Chart
data from Irish sugar institute. EU/UK consumption per capita is about
twice the global average above. North American consumption per capita
has been consistently about four times the global average, of which
more than half now comes from corn sweeteners. On top of that, a
significant and rapidly growing proportion of the North American diet
from sweeteners (as much as 20%) comes from artificial sweeteners.
Our
bodies die when one of five things happens:
- They wear out,
and suffer one severe or a series of cascading 'mechanical' failures
- They are unable to recover from self-inflicted
trauma
- They are unable to recover from trauma
caused by other people or human activity
- They are unable to recover from trauma caused by a
non-human biological
agent
- They succumb to 'system failure' caused by an
inherent genetic
defect
There are few of us who aspire to find a 'solution' for the first
cause. Eighty or a hundred years is a long time for any physical device
with a lot of moving parts to endure, and the cost of replacing most of
our bodies would be astronomical, and the process and results grotesque.
Since the conquest of some of the biological agents like smallpox,
tuberculosis, malaria and polio that have killed millions and even
billions of humans, medical science (and we its patients) have become
somewhat obsessed with causes 4 and 5, to the point we have come to
believe that if we found 'cures' for these agents and defects we would
all live long and healthy lives -- as
if causes 2 and 3 do not exist.
Cause 2, self-inflicted trauma is not
just suicide. When we abuse our bodies through the use of drugs,
ingested, inhaled or injected, we are poisoning our bodies. Smoking
could easily be seen as a form of slow suicide. When we deliberately
choose to
eat too much, too little, or an unhealthy mix of foods and beverages,
we are knowingly poisoning ourselves, inflicting trauma on our bodies
as surely as if we systematically
cut our bodies with razor blades. Most of us are now addicted to the
things we eat -- fats, starches, sugars, salts, alcohol, caffeine and
all the other unnatural substances that make us temporarily feel better
but quickly get us craving more as the illusion of well-being wears
off. It's tempting to blame greedy corporations for our addictive
diets, but the truth is we have craved these substances and the highs
they give us since we first discovered them, and if these cravings were
not satisfied by corporations we would find other ways to get them.
Humans have created a 'market' economy and production system that can
and does find a way to produce anything that people want -- in fact
that's one of the reasons we invented that economy and system. The fact
that this economy and system makes it easier for us to get addicted to
more consumables that are toxic to our health simply explains why more
humans die today of complications of obesity than of malnutrition.
Cause 3, trauma induced by other humans is likewise not
just homicide.
We have so altered the chemistry of our air and water that it is
changing the climate of the entire planet. It would be folly to think
that such adulteration is not also massively affecting our bodies. The
air we breathe, the water we drink and the foods we eat are laced with
chemicals, both organic and inorganic, natural and man-made, that our
bodies were never meant to ingest. Most of those chemicals have never
been tested for toxological effect -- there are simply too many for the
testing agents to handle. Soaring rates of asthma, cancers and
autism almost certainly have Cause 3 sources. They are the result of
massive, collective human activity designed to make our lives better
and, ironically, to make us healthier.
While Cause 2 and Cause 3 are different, in many cases there is no easy
way to differentiate between them. This is why we are willing to at
least listen to people who blame Big Tobacco for addicting them to the
product that is killing them, and who blame Big Agribusiness for
addicting them to sugar and starch and subjecting their children to so
many hormones and antibiotics in meat that there are no antibiotics
left to treat them when they really get sick.
I mentioned in an earlier article that some epidemiologists now believe
AIDS and other diseases of those with compromised immune systems are
not caused by HIV (a biological agent) but rather by inadvertent
self-inflicted trauma -- drugs favoured by homosexual males and toxins
easily transmitted through shared and non-antiseptic needles. No one
wants to hear this, because it would deprive the medical profession and
Big Pharma of a great epidemic to solve, would make many of the
sufferers of this terrible disease open to scapegoating, and would
force science to admit a colossal blunder in diagnosis. And because
it's almost impossible to draw a line of responsibility between Cause 2
and Cause 3 traumas, it also raises the
possibility and even probability that the poisons in our air, water and
food are responsible for the damage to our immune systems that allow
AIDS and the other immune-deficiency related epidemics ravaging much of
the world. If poisoning by mining, air exhaust, food additives,
antibiotics, dumping of wastes, and inability to clean up our water
supplies are found to be the cause of auto-immune diseases and many
cancers, a lot of people in high places could be looking at jail time
for involuntary manslaughter. Not to mention a reputation in the
history books as bigger mass-murderers than all the despots of human
history combined.
A reader writes:
I
have Chronic Fatigue Immune Dysfunction Syndrome (CFS/CFIDS) and
HIV-Negative AIDS, idiopathic CD8 lymphocytopenia. With these two
clinical diagnoses, I believe that makes me living proof that the AIDS-like
CFS is transmissible, something that the medical establishment seems
unable to admit or to acknowledge. I also believe it makes me living
proof that Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and HIV-Negative AIDS are basically
the same mysterious immune disorder.
Two years ago,
after a heterosexual sexual encounter, I became seriously ill with what
looks like the natural disease progression of AIDS. After an "acute
infection" and a "period of asymptomatic health", I have fallen
extremely ill to an unrelenting, progressively-worsening AIDS-like
demise. I can pinpoint exactly when I was infected with my "chronic
viral syndrome of unknown etiology" and because the "acute infection"
stage was so distinguishable, I can also pinpoint exactly when my
undiagnosed illness left my body and infected yet another host. I am a
link in a chain of systemically undiagnosed, sexually-connected,
heterosexual sick people. Whatever I am currently dealing with, it
strongly resembles classic textbook HIV/AIDS disease. But, to add to my
inquiry, I also clinically satisfy the CDC's criteria for the diagnosis
of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome.
As
my blood indicates, my body is reacting to its undiagnosed foreign
invader with: altered CD4/CD8 ratios; a rapid decline in lymphocyte
percentages; a decline in CD3s; inflated LDH, CH50, Cortisol and
segmented neutrophils levels; and a low T3 uptake. In accordance, my
body is reacting to its immunodeficiency with severe and extensive
abnormalities ranging from extreme weight loss and severe debilitating
chronic fatigue to far more disturbing lung/thyroid tumors and AIDS-like
opportunistic infections. Upon review of my
medical file, you would see that I am an HIV-Negative AIDS (idiopathic
CD8 lymphocytopenia) patient with a bleak future.
Increasingly,
I have become concerned that my systemic diagnosis is caught up in the
treacherous politics of CFS and AIDS. Most people with CFS do not like
to talk about the many symptoms and immune abnormalities that they
share with AIDS patients. I also suspect that most ailing patients
would rather be told that they have the very mysterious
Chronic Fatigue Syndrome than to be told that they have AIDS.
I
have a Master's degree. I am a director at my firm. I used to be a
triathlete. I have never used IV drugs. I have never traveled abroad. I
can count my sexual partners on two hands. Statistically speaking, I
know that my undiagnosed infectious and communicable disease is not
rare: so, you tell me, if they are not in the miscellaneous CFS
category, where are all these other immunosuppressed people?
Anyone with Chronic Fatigue
Syndrome, who does not consider the possibility that CFS will
eventually progress to a Non-HIV AIDS diagnosis, is very well trumping
their own ability to diagnosis the root cause of their illness. Why
isn't CFS a reportable
disease overseen by
our public health department? Has anyone ever asked a CFS patient to
epidemiologically track down all of their ex-sexual partners to see if
any of them also suffer from an undiagnosed immune disorder?
Why are we not reading about Non-HIV AIDS cases (and/or the AIDS-like
nature of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome) on the front pages of every
newspaper in America? And if CFS is Non-HIV AIDS, then, depending on
who you believe, there are anywhere between 500,000 - 14,000,000
Americans out there with a transmissible illness. If that is what it
truly is, our new form of AIDS dwarfs the
‘original’ AIDS epidemic tenfold.
I
want honest answers for myself, for everyone who is suffering from this
hideous illness, and especially for those who remain uninfected by my
undiagnosed infectious and communicable disease. As worrisome as my
health is to me, I am extremely troubled by the strong likelihood that
more people are being infected every minute that HIV-Negative AIDS
cases (like mine) are allowed to go undetected -- especially if it
turns out that AIDS and CFIDS are basically the same disorder.
You can label my AIDS-like illness whatever you
wish. I would even allow you to call it infectious-Chronic
Fatigue Syndrome, even though it is utterly beyond my realm of
comprehension as to how the medical establishment can generically name
an entire disease paradigm based on just one (of my numerous)
symptom(s). Regardless of how politics may try to dissuade or delude you, all you
need to know is that my idiopathic immune dysfunction is infectious! It
is contagious! And it is spreading, unleashed, in the world's
population!
I
am not afraid to say that I have AIDS without HIV -- idiopathic CD8
lymphocytopenia -- my second official clinical diagnosis. I am equally
as unafraid of saying the most obvious thing about Chronic Fatigue
Syndrome: It sure does look like AIDS to me. We talk openly
about preparing for an impending Avian Flu pandemic. Why not talk about
the HIV-Negative AIDS epidemic that already exists (and is spreading)
amongst us?
The writer believes that her disease itself is infectious, and she may well
be right, but what if it is endemic in a society that ingests,
voluntarily and involuntarily, millions of chemicals we have absolutely
no idea of the long-range effects of on our bodies, and the infection
agent is merely a catalyst that triggers the 'syndrome'? Or what if it
isn't infectious at all, and it's latent in all of us, just awaiting
some other immune-system-challenging disease or some exhausting or
stressful event in order to start wreaking havoc on our bodies? Are our
bodies all fighting a constant life-and-death struggle with all the
foreign, accumulating, interacting poisons that we ingest every time we
breathe, drink or eat?
Because Cause 2 and Cause 3 are so
inseparable, it is tempting for
politicians, health agencies and especially corporations, who might be
liable once a
causal link to their activities is established, to insist that there
must be a Cause 4 for all these epidemic and fatal problems that would
get them off the hook, and to fiercely resist even looking at other
possible causes. There is plenty of circumstantial evidence that
manufacturing, energy and resource industries (including many
operations run by governments) are guilty of causing an untold number
of deaths
from Cause 3 negligence, and, while it would be a very tough case to
prosecute, finding a Cause 4 for these deaths would both shift
suspicion and refocus attention on the much easier cures for Cause 4
illnesses.
So where does that leave us, the patients? The
obvious lesson is not to depend on, or even particularly trust, those
who have a vested interest in the outcome. We cannot and should not
rely on governments, the NIH and its counterparts around the world,
health care providers, Big Pharma, or of course polluting corporations
to look after our interests -- they are too busy looking after their
own, which in some cases directly conflicts with ours. Here's what we
can do:
- Network with other people
who share our symptoms and/or concerns. Information, and the support of
others, are our greatest tools against ignorance, denial, cover-ups,
and the hostility of those who have an axe to grind -- and who don't
want our messages heard when they place their reputations at risk.
- Do our own research.
Read stuff on the Internet, but also read alternative sources, not just
those spouting the party line. Talk to people, meet and visit with
those who are suffering, doing work, fighting uphill battles for the
truth.
- Take charge of our own health.
If our poor diets contribute to our poor health and eventual death, it
will be small consolation to know that we were being slowly poisoned
anyway. We need to take responsibility for illness prevention, personal
health monitoring, self-diagnosis and self-management of our health. It
is both foolish and unfair to leave everything up to the
'professionals'.
- Think critically.
We should take everything we read and hear with a grain of salt, even
if it comes from 'professionals'. We should be looking for alternative
causes, treatments, approaches and ideas -- care-givers only want to
try one thing at a time, starting with the accepted most likely
treatment, so they can get on to the next patient. They don't have time
to think critically. We must find the time to do so.
- Appreciate that most care-givers are doing their best,
but that their science is not very advanced. We should treat
care-givers as partners in looking after our health, not outsourcers.
The doctors I know who are honest will admit that they rarely know the
answers for sure, that they find their patients over-dependent on them,
and that they just don't have the time to take care of our health all
by themselves. They're caught in a difficult situation -- we want
to put them on a pedestal (and doctors who admit their fallibility lose
patients and lawsuits). But they also want us to know the truth -- that
in many cases they don't know much more than we do about how to
prevent, diagnose or treat some of the most terrifying illnesses of our
time.
This doesn't mean giving governments, health
agencies, health practitioners or polluters an easy way out. In
addition to the above, we should be lobbying governments and the
health-care industry for more patient-centered approaches to health
care: More focus on prevention (including tighter controls on pollution
and on food additives and chemicals), on enabling greater self-care (in
part by requiring the profession and Big Pharma to share more
information with the public, and not just when it is favourable to
their point of view and bottom line), and on more holistic analysis of
health care problems (not just looking for Cause 4 and Cause 5
answers). We need to get rid of the conflicts of interest between
governments, Big Pharma and patients -- and resolve them in our
favour. And we need to recapture the rights we lost a century ago to
treat ourselves -- as long as we are prepared to sign a waiver
accepting full responsibility for the results, we should be able to
self-administer drugs without a prescription and without regulatory
approval. It's ludicrous that the food junkies can push our kids to
consume huge amounts of Aspartame and other poisons, but we can't buy
Codeine to help ease a friend's enormous suffering unless we get
written permission from a doctor.
We're old enough to take care of ourselves, and there's plenty of evidence that if we don't, we shouldn't expect anyone else to. |
MADE IN CANADA
trust your
instincts 
