Doctor says feeding babies raw milk is child endangerment

Daniel H. Gervich, M.D. recently wrote in the Des Moines Register that mothers who feed their babies fresh milk constitutes “child endangerment.”

Gervich’s article was in response to natural health advocates, particularly Eileen Dannemann, who are pushing for House Study Bill 585 that would legalize the sale of unpasteurized milk in Iowa, which he opposes.

Gervich quotes a CDC study and uses alarmist language to make his case:

The risk of serious food-borne illness from unpasteurized milk is 150 times greater than from pasteurized products. The risk of illness requiring hospitalization for dehydrating dysentery, hemorrhagic colitis, renal failure, ascending paralysis, Listeria meningitis, septic shock and death is substantial, and the risks are far higher in infants, children and pregnant women than in others.

The problem is that the CDC study that makes these claims of raw milk being 150 times more likely to cause “serious food-borne illness” has been proven to be a cherry-picked fraud.

“What consumers need to realize, first of all,” said Sally Fallon Morell, president of the Weston A. Price Foundation, “is that the incidence of foodborne illnesses from dairy products, whether pasteurized or not, is extremely low. For the 14-year period that the authors examined, there was an average of 315 illnesses a year from all dairy products for which the pasteurization status was known. Of those, there was an average of 112 illnesses each year attributed to all raw dairy products and 203 associated with pasteurized dairy products.

“In comparison, there are almost 24,000 foodborne illnesses reported each year on average. Whether pasteurized or not, dairy products are simply not a high risk product.”

According to Gervich, 112 cases of illness per year nationwide represents a “substantial” risk enough to constitute keeping the consumption of fresh milk illegal and branding those who give it to their children as unfit parents.

Eileen Dannemann, director of National Coalition of Organized Women, wrote a scathing response to Dr. Gervich which can be read in its entirety below:

Using the term ‘child endangerment’ is a loathsome low blow! Dr. Gervich’s overused soundbite simply serves as a perfect example of the establishment attempting to wreak fear in the hearts of all parents that their children might be removed from their home if they do not agree with the prevailing medical or nutritional model consistent with medical, industry, government, stakeholder made up standards or if God-forbid they should dare break the prevailing Iowa law and access a neighbors farm fresh milk on the farm.

Does the Doctor, unschooled in nutrition, plan on calling Child Protective Services for ‘child endangerment’ on those mothers who seek unadulterated, un-homogenized, un-pasteurized farm fresh milk from a sister species as a substantially equivalent substitute? Does he also call the CPS when a mother refuses to vaccinate their child or when independent (emphasis added) researchers show concern over the 41-fold increase in spontaneous abortions and stillbirth reports after the administration of the H1N1 vaccine in the pandemic season?

Oh…Dr. Gervich…you don’t know about that. Well the CDC didn’t tell you and… you didn’t check the Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting system either. Just like you have your statistics wrong on the milk issue, you don’t even know or care about parent’s concern about giving their child 45 vaccine doses by the time the child is six years old or injecting them in-utero.

So the educated doctor doesn’t see much difference in the loss of ‘enzymes’ in pasteurized milk?

I suppose he doesn’t see the value in tonsils either which was the standard establishment opinion in my day. God knows why He put enzymes in the milk. Who should we listen to God or Dr. Gervich? Gervich says enyzmes don’t make a difference.

And what about homogenization? The dairy doesn’t want to bother with cleaning their spigots when the fat accumulates. So, they process the milk. In layman’s language, in homogenizing milk the fat molecules and the protein molecules are merged, as it were. So what happens, and why so many children are allergic to milk is that the protein receptors which are distinct from the fat receptors in the body are confused as the fat molecules which are inherently larger are now reduced to merging with the protein molecules and are pushed into the protein receptions causing havoc. That is the layman’s version. And that is what Dr. Gervich recommends for our children.

When goats are born, Dr. Gervich, the kid is as tiny as a newborn. Therefore the milk molecules are more digestible to the human infant than cows milk whose calves are born at the size of adult humans.

So, Dr. Gervich, certified infectious disease specialist, educated in part no doubt by the opinions of quasi-military Epidemic Intelligent Service arm of the CDC — what about the huge numbers of women who have been put on psych drugs such as Effexor, Concerta, Paxil, Prozac, etc? Would you think it is wise to urge these women to breast feed? Or do you think that clean, safe, farm fresh milk, substantially equivalent goat’s milk could be a better substituted than genetically modified (GM)) infant soy formula or milk formula derived from dairy cows fed with GMO waste product (Distillers Grain) of the Ethanol industry, a feed that was banned in New York because the milk produced was ‘swill’?

Perhaps since you have put yourself as a nutritional authority and are against House Study Bill 585 that next year you might consider giving us (stupid Iowa women) — those of us who are blatantly endangering our children — a prescription for raw milk. We promise we will be careful to label it in our refrigerator, as suggested by Iowa City representative Vicky Lensing so that, God forbid, Grandma doesn’t drink it by accident. With your help, we can put farm fresh milk and cannabis in the same category.