Thanks to Alice for a balanced explanation.

I just received a photocopied book chapter from my brother-in-law about how to cure myasthenia gravis with good nutrition. The disease was explained as a deficiency in acetylcholine, and the recommendations for diet and vitamin supplementation were designed to help the body produce more acetylcholine. I was surprised that the antibodies that block the receptor cells weren't mentioned until I checked out the footnotes, which were all over 60 years old. Evidently the book was written before it was known that MG is an autoimmune disease. There were all these testimonials about how nutrition had cured this or that case. Some of the cases sounded like vitamin deficiencies (prisoners of war, for example--probably B12) that were mistaken for MG.

There is a notorious quack on the web that all my friends are always recommending to me. He runs a huge site, on which he sells his own products. He believes that all diseases are caused by poor nutrition and (which as Alice shows is different) that all diseases can be cured by proper nutrition. Even AIDS. He thinks that the AIDS virus doesn't make people sick; what makes them sick is worrying so much about being HIV+. This is the level of quackery we're talking about, and yet he has a huge following. People don't trust Big Pharma because it's run by greed. Yet Dr. Quack is certainly making tons of money off his empire--somehow that doesn't count.

I think that chronic illness terrifies people. Here's a woman who last time I saw her was filled with energy, doing all sorts of stuff, the picture of health. Now she can hardly walk. She has been stricken, out of the blue. That's scary, because it makes people realize that it could happen to them. So they think of reasons why it can't happen to them--if I just eat right or exercise or use organic cleaning materials...it's a comforting thought to believe that you're in control. Unfortunately, the corollary is, "if you're sick, it's your own fault."

Abby