Guillaume Belanger's Reviews > The Curse of Louis Pasteur

This book is very interesting in that it presents an entirely different and alternative history of modern medical understanding based on the research of a small set of brilliant scientists, from Bechamp and Bernard starting in the 1820's to Gaston Naessens in the current day and age, that investigated, sought out and found answers to profound questions that were either not investigated by or simply beyond the scope of the understand or intellectual horizons of their contemporaries. For each one of these people, the author gives a typically very short, often too simplistic presentation (in my opinion) of their life's work or of the most important of their findings and conclusions. Nonetheless, it is an wonderful overview of some of the most important findings of modern medical science, and insights into the nature of health and disease, almost all of them which are unknown and unrecognised by the overwhelming majority of specialists and non-specialists alike.

There are also, throughout the book, plenty of recommendations as to what one should do, and eat and drink in order to be in good health. Most of this is really super basic: things that often amount to "don't eat junk food", "don't smoke", "make sure you eat a lot of fruits and vegetables" (which, should be plenty of vegetables but very little fruit), etc. The style is also extremely basic, and clearly written for the least educated among us. These aspects of the book make for what I find to be a serious clash with the importance and level of refinement of the research and sophistication of scientific conclusion about the nature of health and disease on which the book is based. I feel that it is almost like a kind of mockery of it.

The title of the book points to the fact that we are all unfortunately subject to, and immersed in a medical system all of whose basic foundational premises are derived from the flawed science and erroneous conclusions of Louis Pasteur, which the pharmaceutical industry, that was still in its infancy at the time, immediately recognised for the potential to make enormous profits. This involvement and these profits began during his own lifetime, and have continued to grow in scale ever since. The sad reality is that this is very unlikely to change anytime soon.