"I don't think there's been any major shift in the medical profession's general approach to new ideas. I don't think there ever will be that kind of wholesale change. Three hundred years ago, when the major disease was smallpox, Sir Thomas Sydenham [1624-89] developed a new treatment that reduced the death rate from about 50 percent to 1 percent or 2 percent. His reward was being challenged to a duel. The English medical association wanted to drive him out. He wrote: "A new idea is like a sapling in the middle of a road, and if it's not fenced in, it will be galloped over by the trampling hordes." That's a really great statement, and it's also my view of what happens to medical discovery." -----Abram Hoffer, MD, PhD  1997 Interview by Peter Barry Chowka.