This Little Piggy

by Royce Bailey M.D., M.P.H., F.A.A.C.

“And the swine, though he divide the hoof, and be cloven footed, yet he cheweth not the cud; he is unclean to you.”  Lev.  11:7

“There Are No Absolutes,” Satan Says

Satan’s deceptions through the ages have flip-flopped.  In the Dark Ages he pictured God as a tyrant, unmerciful, giving out punishment to all, but a hand full of undeserving people.  The Law of God was to be followed at all cost (justice), with no knowledge of a personal Savior.  Now, Satan portrays God as too kind to harm anyone (mercy).  I have had people tell me that “God would never destroy me.  He’s going to save everybody.  So it doesn’t matter what I do or eat.”  There are no absolutes in this existential life, they tell me.

Acts 10 And 11-Peter Instructed There Is No Difference Between Clean (Jews) and Unclean (Gentiles)

You can eat what ever you want, because the Bible say so in the New Testament, I am told..  This is the thinking I see when those that want no responsibility interpret Acts 10 and 11;  because God in a vision to Peter reportable meant you could eat anything now (clean or unclean).  These same folks say its OK, because this vision freed us from the Law.  Those laws were for the Jews.  Interpretations like this contradict the Bible and scientific logic.  Acts 10 and 11 has nothing to do with food!!!

“The great sin of the Jews was their rejection of Christ; the great sin of the Christian world would be their rejection of the Law of God, the foundation of His government in heaven and earth.”  White, E.G, “Great Controversy,” Pacific Press Pub Ass., 1911:22.

The Pork Tapeworm-Taenia Solium

April 2001-Mayo Clinic in Scottsdale, AZ.  Doctors surgically removed a dead worm (cysticercosis-the pork tapeworm) from the brain of a woman.  The greatest problems from this worm come from infections of the brain and eyes.  The problem in treating “Taenia solium,” is drugs kill the worm, which then release all of its eggs.  The doctor then must deal with the problem the eggs cause too.   This lady had eaten infected pork while in Mexico.  The worm thus had entered her brain and died.  Its carcass was causing her periodic seizures (causing a foreign body reaction-like a piece of glass in your skin).  The operation to remove the worm took six hours.   It required that the patient be only mildly sedated, because she needed to be able to keep talking to surgeons to help guide them from point to point in her brain.

Trichinosis-Trichinella Spiralis

A patient of mine developed aching and inflammatory muscle pains and later was diagnosed by me as having trichinosis.  She became disabled at the age of 50, because of the encapsulated larva that had become embedded in her muscles from eating pork over the years.  She is now a vegetarian, the only treatment that mildly helps the pain, she says.  If she eats poorly (junk food and sweets) the pain will increase.  She states if only I had started life as a vegetarian, like you.

Muscle Pain

My father, a surgeon, told me of the time a Orthodox Rabbi had come for an evaluation of his aching muscles and fevers, that no one had been able to find the cause.  My father biopsied a muscle on his arm and had him come back to the office for the results.  He asked him in front of his wife if he ever ate pork?  “Oh, no I would never do that, it’s against the Torah!”  Later, out of hearing of his wife, he said,” Oh, Doc, please don’t tell my wife, but I just love pork and eat it almost daily.”  He now had his diagnosis and was told that treatment of long-term cases was poor.

The Truth About Pork

My father had found on the biopsy that this Jewish man had trichinosis.  90% of trichinosis in the U.S. comes from eating pork and 10 % from eating bear meat.   The larvae enters skeletal muscle.  Where it grows between muscle fibers and begins to cause pain in several days.  The severity of the infection depends on the number of larvae in the muscles (tens of thousands).  By 6 to 18 months the cysts are calcified and therefore, can cause severe pain with movement of the muscles.  I am sure that many a patient have been mis-diagnosis as having fibromyalgia, when they really have trichinosis.

Does God Mean What He Says?

Is God arbitrary?  Can justice and mercy be seen in our Savior at one time?  Does He really want what is best for His people-Jewish or not?  Should God’s principles (like in Leviticus 11) be done away with?   Ask someone with trichinosis!

References:

Shepard,C.,”News Of The Weird,”www.mountain.com.;May 23-26, 2001:18.

Harrison’s Textbook Of Medicine, 9^th ed, McGraw-Hill,1980; “Trichinosis,” “Cysticercosis”:894-5, 915-6.