Venal virus
Sir: Too many of the ills that threaten medical omniscience are being put down to `a virus' (Letters, 24 November). These are then dealt with by antibiotics. Is not this where the trouble begins — in the doctors' armoury? It appears, from the few cases I have come across, that ME often follows the use of antibiotics in the treatment of an in- fluenza virus. Application of good old- fashioned common sense suggests that damage is caused thereby to the immune system.
Because so great a proportion of our food is artificial or processed, pasteurised and sterilised or is treated with herbicides, pesticides and fertilisers it should come as no surprise to find we have lost our defences against disease. Curiously, those who go to considerable trouble to ensure they eat natural and wholesome food are dismissed as cranks; are they not on the right track?
Perhaps the real problem of ME lies in the misread statistic; as with BSE and salmonella where it is the unnatural feed- ing and keeping, plus the hormone and anti-bacterial 'treatments', that upset the balance of nature and cause the disease, so it may be that the researcher is still looking in the wrong plac e.
Beverley James Pyke
The Gothic House, Bank Lane, Totnes, Devon
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