nation with investment into many high tech enterprises. We should not utilise antiquated technology and make it mandatory for people to microchip their pets when the overwhelming evidence points to its ineffectiveness and potential harmful effects. ​

​By Sierra Choi
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​For those of you who aren't familiar with the term, xenotransplantation is the transplantation of non-human cells, tissues, organs into humans. A lot of startups have recently entered the arena into developing human + pig hybrid animals, and utilising pigs to harvest human organs. Three Cambridge startups: Editas Medicine, Intellia Therapeutics and CRISPR Therapeutics are attempting to treat various diseases from cancer to blood disorders by developing a pig + human hybrid to grow human organs by gene editing. Scientists are following this UK lead in the United States at various universities, and this year have begun to inject human stem cells into pig embryos to produce human-pig embryos called chimeras.

​In the medical world, we are already familiar with using the parts of pigs for various medical conditions. For example, insulin is typically derived from pigs to be injected into humans, and estrogen from pigs are utilised for birth control pills. Many plastic surgeons also utilise dermal fillers made from pig fat and skin grafts for burn victims are derived from the epidermis of pigs. Now you may ask why pigs? Why not chimpanzees or apes or orangutans, our closest ancestors? However, recent research in the last ten years has discovered that pigs could be, in fact, one of our closest ancestors and that we share a remarkably similar DNA. In addition, researchers have discovered that when human genes are combined with pig genes, that they appear to fuse seamlessly together instead of cellular rejection of the foreign DNA as what happens with human and chimpanzee DNA and xenotransplants.
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In 2013, a geneticist and PhD professor at the University of Georgia, Dr. Eugene M. McCarthy had theorised that humans are most likely a hybrid of chimpanzees and pigs. Geneticists have been developing hybrid, fertile offsprings in a variety of different plant and animal species for decades, including the Zebroid (zebra + horse), the Grolar Bear (grizzly bear + polar bear), Beefalo (domestic cattle + American bison) amongst others, the most well known being the Mule (male donkey + female horse), although the latter is known to be sterile.

​Professor McCarthy, in his argument, goes on to describe the various similarities between pigs and humans and the characteristics we share in common. Although his argument is that humans are the result of a hybrid between pigs and chimpanzees, recent developments in the understanding of the role of viruses could also account for these genetic similarities. As I mentioned in my last post on antibiotics, viruses are the known drivers of evolution, and through viruses, genetic information is inserted into the genome of the host using reverse transcriptase.

A small percentage of human babies develop tails due to a failure of the DNA methylation process to "turn off" genetic information that we possess but which aren't usually expressed.

The latest analysis also shows that human limbs share a genetic programme with the gills of cartilaginous fishes such as sharks and skates, according to research at Cambridge University. The "sonic hedgehog gene" discovered in the 1980s, is responsible for animals to form digits or fingers, although these genes are silent and unexpressed in fish. The gene for gills that we share with fish is responsible for the development of our voices and sense of hearing.

​In history, many religions, such as Islam and Judaism have banned the killing of pigs and eating them. Could it be that our ancestors were more closely attuned to the similarities between humans and pigs? Many people have reported that the smell of bacon is strikingly similar to the smell of burning human flesh, and perhaps through atavistic instincts, we are either repulsed or attracted to the scent, depending on whether our ancestral lineages were cannibalistic or not. It is clear, however, that we can no longer deny that we share many of the same genes and attributes with pigs.
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​There are however, larger ethical questions we must ask ourselves, as we begin to discover our close genetic relationship with pigs. Should we farm intelligent beings, such as pigs as a food source? Should we fuse human and pig embryos to grow human organs? Furthermore, what will happen to these pig-human chimeras once they are harvested for their organs? We have to remember as humans, we are still evolving, and that the actions we take now will determine the future of our progeny. Quite frankly, I reject the idea of utilising pigs for human organ harvestation and in our next punctuated equilibrium of evolution, I think the better method will be finding a way to regrow or regenerate our own organs via 3D bioprinting or in a fluid filled sac or pod via nanotechnology and incorporate CRISPR gene editing methods away from utilisation of the insulin, skin, estrogen, organs, fat, cells of an intelligent animal we are closely genetically related to further our mad scientist experiments.
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​Research at Northwestern University has shown that a combination of nanotechnology and biology may enable damaged tissues and organs to heal themselves. In a dramatic demonstration of what nanotechnology might achieve in regenerative medicine, paralyzed lab mice with spinal cord injuries have regained the ability to use their hind legs six weeks after a simple injection of a purpose-designed nanomaterial. Another methodology is through the use of 3D bioprinting to create new tissues and organs.

Play here: youtu.be/s3CiJ26YS_U

​Organovo (NASDAQ: ONVO) is a 3D bioprinting startup founded in 2007 in San Diego, California that develops human tissue and organs. Other startups in this sector include Rokit (founded 2012, South Korea), Aspect Biosystems (founded 2013, British Columbia), 3D Bioprinting Solutions (founded 2013, Russia), and BioBots (founded 2014, Pennsylvania).
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​I read an interesting article in my inbox recently from the eCommerce and lifestyle site goop (founded by Gwenyth Paltrow) about a theory of the Epstein-Barr virus by a medical doctor who linked the virus with Fibromyalgia, Lupus, Thyroid Disorders, Tinnitus, Meniere's Disease, Autoimmune Disease and other "medically mysterious illnesses." Then the article detailed case histories in which the people affected had to endure several stages of this virus that often "hid" itself in the body and organs.

The dramatisation of the case histories read a bit like a horror novel. There was a stage 1, then stage 2, and the virus was "dormant" until reactivated etc. and became increasingly pathogenic and seemed to make a culprit out of a virus that probably actually had little to do with the suffering patients.
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​Viruses help develop the human genome and have been theorised by many researchers to be the major driver of human evolution.

The interesting thing about viruses is that they are a major driver of human evolution. Shared viruses could have affected hominid species diversity both by promoting divergence and by weeding out less resistant host populations, while viruses carried by humans and other animals migrating out of Africa may have contributed to declines in other populations. It is also through the study of bacteria and viruses that current genetics research was able to develop CRISPR/ Cas9 technology in gene editing.

However, back to the goop article, I always think it is interesting how certain doctors are always attempting to make extrapolations behind every "mysterious" disease. After all, the only certainty that many mainstream doctors are sure of is death, and often when people miraculously survive and do just fine without medical treatment, it's always a mystery to them. This is of course, not a negative view of all doctors, but we have to remember that doctors have a specific sort of training and that due to their busy nature of their practices, many often do not have sufficient time to conduct or be up-to-date on the latest scientific research. As a consequence, medical doctors are often limited by instructions and guidelines they receive from the producers of pharmaceutical medications, although many doctors have broken away from mainstream practice.
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​Many medical doctors have broken away from mainstream medical practice and have criticised Louis Pasteur's Germ Theory of diseases, although modern medicine still abides by this theory despite growing research to the contrary.

But are viruses solely responsible for illnesses? Or are viruses the byproducts of illnesses? Certainly in mainstream media, the former is what we have been taught. We were mainly taught to believe in the highly publicised 1861 Germ Theory that we credit to Louis Pasteur and have been subject to decades long fearmongering campaign in media and advertising to be afraid of all bacteria and viruses. Pasteur believed that bacteria and viruses were pathogens that infect the body, and that everyone was at risk if they were exposed. The interesting thing however, is that bacteria and viruses are also present in the bodies of healthy individuals.
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Hollywood movies, such as Contagion (2011) spread this fear that airborne viruses will infect and kill people on a mass scale.

Louis Pasteur had a long-standing rivalry with the fellow researcher and scientist Antoine Béchamp, who advocated that, in fact, all living things possess micro-organisms, and through the exposure to toxins, and lack of nutrition, do the micro-organisms develop into bacteria and viruses as a response to the exposure to toxins, in order to rid itself of the toxins and the malfunctioning cells. Therefore, in Béchamp's Cellular Theory, bacteria and viruses play a role in the immunogenic responses, and part of the cycle of the way the body heals itself.

Although, it was Pasteur's Germ Theory that had been accepted by the society of the 19th century, recent research is proving that Antoine Béchamp is actually the one who had the right idea. Béchamp was able to scientifically prove that the diseased, acidic, low-oxygen cellular environment that is caused by a nutrient deficient diet created bacteria and viruses as the chemical by-products and pleomorphic micro-organisms upon malfunctioning cell metabolism and dead tissue that actually produces the disease state.

What this means is that bacteria and viruses are part of the cycle to kill off the dead, malfunctioning cells. This year's 2016 Nobel Prize in Medicine went to a Japanese cell biologist, Yoshinori Ohsumi, for his discoveries in autophagy some 30 years before, which is a process that removes long-lived proteins, and organelles that have become obsolete or damaged. It is an evolutionary process in which cells can recycle part of its own content by literally eating the dead cells. There is a bacteria-autophagy interplay in the immune response, and although certain bacteria have been shown to evolve and inhibit the signalling pathways that lead to autophagy, bacteria have also been used to eradicate tumours and become vectors for gene therapy of cancer. When certain types of bacteria are injected into a tumour, it signals autophagy to the tumour region.
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In the late 1800s, William Coley injected bacteria into the cancerous tumour of a patient named Mr. Zola, which effectively shrank and eradicated his tumour. His research has lead to contemporary treatments of cancer using self-destructing bacteria.

Recently, researchers at MIT even programmed e.coli to destroy tumour cells although the brunt of this work was initiated by the surgeon and cancer researcher William Coley in the late 1800s, who had successfully treated cancer patients by injecting them with bacteria.

Another important discovery in the last few years is that geneticists and other researchers have discovered that bactericidal antibiotics induce mitochondrial dysfunction. Tetracycline antibiotics, in particular, such as doxycycline, induce genetic changes in human DNA via transcription of genetic expression. In human cell lines, commonly used concentrations of doxycycline change gene expression patterns and concomitantly shift metabolism towards a more glycolytic phenotype, evidenced by increased lactate secretion and reduced oxygen consumption. Quinolones, aminoglycosides, and β-lactams antibiotics similarly cause mutagenic effects in cells.
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Anti-biotic usage has dramatically increased in the early 21st century as researchers have newly discovered its detrimental effects on human DNA.

What does this mean? It means that antibiotics damage the cells in your body by preventing cells to optimally utilise energy and also creates dysfunction in the mitochondria to fight off normal disease states as antibiotics block the autophagy mechanism of cells.

People often cite that antibiotics are the greatest and most fortuitous discovery of the 20th century by citing some anecdote about how it was able to "cure" bacterial diseases such as syphilis that was the cause of death of so many notable literary giants in the late 19th century, such as Frederich Nietzsche and perhaps even Napoleon, although much of this is conjecture. But here, I assert that the discovery of niacin (vitamin B3) and vitamin C were actually probably more important than antibiotics. In many research studies, niacin has been found to be more effective than antibiotics in the treatment of bacterial disease states. This is because niacin is essential for the body to convert carbohydrates, fat and alcohol into energy. Niacin also boosts the ability of the immune system and has a positive effect on genomic stability, cell division and differentiation and apoptosis, therefore regulating the body's natural immune system, and eradicating disease states within the body, whereas antibiotics have been found to eventually lead to paradoxical, detrimental effects, such as "anti-biotic resistance." But more importantly, antibiotics change human DNA to limit its ability to fight diseases by inducing unwanted gene expression.
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It is much more likely that widespread antibiotic usage has lead to a change in people's mitochondrial function that has lead to many secondary disease states that medical doctors have previously not been able to explain such as Fibromyalgia, Lupus, Thyroid Disorders, Tinnitus, Meniere's Disease, Autoimmune Disease, and other "medically mysterious illnesses" that the goop article attributes solely to the Epstein-Barr Virus.

We are now at a time when research can explain why antibiotics make people ill and also let go of old ways of thinking in which people have been heavily reliant on widespread antibiotics usage, just as in previous generations, treatment with mercury was considered the norm, leading to the deaths of many people from what they diagnosed as "consumption" in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The question is how many people have been negatively affected by prolonged or even intermittent antibiotic usage? The goop article attempts to make sense of mysterious diseases that medical doctors can't explain, but in recent years, scientists have discovered the extent of the damage that antibiotic usage causes in human cells.

In addition, we have also discovered that viruses are actually an integral part of human evolution, and that bacteria is not really the bad guy we thought of after all. In this emerging, revitalised biotech era, it appears that we are revisiting Antoine Béchamp's Cellular Theory and moving away from the Louis Pasteur Germ Theory of diseases, and that antibiotics are not really the greatest medical discovery of the 20th century after all.


By Sierra Choi

Disclaimer: This post is not intended to diagnose nor treat any diseases and for educational purposes only.