Quote: "Basically, you die earlier and spend more time disabled if you’re an American rather than a member of most other advanced countries." - Christopher Murray, M.D., Ph.D., Director of the World Health Organization's Global Program on Evidence for Health Policy, 2000.
In 1855 German chemist Baron Justus von Leibig published a paper theorizing that the only minerals that plants needed were nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium. This concept was then aggressively marketed to farmers. By the end of his life von Leibig had changed his mind. But by then chemical fertilizers had killed most of the necessary microorganisms in the topsoil.
The chemicalization of our foods essentially started in 1912 when the FDA was subverted and manipulated by commercial interests after the removal of Dr. Harvey W. Wiley - who had the temerity to try and prevent Coca-Cola from ever reaching the market.
Since that time an enormous quantity of highly toxic chemical food additives, preservatives, pesticides, fungicides, dyes and packaging chemicals have been added to our food to the point where food no longer fits its own dictionary definition:
food n. 1. Material, usually of plant or animal origin, that contains or consists of essential body nutrients, such as carbohydrates, fats, proteins, vitamins, or minerals, and is ingested and assimilated by an organism to produce energy, stimulate growth, and maintain life.
There are over 14,000 man-made chemicals added to our American food supply today. As an example, take a look at the listed ingredients of Subway products which are heavily advertized as a healthy alternative to burger fast food:
Chicken type flavor, artificial colors FD&C red 40 lake, yellow 5, yellow 6, blue 2 lake, red 40, blue 1 lake, blue 1, blue 2, yellow 5 lake, yellow 6 lake, thiamin mononitrate, hydrogenated vegetable shortening, acetylated tartaric acid esters of mono- and diglycerides, ammonium sulfate, calcium sulfate, azodicarbonamide, potassium iodate, sodium stearoyl-2-lactylate, high fructose corn syrup, disodium inosinate, disodium guanylate, sodium metabisulfite, sodium benzoate as a preservative, Polysorbate 80, sodium tripolyphosphate, tetrasodium pyrophosphate, thiamin hydrochloride, sodium phosphates, sodium erythorbate, sodium nitrite, sodium stearoyl-2-lactylate, sodium diacetate, silicon dioxide etc. etc.
Chemical food additives are not natural nutrition for humans or their pets. Human bodies were not designed to ingest or assimilate these chemicals and they don't know what to do with them and they respond to them as the toxins that they are and they become sick, either quickly or slowly. If you give a person a tiny amount of a poison every day, it may take a long while but eventually he will get very sick.
Chemically altered foods and those grown in soils depleted of minerals and enzymes are no longer being recognized or digested properly and they create problems in the body that make it impossible for the body to heal itself and get well. People have been eating so many dead and enzyme-lacking foods for so long that their bodies are also no longer capable of producing the enzymes that they need.
Some of these additives are chemicals that are deliberately engineered in order to get you to get addicted to the specific food that contains them and to make you eat more. It's no accident the US obesity stats are as high as they are. Genetically modified (GM) food is widely available in the USA but in Europe consumer resistance has led to a refusal by the main supermarkets to stock GM products.
Modern food has been ruined with chemical shelf-life preservatives and the way that the food is artificially fed and other synthetic additives at the expense of the enzymes. The normal enzymes that the pancreas produces, most of which are supposed to be used internally, end up getting used up trying to digest these enzyme-lacking genetically-modified processed "foods".
These same fake foods are then "enriched" with a synthetic vitamin spray (see 6 ) below). And so our bodies are suffering from severe undernourishment and malnutrition and thus weakened they easily become sick. People can also become allergic to or intolerant of certain everyday foods such as wheat or milk and since 60-70% of the immune system is actually in the lining of the intestines, this also weakens them.
For a better understanding on why what has happened to enzymes is so crucial, see the Enzymes articles in the Body Info section.
The chemicalization and resultant toxicity of our environment from such things as Isopropyl Alcohol products (hair sprays, shampoos, facial and skin products) some plastics, acetates, dry-cleaning fluids, chlorines from pools and showers, formaldehyde from new construction, hydrocarbons, food dyes, fluoride, perfumes and fragrances all contribute to putting so much strain on bodies that they get sick and can also become unable to respond to even correct nutritional treatments.
Heavy metals such as mercury in fillings and root canals as well as cadmium from traffic fumes, lead paints, hair dyes etc. also further weaken the body.
When you get sick you are then given medications that frequently create serious side effects because when you suppress the body's warning systems it is forced to create more symptoms. At least 250 of the more common medications also contribute to making it extremely hard for a body to heal itself. This is because they bypass the autonomic nervous system and give the body new symptoms that it is now even more unable to recover from due to also not being given enough proper nourishment in food to do so.
Many people in order to try and minimize the effects of the above take vitamins and minerals obtained from their local health store completely unaware that 95% of these vitamins and minerals are now supplied by the same pharmaceutical companies who have created many of these problems. They are no longer the nutritional supplements they once were but are, more accurately, "nutraceuticals" which are synthetic fractional chemical isolates of real vitamins and are really only safer drugs.
People tend to assume that Vitamin C from one brand is pretty much the same as Vitamin C from another brand and in many cases, they're right since the Vitamin C came from the same original supplier. But what most people don't realize is that these vitamins and minerals are not true and complete vitamins and minerals as would be supplied by good organically-grown whole foods but are in fact chemical synthetics made from such things as coal tar, petroleum products, animal by-products, waste and fecal matter, ground rocks, stones, shells and metal.
And not only do they not supply the benefits of the real vitamins and minerals but they can actually be harmful to you when taken over time. Especially in the mega doses so often recommended. Real vitamins only require very minute doses to be effective.
SUMMARY
In a nutshell, what is going on is that we are being continuously slowly poisoned by our toxic food and our toxic environment to the point where our bodies simply cannot handle it and we eventually become chronically ill. The lack of enzymes in our food overtaxes the body's own enzyme production process and causes its eventual breakdown. Then we get treated with toxic medications or vitamin synthetics which make us even more ill. If we are unfortunate enough to end up in a hospital, we get more toxic food and medications and frequently pick up diseases that we didn't have before ( see medical statistics). It's a vicious cycle but one that we don't have to put up with.
MEDICAL STATISTICS
* The third highest cause of deaths in the US is what is termed "iatrogenic", which means "induced in a patient by a physician's activity, manner, or therapy." This accounts for an estimated 225,000 deaths per annum which is about 10% of total deaths from all causes including old age. Of these, 12,000 deaths result from unnecessary surgery. The highest cause of deaths in the US is heart disease (725,000) and the 2nd highest is cancer (549,000). Both of these were almost unheard of at the beginning of the twentieth century.
* 180,000 deaths a year occur due to adverse reactions to prescription medications. By comparison, general accidents in life account for 98,000 per annum. This includes 42,000 from car accidents, 120 from airline crashes**, 90 from being struck by lightning** and 5 from Anthrax (in 2001). 15,500 die from murders and 20,000 from flu or its complications.
**averaged over 2-3 decades
Causes of Death Further Breakdown
1. Tobacco
435,000
2. Poor diet and physical inactivity
400,000
3. Alcohol consumption
85,000
4. Infectious agents (e.g., influenza and pneumonia)
75,000
5. Toxic agents (e.g., pollutants and asbestos)
55,000
6. Motor vehicle accidents
43,000
7. Firearms
29,000
8. Sexual behavior
20,000
9. Illicit use of drugs
17,000
* Despite all the media hype about how good the US medical system is and how we're winning the war against cancer, these statistics tell a very different story:
According to the 2001 World Health Organization report, "World Health Report – Health Systems: Improving Performance", the U.S. ranks 37th out of 191 countries. A commentary published in the July 26, 2000 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association notes that in a comparison of the top 13 industrial countries based on 16 health indicators, the U.S. ranked on average 12th. The countries included in the study were, in order from the top-ranked (best health care) to the lowest-ranked, as follows: Japan, Sweden, Canada, France, Australia, Spain, Finland, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, Denmark, Belgium, the U.S., and Germany. Of the 13 countries compared, only Germany ranked lower overall than the U.S. In fact, the U.S. ranked dead last for three indicators. These were low-birth-weight percentages, neonatal mortality and infant mortality overall, and years of potential life lost. These rankings do not paint a picture of a country that has the world's best health care.
Is it true that we're winning the war against cancer like we're asked to believe, after the massive research funding backed by the government?
From the U.S. government's own raw statistical abstracts we find the real story:
Mortality from Cancer in the U.S.
year --- deaths/ 100,000
1967--- 157.2
1970--- 162.9
1982--- 187.3
1987--- 198.2
1988--- 198.4
1989--- 201.0
1990--- 203.2
1991--- 204.1
1992--- 204.1
1992 is the last year for which data is currently available from Vital Statistics. There is nothing to indicate that there should be any downturn between 1992 and the present. In fact, independent analysis by the CA Journal for Cancer Clinicians, Jan 97, put the 1993 death rate at 220 per 100,000. A 40% increase in cancer deaths per capita in the last 4 decades is hardly "winning the war against cancer."
* An estimated 2 million people a year (11% of those admitted) catch infections in hospitals that they didn't have when they were admitted and approximately 90,000 of them die from these infections. An approximate list in order of likelihood is: urinary tract infections (34%), surgical site infections (17%), respiratory infections especially pneumonia (13%), blood infections/bacteremia (14%), skin (especially burns), gastrointestinal tract infections, and central nervous system infections.
* About 2,216,000 annual hospitalizations result in adverse drug reactions and these account for 106,000 deaths annually.
* As Dr. Robert S. Mendelsohn demonstrates in his book "Confessions of a Medical Heretic", when hospitals or doctors go on strike, the death rate goes down and when they go back to work, the death rates rise again.
* It’s estimated, that 80% of the population will end up with a tumor, cancer, disease or some type of physical problems or pain. This means approximately 4 out of 5 people are on the highway to some type of physical tragedy.
* Side effects of commonly used over the counter pain relievers include gastric ulcers, bleeding stomachs, hospitalizations and 16,500 deaths last year.
* Between 1950 and 1964 more people died in US state and county psychiatric hospitals than Americans killed in battle for the Revolutionary War, War of 1812, Mexican War, Civil War, Spanish-American War, World Wars I and II, Korean War, Vietnam War and Persian Gulf War combined. And the total number of psychiatric inpatient deaths from 1950 to 1990 exceeded the number of battle deaths in the above wars by at least 70 percent!
* "...St. John's Wort fully cured 24 percent of the depressed people who received it, and Zoloft cured 25 percent -
but the placebo fully cured 32 percent...." Shankar Vedantam, The Washington Post, Wednesday, May 8, 2002
* A 1992 study in Journal of the American Medical Association of 223 patients concluded that no treatment at all for prostate cancer actually was better than any standard chemotherapy, radiation or surgical procedure. (Johansson)
* The National Patient Safety Foundation (NPSF) commissioned a phone survey in 1997 to review patient opinions about medical mistakes. The findings showed that 42% of people believed they had personally experienced a medical mistake. In these cases, the error affected them personally (33%), a relative (48%), or a friend (19%).
The location where the medical error was experienced was:
hospital (48%),
doctor's office (22%),
operating room (7%),
clinic (5%),
emergency room (5%),
pharmacy (4%),
home (3%),
medical laboratory (1%),
nursing home (1%), and
other (5%).
Sources:
Vital Statistics of the United States vol.II 1967-1992
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (National Center for Health Statistics), Deaths: Final Data for 1997.
National Vital Statistics Reports: Deaths: Leading Causes for 1999. Volume 49, Number 11, October 12, 2001
2001 World Health Organization "World Health Report
Mokdad AH, Marks JS, Stroup DF, Gerberding JL. Actual causes of death in the United States, 2000. JAMA. 2004 Mar 10;291(10):1238-45.)
Journal of the American Medical Association, July 26, 2000
Institute of Medicine (IOM), "To Err Is Human: Building a Safer Health System", 2000
Barbara Starfield, MD, MPH, Is US Health Really the Best in the World?, JAMA, Volume 284, No. 4, July 26, 2000
Lazarou J, Pomeranz BH, Corey PN. Incidence of adverse drug reactions in hospitalized patients: a meta-analysis of prospective studies. JAMA 1998 Apr 15;279(15):1200-5
JAMA / volume:279 (page: 1216) Drugs and Adverse Drug Reactions: How Worried Should We Be? David W. Bates, MD, MSc April 15, 1998
EILEEN G. HOLLAND, PHARM.D., and FRANK V. DEGRUY, M.D. Drug-Induced Disorders, Volume 15, No. 7, November 1, 1997
Phillips DP, Christenfeld N, Glynn LM. Lancet 1998 Feb 28;351(9103):643-4 Increase in US medication-error deaths between 1983 and 1993
National Academies, "Preventing Death and Injury From Medical Errors Requires Dramatic, System-Wide Changes" November 29, 1999, (press release)
Richard J. Bonnie, Carolyn E. Fulco, Catharyn T. Liverman, Editors; Committee on Injury Prevention and Control, Institute of Medicine, Reducing the Burden of Injury: Advancing Prevention and Treatment
Schuster M, McGlynn E, Brook R. How good is the quality of health care in the United States? Milbank Q. 1998;76:517-563.
National Patient Safety Foundation at the AMA: Public Opinion of Patient Safety Issues, Louis Harris & Associates, September 1997
UnitedJustice.com
ABC News Reports 2003
