Is Organic Food Worth the Price?

By Gene Franks

Americans are among the most starved people on this planet. In spite of all the chemical supplements and new foods, we are living on a diet that is deficient in the essential factors of life. We have an epidemic of extreme malnutrition and a nation where over 65% of the American people are chronically ill. Our diet lacks the vital force of the more primitive basic foods.–Viktokras Kulvinskas.

The Gazette challenges readers to learn more about food. Survival in our age of high-tech misinformation requires, in fact, that we become passionate amateurs in the art of feeding ourselves. Allowing food industry professionals to make food choices for us is not only unwise and unhealthy–it is positively boring. Nourishing our bodies is one of life’s basic pleasures. Procuring and preparing food should occupy a larger share of our time and get a larger share of our resources. Eating well is fun, and we should indulge ourselves in excellent foods.

The degree to which we can indulge ourselves in food, of course, depends upon our individual resources. I confess that this article will not solve the problems of the very poor, who are required by necessity to settle for the less expensive foods, just as they settle for less in other areas of life. I know no cure for this. But everyone, even those who cannot buy organically grown produce, can eat as well as their resources allow. Potatoes cost less than potato chips; yams cost less than Snickers bars; excellently filtered water costs far less than sodas.

A big part of the American food myth is that food should be cheap. It should not. Food should, in fact, get top billing on our list of spending priorities. To buy cheap food in order to afford an expensive lawnmower demonstrates a perverted value system.

Organically grown foods are among the items many view as unaffordable. This is the narrow view of the issue, based only on the purchase price. John Ruskin, an English thinker and artist so famous they named a cigar after him, pointed out that when an item purchased for what seems a low price fails to fulfill the need it was intended for, the purchaser has not saved money but has in fact wasted the full purchase price. Because of our food-should-be-cheap conditioning, an organically grown tomato may seem expensive; but a delicious, locally grown, fresh-from-the-garden, chemical-free tomato is a great bargain when compared with the tasteless, ether-reddened blob of mush offered at half the price by the Killer Tomato industry.

The reasons for buying organic food are many. Some that are often mentioned (this listing is indebted to the Spring 1992 issue of Organic Times) are the protection of children (they are more vulnerable than adults to pesticide poisoning); prevention of soil erosion (perhaps our most severe problem in the long run); the protection of water quality (pesticides, herbicides, and commercial fertilizers are formidable water contaminants); energy savings (organic farming is essentially labor intensive, while conventional farming is one of our major energy wasters); prevention of chemical poisoning of farm workers (remember Cesar Chavez); helping small farmers (organic farming favors the small producer, while conventional farming is designed to eliminate family farms and put all land in the hands of large corporate “farmers”); support of a true economy (although organic foods might appear more expensive, we, as taxpayers, pay dearly for the pollution cleanup, pesticide testing, irrigation projects, soil depletion, hazardous waste disposal, farm subsidies, etc. resulting from conventional agriculture); promotion of biodiversity (the disastrous practice of monocropping is the hallmark of meat-based conventional agriculture); and, certainly not least important, the provision of more nutritious, better-tasting food.

Although organically grown produce has shown itself repeatedly to be superior to conventionally grown food in “food chart” nutrients, there are certainly intangible nutritional benefits not yet recognized or measurable. Nutrition is a science in its infancy. In spite of the know-it-all posture assumed by many nutrition professionals, most university “nutrition science” is more theory than fact. As a single example, consider the broad disagreement among experts on the very basic question of whether or not the body assimilates inorganic minerals from water.

One of the intangible “ingredients” that makes organic food much superior to conventional is what some writers have called “information.” Homeopathy should have taught us by now that there are unseen, intangible essences at work in nature that defy explanation by orthodox material science. Although no one has explained it, information, the wisdom of the soil, the wisdom of billions of years of experience, takes on physical substance in food grown under natural conditions. It is like spirit becoming flesh.

According to nutrition writer John David Mann, ancient foods like naturally grown microalgae are rich in information. “A food that goes back over four billion years,” he writes, “clearly has a rich store of valuable genetic information.” Other writers have speculated on how this ancient information is passed to food consumers. Orthodox Science, our nation’s leading religion, scoffs because it cannot explain the mechanism, just as it initially scoffed at belief in roundness of the planet and the circulation of blood.

Mann says that organically grown foods are information rich: “Beyond their mere avoidance of chemicals, they contain the value of the skill and craftsmanship of their production; the care taken to preserve the soil on which they’re grown; the traditional methods they embody; the preservation of genetic diversity; and even the social value of the small-scale, family-farm economy that underpins their production.”

The importance of eating food that has been grown in real soil, or in pure, natural water in the case of algae, rather than the chemically created artificial growing surface of conventional farming is that soil imparts its information to the plant. Genuine organic soil is not only rich in trace elements not available to commercially grown plants, but also in micro-organisms which,  the old Roman poet Lucretius reminded us, “hand on the torch of life, like runners in a race,” passing on from generation to generation the wisdom of the soil and the experience of the ages. It is through the living soil and through the ancient plants that grow in it that we are rooted to the earth. “The statement that the earth is our mother,” writes Nobel laureate Rene Dubos, “is more than a sentimental platitude, since . .  . we are shaped by the earth. The characteristics of the environment in which we develop condition our biological and mental being and the quality of our life. Were it only for selfish reasons, therefore, we must maintain variety and harmony in nature.”

No mater how much USDA would deny it, a tomato grown from an heirloom seed in rich, chemical-free soil, nourished by natural light, clean water, and a full complement of micro-organisms and trace minerals, has valuable information and other intangible benefits that can never be listed in Handbook 8. That its monetary cost should be greater makes sense.

Editor: This article appeared initially in Gazette #45. The main article of the issue, “My Secret Life as a Farmer,” is

recommended.

Gazette’s Guide to Ethical Eating

by Gene Franks

If you can do this with gusto, you are a genuine carnivore (soon, probably, to be an ex-carnivore, since you will likely succumb to salmonella poisoning). If you can’t do this, you are a vegetarian. To confirm the result, repeat the test using an apple. If you can butcher the apple without remorse and eat it in its natural state, you are definitely a vegetarian.

Eating as far from ourselves as possible in our mutual eating society requires no special training. One can easily see that a potato is less like us than a pig. For those who argue that plants, too, are alive, I agree. That is precisely why, unlike animal corpses, they are such perfect food for us. Live food is easily assimilated, but dead food makes graveyards of our bodies.

We must never forget that we, too, are predators in the mutual eating society. Plants are our natural prey. We should eat them with reverence and respect. Most ot us have not evolved to the point where we can support our lives on such distant substances as air, as some saintly people are said to do. For most, plants are as far as we can get from ourselves, and they are in every way our ideal food. Nature has wisely arranged things so that we exist in a different time zone from our natural food source. This offers us the insulation from remorse necessary for predators. Substances that writhe in agony or cry out in pain when killed are too near us to be suitable food.

The Pure Water Gazette’s Classification of Vegetarians

Some people still say that being a vegetarian or a vegan is too drastic. Drastic is having your breast or your bowel removed, or being sawed in half, with veins from your leg plugged into your heart; that’s drastic.–Caldwell Esselstyn, Jr., M.D.

Ever wonder what the difference is between a vegan and a vegetarian? A lacto-vegetarian and an ovo-vegetarian? Here’s how the Pure Water Gazette explained the whole business in issue#42.

Non-vegetarians. People who eat cows, horses, pigs, chickens, hummingbirds, orange roughy fish, snails, turtles, dogs, earthworms, etc. To wit, flesh eaters.

Show Biz vegetarians. People who say they are vegetarians on TV talk shows. They do not know that fish and chickens are animals and class themselves as vegetarians because they sometimes don’t finish all of their hamburger.

Lacto-ovo-vegetarians. People who eat no flesh, but do eat the eggs and milk of animals.

Ovo-vegetarians People who eat animals only in unhatched form.

Lacto-vegetarians. People who eat no flesh, but do eat animal milk products.

Vegetarians. People who eat neither flesh, nor fowl, nor egg, nor milk. They carefully avoid foods with hidden animal products, like Jello-O, or lard-cooked beans at Mexican restaurants.

Vegans (Aspiring). People who attempt to neither eat nor use anything of animal origin. They eat no flesh, egg, or milk, wear no leather, wool, fur. feathers, silk or any product of animal origin. They do not eat honey (obtained by exploiting bees), or take vitamins sold in gelatin capsules. They spend  much, much time wondering about these things.

Vegans (Absolute).Dead people.

 And Now … Frankenpigs!

By Jim Hightower

August 14, 2001

Gazette’s Introductory Note:  Jim Hightower is former Texas Commissioner of Agriculture.  For more on the pig manure problem, see B. Bea Sharper’s perceptive animal manure exposé.

Ready or not, here comes the “March of Science” … marching right over common sense, Mother Nature, and us.

The latest product of the mad science of biotechnology is a new critter that industry had dubbed: Enviropig. Though you might call it Frankenpig. The Boston Globe reports that big corporate hog producers working with Canadian scientists, have financed development of a genetically-altered porker that produces a more environmentally-friendly manure. Manure is a big barrier to the expansion of massive hog factories, because swine excrete excessively, the excretion is especially stinky, and this pig stuff contaminates rivers and our other water supplies, killing fish and causing health problems.

So, for years, the hog industrialists have sought a scientific fix, and now the biotech DNA manipulators have spliced the genes of mice and — get this — E.coli bacteria into pig genes. The result is a pig that they say can digest the polluting phosphorous that comes in its feed ration, rather than excreting the phosphorous, which then runs from these huge hog factories into area water supplies.

One of the white-smocked lab guys who did the hocus-pocus on the pig genes said, “We’re hoping everyone will be pleased with this animal.” Well, the industry is so pleased that it rushed out to trademark the Enviropig name, hoping everyone will be fooled into thinking everything is now hunky dory at the neighborhood hog factory.

But hold your herd of Frankenpigs right there. Most of us are neither fooled nor pleased. Phosphorous is hardly the only contaminant in pig runoff, there’s still the stench and health threat of airborne contaminants, and there’s the little matter of the longterm human health and environmental consequences of adding mouse and E. coli genes to pigs.

This is Jim Hightower saying … The answer to pig pollution is not scientific quick-fixes, but sustainable agriculture based on small family farmers, rather than massive concentrations of animals in confined factory operations.

Fair Use Statement

Teaching Math Through the Ages

Editor’s Note: This piece by an unknown author provides a mini-critique of the state of American education.

Teaching Math in 1950:

A logger sells a truckload of lumber for $100. His cost of production is 4/5 of the price. What is his profit?

Teaching Math in 1960:.

A logger sells a truckload of lumber for $100. His cost of production is 4/5 of the price, or $80. What is his profit?

Teaching Math in 1970:

A logger exchanges a set “L” of lumber for a set “M” of money. The cardinality of set “M” is 100. Each element is worth one dollar. Make 100 dots representing the elements of the set “M”. The set “C”, the cost of production,  contains 20 fewer points than set “M”. Represent the set “C” as a subset of set “M” and answer the following question: What is the cardinality of the set “P” of profits?

Teaching Math in 1980:

A logger sells a truckload of lumber for $100. His cost of production is $80 and his profit is $20. Your assignment: Underline the number 20.

Teaching Math in 1990:

By cutting down beautiful forest trees, the logger makes $20. What do you think of his way of making a living? Topic for class participation after answering the question: How did the forest birds and squirrels feel as the logger cut down trees? There are no wrong answers.

The Science of Deceit

by Burton Goldberg

The mainstream media regularly reports on the “dangers” of “unproven” herbal remedies and supplements. But what is the reported number of people who have died from using herbs and supplements? According to the FDA, between 1993 and 1998, federal, state and local agencies reported a total of 184 deaths, most of which were associated with weight loss formulas. Compare that to the reported number of people who die in hospitals because of the side effects of properly prescribed pharmaceutical drugs: more than 100,000, every year. You can add to that the number of patients killed in hospitals because of “medical errors”: another 100,000 or so. Those statistics are from the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA). This means that the ordained guardians of our health kill as many people every week as died in the September 11 terrorist attacks.

And that number only includes people who died in hospitals. A 1998 JAMA article estimated that more than 2 million people require hospitalization every year because of the adverse side effects of drugs. Moreover, it is widely conceded that the number of adverse reactions and fatalities attributable to prescription drugs is actually many times the number reported.

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Statistics aside, let’s put a face on what I’m talking about. Paul Domb is the son of a dear friend of mine. Two years ago, Paul was a 41-year-old endurance athlete who had run thousands of road races, hundreds of triathlons and other world-class endurance events. Paul had regularly trained twice a day for 20 years to stay in competitive shape, so it was hard for him to understand why he should begin to experience anxiety and panic attacks. He went to a psychologist who, after a few sessions, recommended that Paul take the antidepressant drug Paxil. Paul was reluctant, but his anxiety was affecting his work in corporate real estate, so he started taking a daily dose of 20 mg.

About three weeks later, Paul was set to begin an early morning swim when he felt his heart suddenly speed up. For the first time in his life, he felt faint and lost consciousness. He fell backward, crashing onto a metal pool chair. He revived after several seconds, and felt ready to continue his workout, but his training partner convinced him to take it easy and go home. Paul related the incident to his wife, who insisted he go to the hospital for an examination.

At the hospital, he underwent an extensive battery of tests. They took Paul’s medical history, asking what medications he was on, and took brain scans, electrocardiograms and various other tests. Paul’s electrocardiogram ‹measuring his heartbeat rhythms ‹showed an unusual pattern. A cardiologist specializing in heart rhythms was called in. He told Paul that he needed to put a catheter up Paul’s groin to stimulate the heart in an effort to reproduce the earlier arrhythmia. Paul refused, but the physician told him that a previous patient with the same symptoms who refused the test died soon after. Scared into it, Paul took the test. Afterward, the doctor came back with the bad news: Paul had a rare disorder called Brugada Syndrome. Without having a pacemaker/defibrillator inserted, he was told, his heart could suddenly stop and he could drop dead at any moment.

There was worse news: The disease was genetic and the possibility existed that Paul’s 5-year-old daughter had the same condition and could die at any time.

Paul had the pacemaker inserted. Unfortunately, his doctors did not take into account that he was a competitive athlete, and they set the parameters of the pacemaker wrong. Whenever Paul went to sleep, his heart rate dropped below “standard,” and the device would rapidly pace his heart. Paul was unable to get more than two hours of sleep at a time. Although the doctors eventually reset his pacemaker, that was just the beginning of what became almost six months of physical and emotional hell. He was nauseated, but vomiting brought no relief. He frequently had convulsions. Electric shocks would shoot through his body 30 or 40 times a day, sometimes violent enough to cause him to fall. He started having recurring thoughts of suicide ‹or violence toward others. And through it all he was tortured by the fear that his daughter was going to die because of the genes he had passed on to her. Paul traveled the country, seeking an answer, but no doctor could help him. So Paul buried himself in research, trying to find a solution to his problems. And then one day he happened to catch the TV news show 20/20. On it were people describing exactly the same symptoms as he had, only they didn’t have Brugada Syndrome ‹they were suffering side effects of trying to withdraw from Paxil.

Paul could hardly believe it. His doctor had told him to stop taking Paxil before his heart surgery. Paul started studying Paxil, and what he found shocked and enraged him. He discovered an astounding pattern of apparently deliberate deception by SmithKline Beecham (now called GlaxoSmithKline), the manufacturer of Paxil, withholding information on the dangers of this drug from the FDA and the medical community. In June 2001, GlaxoSmithKline lost a lawsuit when a Wyoming jury awarded $6.4 million to the family of a man who killed three relatives and himself after taking the antidepressant. The verdict was based on the company’s failure to sufficiently warn doctors and patients that the effects of the drug could include violence. It has since come to light that 20% of patients worldwide who were prescribed Paxil for depression stopped taking it because of suffering adverse effects. And effects of withdrawal include intense insomnia; vertigo; electric shocks; profuse night sweats; nausea; extreme confusion; intense fear of losing sanity; and thoughts of suicide and homicide. A class action filed in San Diego, representing thousands of victims of Paxil is pending.

Paul then went to an expert: Pedro Brugada, the physician son of Dr. Ramon Brugada, for whom the condition is named. Brugada the younger looked at all of Paul’s records and told him that he didn’t have Brugada Syndrome. Other experts concurred. Paul was told that the hospital’s original procedure to reproduce arrhythmia “would’ve brought a horse down.” His “abnormal” heart rhythms come from having the benign “athletic heart syndrome,” a sign of a super heart. The original fainting was probably due to taking Paxil; the later problems were likely due to withdrawal from it.

Even with this confirmation, Paul had to go to more than 20 doctors before he found one who would remove the pacemaker. Paul is recovering from his ordeal; he is able to walk a mile now, although previously he could run 50. Despite off-the-record confirmations of incompetence and negligence in Paul’s misdiagnosis and treatment, not one physician would sign a letter to that effect, or agree to testify on his behalf. Now, multiply Paul’s story by thousands‹by millions‹every year, and you can understand my anger over sensationalistic headlines about the “dangers” of taking herbs like St. John’s wort.

Here are some truths about the “scientific” testing of pharmaceutical drugs that you probably are not aware of. Did you know that the research information contained in the Physicians’ Desk Reference  (the pharmaceutical bible used by M.D.s )is supplied by the drug manufacturers themselves? Did you know that the FDA approves drugs not by actually doing the testing, but simply by reviewing studies submitted by the drug manufacturers? Did you know that a drug manufacturer needs to submit only two studies showing satisfactory results to get a drug approved by the FDA‹even if there are even more studies showing the drug causes adverse reactions in an unacceptably high number of cases?

Did you know that most of the articles discussing the efficacy of drugs that are published in medical journals are studies paid for by the drug manufacturer? And that often, as the New York Times reported last summer, the academic scientists listed as lead authors are often just “window dressing, to lend credibility to papers that are really the work of drug companies. The academic scientists’ main role in such studies is to recruit patients and administer experimental treatments. The scientists or their universities are paid for this work.”

And did you know that a study conducted by USA Today found that more than half of the experts hired to advise the government on the safety and effectiveness of medicine had a direct financial interest in the drug or topic were asked to evaluate? An analysis of financial conflicts of interest at 159 FDA advisory committee meetings from January 1, 1998, through June 30, 2000, found that at 92% of the meetings, at least one member had a financial conflict of interest, while at 55% of meetings, half or more of the FDA advisers had conflicts of interest. These conflicts included helping a pharmaceutical company develop a medicine, then serving on an FDA advisory committee that judges the drug.

You may not know that a significant portion of your tax dollars earmarked for healthcare goes to research on patentable drugs that make billions of dollars for drug companies. The government should fund research into nontoxic, non-patentable remedies at a much higher level than it is presently doing. This situation again points out the need for political action, for campaign reform. For 2001, the budget for the National Institutes of Health was $20 billion. This amount could be doubled by 2003. Approximately 83% of this is spent on research performed outside the NIH. This is serious money, and most of it goes to developing patentable drugs.

A recent article in the New York Times revealed that the pharmaceutical industry spent $177 million on lobbying in 1999 and 2000: That’s $50 million more than their nearest rival, the insurance industry. They employ more lobbyists (625) than there are members of Congress ‹and more than half of the lobbyists are former members of Congress, congressional staff members or government employees.

This shows how important it is to get involved politically, and work for campaign-finance reform. It’s also time for individual physicians to take responsibility for their actions, and stop being pawns in the economic games played by the drug and health insurance industries. Physicians will change only if their patients demand it. Reform will only come from market forces, which means you: how you spend your money on healthcare, and on charitable and political donations. Get informed, take responsibility for your own health, and choose your doctors and medicines wisely.

Reprinted from superb newsletter,Alternative Medicine.

Visit their website today.

A 1998 JAMA article estimated that more than 2 million people require hospitalization every year because of the adverse side effects of drugs.

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Tiger Tom’s Tales of Dogs

Slobbery Stories that Reveal the Truth about Nature’s Most Overrated Creatures

Caution: Do Not Read These Out Loud to Your Children

Tiger Tom’s great series of dog fables, designed to reveal and reflect on the mental and moral shortcomings of man’s best friend.

The Little Girl and the Dog

by Tiger Tom

Once a little girl was on her way to visit her grandmother. She had to pass through a bad neighborhood, where she saw a spotted dog with long ears and a big slobbery tongue lapping up somebody’s garbage. . The dog asked, “Are you taking that bag of goodies to your grandma?”

“Yes,” said the little girl.

When the little girl got to Grandma’s, she got the key from under the flower pot, let herself in, and headed for Grandma’s bedroom. Thirty feet from the bed she caught on that it wasn’t her grandma in bed but the same big, ugly spotted dog with a slobbery tongue and a stupid expression that she had seen gulping garbage.

Not being a nitwit, the little girl said: “Grandma, I have to pee pee then I have some goodies for you.” She stepped into the bathroom, took a cell phone from her goodies basket and called 911. While she was waiting for help, she engaged Spot in a long, pointless conversation about the size of his teeth and his ears and his tongue. By the time Animal Control arrived, the slow-witted canine believed that he was really the little girl’s grandmother. He tried to tell them they were making a big mistake as they hauled him off to the kennel of no return.

As soon as Spot was gone, the little girl’s grandma returned from the mall. The little girl helped her strip the bed, deodorize the room, and spray for fleas. Then they sat down to some cookies and soy milk and had a good long laugh about how stupid dogs are.

The Moral: Dogs aren’t as good as wolves at fooling little girls and their grandmas.

The Three Dogs

A Short Tale with a Happy Ending

by Tiger Tom

Three dogs lived in a modest one-room doghouse behind the Big House. One day when the Powers That Be brought the dogs their food, Father Dog, a big, ugly palooka who thought he knew everything, said with pompous authority: “This food is too fresh. Let’s go out and do some dog stuff, then we’ll come back and fight over the food later.”

So they went into the yard and smelled each other, dug some random and meaningless holes, turned around three times and lay down, and took a four-minute nap.They scratched, peed repeatedly, rolled on their backs, turned around three times and lay down again, did much random and pointless barking, then turned around three times and lay down and scratched some more. After licking his balls for some time, Father Dog decided it was time to eat.

When he got to the food bowl, however, he saw right away that some of the food was gone. In fact, a small generic animal was helping himself to it. Father Dog was so enraged that he did not wait for the usual “someone’s been eating my food” repartee but rather charged full speed, growling, snarling, and slobbering, in pursuit of the tiny thief. Just as Father Dog attained full speed and was closing in for the kill, the small animal slipped easily through the cyclone fence and was gone.

Father Dog was going much too fast to stop. Although he locked his brakes and clawed at the ground, he crashed hard into the fence and burst immediately into flames. Soon there was nothing left but a bad smell and a big pile of smoking flesh.

The Moral: Being big and stupid is an advantage if you are a football player, but not if you are a dog.

The Fancy Dog Who Learned to Heal

by Tiger Tom

Once a very fancy dog began losing hair from his face and then from his neck and then from his armpits and then from his tail and then from the rest of his body. He smelled even worse than dogs usually do and he always had big gross globs of white stuff in his eyes. He was very upset. He had always been a fancy dog who loved to put on a lot of gaudy stuff and play the fool for humans.

His  condition was at first misdiagnosed as a simple case of the Three Day Mange. But  when he did not respond to the usual scrubbing and scalding therapy, the dog doctor recommended an emergency thyroid transplant.

Unfortunately,  no thyroid donor was available. While he was in the dog hospital waiting for a donor, Bowser, for that was our hero’s name,  was enrolled in the dog hospital’s special “Get A Life” therapy training courses. This program was offered to improve his job skills and, of course, to get more of the owner’s money.

When he had  “Shake” and “Roll Over” down pretty good,  on his twelfth day in the dog hospital,  the trainer came in, raised his hand over his head,  and  introduced a new command.  “Heel!”  he shouted.

As if by magic, the big globs of white stuff left Bowser’s eyes, hair started growing in the places where it’s supposed to, and he suddenly smelt no worse than most other dogs. In spite of the dog doctor’s protests and dire predictions of  death and worse, Bowser left the hospital with his original thyroid intact. Soon, he was back to being his normal pompous , greedy and slobbery self.

The Moral:  Be careful what you say to dogs. They are lousy spellers.

The Wolf and the Dog

by Tiger Tom

I, Tiger Tom,  confess that I snatched this tale from the great Spanish fable writer Félix María de Samaniego,  who picked it up from someone else and wrote it down  over twenty decades ago. Samaniego wrote it in fancy 18th century Spanish poetry, but I am changing it to very simple English so that even Americans can understand it.  I, Tiger Tom, like this story because it sheds light on how dogs got to be the jerks they are today.

A skinny, hungry wolf was out prowling for food one morning when he came upon a plump dog at the edge of town.

“Señor Dog,” said the bony wolf, “I can’t help but marvel at how good you look, while I, who run looking for food day and night, am a picture of Death itself.”

The dog got right to the point. “Señor Wolf, it could be that you are in the wrong profession. Perhaps you should follow my example.  Give up all this roving about and sleeping in caves.  Move to town. Find a rich family and get you a good watchdog job.  Watchdoggery is a noble calling.  You just keep an eye on things, suck up to the people, act like a moron,  and the  good stuff in life rolls your way.”

The wolf didn’t think twice. He vowed at once to give up his hungry lifestyle and move to town. So the two compadres walked along and chatted amicably until the wolf started asking some personal questions.

“Señor Dog,” he said. “I’ve been wondering about that ring around your neck where all the hair seems to be worn away. What, pray tell, is that?”

The dog evaded the question, so the wolf asked again. The dog said, “Oh, that’s nothing.  Just the mark of the chain”

“Chain?”

“Yes. It’s no big deal. They put it on me to make sure I stay on the job and don’t go wandering around.  But they let me off at meal time and treat me like a king.  Anything they don’t want to eat they throw right on the floor for me. Stuff like bones when the meat is gone, stale bread, and sometimes even a big glob of fat that was accidentally burned by the cook.  It’s great!  Sometimes they rub their hands around on my back and all I have to do is act like I like it, keep my mouth shut, and wag my tail.”

“All that is fine,” said the wolf, “but it sounds to me that being a watchdog is a lot like being a prisoner.”

“In fact,” said the wolf, moving to center stage and adopting the tone and posture of an 18th century neo-classical poet,

“Though you dine like a glutton

on bread crusts and mutton,

I’ll stick to my cave

Where I’ll n’er be a slave.”

The Oversanitization of America

by Rebecca Ephraim, RD, CCN

Conscious Choice, July 2002

“Kill those bugs!” appears to be a slogan that germ-phobic Americans have fanatically adopted. And merchants have responded with zeal. If you visit the soap, detergent, or health and skin-care aisle of any store, you’d swear that malicious monster bacteria are on the loose and they are on the hunt for your family members. Product labels touting extra-strength bacterial fighting agents conjure up images of filthy disease-breeding germs that have to be stopped! Of course, the makers of these products are simply meeting the feeding frenzy of misguided consumers who are intent on spraying, squirting, and smearing all forms ofantibacterial agents in and around their homes as well as on themselves and their kids.

Antibacterials are designed to remove disease-causing organisms from external surfaces before they can enter the body. But we’re learning that, in the case of a large group of these antibacterials, this is not a healthy approach to keeping disease at bay for a number of reasons. Most important, there’s growing evidence that certain antibacterials may well be contributing to the alarming problem of bacterial resistance that was initially linked to our indiscriminate and improper use of antibiotics.

Antibacterials are in a separate category from antibiotics but both are lumped under the umbrella term of antimicrobials. It’s been a well-known fact for years that this country’s wayward use of antibiotics has created mutant strains of bacteria — including those that cause meningitis, pneumonia, children’s middle-ear infections, and blood infections — that are now resistant to at least one antibiotic. In fact, tuberculosis has been shown to be resistant to many antibiotics and frequently does not respond to treatment.

Quite logically, consumers’ fear of this situation and the urge to protect themselves has resulted in the persistent and arbitrary use of antibacterials. But, ironically, in our unwitting need to build germ barriers by applying antibacterials — and buying items impregnated with them (such as cutting boards, high chairs, toys, and mattress pads) — we are contributing to the problem on several levels according to emerging new research.

Stuart Levy, M.D., could be considered America’s resident expert on the entire sweeping subject of antibiotics and antibacterials. As director of the Center for Adaptation Genetics and Drug Resistance at Tufts University Medical School, Dr. Levy is a scientist on a campaign to reduce the indiscriminate use of them. But the issue of antibacterials is one that is fairly new on the scene. For instance, in 1992, he released The Antibiotic Paradox, a book detailing antibiotic misuse. He didn’t address antibacterials at the time, as they hadn’t emerged on the consumer scene. In the ten years since, antibacterials have become a ubiquitous presence in most American homes. This time, Dr. Levy dedicates an entire chapter to the subject in his newly released and updated second edition.

He emphasizes that antibacterials can be divided into two group: one is the cause for alarm and the other includes a group that’s considered safe to use. The safe group is referred to as non-residue-producing antibacterials and includes the sorts of products that many of us carry around in our cars or purses to clean our hands when soap and water are not available. They are products with ingredients that immediately kill bacteria and then quickly evaporate. These include antibacterials made from alcohols, ammonia, hydrogen peroxide, and chlorine bleach.

The real culprits are in the other group, termed residue-producing agents which are chemicals that linger on surfaces or products impregnated with them. These long-lasting residues will continue to kill benign bacteria and increase the growth of resistant strains long after target bacteria have been removed.

The most widely used among these are triclosan, triclocarbon, and benzalkonium chloride. (A full list can be accessed at the Web site “Alliance for Prudent Use of Antibiotics” at www.apua.org). These are the residue-producing chemicals that are used not only in toiletries and detergents, but also incorporated into toothbrushes, pens, and children’s products.

Antibacterial agents are a concern on three different fronts. First, there’s the controversial issue of whether using them in the home conclusively contributes to antibiotic resistance. Constant use of these disinfecting agents tends to disrupt the normal bacteria that act as barriers against invading pathogens. In turn, this could eventually lead to pathogens that are treatment resistant. For example, the bacteria that give rise to ear infections and pneumonia can exist on the outside of our bodies. Theoretically, if these germs are consistently exposed to low levels of antibacterials that are spread around our homes, the germs might not be killed and may instead mutate into stronger strains resistant to treatment.

Laboratory research has proven that this is a possibility although the phenomenon has not been duplicated on the home front. Dr. Levy believes it’s simply a matter of time. “We have not seen [the emergence of antibiotic resistance] yet in the home but it’s a potential that may well be real because there’s nothing that’s been in the laboratory that hasn’t eventually occurred outside in a worse situation.”

Nonetheless, Dr. Levy is quick to point out that there is a place for the residue-producing antibacterials when severely immune-compromised people are at home. “My suggestion is to reserve [these] products for when you need them and that is for a vulnerable patient… a patient who comes home from the hospital whose immune system is down…for elderly diabetics, for AIDS patients… for people who really need them.”

Further, if you need to use residue-producing antibacterials for these purposes, Dr. Levy cautions that they be applied “in a careful way” by spreading them for a period of minutes — not for the few seconds that we usually take to wash surfaces.

Another concern about the indiscriminate use of residue-producing antibacterials, according to Dr. Levy, is the issue that’s termed the “hygiene hypothesis” which is a theory originating in Europe. “If you try to keep your house too sparkling clean — especially with infants — they then don’t come in contact with the good bacteria that allows their immune system to mature correctly. We have antibacterials circulating in the house in little fine films all over. What kind of microbiology is going to live there and is it going to be the right kind to allow the immune system to mature as it has for centuries?” He believes the answer is “no.” Research shows there is a higher percent of allergies, asthma, and eczema among kids who have been raised in super sanitary conditions.

Moreover, the use of the residue-producing antibacterials poses a severe threat to our environment as these chemicals have been found in surface waters, sewage treatment plants, the bile of fish, and even breast milk! As an environmentalist, Dr. Levy fears the repercussions of this situation. “On one hand, it says that products we use in the home and for ourselves don’t just miraculously disappear…. Sewage disposal…can’t get rid of these chemicals so they will have a life afterwards. They will then hit bacteria microbes down the way. How do we know what effect they’re going to have eventually on ecosystems which rely on a mixture of bacteria?”

As conscientious consumers we can avoid buying the residue-producing antibacterials for everyday use — the chemicals should be listed on the product labels. Moreover, Dr. Levy says there is no evidence that routine use of these chemicals imparts a health benefit. Scrubbing with plain old nonbacterial soap and water removes virtually all the bacteria.

Disclaimer: This column is for information only and no part of its contents should be construed as medical advice, diagnosis, recommendation or endorsement by Ms. Ephraim.

Rebecca Ephraim is a Registered Dietitian, Certified Clinical Nutritionist and a nutrition reporter specializing in integrative medicine issues. She can be reached at rebecca@consciouschoice.com. 

© Rebecca Ephraim. All rights reserved.

Gazette’s Fair Use Statement

The Pure Water Gazette proudly confers its Hero Award on Mr. Bud Welch of Oklahoma City

—[Capital punishment] has no redeeming social value. It’s no deterrent to crime. It just teaches our children to hate.–Julie-Marie Welch, speaking to her father shortly before her death at age 23 in the Oklahoma City bombing. 

It is easy to keep to one’s principles when things go our way.  But when things turn bad, few have the Job-like strength to stick to what they know is right in spite of the pain. 

Bud Welch, an Oklahoma City gas station owner, lost his only daughter Julie-Marie in the 1995 bombing of the Murrah Federal Building.  Julie-Marie was the center of his life.  She was a happy, intelligent young woman, who studied several foreign languages and was working as an interpreter for the Social Security Administration when the Timothy McVeigh’s bomb ended her life.

When Julie-Marie was killed, Mr. Welch, now 61, says that for ten months his grief and rage were unbearable. “I was so damn full of rage and vengeance that I drank myself to sleep every night,” he said.    

Although he later paid a lengthy visit to McVeigh’s family and offered condolences to his father and sister, Mr. Welch says that he has not yet been able to forgive the man who killed his daughter. Speaking at Harvard University, he said: 

Every Wednesday at 11:30,  I’d meet my daughter Julie-Marie for lunch at a Greek restaurant across the street from the Murrah building. She spoke five languages and translated Spanish for the Social Security office there. But on Wednesday, April 19, 1995, I never got to have lunch with Julie-Marie. I miss her so–her smile, her kindness. She was only 23.  

As far as the death penalty is concerned, it won’t help me any when Tim is killed. The death penalty is about revenge and hate, and I know there are people sitting around this table right now that profess to be Christians. If we’re going to truly follow Christ, as I feel like I try to do, I think we must ask ourselves this one question about the death penalty: “Would Jesus pull the switch?” I don’t think that he would, because Jesus stopped an execution, when he said, “Let those who are without sin cast the first stone.”  I think Ghandi put it very well about the Old Testament–“An eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind.”  (For the full text go to http://www.mvfr.org/harvard.html.)  

On another occasion, Bud Welch said:  

I fear for our country. We need social change on the death penalty–just as we needed social change in the 1800’s with slavery. We moved from abolishing slavery, to granting women the right to vote, to passing civil rights laws. We finally made these necessary social changes and we must take the next step with the death penalty. Do not allow fundamentalist religious groups to control our social agenda. 

Speaking in Colorado before an Amnesty International gathering,  Welch delivered the following address.  At that time, the McVeigh execution was scheduled for May 16, 2001. 

Bud Welch Statement about Timothy McVeigh

To my friends and fellow abolitionists who will be in Terre Haute for the state sanctioned killing of Timothy McVeigh, or at other protests around the country, I want you to know that my prayers are with you. I believe that a statement should be made.

I ask you to be my voice on May 15 and 16, 2001. I urge you to send a clear message to our Government–and to the people of this nation–that what we are embarking on on May 16 is just plain wrong. Our society should not tolerate a government with the power to kill its own citizens. Send that message in whatever way you feel is appropriate, with compassion, with nonviolence, and in peace.

When my daughter, Julie, was killed, I joined a “club” that I wish had no members: The price of admission is too high. I know the pain of losing a loved one because of a senseless act of violence. On May 16, 2001, I will stand with other families who have lost loved ones to unnecessary violence, and I will be with Tim McVeigh’s family as they prepare to be victimized in a political event, staged by the Government of these United States.

Americans must be made to understand that in Tim McVeigh’s mind, he was engaging in an act of revenge when he bombed a United States installation. In his mind he was at war, and much the same as when we bomb Iraq or send more than a billion dollars in weapons to Colombia, innocent civilians die and countless lives are changed forever. The “collateral damage” from McVeigh’s “war” or any other is the same: Innocent people die.

Of course McVeigh’s thinking was horrifically wrong. I am simply saying that we must attempt to understand his mind set, and recognize that WE must choose to stop the cycle of violence! Killing Tim McVeigh only continues the violence. And, killing McVeigh makes him a martyr in the eyes of those who supported him and share his beliefs. We should not be surprised if one or more of his supporters tries to avenge our killing McVeigh. We should ask ourselves: How much killing and how much revenge are we prepared to live through?

I fear for our country. We need social change on the death penalty–just as we needed social change in the 1800’s with slavery. We moved from abolishing slavery, to granting women the right to vote, to passing civil rights laws. We finally made these necessary social changes and we must take the next step with the death penalty. Do not allow fundamentalist religious groups to control our social agenda.

To the media, I implore you: Respect everyone who is suffering through this ordeal. Please be fair and accurate in your reporting. And please respect me, the other victims families, the survivors, and Tim’s family.

Bud Welch,  March 8, 2001

The Pure Water Gazette is honored to add Mr. Welch to the recipients of its Hero Award.

Too much medicine?

Almost certainly

by Ray Moynihan

Gazette’s Introductory Note:.  This short article, pregnant with ideas that relate to our modern medical dilemma, is reprinted here without footnotes.  If you want to pursue the issue, please go to the fully footnoted original that is linked at the bottom of this page.–-Hardly Waite, Gazette Senior Editor.

Most doctors believe medicine to be a force for good. Why else would they have become doctors? Yet while all know medicine’s power to harm individual patients and whole populations, presumably few would agree with Ivan Illich that “The medical establishment has become a major threat to health.”¹ Many might, however,accept the concept of the health economist Alain Enthoven that increasing medical inputs will at some point become counterproductive and produce more harm than good. So where is that point, and might we have reached it already?

Readers of the BMJ voted in a poll for us to explore these questions in a theme issue of the BMJ, and this is that issue. Unsurprisingly, we reach no clear answers, but the questions deserve far more intense debate in a world where many countries are steadily increasing their investment in health care. Presumably no one wants to keep cutting back on education, the arts, scientific research, good food, travel, and much else as we spend more and more of our resources on an unwinnable battle against death, pain, and sicknessparticularly if Illich is right that in doing so we destroy our humanity. And do we in the rich world want to keep developing increasingly expensive treatments that achieve marginal benefits when most in the developing world do not have the undoubted benefits that come with simple measures like sanitation, clean water, and immunisation?

Any consideration of the limits of medicine has to begin a quarter of a century ago with Illich, who has so far produced the most radical critique of modernor industrialisedmedicine.¹ His argument is in some ways simple. Death, pain, and sickness are part of being human. All cultures have developed means to help people cope with all three. Indeed, health can even be defined as being successful in coping with these realities. Modern medicine has unfortunately destroyed these cultural and individual capacities, launching instead an inhuman attempt to defeat death, pain, and sickness. It has sapped the will of the people to suffer reality. “People are conditioned to get things rather than to do them . . . They want to be taught, moved, treated, or guided rather than to learn, to heal, and to find their own way.” The analysis is supported by Amartya Sen’s data showing that the more a society spends on health care the more likely are its inhabitants to regard themselves as sick.²

Illich’s critique may seem laughable, even offensive, to the doctor standing at the end of the bed of a seriously ill person. Should the patient be thrown out and told to cope? It is of course much easier to offer a critique of cultures than to create new onesand Illich (like doctors, ironically) is much stronger on diagnosis than cure. But he does write about recovering the ability for mutual self care and then learning to combine this with the use of modern technology. Though his polemic was published long before the internet, this most contemporary of technologiescombined with the move to patient partnershipis shifting power from doctors back to people. People may increasingly take charge, more consciously weighing the costs and benefits of the “medicalisation” of their lives. Armed with better information about the natural course of common conditions, they may more judiciously assess the real value of medicine’s never ending regimen of tests and treatments.

Although some forcesthe internet and patients’ empowermentmight offer opportunities for “de-medicalisation,” many others encourage greater medicalisation. Patients and their professional advocacy groups can gain moral and financial benefit from having their condition defined as a disease.³ Doctors, particularly some specialists, may welcome the boost to status, influence, and income that comes when new territory is defined as medical. Advances in genetics open up the possibility of defining almost all of us as sick, by diagnosing the “deficient” genes that predispose us to disease.⁴ Global pharmaceutical companies have a clear interest in medicalising life’s problems, ^5 6 and there is now an ill for every pill.⁷ Likewise companies manufacturing mammography equipment or tests for prostate specific antigen can grow rich on the medicalisation of risk.⁸ Many journalists and editors still delight in mindless medical formulas, where fear mongering about the latest killer disease is accompanied by news of the latest wonder drug.⁹ Governments may even welcome some of society’s problemswithin, for example, criminal justicebeing redefined as medical, with the possibility of new solutions.

As the BMJ ‘s debate over “non-diseases” has shown, the concept of what is and what is not a disease is extremely slippery. ^10 11 It is easy to create new diseases and new treatments, and many of life’s normal processesbirth,¹² ageing,¹³ sexuality,¹⁴ unhappiness,¹⁵ and death¹⁶can be medicalised. Two sets of authors in the issue argue convincingly, however, that there is much undertreatment, suggesting a need for more medicalisation. ^13 17 The challenge is to get the balance right.

It is those who pay for health care who might be expected to resist medicalisation, and governments, insurers, and employers have tried to restrain the rapid and unceasing growth in healthcare budgets. They have had little or no success, and Britain’s government now plans to raise taxes to pay for more health care. Labour, the party in power, will have calculated that the risk of trying to bottle up demand is greater than thesubstantialrisk of raising taxes. But while increased resources will be widely welcomed, the cost of trying to defeat death, pain, and sickness is unlimited, and beyond a certain point every penny spent may make the problemworse, eroding still further the human capacity to cope with reality.

Ivan Illich did not want the wholesale dismantling of medicine. He favoured “sanitation, inoculation, and vector control, well-distributed health education, healthy architecture, and safe machinery, general competence in first aid, equally distributed access to dental and primary medical care, as well as judiciously selected complex services.”¹ These should be embedded within “a truly modern culture that fostered self-care and autonomy.” This is a package that many doctors would find acceptable, particularly if available to everybody everywhere.

Doctors and their organisations understandably argue for increased spendingbecause they are otherwise left paying a personal price, trying to cope with increasing demand with inadequate resources. Indeed this is one of the sources of worldwide unhappiness among doctors.^18-20 Although seen by many as the perpetrators of medicalisation, doctors may actually be some of its most prominent victims.³ This is perhaps why BMJ readers wanted this theme issue.

Perhaps some doctors will now become the pioneers of de-medicalisation. They can hand back power to patients, encourage self care and autonomy, call for better worldwide distribution of simple effective health care, resist the categorisation of life’s problem as medical, promote the de-professionalisation of primary care, and help decide which complex services should be available. This is no longer a radical agenda.

Ray Moynihan, journalist.

Reprinted from the British Medical Journal.

Gazette Fair Use Policy.

Footnotes not included in our reprint.  Please go to British Medical Journal original linked above for footnoted version.