HOME   HYGIENE LIBRARY CATALOG   CHAPTER 24

   It's a peculiar thing--humans are the only animals in the world capable of logic and reason, and yet they spend most of their time doing illogical and unreasonable things.

   Aside from the fact that there are enough nuclear bombs stockpiled in the world to obliterate life on Earth many times over, and aside from the human devastation and pollution of forests, land, oceans and atmosphere, the human race is in more immediate danger from environmental factors surrounding people in everyday life.

   Now that it is realized that little children, as they play, have within them the early stages of artery disease, that young men and women, as they frolic and laugh at life, do so with partially blocked coronary arteries--some of them indeed already afflicted with arthritis and some with early cancer--surely we should not be surprised at the relentless degeneration and mortality among the middle-aged.

   Now that it is further realized that the dignified and trusted people to whom we look for guidance and protection, seem not to have much idea of what is happening or of what to do (perishing along with the rest), it becomes clear that survival is a matter of individual effort.

   Taking stock of the situation we find:

1. Conventional medical treatment is utterly ineffectual against degenerative disease conditions, serving only to mask symptoms and relieve pain until the patient eventually dies. More often than not, great harm results from drug treatment. These "side effects" are in turn relieved by other drugs, and so on.

      When remission of disease occurs or recoveries from lesser illnesses are made, rarely is medical treatment responsible. Records show that untreated patients or even primitive natives treated by witch doctors achieve the same overall recovery rates.

      Specifically, heart patients should not be lulled into a sense of security because of symptomatic relief and should not readily accept by-pass surgery, which in most cases is avoidable.

2. The world abounds in misconceptions and false information, disseminated sometimes by the most respectable people.

      Many long-established, influential institutions, government and private, set up for the purpose of acquiring and disseminating information about various diseases and their management, are little more than well-meaning bureaucracies compiling statistics, and reiterating out of date information, much of which is wrong or misleading. The misinformation stems mainly from ignorance, but also to a great extent from the lobbying and pressure from commercial interests. The greatest impediment to medical progress is the neglect by the medical establishments to investigate valuable research data.

      Recently, there have been belated admissions by various medical authorities that diet is a factor in the onset of a number of different degenerative diseases. These admissions are made in the form of announcements of "new information", although in most cases the information has been available for fifty years or more. For instance, the association of dietary fat with diabetes was shown by Dr R. Geyle of Columbia University in 1923. Later in 1935, Dr I. M. Rabinowitch of Canada, after a 5-year study of 1,000 case histories, presented information to the US Diabetic Association, which clearly demonstrated that blood fat was the prime causative factor in diabetes, but his information was rejected. Only today is this information being medically accepted, and Dr James Anderson of the University of Kentucky is becoming famous for his dietary treatment of diabetes. How did Dr Anderson discover this form of treatment? The fact is that Nathan Pritikin told him in 1975, and moreover, provided $10,000 for Dr Anderson's first clinical trial. Notwithstanding all this, the best dietary advice forthcoming from the Diabetic Association today is a token reduction of dietary fat to 30% of total calories!

      The American Medical Association and the American Heart Association apparently have been unaware of information known a hundred years ago. More recent documented information which has been virtually ignored since the 1940s and 1950s are the many case histories presented by Dr Lester Morrison of Los Angeles, and others, which demonstrate clearly the implication of dietary fat and cholesterol in coronary heart disease. It was shown also at that time how it was simple to reduce blood cholesterol by diet and that even a moderate reduction to 220 mg% reduced coronary deaths by 50-75%.

      In 1965, writing in the Journal of the American Medical Association, Dr Meyer Freidman said:

      "A meal rich either in animal or vegetable fat can lead to sludging of the blood and blocked capillaries for most of a 24-hour period, and one fatty meal follows another. At this writing, I know of no single phenomenon that has been so consistently neglected, in the study of heart disease, as this one. Later we may rue this inexcusable oversight."

      Conveying a message a child would understand, the article was illustrated with actual photographs of blood vessels choked with sticky cells and sludge . . .

      Doesn't anybody read JAMA ? Can't the specialists comprehend simple English? Here were are 31 years later with the AMA and the AHA still advising a high fat diet (30%) while their own tests have shown this diet to be ineffectual!

      The cancer establishment has the worst history of pigheadedness and intrigue. Since as far back as 1809, when Dr Richard Lambe of London wrote a treatise on the successful treatment of cancer by a diet of raw vegetables, the medical authorities have resisted bitterly the idea that diet was a factor in the onset and regression of cancer. Many doctors over the years have successfully treated cancer patients by dietary means, but not only could they not get a hearing from the authorities, they were pressured and persecuted for stepping out of line. Fortunately, many of these doctors wrote books describing their work and successes, which today provide valuable references.

      As described in Chapter 20, there is so much evidence of the implication of diet with cancer, it is unbelievable that the National Cancer Institute held off making its first admission regarding diet until 1979, and today, in line with the other medical groups, still recommends a fat intake of 30%.

      In 1982 a comprehensive report called "Diet, Nutrition and Cancer" was issued by the US National Research Council, The report was prepared by a committee of people from the National Academy of Science, the National Academy of Engineering and the Institute of Medicine. The findings were that nutritional factors were significantly involved in the cause of cancer, but not only did the report display a lamentable lack of comprehension, it made no proposal at all that dietary correction should urgently be implemented in the treatment of the disease! It was a pussyfooting report but at least better than anything the multi-billion dollar National Cancer Institute has come up with.

      At a convention in San Diego in October, 1981, the Gerson Institute, which carries on the work of Dr Max Gerson (who died in 1958), presented 100 fully recovered "incurable" patients, half of them so-called "terminal" cancer patients, together with their medical histories. These people had been cured by dietary methods. The institute issued a formal public challenge to any medical authority to investigate these cases, but there has been no response, the same as with similar challenges in the past.

      The most chilling indictment of the medical establishment (and there are many to choose from) could well be the Fitzgerald Report of 1953, instigated by Senator Charles Tobey, Chairman of the Senate Interstate and Foreign Commerce Committee, US Government. Attorney Benedict Fitzgerald was appointed to study the various aspects relating to cancer in the USA, including the operations of all individuals, organizations, foundations and clinics, their methods Of research, diagnosis, treatments and the efficacy thereof, as well as their fund-raising methods, financial structures and allocation of expenditure. The report disclosed a disgraceful state of intrigue, monopoly, dishonesty and suppression of information, but the report itself was suppressed and nothing came of it. However copies of the Fitzgerald Report are available today from the National Health Federation,. P.O. Box 688, Monrovia, Ca. 91016.

      Thirty years after the Fitzgerald report, the intrigue and persecution continue. Although admitting the causes of cancer "are not understood" (by them) the medical establishment, despite its ignorance and failure still claims (and possesses) the supreme authority as to how a physician--regardless of his experience and results--must treat his patients and although the establishment at last has actually produced dietary advice on the prevention of cancer, a physician who treats a cancer patient with nutritional therapy is today still regarded as a quack and persecuted as a felon. The same physician if he mutilated his patients with unnecessary surgery or fearfully injured them with radiation or poisonous chemicals would be fully approved. Whether or how long the patients survive is inconsequential.

      So oppressive and uncompromising has been the attitude of the American medical establishment in persecuting dedicated physicians that the Committee for Freedom of Choice in Medicine (California) is emminently to file an action before the Permanent Committee on Human Rights of the United Nations claiming that the US medical establishment is in gross violation of the UN Declaration of Human Rights Agreement of 1966.

      The Arthritis Council, the MS Society and others, all have the same plodding negative attitude which stems from the total unawareness of the nature of the so-called degenerative diseases and of the underlying factors involved. Other-wise, if the medical profession did comprehend the nature of the different disease conditions, it would be obvious that there is no need for specialization and the accompanying specialized organizations that clutter our community.

3. Apart from inertia, the main influence which keeps orthodox medicine on the wrong track is the enormous power of the drug and chemical industries which, at huge expense, maintain a constant brainwashing campaign directed both at the medical profession and the general public. In addition, by their direct influence within the administration of various medical organizations, these industries control the allocation of the majority of research funds provided by public subscriptions and government funding, as well as the grants they make themselves. Thus drug research projects receive favorable consideration, while nutritional research is ignored.
4. There is a growing realization that prevention is better than cure, but unfortunately, there is a widespread misconception that prevention means merely the early detection of disease symptoms still to be treated in the conventional way. Early detection of symptoms is beneficial to the patient only if dietary and other changes are adopted as corrective measures.
5. The vitamin and health food industries are rapidly growing and becoming "big business". Although they don't cause the same harm as the drug companies, they don't provide the great benefits they advertise either. In the belief they are attaining vital health, many deluded people spend a great deal of money on food supplements and vitamins, only to achieve the distinction of having very expensive urine.
6. Like the chemical and drug industries--the meat industry, the dairy industry, the poultry industry, the sugar industry, the liquor industry, the soft drink industry, the processed food industry, the fast food industry, the tobacco industry, the confectionery industry--or any other industry--are all intent on making money, and have little regard for ethics to do so. The Government makes a great song and dance about health but still subsidizes tobacco growers and panders to the other lobbyists, including the medical lobby.

      To enhance sales, many of these industries advertise their products as beneficial to health or happiness, and commission prestigious people to promote them. The advertising and television industries, also profit motivated, don't care too much what products they advertise.

   Advertising is not the only way to "con" the public; all sorts of connivance is used. When in 1979, the American Academy of Science was reported worldwide to state that cholesterol had not been proven to be a factor in heart disease, the meat and dairy industry benefited greatly. The Academy's statement, it should be noted, originated from Dr Olsen, a paid consultant to the US meat and dairy industry.

   Ten years earlier, in 1969, when Dr Richard Aarons at Rockefeller University exposed yet again the dangers of polyunsaturated fat, the National Dairy Council gave him their "Man of the Year" award.

   It should also be noted that the US National Dairy Council provides the bulk of the nutritional information used by the US Government and US educational authorities.

   When Senator George McGovern in 1978 announced the Senate Select Committee's recommendation on diet for the American people, which suggested that small reductions in the intake of meat, eggs and dairy products should be made, there was a great outcry from producers. Even the American Medical Association objected, saying there was no evidence to show that the American diet should be changed, that vast economic dislocation could ensue, and that matters of diet were the concern of the physician/patient relationship!

   The country needs a medical system, but not one which thrives on community sickness. Our present medical system fails because it is a government protected monopoly answerable only to itself. Despite the apparent wonders of medical science which are more like entertaining sideshows--a sort of pageantry to keep the peasants impressed--the medical system is stagnant, like an old feudal kingdom with all its protocols and bigotry. Like the mammoth trading monopolies of the past, it must change--or go out of business.

   Meanwhile, addicted to the seemingly harmless pleasures of civilization, mankind careers on, only vaguely aware of the dangers staring us all in the face, and smug in the belief that modern technology can solve all problems. The problems however, ignore man-made rules, they are a product of the laws of Nature.

   So the incidence of cancer, a rare disease one hundred years ago, increased to a figure of one person in eight by 1950 and today is almost one person in three (according to the American Cancer Society), and is still increasing. What would the figure be if cardiovascular disease did not intervene in half the population? The British Medical Association reports an increase of VD since 1957 of 1700%. "New" diseases like Legionnaires' disease, herpes, AIDS and others, increase despite the "imminent breakthroughs" by modern medicine.

   Let's face it, civilization today is on the skids. Other civilizations have risen, flourished and vanished in the past. Ours won't be the first to do so, but who knows? It could be the last.

Health or wealth

   Three of the wealthiest men in the world, Aristotle Onassis, Howard Hughes and the Shah of Iran were, at the same time, three of the sickest. They were not old men either, and yet the most expensive medical doctors, with all their space-age technology, could not save them. Compare their cases with that of Elizabeth May Doolin, a 75-year-old pensioner (see Chapter 2) from the small country town of Uralla, NSW A few years ago she too was one the sickest people in the world, immobile and awaiting death. Entirely on her own initiative, and without any outside assistance whatever, she adopted the Pritikin program, having read a simple description of it in the Sydney Daily Mirror (February, 1979) and, at no expense at all, she rapidly recovered her health and mobility.

   It takes all kinds to make the world. Which kind are you?