The wisdom of the middle path. In GBCAs and everything else.

History is replete with examples of groups taking an extreme untenable position and disaster follows. One example is the failure of the Russian princedoms from uniting in the face of the Golden Horde of the Mongols, and falling as a result. The failure of centrist and right wing political parties in Venezuela to unite, and thereby allowing Chavis to take and maintain control, And in present day US the extreme view on 62 genders, gender is fluid in lower grade school children, and transgender women, that frightened the large center of American opinion. The majority of people are centrist in their views, in the US, in the world, and in all time - it is important to understand that - this is what I refer to as wisdom sense. Major change in opinion takes time and cautious, thoughtful alterations. Suddenly hearing that a teacher has agreed with your child that he is now a girl, and you were not aware of that decision being made, is infuriating......Now I suspect this is extremely rare this level of stupidity- but it was crucial that left-leaning politicians clamp immediately down on all such stupidities ,but they didn't, or at least as important, the perception was that they didn't.

This is especially true when the middle path is actually empirically, thoughtfully, and scientifically the most correct of all possible paths.

This is what I forsee with gadolinium. My position lies exactly in the rational and scientific middle. So the still too-frequently-held position of the medico-industrial complex and most allopathic physicians follow that gadolinium is perfectly safe if your kidneys are normal. This is wrong. What this group does not realize is that there are a number of highly qualified physicians with Gadolinium Deposition Disease who are actively involved with getting Gadolinium banned entirely. To the point, and I do see the dark humor of this, that they feel all the work that I have done to show the value of GBCAs for imaging disease in the abdomen, and less writing on pelvis and chest, have not contributed anything to health care. I of course dispute this. And despite the dismissing of essentially the majority of my career's importance, I do get along with these extreme physician Gd-antagonists, because they have suffered greatly from Gd.

So if these extremists succeed and all GBCA agents are banned, from my perspective it is just reliving the multiple mistakes that humans have made throughout the past and present. You have to understand both the middle path, and also understand what reality is most likely the case. In this particular obvious case: if the published world authority on the use of GBCAs also says: "hey, some people with normal kidneys also get sick from Gd in an immunological/ toxic pathway and we have to do something about it", just maybe that expert is correct - in this case I would say 99.99% likely to be correct.

So be warned. There are highly competent people working hard to get GBCAs banned, if in your folly you continue to espouse GBCAs are 100% safe in people with normal kidneys, and dismiss subjects who claim to be very sick from GBCAs, then you did this to yourself. You were the foolish competitive Russian princes who could not unite in the face of the Golden horde. I have tried to show and write about the rational middle and to prevent this extremism, by emphasizing the middle path. As early as 2016, I wrote major articles in major journals. I do not want them to succeed, but from my perspective if they do, then so be it. I have followed the wise central path. You will have brought your own bonfire of the vanities upon yourself. If you wonder why science and medicine has experienced such a backlash of public trust, look in the mirror.

Richard Semelka, MD