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All too often, we hear that the reason life expectancy has been increased is thanks to the marvellous developments in modern medicine. This is a message that is repeated many times and promoted by the medical industry – with little or no evidence.

In fact, the opposite may be the truth. A combination of not understanding the concept of life expectancy, ignoring scientific facts, plus a willingness to take credit when it is not due has seen the medical industry promote itself as the reason we live longer. Behind the scenes, this is little more than a marketing strategy for the big pharmaceutical companies.

Don’t get me wrong; this does not undermine the fantastic role medical doctors play in acute life-saving events. These make a huge contribution to an individual’s life expectancy but make an insignificant contribution to life expectancy for all of us.

The overemphasis of modern medicine on the pharmaceutical model and “silver bullet” approach has led to a disempowerment of individuals over their own health during the past few decades, during which we have seen a huge rise in chronic illness. The more specialists and the bigger the medical budget, the poorer the health of the public.

Let’s take an example: the US uses 50% of the world’s pharmaceuticals and spends more per person on medicine than any other nation, yet has one of the poorest health outcomes in the developed world.

Modern medicine tends to focus on prescriptive treatment of disease, rather than health promotion, prevention and management.^1,2 It is likely that everyday medical care provides little contribution to increased life expectancy of a population.^3,4

Gains in life expectancy worldwide have been greater during lastcentury than at any other time in recorded history.^5,6 Statistical analyses show that since the early 1800s life expectancy at birth has seen a linear rate of increase.⁷

Within this time, it has been human advances in sanitation, increased food supply, improved access to water, and basic preventative medicine that have helped drive these steady increases in the developed world – not pharmaceuticals. The majority of life expectancy gains were made before pharmaceuticals to treat heart attack, stroke and other forms of chronic illness were even developed.

However, it is important to understand the concept of life expectancy. It is the average number of years of life remaining at a given age for a selected population. Life expectancy at birth is commonly used as the main indicator of human health and well-being. It is said to give an indication of the overall mortality of a population.⁵ However, it is a poor indicator of population health.⁸

Life expectancy is poorly understood. Most people think it is increasing the age to which they can live; for example, people at 50 think that they are going to live longer because of an increase in life expectancy. This is not the case. Life expectancy is a statistical anomaly, which takes the average of the age of a person’s death. It includes everyone: infants, children, teenagers right through to those in their old age. This means that if the rates of infant mortality are reduced, the average life expectancy is dramatically increased overall.

A simple example will highlight this. If 50% of the population died before one year of age and 50% of the population died at 80 years of age, the average age of life expectancy is around 40 years even though 50% lived to 80 years of age. If you eliminate the infant mortality the life expectancy goes up to 80 years of age. This does not mean people are living longer, they are still dying at 80 years of age but the statistical average, the “life expectancy,” has increased.

This reduction of child mortality skews the life expectancy.⁹ Statistical analysis has revealed that the trends in cohort geriatric mortality follow those of reducing childhood mortality.¹⁰ This means that benefits from improvements in mortality rates of younger generations provide a false impression of the benefits to older generations. Furthermore, life expectancy at birth can only predict life expectancy with 95% confidence to within a fourteen-year range.⁹

That is, we may live to 80 years of age plus or minus 14 years. Therefore it cannot be trusted as a reliable base to measure contribution of health interventions for whole population life expectancy. Reduced child mortality positively skews life expectancy statistics and gives the misconception of increased population lifespan.^11,9,6

To highlight the problems with this approach even further, the high rate of infant mortality in the 1900s was a result of the advent of pathological anatomy in the 1820s, and consequently the increase in number of conducted autopsies, is correlated to the incidence of fatal childbed fever. The decline in the 1840s and 1850s was a result of hygiene practices that the medical profession battled against for two decades. Why did it take so long?

Research now also shows the supply of doctors has an insignificant relationship within infant mortality,¹¹ that is, the number of doctors has no bearing on infant mortality rates. This becomes apparent when you look at non-medical home birthing rates in the Netherlands of up to 30% and 1% in Australia and the two countries have virtually identical infant mortality rates. But we have significantly higher wheeze, asthma, allergies and eczema, which are associated with interventionist births, in Australia.

Life expectancy at birth does not provide adequate information as to the health or morbidity of a population prior to death.^5,9 Better statistical analyses should be used that incorporate both morbidity and mortality measurements of population health. That is, continued increases in life expectancy in the future should only be considered worthwhile if accompanied by longer periods of good health.¹² More consistent measures like the “potential years of life lost” should be used.⁹

Modern medicine tends to focus on prescriptive treatment of disease rather than preventative avoidance and health management.¹³ We need to re-establish the balance between disease prevention for a population, as opposed to only treating consequences of disease to prolong individual life.¹⁴

Billions of dollars are spentinventing and testing new drugs that only marginally extendthe benefits of those they replace, instead of using existing resourcesto better deliver effective services.¹⁵ Despite the billions of dollars spent, there is no population-based data to allow the direct connection of prescriptive medical care to the extension of life.⁴ In fact, numerous studies have shown the opposite.

A major Australian study found an association between increasing mortality and an increase in the doctor supply,¹¹ which is attributed to increasing adversities or complications caused by or resulting from medical treatment within society.¹¹ This is known as autogenesis and has been the subject of much study. Depending upon how one uses statistics, autogenesis is now considered either first, second or third in comparison to cancer and cardiovascular rates. It is one of the biggest killers; most iatrogenic deaths are due to undesired effects of drugs when taken at a normal dose. In Australia alone, thousands of people die prematurely every year as a result of prescription drugs.

There is no evidence to link increased medical spending and health outcomes, with many lower-spending nations such as Cuba tending to have better outcomes than higher-spending nations such as America.¹⁶ It is fascinating to consider that despite having one of the lowest doctor-to-patient ratios in the developed world, Okinawans and the Seventh Day Adventists living in California can expect one of the highest life expectancies.¹⁷

Modern medicine cannot be given credit for increasing life expectancy at birth. Theory suggests that with increasing doctor supply, a population becomes increasingly dependent on their services to maintain health and ultimately neglects the more important lifestyle factors that contribute to longer, healthier life.¹⁸

To the peril of preventative health care, there is often more short-term political capital to be gained from the construction of hospitals and investments in curative technology than from alleviating the causes of ill health.^16,17

With obesity and heart disease emerging as leading causes of mortality in the developed world, we must ask where life expectancy is headed in the future and give more political weight to preventative care. Theories of a time lag effect suggest a possible regression of life expectancy in the future, even with better health outcomes during infancy, which may very well be a result of contemporary approaches to healthcare.^19,20

Nowadays few people are ignorant of the dangers of smoking, drug and alcohol misuse, driving while intoxicated, risky sexual behaviour, fatty diets and so on.¹⁶ Reduction in these contributors to premature mortality must be considered significant for life expectancy gains.¹¹ The cost of smoking cessation to save a life, not to mention the reduction in suffering and morbidity, is in the hundreds to a few thousand dollars per person²¹ and a recent Australian study reported favourable cost-effectiveness for smoking interventions, physicalactivity interventions and multiple behaviour interventionsin high-risk groups.²²

Okinawa, Japan boasts one of the longest life expectancies for its population in the world.^23,17 There are also a significantly large population of centenarians living within the region.¹ Despite being one of the poorest regions in Japan and being the bottom ranked in socioeconomic indicators for the country, Okinawa ranks at the top for its populations health and life expectancy.²⁴ Okinawan people tend to live long and, most importantly, healthy lives. This is attributed to diet, high levels of physical activity, and strong cultural values that include good stress-coping abilities.¹⁷

It just so happens that Okinawa culture embraces Hara Hachi Bu, which means to eat only until 80% full.²⁵ Caloric restriction is the only consistently reproducible experimental means of extending mean and maximum lifespan. Laboratory experiments show markedly decreased morbidity in laboratory mammals that are fed to only 80% full.^25,26 Much of the developed world stands to learn from this, as obesity linked to poor eating habits is an ever-increasing epidemic.

Studies on populations with Okinawan ancestry living in Hawaii have supported claims that epigenetics are more influential to longevity than genetics.²⁴ That is, Okinawans who leave the island do not live as long as those who live on the island. Furthermore, studies on the oldest living natural population in the world, the Seventh Day Adventists living in California, support these findings.¹²

Any gains in life expectancy have to be seen in the context of the healthy habits in which a population engages. Those living longer – 80 years or more – right now were born in the 1920s and 1930s. They developed healthy eating and lifestyle habits that many of them still practice. It is unlikely that the next generation will enjoy these longer and healthier years due to poor habits.

Our reliance on doctors and prescription medicine to ensure population longevity appears to be very narrow in light of its historical contribution to health. Starting down the right path with appropriatenutrition and lifestyle are important componentsof healthy aging and increasing your life expectancy.

Acknowledgements: Thanks to Sean Allen for contributing to the research in this article.

Professor Peter Dingle’s new book on the truth about cholesterol and cholesterol lowering medication, The Great Cholesterol Deception, is available from all good bookstores or order at www.drdingle.com.

FOOTNOTES:

1. Raskin and Ripoll 2004

2. Riley 2001

3. Kamerow 2007

4. Bunker 2001

5. Michaud 2001

6. Yin et al. 1985

7. Oeppen and Vaupel 2002

8. Robine 1999

9. Murray 1988

10. Cramming 2006

11. Richarson and Peacock 2003

12. Fraser 2001

13. Riley 2001

14. Dyer 2002

15. Kamerow 2007

16. Hunter 2003

17. WHO 2008

18. Illich 1975

19. Terry et al. 2008

20. Olshansky 2005

21. Cummings et al. 1987

22. Gordon et al 2007

23. Oeppen and Vaupel 2002

24. Cockerham 2008

25. Willcox et al. 2006

26. Bryant 2004

Steven R. Cummings, MD; Susan M. Rubin, MPH; Gerry Oster, The Cost-effectiveness of Counseling Smokers to Quit. JAMA. 1989;261(1):75-79.

Gordon L, N. Graves ,A. Hawkes, and E. Eakin A review of the cost-effectiveness of face-to-face behavioural interventions for smoking, physical activity, diet and alcohol. Chronic Illness, Vol. 3, No. 2, 101-129 (2007)

Aaron, S, Ferguson, D. 2008. Exaggeration of treatment benefits using the “event-based” number needed to treat. Canadian medical association journal (Online) Vol 179, iss. 7, accessed: 12/01/09 via Google Scholar.

Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, 2008. Australia’s national agency for health and welfare statistics and information, Australian Government http://www.aihw.gov.au/

Bryant, R, 2004. Live longer: cut calories, exercise more. Dermatology Times: Clarifying Cosmetic Dermatology, International journal of epidemiology (Online) Vol 25, accessed : 09/12/09 via ProQuest.

Bunker, J, 2001. The role of health care in contributing to health improvements within societies, International epidemiological association, (Online) Vol 30, accessed : 12/01/09 via Oxford Journals Online.

Cockerham, W, Yamori, Y, 2008. Okinawa: an exception to the social gradient of life expectancy in Japan, (Online), accessed: 09/12/09 via Google Scholar.

Crimmins, E, Finch, C, 2006. Commentary: Do older men and women gain equally from improving childhood conditions?, (Online) Vol. 35, accessed: 12/01/09 via Google Scholar.

Dyer, O, 2002. Simple measures could increase life expectancy by 5-10 years. British Medical Journal (Online) Vol. 985, iss. 325, accessed: 17/01/09 via ProQuest.

Fogel, W, 2004. The escape from hunger and premature death, 1700-2100. Europe America and the third world. University of Chicago, Cambridge University Press, New York.

Fraser, G, Shavlik, D, 2001. ten years of life, is it a matter of choice?, (Online) Vol. 161, accessed: 11/01/09 via Google scholar.

Halvorsen, P, Selmer, R, Kristiansen, I, 2007. Different Ways to Describe the Benefits of Risk-Reducing Treatments: A Randomized Trial. Annals of Internal Medicine, Vol. 12, 848-856, accessed: 19/01/09 via ProQuest.

Hunter, D, 2003. Public health policy, Blackwell publishing, Oxford, UK.

Illich, 1975. Medical Nemesis, Calder and Boyars, London. (Online Book) Vol. 161, accessed: 11/01/09 via Google scholar.

Kamerow, D, 2007. Today’s doctor’s dilemma. British Medical Journal, Vol. 12, 848-856, accessed: 19/01/09 via Oxford Journals Online.

Lubson, J, Hoes, A, Grobbee, D, 2000. Implications of trial results: The potentially misleading notions of number, (Online) Vol. 356, accessed: 04/01/09 via Google scholar.

Martien, P, 2007. Who wants to live forever? Three arguments against extending the human lifespan. Journal of Medical Ethics (Online) Vol. 585, Iss. 33 accessed: 09/12/09 via ProQuest.

Murray, C, 1988. The Infant Mortality Rate, Life Expectancy at Birth, and a Linear Index of Mortality as Measures of General Health Status, International Journal of Epidemiology (Online) Vol. 17, Iss. 1 accessed: 09/12/09 via ProQuest.

Michaud, C, Murray, C, Bloom, B, 2001.Burden of Disease – Implications for Future Research, Vol. 285, accessed: 07/01/09 via Oxford Journals Online.

Nakaji, S, Domhnall, M, O’Neill, S, McNally, O, Baxter, D, Sugawara, K, 2003.

Life expectancies in the United Kingdom and Japan, Journal of Public Health Medicine (Online) Vol. 25, Iss. 2 accessed: 15/12/09 via ProQuest.

Oeppen, J, Vaupel, J, 2002. Broken limits to life expectancy, Academic research library, Vol 296. accessed: 15/12/09 via Sciencemag.

Olshansky, J, Passaro, J, Hershow, R, Layden, J, Carnes, B, Brody, J; Hayflick, L Butler, R, Allison, Ludwig, D, 2005. A Potential Decline in Life Expectancy in the United States in the 21st Century. Obstetrical & Gynecological Survey. Vol. 60 Iss. 7, accessed: 09/01/09 via Oxford Journals Online.

Raskin, I, Ripoll, C, 2004. Can an Apple a Day Keep the Doctor Away? Current Pharmaceutical Design (Online) Vol. 27, Iss. 10 accessed: 09/12/09 via ProQuest.

Richarson, J, Peacock, S, 2003. Will More Doctors Increase or Decrease Death Rates?, An econometric analysis of Australian mortality statistics, Centre for health programme evaluation, Working paper 137, Monash University, Australia.

Riley, J, 2001. Rising life expectancy: a global history, Cambridge University Press, New York, (Online book) accessed : 20/12/08 via Google Scholar.

Robine, J, Romieu, I, Cambois, E, 1999. Health expectancy indicators, World Health Organization, Bulletin of the World Health Organization, (Online) Vol 77, Iss 2 accessed : 11/01/09 via Google Scholar.

WHO, 1999. Making a difference, World Health Report, World Health Organisation, http://www.who.int/whr/1999/en/index.html

WHO 2002. Reducing risks, promoting healthy life. World Health Report, World Health Organisation,http://www.who.int/whr/2002/chapter1/en/index.html

WHO 2008. Statitstical information system. World Health Organisation, http://www.who.int/whosis/data/Search.jsp

Willcox, C, Willcox, B, Hidemi, T, Curb, D, Suzuki, M, 2006. Caloric restriction and human longevity: what can we learn from the Okinawans? (Online) accessed: 15/12/09 via ProQuest.

Yin, P, Shine M, 1985. Misinterpretations of Increases in Life Expectancy in Gerontology Textbooks, The Cerontological Society of America (Online) Vol. 25, Iss.1 accessed : 15/12/09 via ProQuest.

DR. PETER DINGLE Ph.D has a Bachelor of Education in Science, Bachelor of Environmental Science with first class honours, and a Ph.D. Dr. Dingle is an Associate Professor in Health and the Environment at Murdoch University and one of Australia’s best motivational health speakers. He has spent the past twenty years as a researcher, educator, communicator and author. He has more than 100 scientific papers. Dr. Dingle currently has 6 books in print with the latest ones My Dog Eats Better Than Your Kids and Is Your Home Making You Sick. He is a regular in state and national print media and may be heard weekly on radio and TV, reporting on health and the environment. He was the presenter on the award winning SBS program “Is Your House Killing You”, and he is seen regularly on “Can we help” on ABC. His website is www.drdingle.com.

The above article appeared in New Dawn No. 125 (Mar-Apr 2011).

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Millions of Australians are prescribed cholesterol-lowering drugs – statins like Pravachol^®, Zocor^® and Lipitor^® – each year at a cost of more than $1 billion dollars with very little, if any, benefit. In the US, some 40 million people currently take statins at a cost of more than $3.00 per pill, more than $1,000 per year, totalling more than $40 billion a year.

While there are many exaggerated claims and a lot of hype about the benefits of statins, there are also many studies showing no benefits at all. The pro-statin hype is based on the misuse and abuse of statistics.

Various independent studies in prestigious, peer-reviewed journals have shown that statin use in primary prevention – that is, to save lives – has minimal or no value in reducing mortality and certainly nothing that is considered anywhere near clinically significant to warrant their widespread use. It does not matter how one manipulates the statistics, the results just aren’t there.

In data gathered in 2009 from six trials, a review of the efficacy in lowering the risk of death with statins found virtually no difference between the treatment group and the control group.¹ There are many more of these studies.

In an independent meta-analysis (when a number of studies are put together to achieve more statistical power) of randomised controlled trials in patients without CVD, statin therapy decreased the incidence of major coronary and cerebrovascular events and revascularisations but not coronary heart disease or overall mortality.²

Taking statins for a number of years will not reduce mortality: “Primary prevention with statins provides only small and clinically hardly relevant improvement of cardiovascular morbidity/mortality.”³ “Hardly relevant” means there is virtually no clinical benefit; as the authors of these particular studies are independent, they gain nothing by stating this.

Another review found that “current clinical evidence does not demonstrate that titrating lipid therapy (trying to lower cholesterol with statins) to achieve proposed low LDL cholesterol levels is beneficial or safe.”⁴ In other words, lowering lipids has no real benefit and has the potential for adverse effects.

Following up on this, in a major independent review of studies funded by the Ministry of Health of British Columbia (Canada) on statins and primary prevention, researchers reported that “statins have not been shown to provide an overall health benefit in primary prevention trials.”⁵ This is a government report carried out by an independent university yet its findings are still ignored.

The problem really comes down to vested interests and the abuse of statistics. To overcome the limitations of small studies, vested parties combine many studies into a meta-analysis. The researchers themselves select the studies used in the meta-analysis. A fundamental problem is that researchers with direct links to drug companies have the authority to select the most positive studies and ignore the rest – including independent studies not funded by pharmaceutical companies. Despite this, they have still not been able to show any clinically significant findings.

As readers of the scientific journals, we should not be confused between statistical significance and clinical significance. For an outcome to be “statistically significant” means that the outcome was likely a result of the treatment – whether the result was 100% effective or less than 0.1% effective. That is, if you treat 1,000 people to save one life (0.1%) it may be statistically significant but it is not clinically significant. “Clinical significance” means 20% to 30% or more. The drug companies’ most positive studies on statins for prevention of CVD report statistical significance, mostly 1% or less, and none have found any clinical significance.

Busy medical professionals don’t have time to review the statistics; few of them may be aware of the different ways the statistics are manipulated. So if the experienced professionals don’t understand the results of these studies, how do we expect the media or public to understand?

More Deception

The studies on statins also report “relative risk,” not “absolute risk” or “real risk.” The relative risk reduction is highly misleading^6,7,8,9,10if not deceptive. An example of relative risk is: if you have four people in a study who die in the placebo group (no drug) compared to three people who die in the drug treatment group – that is, four were expected to die but with the drug only three did – then there is a 25% relative risk reduction. However, to get this effect of saving one life you would have to treat 1,000 people and the real risk reduction is 0.1%. Relative risk is like adding 1+1 to get 11 or 2+5 to get 25 or more. How can the pharmaceutical companies and the researchers working for them get away with this? This is probably because (at least in my experience) most people are afraid of statistics.

In studies by the Medical Research Council dating back to the late 1980s, researchers found that of 1,000 men ranging in age from 35 to 64 who received treatment for mild hypertension over five years, there were six fewer strokes and two fewer cardiovascular events than would be expected.^11,12 The real risk reduction over five years was 0.9%.

Ten years later, a study of Pravachol^® was released in the media, with much fanfare, as having a 22% drop (relative risk, not real risk) in mortality. However, when one looks at the numbers and statistics behind the calculations, treating 1,000 middle-aged men who had hypercholesterolemia (high cholesterol) and no evidence of a previous myocardial infarction with pravastatin for five years resulted in seven fewer deaths from cardiovascular causes, and two fewer deaths from other causes than would be expected in the absence of treatment.¹³ The real risk reduction, however, was a mere 0.9%, less than 1% or nine lives out of 1,000 when treated for five years. The research was sponsored by Bristol-Myers Squibb Pharmaceutical (West of Scotland Coronary Prevention Study).

Conservatively, put another way, researchers treated 1,000 people for five years at a total cost of over $5 million to save seven people from CVD. One might wish to compare this to the cost and efficacy of adopting healthy lifestyle choices.

In the Heart Protection Study in the United Kingdom, more than 20,000 participants aged 40 to 80 years with high risk of cardiovascular disease but average-to-low levels of total cholesterol and LDL cholesterol were treated with 40mg daily of simvastatin (marketed under several trade names including Zocor). Of 20,500+ study participants, 577 on statins died from a heart attack, 701 not treated died from a heart attack. That is a 25% relative risk reduction over five years.¹⁴ Sounds good, doesn’t it? The real percentage improvement is actually 1.7%. Over the five-year study, they saved 25 people per year in a high-risk population with previous cerebrovascular disease, peripheral artery disease, renal impairment or diabetes. These are seriously ill people and the researchers still achieved a benefit of only 1.7%. Researchers neglected to mention that around 30,000 people were not allowed in or dropped from the study and not counted in the percentage of people with side effects. There were 10,269 people on statins and 10,267 people on a placebo.¹⁵

A study of 90,056 participants combining 14 randomised trials looked at the best outcome for people who had pre-existing conditions: 47% had pre-existing chronic heart disease, 21% had a history of diabetes and 55% a history of hypertension. The death rate was 8.5% among the statin group compared to 9.7% in the control group. This difference represents 1.2%.¹⁶

The well-known JUPITER study compared a placebo group to a statin-taking group. The study found that there were 68 heart attacks in the placebo group and 31 heart attacks in the drug treatment group – a 58% relative risk reduction. There were 64 strokes in the placebo group, compared to 33 strokes in the treatment group, a relative risk reduction of 48%.¹⁷Sounds good, doesn’t it? However, the drug treatment group had 8,901 participants in it. In real terms, the heart attack risk went from a very low 0.76% to 0.35% and the risk of stroke went from 0.72% to 0.37%.

Effectively, if you treat 300 people with expensive and dangerous drugs you might save one life. Under the best possible scenario, the real risk reduction was well under one half of one percent. The real risk reduction of consuming a handful of raw mixed nuts is much higher. It is interesting to note that one of the risk factors used to select the participants in the study was C-Reactive Protein (CRP) an indicator of inflammation, the real cause of CVD.

In an independent assessment of the same statistics in 2010 titled “Cholesterol Lowering, Cardiovascular Diseases, and the Rosuvastatin-JUPITER Controversy. A Critical Reappraisal” by Michel de Lorgeril and her 8 colleagues found that “the JUPITER Study” was severely flawed.¹⁸ This recent analysis did a careful and independent review of both results and methods used in the JUPITER Study and reported that the “trial was flawed.”

In an unprecedented attack on the study they (scientists other than myself usually don’t say boo even when it is serious) stated that, “The possibility that bias entered the trial is particularly concerning because of the strong commercial interest in the study.” In other words, the big pharmaceutical money influenced the study. And concluded, “The results of the trial do not support the use of statin treatment for primary prevention of cardiovascular diseases and raise troubling questions concerning the role of commercial sponsors.”

This is a scathing attack in scientific terms of the earlier drug company sponsored study. Scientist do not go out of their way to create waves but these ones have not just found different results but also criticised the earlier studies link with pharmaceutical industry. It highlights not only that the studies don’t show any significant results but these studies and the education of our doctors is strongly influenced by the drug companies.¹⁹

More recently, a study reported in the BMJ was a meta-analysis of 10 randomised clinical trials of about 70,000 people followed for an average of four years.²⁰ In these trials, people with risk factors for cardiovascular disease but no history of existing disease were randomised to receive statins or no treatment. The relative risk reduction was 12% for total mortality, 30% for coronary event and 19% for a cerebrovascular event (stroke). However, the real risk reduction was 0.6%, 1.3% and 0.4% respectively. The actual number needed to treat to save one life was 167. Despite this outcome the authors of the study concluded, “In patients without established cardiovascular disease but with cardiovascular risk factors, statin use was associated with significantly (statistical not clinical) improved survival and large (statistical) reductions in the risk of major cardiovascular events.” (emphasis added.).

In fact, the authors had significant associations with the drug companies and failed to mention it was statistically significant but not clinically significant. Again, busy medical professionals tend to read only the abstracts; claims like this are pretty convincing, though very misleading.

More telling however, is the latest findings in June 2010 where two major independent studies, one the re-analysis of the Jupiter Study reported above and the other “A Meta-analysis of 11 Randomised Controlled Trials Involving 65,229 Participants” (don’t worry about the title) by Ray Kausik and 6 other independent researchers. The study, wait for it, found the use of statins in high-risk individuals was not associated with a statistically significant reduction in mortality. That is, they don’t save lives. Their data combined from 11 studies with 65,229 participants followed for approximately 244,000 person-years, a very big study, reported that this “meta-analysis did not find evidence for the benefit of statin therapy on all-cause mortality in a high-risk primary prevention set-up.” In other words they don’t save lives even in a high risk group. Even if you have all the elevated risk factors these drugs don’t work.

How many more studies to we need to do to show these drugs don’t work?

Professor Peter Dingle’s new book on the truth about cholesterol and cholesterol lowering medication, The Great Cholesterol Deception, is available. To order, visit www.drdingle.com.

Footnotes

1 Bartolucci, A.A., S. Bae, et al. (2009). A Bayesian meta-analysis approach to address the effectiveness of statins in preventing death after an initial myocardial infarction. 18th World IMACS/MODSIM Congress. Cairns, Australia. 2009. Cairns, Australia. http://mssanz.org.au/modsim09

2 Thavendiranathan, P., A. Bagai, et al. (2006). “Primary prevention of cardiovascular diseases with statin therapy: A meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials.” Archives of Internal Medicine 166: 2307-2313.

3 Vrecer, M., S. Turk, et al. (2003). “Use of statins in primary and secondary prevention of coronary heart disease and ischemic stroke. Meta-analysis of randomized trials.” International Journal of Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics 41(12): 567-577. M.Turk, S.Drinovec, J.Mrhar, A.International Journal of Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics. International Journal of Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics 567-57741122003

4 Hayward, R.A., T.P. Hofer, et al. (2006). “Narrative review: Lack of evidence for recommended low-density lipoprotein treatment targets: A solvable problem.” Annals of Internal Medicine 145(7): 520-530.

5 University of British Columbia (2003). “Do statins have a role in primary prevention? A review by the Therapeutics Initiative of the Department of Pharmacology & Therapeutics of the University of British Columbia.” Therapeutics Letter (48).

6 Fidan, D., B. Unal, et al. (2007). “Economic analysis of treatments reducing coronary heart disease mortality in England and Wales, 2000–2010.” QJM 100: 277-289.

7 Franco, O.H., A. Peeters, et al. (2005). “Cost effectiveness of statins in coronary heart disease.” Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health 59: 927-933. O.H.

8 Franco, O.H., E.W. Steyerberg, et al. (2006). “Effectiveness calculation in economic analysis: the case of statins for cardiovascular disease prevention.” Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health 60: 839-845.

9 Capewell, S. (2008). “Will screening individuals at high risk of cardiovascular events deliver large benefits? No.” British Medical Journal 337: a1395. S. British Medical Journal Capewell200816161617

10 Nuovo, J., J. Melnikow, et al. (2002). “Reporting number needed to treat and absolute risk reduction in randomized controlled trials.” Journal of American Medical Association 287: 2813-2814.

11 Medical Research Council Working Party (1985). “MRC trial of treatment of mild hypertension: principal results.” British Medical Journal 291: 97-104.

12 Miall, W.E. and G. Greenberg (1987). Mild Hypertension: Is There Pressure to Treat? An account of the MRC trial. New York, Cambridge University Press.

13 Shepherd, J., S.M. Cobbe, et al. (1996). “Prevention of coronary heart disease with Pravastatin in men with hypercholesterolemia.” New England Journal of Medicine 333: 1301-1307. P.W.McKillop, J.H.Packard, C.J.New England Journal of Medicine. New England Journal of Medicine 1301-13073331996

14 Heart Protection Study Collaborative Group (2002). “MRC/BHF Heart Protection Study of cholesterol lowering with simvastatin in 20,536 high-risk individuals: A randomised placebo-controlled trial.” Lancet 360: 7-22.

15 Ibid.

16 Cholesterol Treatment Trialists’ Collaborators, C. Baigent, et al. (2005). “Efficacy and safety of cholesterol lowering treatment: Prospective meta-analysis of data from 90,056 participants in 14 randomised trials of statins.” Lancet 366: 1267-1278. L.Buck, G.Pollicino, C.Kirby, A.Sourjina, T.Peto, R.Collins, R.Simes, R.Lancet, Lancet 1267-12783662005

17 Ridker, P.M., E. Danielson, et al. (2008). “Rosuvastatin to prevent vascular events in men and women with elevated C-reactive protein.” New England Journal of Medicine 359(21): 2195-2207. J.G.Nordestgaard, B.G.Shepherd, J.Willerson, J.T.Glynn, R.J.JUPITER Study Group, New England Journal of Medicine 2195-2207359212008

18 Ray, K.K., S.R.K. Seshasai, et al. (2010). “Statins and all-cause mortality in high-risk primary prevention: A meta-analysis of 11 randomized controlled trials involving 65 229 participants.” Archives of Internal Medicine 170(12): 1024-1031.

19 de Lorgeril, M., P. Salen, et al. (2010). “Cholesterol lowering, cardiovascular diseases, and the Rosuvastatin-JUPITER controversy: A critical reappraisal.” Archives of Internal Medicine 170(12): 1032-1036.

20 Brugts, J.J., T. Yetgin, et al. (2009). “The benefits of statins in people without established cardiovascular disease but with cardiovascular risk factors: meta-analysis of randomised controlled trials.” British Medical Journal 338: b2376.

.

DR. PETER DINGLE Ph.D has a Bachelor of Education in Science, Bachelor of Environmental Science with first class honours, and a Ph.D. Dr. Dingle is an Associate Professor in Health and the Environment at Murdoch University and one of Australia’s best motivational health speakers. He has spent the past twenty years as a researcher, educator, communicator and author. He has more than 100 scientific papers. Dr. Dingle currently has 6 books in print with the latest ones My Dog Eats Better Than Your Kids and Is Your Home Making You Sick. He is a regular in state and national print media and may be heard weekly on radio and TV, reporting on health and the environment. He was the presenter on the award winning SBS program “Is Your House Killing You”, he is seen regularly on “Can we help” on ABC and is currently filming his second TV series. His website is www.drdingle.com.

The above article appeared in New Dawn No. 123 (Nov-Dec 2010).

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Water fluoridation has been around for just over 60 years and whilst the practice has become widespread, particularly in Western nations, it’s always been a controversial and often passionately argued one.

My formative moment in the fluoride ‘debate’, one that cathartically shunted me into the anti-fluoride lobby’s arms, came many years ago when I was sitting in a dentist’s chair in Cambridge, UK.

I knew very little about fluoride at the time, so it was with an open mind and calm disposition that I opened my mouth in order for my dentist to pour in some fluoride solution which he said would give my teeth a strong protective coating. The problems started immediately after having dispensed the liquid into my mouth when he stammered, “…but don’t whatever you do swallow it!” “Why?” I gurgled, “Because it’s poisonous and could kill you,” came his reply.

The swill, which was supposed to have lasted about one minute actually lasted about 10 seconds and ended up all over my lap and the surgery floor. The incident was funny. We laughed about it at the time, but I had learned something new and very disturbing about fluoride that has remained with me. It matured into an understanding and appreciation of matters concerning fluoride that, whether you have any concerns about ingesting this chemical or not, I feel compelled to share with you.

The pro-fluoridation lobby, notably the dental and medical associations in several countries, together with armies of practitioners tethered to them, will tell you that fluoride is a naturally occurring substance,1 that it is safe and effective at preventing tooth decay when used in designated dosages, and that its use is strongly supported by credible scientific evidence. It has, they say, improved the quality of life and well being of millions of people around the world for decades.

They will also say that because it is generally added to water supplies at less than 1 part per million, that it is extremely safe, but that ‘if’ young children get too much fluoride they may develop a condition called dental fluorosis which is mostly detectable by dentists and involves a mild discolouration of teeth enamel. All sounds pretty harmless and reassuring don’t you think?

However, if you were to take a quick peek at even a small amount of the arguments that are levied against the use of fluoride by the anti-fluoride lobbyists, you might be in for a nasty, albeit rather compelling, surprise.

Let me just pick off a few of them and in no particular order.

On the history of fluoridation, despite what is written on the Australian Dental Association’s website2 – which states that interest began in the US more than 100 years ago when a Colorado dentist noticed that some of his patients were displaying mottled yet decay free teeth which he deducted was due to their drinking of local spring water that was naturally high in fluoride – the real and well documented origins of water fluoridation actually sprang from a pre-emptive public relations campaign commissioned by US military interests.3 They were attempting to stave off litigation arising out of the Manhattan Project, the one that was set up to produce the world’s first atomic bomb.

Apparently atomic bomb production required enormous amounts of fluoride, which inevitably resulted in large amounts of fluoridated (not radioactive) effluent spewing out over the US countryside. People, animals and crops that were downwind began to get diseased causing the US government to become concerned (for its precious bomb project, not the people who were sick).

For the US, with plans to use the A-Bomb as a defensive deterrent after WWII, it was a strategic imperative that bomb production be allowed to continue without the threat of massive class actions hanging over it, and that therefore the exposure of humans to ‘low’ levels of atmospheric fluoride be demonstrated to be biologically safe.

Human studies developed and administered by institutions associated with the A-Bomb project were mainly focused on the town of Newburgh,4 New York from 1946-56 where the effects on health were observed following the addition of fluoride to the town’s drinking water supplies.

Whilst the results of the research were heavily censored, the intended purpose of the findings had been to serve as evidence in favour of the safety of continued low, long term exposure of humans to fluoride.5

The litigants, mainly farmers, were bought off and the results of the research will therefore probably never be dragged into the public spotlight. However, following incidental observations made during the water fluoridation research program, it was floated by one of the team leaders that it “might help to counteract a local fear of fluoride… through lectures on… fluoride toxicology and perhaps the usefulness of fluoride in tooth health.”6

The rest is history! That the development of water fluoridation was motivated by a benevolent move to prevent dental caries was almost a total myth and it gets a lot worse than that.

Fluoride production increased significantly since the immediate post-war years and is now a toxic by-product of the chemical industry that is produced in massive quantities. Most of the early research presented to support the notion that fluoride is both safe and effective for use in the prevention of tooth decay was conducted or funded by the very same interests7 that stood to benefit most from its use in the public domain. It was also done when there was a lot less environmental fluoride around too.

That fluoride is toxic and dangerously so is not in doubt or contention, but the fact that it is poured into the water supply of any local council that so wishes to do so is nothing short of criminal, given the facts that are now available.

Most European countries including Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Holland and the whole of Scandinavia, have (in many cases after having embraced it) now rejected water fluoridation outright.8 As of today Europe is reportedly 90%+ free9 of fluoridated water. Indeed there have never been any transparently conducted scientific studies anywhere in the world,10 including Australia, that unequivocally demonstrated the safety of water fluoridation on human health, most of the research having been focused on the chemical’s dubious impact on oral health.

Fluoride is a cumulative toxin, it gets stored mostly in bone tissue and has now found its way into dental products, food, soft drinks, polluted air and in fact it’s just about in anything manufactured using treated mains water.

Although it varies from place to place, it is added to water in concentrations of around 1 part per million, a level deemed safe,11 yet is added to toothpaste products in concentrations as high as 1,500 p.p.m., easily enough to kill a small child if it swallowed a whole tube.

Fluoride does indeed occur in nature in trace amounts, but the fluoride that we have in our water supplies is not the same thing at all. What we put into our mains water is, without exception, an industrial toxic waste product. Neither is fluoride in any of its forms essential for good nutrition.12 Tooth decay (contrary to what is implied by the likes of the Australian Dental Association and the Australian Medical Association) is not a symptom of fluoride deficiency. There is no such thing.

The forms of fluoride placed into our water systems and then into our bodies are usually calcium fluoride, sodium fluoride or hydrofluorosilicic acid. They are all either industrial or pharmaceutical grades of fluoride compounds which, in the instance of the latter, is scraped from the inside of smokestack scrubbers during the production of phosphate fertilisers. If it were not dumped into our drinking water it would be considered a highly dangerous and toxic chemical to be disposed of at considerable expense and with significant health and safety precautions. Yet we happily consume it when we’re told to.

Another way of looking at water fluoridation is as a form of forced mass medication not by doctors, but, effectively by dentists. We should remember that these are the same body of professionals who are still lodging tons of mercury in our mouths each year in the form of amalgam fillings. If I lived in an area where 25% of people suffered from headaches I’d be unhappy, to put it mildly, if my local council put paracetamol in my water supply as a preventive measure and on the advice of some doctor. I fail to see the difference with what they are doing with fluoride (except that fluoride is a toxic waste and not an approved medicine).

If you absolutely do not want to take fluoride when it’s forced on you the only way to resist is to purchase a water filter that is good enough to filter the stuff out. Even if you did this, what about the water you bath and shower in, or those who live in places too small to accommodate an extra tank, or in institutions where you just don’t get the choice. It’s sometimes simply impossible to take evasive action.

With mass medication there is no such thing as a safe nominated dose. Even if we did need extra fluoride, just like everything else in this world everyone’s needs are totally individual, as are indeed our levels of exposure to fluoride natural and otherwise. We’d do well to remember that early research into fluoride was done before it was widely dispersed into the atmosphere, our food, drinks and personal care products.

Further, there are those amongst us who tend to drink more than others, sportspeople, the sick or the very young. What level of choice do they get if they don’t want to overdose on fluoride? Water fluoridation will give you the same dose per litre whether you drink a lot of water or not.

I don’t trust any authority when, as the Australian Dental Association (ADA) does, it continues to claim that the side effects of fluoridation are limited to fluorosis13 and little else. Fluorosis is, in itself, evidence of excessive ingestion of fluoride and shouldn’t be tolerated at all – period. In order for the ADA to say this with any integrity and honesty it has to be ignoring, at the public’s expense, a large body of accumulating evidence that strongly indicates fluoride is neither as effective, nor as safe as it was once cracked up to be.

New research indicates that the benefits of fluoride are equivalent to an average difference of less than one filling in baby teeth of younger children and “no significant difference” in the permanent teeth of older children,14 yet the pro-lobbyists are still claiming the outdated figure of between a 15-25% reduction in tooth caries in fluoridated areas! They’re having us on!

Perhaps more to the point, the reduction in dental caries that we have seen (credit for which has been claimed by the pro-lobby) were in line with similar reductions in areas that were not fluoridated. In fact in fluoridated areas that were monitored after they had ceased fluoridation caries reduction was seen to peak immediately after cessation.15

Other research tells us that for fluoride to be effective as a preventive measure against tooth decay it has to be used topically.16 This means that forced ingestion via the water supply is ineffective. The same research also indicates that fluoride works least well down among the crevasses and fissures of the teeth, where most decay occurs anyway.

Coming closer to home and Australian research has recently debunked the myth that Australians living in fluoridated areas have healthier teeth and significantly lower levels of tooth decay than the rest of the nation. They don’t.

Recent claims17 by the Queensland government that Townsville (fluoridated for 50 years or more) has 65% less decay is based on data from 1991 (!) and relates to a tiny 0.2% of a single tooth surface (there are 128 tooth surfaces in the average fully grown adult mouth). Therefore the claims and many others that it is using to support fluoridation, and the same goes for every other state, are misleading and unjustified.

More recent surveys done between 2000-2002 clearly show that Townsville children have more decay in their permanent teeth than children in North Brisbane, the Gold Coast and several other Queensland Health Districts that do not have water fluoridation. Townsville, for all its decades of fluoridation, is smack in the middle, no better and no worse than any other area of Queensland. Do these sorts of results justify the continued dumping of a toxic waste into our drinking water?

As the award-winning investigative reporter Christopher Bryson says in his book The Fluoride Conspiracy, “Fluoride science is corporate science, fluoride science is DDT science, it’s asbestos science, its tobacco science.”

It’s happened in Europe, but when are our politicians going to stop this fluoride nonsense here in Australia?

2006 was a good year for anti-fluoride lobbies. The National Research Council in the US, a highly reputable scientific organisation, issued a report called ‘Fluoride in Drinking Water: A Scientific Review of EPA’s Standards’.18 It is a lengthy report that was not commissioned to judge the safety or benefits of water fluoridation per se, but rather to assess the safety of the “maximum contaminant level goal,” which incidentally the report recommended should be lowered.

But the report, despite keeping rigidly to the initial brief, gave strong support to the notion that US citizens are being constantly over-dosed with harmful levels of fluoride and that whilst bones and teeth were most affected, these were not the sole targets of the report’s concern.

The report threw up a growing body of research linking fluoride exposure to crippling skeletal fluorosis (similar in effect to arthritis), bone fracture, joint pain and damaged teeth. It also pointed to fluoride’s disruption of the nervous and endocrine (hormone) systems with specific focus on the brain, the thyroid and the pineal glands. There is also evidence linking fluoride to behavioural disorders, clinical depression, dementia, lowered levels of I.Q. and migraines, and finally to osteosarcoma (a type of bone cancer that particularly affects young males).

So, bad news is good news, but does it make you feel like taking a glass of tap water with added fluoride, or what? Small wonder then that there is this world wide phenomenon whereby whenever there is a publicised public debate on the merits or otherwise of the fluoridation of water, no one from the pro-lobby ever shows up.
By way of reinforcing the reasons why this is so, it’s worth remembering that back in 1965 when fluoridation was well underway in the US, it was Joseph Flanagan of the American Medical Association which openly endorsed the use of fluoride for dental caries prevention. He wrote:

“The AMA is not prepared to state that ‘no harm will be done to any person by water fluoridation’. The AMA has not carried out any research work, either long-term or short-term, regarding the possibility of any side-effects.”19

Which brings me to the extraordinary turn of events that appears to be taking place in Queensland at the time of writing.

Given all the evidence currently available which throws such extreme doubt and serious concerns on the practice of water fluoridation, the State government in Queensland has chosen 2008 to go open slather on water fluoridation.20

Up until now Queenslanders had been given a choice on whether or not to fluoridate its local water supplies. Only 5% of Queensland has elected to do so, although some previously had done so and subsequently discontinued the practice. Yet according to the latest National Children’s Dental Survey (published in Dec. 2007),21 75.1% of Queensland children aged 5-12 years have no decayed teeth. This compares with figures of 76.9% for the national average and 72.9% and 79.7% in the ACT and South Australia respectively (both fluoridated and the ACT 100%). So why the sudden and urgent need to fluoridate Queensland’s water supply?

This provides clear and irrefutable proof that fluoridation neither creates good dental health, nor performs any better at doing so than areas that do not have water fluoridation.

No one is saying there is no problem with standards of dental health and that something really ought to be done about it. The key issue is that overwhelmingly water fluoridation is not the answer, and when it is mistakenly introduced as the answer it presents a plethora of serious new risks to the health of the people who drink it. The ADA doesn’t believe these risks exist and if you don’t believe me go and have a look at the FAQ section of its website.22

Take any region of Australia whether it is fluoridated or not and compare the figures. The statistics,23 when carefully and thoroughly studied, strongly suggest that fluoridation makes only insignificant improvements to dental health in the early years (in all likelihood only because one of the effects of fluoride is to delay the eruption of first teeth) and none at all once kids reach 12 years or so. After drinking fluoridated water for 12 years, Townsville children have the same or more decay as children who never consumed fluoridated water!

It isn’t all about the likes of Townsville either. Some of the other problems that water fluoridation hasn’t solved are: a) nursing bottle tooth decay, a problem affecting all areas in Australia, b) lower income groups which tend to have higher levels of tooth decay, yet still drink the same water as higher income groups, c) rural and remote areas where tooth decay is reportedly consistently worse, and finally d) Aboriginal and Islander communities where oral health has declined to levels well below the national average and have been headed in that direction ever since they stopped eating traditional, healthy diets.

So where is all this going? Well, if Queensland is anything to go by, back to the dark ages. Will someone please tell the Queensland government this is not a good time to take the highly questionable step of forcing water fluoridation onto the rest of the State. It flies directly in the face of common sense, current wisdom, people’s rights and is not in the best interests of everyone’s long term health.

As a spokesperson for Queenslanders Against Water Fluoridation recently articulated in an open letter to State Premier Anna Bligh,24 “If fluoride ingested water made a real difference to decay, the longer it was consumed, the more difference there would be.”

So here, for what it is worth, are a few humble suggestions for the way forward from here. My first and number one priority would be to stop water fluoridation now. The evidence is very much against it and has already convinced most of Western Europe.

My second would be that if you don’t accept the first point, then before anyone with sufficient power and totally lacking an enquiring mind makes a decision that could make us all ill, would someone please fund some good, objective and independent research so that the matter can once and for all be decided.

Thirdly, whilst I’m not sure where everybody else stands on this issue, if you are quietly and rock solidly convinced that you as an individual need fluoride, especially if you have any affiliation with the ADA, then be my guest and go buy yourself a tube of fluoride toothpaste, but remember to spit it out when you’ve done brushing your teeth as it’s not too good for you if you swallow it.

Finally, and just in case the whole nasty issue of poor dental health could even remotely have anything to do with poor diet, nutrition and generally poor standards of personal oral hygiene, perhaps we might be better off investing some money on trying to improve these things.

The ADA can rubbish the anti-fluoridation lobby as unscientific all it likes, but for me I think that the US National Research Council in its 2006 report; theLancet,25 one of the medical world’s most pre-eminent journals, which published an article on fluoride as an emerging neurotoxin; Chinese studies linking fluoride to lowered I.Q.26; Cancer, Causes & Control journal which linked osteosarcoma to water fluoridation27; the American Dental Association & Centre for Disease Control 2006 advising that infants under 12 months old not consume fluoridated water28; should all be given bravery awards for finally providing us with good evidence that links adverse health impacts to the practice of water fluoridation.

Don’t expect the chemical industry to stop producing fluoride any time soon either. It’s a big industry and would probably come to a grinding halt if they found they couldn’t produce it any more. But please, can we make them take it away and store it somewhere safe at their own expense and not at ours?

Ah well, these are just some thoughts and only mine at that!

Footnotes

1. www.health.qld.gov.au/fluoride/default.asp
2. Ibid.
3. Australian Fluoridation News, ‘The Authentic Original History of Fluoridation’ by Glen S.R. Walker, Sept/Oct 2007, p.2.
4. Ibid., p.6.
5. Ibid., p.7.
6. ‘Declassified documents, studies showing lower IQ bolster voter rejection of fluoridation’,Business Wire, 29 November 1996, www.mind-trek.com/arti-int/961202d.txt
7. Australian Fluoridation News, ‘The Authentic Original History of Fluoridation’ by Glen S.R. Walker, Sept/Oct 2007, p.7.
8. www.whocollab.od.mah.se/euro.html
9. Ibid.
10. ‘Scientists and Professionals Lash Out Against Water Fluoridation’ by Adam Miller, www.naturalnews.com/022008.html
11. www.health.qld.gov.au/fluoride/q_and_a.asp
12. ‘50 Reasons to Oppose Fluoridation’ by Paul Connett, Ph.D Prof. of Chemistry, St. Lawrence University, NY, USA, www.fluoridealert.org/50-reasons.htm
13. www.health.qld.gov.au/fluoride/q_and_a.asp
14. ‘Caries Experience Among Children in Fluoridated Townsville and Unfluoridated Brisbane’, by Gary D. Slale; John Spencer; Michael J Davies; Judy F. Stewart, Australian and New Zealand Journal of Public Health 1996 Dec; 20(6): 623-9.
15. Olsson ’79; Retief ’79; Mann ’87 & ’90; Steelink ’92; Diesendorf ’86 and Colquhoun ’97, www.fluorideawareballarat.com/what_the_experts_say.htm
16. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC ’99, 2001); http://bmj.bmjjournals.com/cgi/content/full/321/7265/904/a
17. Water Fluoridation & Children’s Dental Health. The Child Dental Health Survey. Aust. 2002.
18. National Research Council ‘Fluoride in Drinking Water: A Scientific Review of EPA’s Standards’, 2006, www.fluoridealert.org/health/epa/nrc/
19. Letter dated 13.5.1965, J.E. Flanagan Jnr. (Assist.Dir. Dept. of Environmental Health, USA).
20. www.health.qld.gov.au/fluoride/whats_new.asp
21. National Children’s Dental Survey, Australia, published 17 December 2007.
22. www.fluoridationqld.com
23. National Children’s Dental Survey, Australia, published 17 December 2007 & Public Water Fluoridation & Dental Health in NSW (Australian and New Zealand Journal of Public Health 2005. Vol. 9 No.5).
24. www.gawf.org
25. ‘Developmental Neurotoxicity in Industrial Chemicals’, Lancet 368.
26. Wang ’97; Guan ’98; Varner ’98; Zhang’99; Lu 2000; Shao 2000; Sun 2000; Bhatnagar 2002; Chen 2002
27. Bassin B; Wypi D; David RB; ‘Age Specific Fluoride Exposure in Drinking Water and Osteosarcoma (US), 2006.
28. www.ada.org/prof/resources/pubs/adanews/adanewsarticle.asp?articleid=2212

HUW GRIFFITHS is a British-born naturopath who came to Australia in the early ‘90’s. His interest and passion for natural and traditional health therapies was developed and nurtured alongside an international career in marketing and communications.

The above article appeared in New Dawn No. 107 (Mar-Apr 2008).

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Recently I received an intriguing email claiming that the rapidly increasing worldwide epidemic of diabetes was caused by depleted uranium (DU). As a medical doctor I never heard of such an idea. Every physician knows that radiation can lead to cancer, but the DU and diabetes connection seemed ludicrous. Nevertheless, I thought it would be interesting to check it out on the Internet.

The best tool for medical research on the Net is the PubMed website sponsored by the US National Library of Medicine. I typed in the keywords: depleted uranium and diabetes. No citations to scientific papers in the medical journals appeared on my computer screen, which further assured me there was no scientific connection. Even when I used key words – depleted uranium and human disease – only a mere 16 papers were cited on the subject from 1994 to 2005; and only half these papers addressed the medical problems of soldiers exposed to DU in the Gulf War.

What was revealed is that DU accumulates in lymph nodes, brain, testicles, and other organs, and the short term and long term effects of DU were not known. There was a definite increase of birth defects in the offspring of persons exposed to DU; and Gulf War vets who inhaled DU were still excreting abnormal amounts of uranium in the urine 10 years later.

Why was there so little written about DU and its effects on the human body? Having written extensively on the man-made epidemic of AIDS and its cover-up for two decades, I was not surprised. I strongly suspected research into the health effects of DU on Gulf War veterans was “politically incorrect.” On the other hand, a quick Google Internet search of – “side effects” + “depleted uranium” – referred me to 71,000 English pages on the web. When I added the key word “diabetes” there were 22,000 pages.

I also discovered that articles about the health dangers of DU rarely, if ever, appear in the major media. In a January 2001 press release FAIR (Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting) accused the media of “depleted coverage of depleted uranium weapons.” Nevertheless, a great deal of information on DU can be found on the Internet.

DU was first used by the US in the 1991 Gulf War, then in the Balkans in the late 1990s, in Kosovo in 2000, in the war against Afghanistan, in Iraq in 2003, and also by the Israelis in the 2006 war with Lebanon. Needless to say, US military and government officials totally deny any health danger from DU. A reassuring New York Times article of 9 January 2001 entitled “1999 U.S. document warned of depleted uranium in Kosovo” by Marlise Simons, noted “while acknowledging the hazards, both the Pentagon and NATO, pointing to medical experts, have denied any links could exist between exposure to depleted uranium and the illness and deaths of veterans.”

DU weapons were developed by the US Navy in 1968, and were first given to Israel by the US in the 1973 Arab-Israeli war. Since then, the US has tested, manufactured and sold DU weapons systems to 29 countries. Vieques Island, a testing site in Puerto Rico, was repeatedly bombarded with DU in 1999 prior to its use in Kosovo.

DU is a byproduct of the enriching of natural uranium for use in nuclear reactors. As nuclear waste, DU is costly to keep but relatively inexpensive to obtain. Due to their tank armour-piercing capabilities, DU weapons are extremely effective and the reason why the military is so enthralled with them.

Depleted Uranium Whistleblowers

Major Doug Rokke is a leading DU expert who has become a whistleblower against its use. He claims each tank round is composed of 10 pounds of solid uranium-238 contaminated with plutonium, neptunium, and americium. The round is pyrophoric, meaning it generates intense heat on impact, easily penetrating a tank because of the heavy weight of the metal. When DU munitions hit, they produce a firestorm inside any vehicle or structure, resulting in devastating burns and injuries to those who escape immediate death and incineration.

On impact, DU produces uranium oxide dust and pieces of uranium explode all over the place. Once inside the body the tiny nanoparticles enter the lungs and blood stream and are carried throughout the body. When Rokke and his team were assigned to “clean up” the DU after the first Gulf War, all his men got ill within 72 hours with respiratory problems, rashes, bleeding, and open sores. In an Australian interview with Gay Alcorn in 2003, Rokke admitted: “After everything I’ve seen, everything I’ve done, it became very clear to me that you can’t take radioactive wastes from one nation and just throw it into another nation. It’s wrong. It’s simply wrong.”

According to Asaf Durakovic MD of the Uranium Medical Research Centre in Washington DC, the term “depleted uranium” is a misnomer. Both “depleted” and “natural” uranium are over 99% composed of uranium 238. DU is almost as highly concentrated as pure uranium and may contain plutonium (a deadly element) in trace amounts.

Leuren Moret is an independent American scientist who works on radiation and health issues with communities around the world. At age 61, she is the leading activist against the use of DU, having worked in two nuclear weapons labs, including the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Berkeley, California, run by the US Department of Energy. She is the ultimate antigovernment whistleblower on DU, along with Rokke and Durakovic, and all three have personally suffered (including death threats) for their anti-DU views.

In her article “Depleted uranium: The Trojan Horse of nuclear war,” which appeared in the June 2004 World Affairs Journal, Moret claims: “The use of DU weaponry by the US, defying all international treaties, will slowly annihilate all species on Earth including the human species, and yet this country continues to do so with full knowledge of its destructive potential.”

DU travels. DU radioactive particles are picked up by the atmosphere and are transferred by wind storms and air currents. They permanently contaminate vast regions and slowly destroy the genetic future of populations living in those areas. As the Trojan Horse of nuclear war, Moret calls DU “the weapon that keeps on killing.” There is no way to turn it off – and no way to clean it up. It meets the US government’s own definition of “weapons of mass destruction.”

Depleted Uranium over the United Kingdom

DU has a very high affinity for cellular DNA and permanently damages it. DU is the “fourth generation” of nuclear weapons. First came the atomic bomb, then the hydrogen bomb, then neutron bombs, and now DU. Moret claims the contaminated DU-dust from the Middle East gets absorbed into the atmosphere. Via dust storms and air currents it ends up in Europe and Britain. Eventually it spreads and get absorbed into the atmosphere globally. There is no safe place; no possible way to escape it.

Moret’s concerns are confirmed by a 2006 report from England by Chris Busby and Saoirse Morgan, appearing in European Biology and Bioelectromagnetics and titled “Did the use of Uranium weapons in Gulf War 2 result in contamination of Europe?” Data (obtained with the help of the Freedom of Information Act) from the Atomic Weapons Establishment at Aldermaston, Berkshire, UK, revealed that after nine days of the “shock and awe” start of the Iraq war on 19 March 2003, much higher levels of uranium were picked up on five sites in Berkshire. On two occasions, levels exceeded the threshold at which the Environment Agency must be informed, though still within safety limits. These levels were the highest levels of depleted uranium ever measured in the atmosphere in Britain. The report also confirmed weather conditions over this war period, which showed a consistent flow of air from Iraq northwards.

Not surprisingly this research was vigorously denied as “uranium of natural origin” by various government officials. However, Busby and Morgan insist the findings are the first evidence that DU particles were able to travel thousands of miles from Baghdad to England. Their report can be found on the Internet.

Gulf War Syndrome

About 300 tons of DU were dispersed over Iraq in 1991. Yet the US Department of Defense (DoD) has found little health risk to soldiers who inhaled DU and continues to claim exposure to DU is safe. Nearly 580,000 soldiers were deployed in the war. 294 soldiers died and 400 were wounded or became ill. As of year 2000, there were 325,000 on permanent medical disability, and over 11,000 have died. Obviously something serious happened to the health of these men and women who served in the Gulf.

DU is known to be neurotoxic. Gulf War vets are twice as likely to come down with ALS (Lou Gehrig’s disease) than vets who did not serve in Iraq. ALS, a fatal neuromuscular disease, is now considered a “service-connected” disease and vets can get disability. Gulf War vets have nearly twice the prevalence of “chronic multi-system disease” than soldiers who served elsewhere at the same time. But so called “Gulf War Syndrome” continues to be denied as a specific illness. The Department of Defense’s evaluation does not consider GWS as a unique syndrome, unique illness, or unique symptom complex in deployed Gulf War vets.

The Worldwide Diabetes Epidemic

A half century ago, during the early years of the Cold War when I went to medical school, diabetes was not a common disease. Now in the 21st century it is common to hear of diabetes as an impending epidemic. Certainly the statistics bear this out.

Currently, 7% of Americans have diabetes (17 million). In addition, a Los Angeles Times front-page report on 16 September 2006, claims that there are more than 41 million Americans with abnormal blood glucose abnormalities, “that indicate they may soon develop diabetes.” In Puerto Rico (where DU was tested) 10% of the population has diabetes.

The Centres of Disease Control (CDC) in Atlanta declares that “unless Americans change their ways,” 33% of the babies born this year will be diabetic by the year 2050. Also by 2050 there are expected to be 45 million diabetics in the US. A vet support group, Veterans with Diabetes International, says there are 143 million people worldwide with the disease, and 300 million people are expected to have diabetes in 2025.

Type 1 diabetes, most often seen in children and young adults, comprises 5-10% of the cases. Type 2, a metabolic disorder resulting from the body’s inability to make enough or properly use insulin, frequently strikes adults, especially obese adults. This group comprises 90% or more of diabetics. The CDC predicts that Type 2 diabetes will increase 165% by 2050. People with Type 2 diabetes are also twice as likely to get pancreatic cancer.

Thirty-four years after the Vietnam war ended, the DoD finally presented the “strongest evidence” that Type 2 diabetes can be connected to Agent Orange. Eighteen million gallons of this plant defoliant and poison was sprayed over Vietnam by the US military. It is now known to cause cancer and birth defects. Starting in the year 2002 diabetes is now recognised as a “service-connected” disease for all Vietnam vets. At present, diabetes is not service-connected for Gulf War vets.

Nine percent of Vietnam vets have Type 2 diabetes. There is no current evidence that Gulf War vets have a heightened incidence of diabetes, but I could find no solid research to confirm or deny this. Perhaps in one or two more decades government scientists will discover a connection to DU.

The common causes of diabetes are thought to be obesity, poor diet and lack of exercise. Leuren Moret believes the cause of the new epidemic is more sinister: namely the increasing levels worldwide of depleted uranium in the atmosphere, combined with emissions from the proliferation of nuclear power plants.

Unlike government scientists, Moret says DU is very, very, very nasty stuff; and that diabetes is an immediate response to DU, in contrast to the decades it can take for uranium to produce radiation-induced cancer. Although she cannot prove it, she is the first scientist to strongly suggest a connection between the new worldwide diabetes epidemic and DU.

Moret insists the medical profession has been active in the cover-up of low level radiation from atmospheric testing and nuclear power plants. I have been unable to verify this, but it is consistent with the passive role the health profession took during the Cold War nuclear testing in the US (more later). She has also spoken about medical professionals in hospitals who were threatened by government officials with $10,000 fines and jail time if they talked openly about the returning Iraq war soldiers and their medical problems. This could explain the paucity of reports in the scientific literature regarding vets exposed to DU and their war-associated illnesses.

Moret also says reporters have been prevented access to more than 14,000 medically evacuated soldiers from the current Iraq War, brought back to Walter Reed Hospital near Washington, DC. To learn more about Leuren Moret and her research, Google: Leuren Moret + videos. In addition, she appears in the recent documentary film Beyond Treason, detailing the horrific effects of depleted uranium exposure on American troops and Iraqi civilians in the Gulf region in 1991.

Is Depleted Uranium Safe?

Ronald L. Kathren is Professor Emeritus at Washington State University and a leading authority vouching for the safety of DU. Unlike Major Rokke, he does not appear to have ever served in the military or to have come in contact with DU on a battlefield. Nevertheless, his opinions carry a lot of weight in the scientific world.

Kathren does not dispute the fact that military personnel who may have had contact with DU are suffering from various illnesses, but he believes that exposure to uranium is very unlikely to be the cause.

Writing for the Portland Independent Media Centre on 3 July 2005, he declares: “Health physicists are deeply concerned with the public health and welfare, and as experts in radiation and its effects on people and the environment, are quite aware that something other than exposure to uranium is the cause of the illnesses suffered by those who have had contact with depleted uranium from munitions. A truly enormous body of scientific data shows that it is virtually impossible for uranium to be the cause of their illnesses. Despite this body of scientific data to the contrary, misguided or unknowing people continue to allege that the depleted uranium, and specifically the radioactivity associated with the depleted uranium is the cause of these illness. This is indeed unfortunate, for health physicists and other scientists and physicians already know that depleted uranium is not the cause of these illnesses and thus any investigations into the cause of these illnesses should focus on other possible causes. If we are to offer any measure of relief or solace to these suffering people, and to gain some important additional knowledge of the cause of their illness, we should not waste our valuable and limited energies, resources and time attempting to point the finger at depleted uranium as the culprit, when it is already known that uranium is almost certainly not the cause of the problem.” (http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2005/07/320739.shtml)

“No Level of Radiation is Safe for Humans”

As a physician it is inconceivable to me that government-approved experts like Kathren can so quickly dismiss DU as safe and harmless, particularly when on 29 June 2005, a National Academy of Sciences panel in Washington DC has found that no level of radiation is safe for humans.

The panel concluded that “any dose of radiation, no matter how small, can induce cancer. Exposure to radiation is becoming more and more likely for most people because of the growing use of radiation in medicine. The new findings could lead to changes in medical practices and the levels of radiation allowed at former nuclear sites.” The panel also contradicted the often heard dictum of some government pro-nuclear scientists that “a little radiation is good for you.”

The idea that low doses of radiation are safe is the myth that allowed extensive nuclear testing during the Cold War without a huge protest from every member of the human race. It is this myth that still allows DU weapons to be used on battlefields against “terrorists.”

Historically, the proof of the danger of nuclear warfare was provided a decade ago by the publication of a US Congressional committee report authorised by President Bill Clinton and entitled, The Human Radiation Experiments. The report showed clearly that government scientists and physicians could not be trusted in their pronouncements regarding the safety of nuclear weapons. Even worse was the documentation of countless covert and secret radiation experiments conducted on unsuspecting citizens during the Cold War “in the name of science.” Unfortunately, this horrific 1996 report did not deter Clinton from allowing DU weapons in Kosovo in 1999, nor did it deter President George W. Bush, who authorised their use again in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Anyone with Internet access can simply Google “the human radiation experiments” for details of the shameful science surrounding nuclear testing and the disastrous health effects on unsuspecting American citizens.

In 2001, a half century after extensive nuclear weapons testing in the American West, the US National Cancer Institute was finally forced to reveal its finding that bomb testing in Nevada, which spread radioactive fallout across every state of the Union, has caused at least 15,000 cancer deaths and up to 212,000 non-fatal thyroid cancers. John LaForge of Nukewatch.com reminds us that “the 67 bomb tests blown off between 1946 and 1958 were said at the time to be safe.”

Money, Power and Depleted Uranium

Who is profiting from this global uranium nightmare? In The Enemy Within (1996) Jay Gould reveals that the British Royal family privately owns investments in uranium holdings worth over $6 billion through Rio Tinto Mines, an Anglo-Australian company, which is the world’s largest mining company with more than 60 operations in 40 countries. Africa and Australia are two of the main sources of uranium in the world; and the Rothschilds control uranium supplies and prices globally.

Gould notes that nuclear radiation has brought dramatic increases in breast cancer mortality, especially in communities 50 to 100 miles downwind from nuclear reactors. Book reviewer Donna Lee writes: “The Enemy Within has enough scientific data to address those bureaucrats who deny that living near a nuclear reactor is a hazard to one’s health. It also includes enough direct, clear prose to convince me, a breast cancer survivor, that I grew up during the Cold War as an unknowing guinea pig, further victimised by the politics of suppression and denial.”

Lee continues: “After reading the book, however, I am bothered by one persistent question. I was born and raised and continue to live in San Francisco, California, which has the highest incidence of breast cancer in the world. The Enemy Within concerns itself with breast cancer mortality rates, which are highest in the communities around New York City. San Francisco isn’t within 100 miles of a nuclear reactor and it isn’t even mentioned in the book. If low level radiation explains clusters of breast cancer throughout the US, what explains us?”

Actually there was a nuclear power plant located in Sacramento, less than 100 miles from San Francisco, which became active in 1975. Gould probably did not include this in his 1996 book because the Rancho Seco Nuclear Power Plant was forced to shut down its operations in 1989, due to a public outcry and a referendum.

David Bradbury says child cancer rates on Vieques Island have soared 250% above the Puerto Rican national average in the last thirty years. In his 2005 documentary film, Blowin’ in the Wind, the provocative Australian filmmaker and two-time Academy Award nominee also provides some answers regarding the huge financial interests involved in uranium production and DU weapons. Australia provides one-third of the world’s uranium supply, and Bradbury reveals a secret treaty that allows the US military to train and test its DU weaponry on Australian soil. He exposes plans to extract over $36 billion from uranium mines over the next six years, and shows the finished construction of a 1,000 mile railway from the mining area to a port on the north coast of Australia to transport the ore.

The railway project was built by Texas-based Halliburton Company. In 1995 US Vice President Dick Cheney was CEO of that company. The film maker says, “The Queen’s favourite American buccaneers, Cheney, Halliburton, and the Bush family, are tied to her through uranium mining and the shared use of illegal depleted uranium munitions in the Middle East, Central Asia and Kosovo/Bosnia. The major roles that such diverse individuals and groups as the Carlyle Group, George Herbert Walker Bush, former Carlyle CEO Frank Calucci, the University of California managed nuclear weapons labs at Los Alamos and Livermore, and US and international pension fund investments have played in proliferating depleted uranium weapons is not well known or in most instances even recognised, inside or outside Australia. God Save The Queen from the guilt of her complicity in turning Planet Earth into a ‘Death Star’.”

Depleted Uranium and the War on Terror

There is nothing more terrifying than the thought of exposing all life forms on the planet to DNA-altering radiation in order to provide us with “safety” and “democracy.” It is truly diabolic to think that the destruction of the planet is now occurring with so few people comprehending what is going on – and still fewer people taking an active stand against this tragedy. It is apparent that most of the world’s political and spiritual leaders, as well as scientists, physicians, lawyers, and health professionals do not care about the dangers of DU weapons and other forms of nuclear energy. If they cared we would certainly be hearing and reading about it on television and in the major media.

As a researcher and writer over the part few decades, I have focused on the man-made origin of AIDS and the little-known bacterial cause of cancer, paying little attention to nuclear radiation. However, in 2001 I wrote an article entitled “The Human Radiation Experiments: How Scientists Secretly Used US Citizens as Guinea Pigs During the Cold War”, which was published in the September-October 2001 issue of New Dawn, and is posted on several websites. But I must admit I was unaware of the serious planetary problems posed by DU. I simply assumed that no civilised and peace-loving country would ever be reckless and heartless enough to use these radioactive weapons. How wrong I was!

What I find most pathetic and inconceivable is that we have learned nothing from the detrimental health effects unleashed by the atomic bombing of Japan – and nothing from the nuclear testing horrors of the last half of the 20th century. Instead we continue to contaminate vast areas of the world with radiation we don’t know how to get rid of.

I remember as an eleven year-old boy how jubilant everyone was by the atomic attack on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945, which brought the war to a rapid end. A half century later my Caucasian niece married a Japanese-American man. Shortly after the wedding she noticed a lump in his neck, which proved to be thyroid cancer. His mother was a child when she lived 50 miles outside of Hiroshima when the bomb was dropped. Decades later, in her forties, she was diagnosed with thyroid cancer, undoubtedly due to the radiation fallout. The doctors considered the possibility that my niece’s husband might have developed thyroid cancer because of radiation-altered and thyroid cancer-causing genes passed on to him by his mother. Of course the family wonders if their two young children will eventually also get thyroid cancer. Who would have thought that the atomic bombing of Japan in 1945 would have a cancerous effect five decades later on my family living in California?

A few years ago I developed a thyroid nodule, which was biopsied and proved non-cancerous. As a teenager in the 1950s I received “superficial” radiation treatments for acne at the recommendation of a well-known New York dermatologist, a treatment that was later banned because of its potential to cause thyroid cancer.

It is almost a cliché to remind people that “all of us are connected.” The fallout from DU and nuclear energy now binds us all together in an increasingly radioactive planet. No one is immune from the deleterious effects of radiation, and no one knows how to clean it up.

What can we do about it? The only thing we can do is to stop the madness immediately. However, power and greed and politics and religion make that highly unlikely.

We have met the perpetrators of the new radiation-induced “war on terror.” And, sadly, it is us.

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Dr. ALAN CANTWELL is a retired dermatologist and the author of five books on the man-made origin of AIDS and the infectious origin of cancer, all published by Aries Rising Press, PO Box 29532, Los Angeles, CA 90029, USA (www.ariesrisingpress.com). Many of his personal writings can be found on www.google.com by typing in key words “alan cantwell” + articles. His latest book is Four Women Against Cancer: Bacteria, Cancer and the Origin of Life. His books are also available on www.amazon.com and in the US through Book Clearing House @ 1-800-431-1579. Email: alancantwell@sbcglobal.net.

The above article appeared in New Dawn No. 99 (Nov-Dec 2006).

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In my medical research into the infectious cause and origin of cancer, I never imagined I would become enmeshed in the strange world of Wilhelm Reich. For two decades I had studied the work of scientists linking bacteria to cancer, but never once did I come across Reich’s important experiments with the deadly “T-bacilli” that he discovered in cancer.

I first learned about Reich in 1982 from Lorraine Rosenthal who heads the Cancer Control Society in Los Angeles. Her mother worked in his laboratory in the 1950s, and Lorraine was sure his cancer work was related to my cancer microbe research. She recommended I read Reich’s two most revolutionary books: The Bion Experiments on the Origin of Life (1938) and The Cancer Biopathy (1948). These two volumes provide valuable and fascinating insights into the origin of the cancer cell and his discovery of cancer “T” bacteria.

During his life, Reich was portrayed as a mad psychiatrist and scientist who advocated free love, abortion, communism, and a multitude of other so-called perversions. The medical establishment regarded him as quack who tried to dupe the public into believing he had a cure for cancer. Eventually the US government took legal action to suppress Reich’s research, and the closing years of his life were filled with tragedy. Persecuted and hounded by the government, he was finally sacrificed on the altar of science.

Who was Wilhelm Reich? And why was he condemned for his beliefs? Was he merely a crack-pot psychiatrist? Or was he one of the greatest and most misunderstood scientific geniuses of the twentieth century?

Reich’s Sex Experiments and Orgone Energy

Reich was born on March 24, 1897, on a small farm on the eastern outreaches of the Austro-Hungarian empire in what is now known as the Ukraine. At age twelve his childhood was shattered by his mother’s suicide. Provoked by marital unhappiness and infidelity, and beatings by her husband, she swallowed a kitchen poison. Reich watched her die a slow and agonising death. His father died of tuberculosis in 1914, and twelve years later his only brother also died of TB. Orphaned at age 17, Reich entered the Austrian army and experienced the brutality of World War One and the ensuing breakup of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

After the war he resumed his studies in Vienna and entered medical school. He was a brilliant student who developed a strong liking for the new speciality of psychiatry. At age twenty-three he became one of Sigmund Freud’s prized associates and began private practice as an analytic psychiatrist.

As a pioneer in the study of human sexuality, he used novel experimental methods to examine, analyse and measure various aspects of physical lovemaking. He concluded that the ability to love was dependent on one’s physical ability to make love with “orgastic potency.” Reich coined this term to denote a kind of super-lovemaking in which the mental, physical and emotional aspects of sexuality were all functioning at a high level. Experimenting with electrical stimulation of erogenous zones, he showed that sexual feelings of touch, pleasure, and pain could all be measured in the laboratory.

The physiologic process of erection of the male penis provided the beginning formula for Reich’s great scientific discoveries. Before male orgasm, he noted four distinct and separate processes that had to take place physiologically. First is the necessary psychosexual build-up or “tension.” Second, the “charge” that accompanies tumescence of the penis, which Reich measured electrically. Third, the electrical “discharge” at the moment of orgasm. And fourth, the final “relaxation” of the penis.

Reich observed these four essential stages (tension, build-up, discharge and relaxation) in all aspects of life forms he examined. In the orgasm process of sex, he discovered a unique energetic life force that pervaded all nature. Reich named this force “orgone energy.”

With Freud’s professional support, Reich quickly rose to the highest ranks of academia. His classic book, Character Analysis (1933), recounts his original contributions to psychiatry and introduces Reich’s novel concept of “body armoring.” Reich discovered that unreleased psychosexual energy could produce actual physical “blocks” within the muscles and organs of the body. These blocks act as an unfortunate “armor” preventing the release of blocked sexual energy. The orgasm, along with the convulsive body spasms which accompany orgasm, is the mechanism through which “orgone energy” is released by the body.

Reich believed a healthy and loving sex life is everyone’s right. In fact, he considered a good sex life absolutely necessary for the proper functioning of the body. He stressed that the social and political ills of the world stemmed largely from society’s repression of sexuality. This repression leads to unhappiness, depression, and the inability to express joyous sexual love. For countless people the sexual energy is blocked because of personal body armoring. As a result of this armoring, such people often fall victim to various aspects of the “emotional plague.”

In his practice of analytic psychiatry Reich broke with tradition. Instead of sitting passively, notebook in hand while his patients talked, Reich took an active role in the therapy. He frequently touched his patients, felt their chests for breathing, and repositioned their bodies. Sometimes he badgered and goaded them to physical action. In order to observe their body response during analysis, he sometimes insisted that all or part of the clothing be removed. Men were often reduced to shorts; women to bra and panties. Reich’s colleagues publicly protested against these unorthodox and radical psychiatric practices, and his most vociferous opponents accused him of immorality.

Reich, Communism and the Nazis

As a young man in post-war Vienna during the 1920s and 30s, Reich was active politically. Disliking the anti-sexual right-wing conservatives and repelled by the fanaticism of the fascists, he migrated to Marxism and the sexual freedom proclaimed by the communists. Although Reich was a sex expert, his expertise did not carry over to the state of matrimony. In 1922 he married Annie Pink, a psychiatrist. Their first child Eva was born in 1924, and a second daughter in 1928. No matter how hard he tried, it was impossible for Reich to conform to marital convention and the marriage was chaotic.

In his writings the outspoken Reich went so far as to propose that a series of romantic relationships (“serial monogamy”) was a better alternative to marriage. In The Function of the Orgasm (1927) he declared: “Marriage is only one of the many issues where social scientists go astray, especially since they fail to see marriage for what it really is – a sexual union, based primarily on genital love. They prefer to ignore that fact and merely view it as an economic union or means to perpetuate the human race. Actually very few people marry for money or to have children; marriages of today really limit peoples’ freedom and may lead to economic deprivation.”

For professional, political, and social reasons, Reich moved his practice to Berlin in 1930. He joined the German Communist party, convinced the sexual freedoms of Marxism would liberate the common man and foster his mental health. As a spokesman for the Party, Reich advocated free contraceptives, birth control, abortion on demand, and sex education in schools.

By 1933, Reich’s marriage was on the rocks and he was already in another passionate love relationship. The German communists were increasingly disenchanted with the controversial Reich due to some of his outrageous ideas on sexual-political matters. The Party finally expelled him. He was also in a career crisis. His psychiatric writings and left-wing political activities became progressively more out of tune with Freud’s ideas and their relationship cooled considerably. In a supreme blow to Reich’s career, the Psychiatric Association revoked his membership.

All this personal turbulence was compounded by the rise of Hitler and Nazism. The Nazi press damned Reich as a radical psychiatrist, an anti-Nazi communist, a womaniser, and a Jew. Berlin was no longer safe. Disguised as a tourist on a ski trip to Austria, he luckily got out of the city by the skin of his teeth.

Returning to Vienna, he soon realised he was no longer professionally welcome there either. He emigrated to Denmark but soon became embroiled in disputes with Danish communists. From there, he relocated to Sweden, but was again harassed by the authorities. Finally, through the help of Norwegian colleagues, he secured residence in Oslo, where he had a new laboratory and enough money to continue his research.

By 1934 Reich’s divorce was finalised. Escaping the Nazis, Annie and his children resettled in Austria. Reich was madly in love with Elsa Lindenberg who had dutifully followed him in his exodus to Austria, Denmark, Sweden, and finally to Norway. In Norway he was determined to continue his research into the orgone life force that he had discovered in his orgasm experiments.

The Bion Experiments and the Origin of Life

His experiments began simply by close microscopic examinations of the smallest form of cell life known to man: the so-called “protozoa.” Reich marveled at the squirming amoebae that developed from his grass and water “infusions.” Swimming in his microscopic preparations, the one-celled organisms were seemingly structureless blobs, yet they were also exceedingly complex forms that ate, digested, contracted, expelled, and multiplied. He playfully applied a small electric current and watched the protozoa contract and elongate.

During the years 1934-1937 Reich was totally absorbed in his experiments on the origin of life. His preparations consisted of infusions of various substances, such as grass, beach sand, earth, coal, iron fillings and animal tissue. He tested various combinations and added potassium, gelatin and other biochemicals to the mixtures. Boiling the preparations resulted in a marked increase in the number of “vesicles” that could be cultured.

After much experimentation, Reich concluded the cultured vesicles were intermediate “transitional” forms which were “midway between life and non-life.” “Dead” inorganic substances (such as sand, earth, and coal) gave birth to vesicles which pulsed with life. Reich named these energetic vesicles “bions.” He suspected bions were a heretofore unrecognised elementary stage of life.

After cooling the boiled bion cultures, he poured some of the boiled material onto laboratory nutrient culture media designed to grow ordinary bacteria. An unbelievable phenomenon resulted: the boiled bion cultures gave birth to peculiar-looking bacteria, and amoeboe!

To eliminate the possibility of contamination, Reich heated the cultures to the intense, flaming, glowing temperatures of incandescence (150 degrees Centigrade), and repeatedly sterilised his lab culture media by autoclaving it at a high temperature (180 degrees Centigrade) and pressure. At the time it was thought no known bacteria or any other life forms could possible survive such a high temperature and pressure.

Reich believed he had discovered an indestructible life force that defied death. He concluded: Bions are preliminary stages of life; they are transitional forms from the inorganic and non-motile – to the organic, motile, and culturable state.

When Reich’s The Bion Experiments On the Origin of Life was published in Oslo in 1938, the book created a furore. His critics latched onto one paragraph in the book that intimated Reich might have inadvertently found a cancer cure. Reich wrote that preliminary studies showed bion-like structures could be cultured from human blood and “bion research proved particularly fruitful for an understanding of cancer.” He was attacked by the scientific and lay press as a “Jew pornographer” who was tinkering with life and promoting a quack cancer cure.

Instead of discouraging him, the attacks lured him deeper and deeper into orgone research. Reich was determined to prove, beyond doubt, the reality of the new life energy forms he had discovered.

The T-Bacilli, Cancer and Reich’s Bions

The unfair accusations surrounding the publication of The Bion Experiments goaded Reich into trying to solve the mystery of cancer. Weeks earlier he had placed some sterile cancer tissue (provided by the surgeons at a local hospital) into flasks containing liquid nutrient broth. Now in his anger, he scurried around to retrieve the bottles. To his astonishment, “all these cultures showed a green-blue coloration. Taking material from the margin, [Reich] inoculated a new agar plate and saw, for the first time, the T-bacilli, the discovery of which would help break down the mystery surrounding the cancer problem.”

The finding of bacteria in cancer filled Reich with a curious mixture of fear and awe. With fear because he knew that solving the secrets of cancer would be a Herculean task, further antagonising the medical establishment against him. With awe, because he intuitively knew these bacilli were involved in the agonising cancer deaths that affected countless millions. After much study, Reich named his newly-discovered cancer microbes “T” bacilli, after the German word “Tod”, meaning death.

The years 1934-1937 in Norway were Reich’s happiest. The bion work was exceedingly productive, and he was deeply in love with Elsa Lindenberg. In August 1938, Hitler annexed Austria. Miraculously, Annie and his children had emigrated to America the month before. Reich’s lingering presence in Norway increasingly angered the authorities, and the newspaper attacks against him were unrelenting.

Aggravated by depression and bouts of jealously and pettiness, his relationship with Elsa cooled. An American colleague strongly urged Reich to emigrate to the United States. In August 1939, on the last boat to leave Norway before the war, Reich left for America. Half-heartedly he had asked Elsa to come, but their tempestuous love affair was over and beyond repair. By this time Reich was also completely disillusioned with the communists and their false promises and their perversion of Marx’s humanitarian ideals. Never again would their philosophy interest him, and he became an ardent anti-communist.

When he embarked for America, Wilhelm Reich was no longer young. He was 42 years old and he would again be a stranger in a strange land. He rented a house in Forest Hills, Long Island, and soon began a new love affair with Ilse Ollendorf, who was extremely helpful in assisting him with his research. They were married in 1946 and Ilse bore him a son, Peter.

The cancer work continued with the T-bacilli proving to be the key to the origin of cancer. Reich’s experiments showed that all life contains orgone energy and when this energy diminishes in the cells, either through injury or aging, the cells undergo a death process that Reich termed “bionous degeneration.” As a consequence of this degeneration, the deadly T-bacilli begin to form in the cells.

Reich could demonstrate these bacteria microscopically in living (and unstained) cancer cells. Cultures of T-bacilli injected into mice caused inflammation and eventual death from cancer. The T-bacilli that formed in the cells provoked a reaction in the tissues resulting in the formation of vesicular swellings. Microscopically, these vesicles gave off a bluish glow, and Reich called them “blue PA bions” because they resembled the clumped “PAcket” bions that were experimentally produced when he heated substances (such as grass and coal) to high temperatures.

In degenerating cancerous tissue, the blue PA bions seriously affected the orgone energy of the cells. In other mouse experiments, Reich injected blue bions into the tissue and observed the resulting cancerous cell changes and the development of actual protozoa. These cancerous changes were similar to what had occurred in Reich’s earliest experiments during the death process of cut blades of grass immersed in his water infusions. First the tissue cells swelled and formed vesicles; and eventually transformed into protozoa.

Reich found that cancer cells have less orgone energy than normal, healthy cells. As the energy-depleted cancer cells break down and degenerate into T-bacilli, putrefaction of the body occurs. It is the overwhelming infection with T-bacilli and the massive breakdown of cancer tissue that causes most deaths from cancer. Cancer is literally death in the living body.

Reich discovered T-bacilli not only in the cancer tumours, but also in the blood, the body fluids, and the excreta of cancer patients. He originally thought the T-bacillus was the specific infectious agent of cancer. But these cancer microbes were eventually found by Reich in persons with other diseases – and Reich also observed the T-bacilli in the blood and excreta of normal healthy people!

The blood of cancer patients produced T-bacilli easily and quickly. In contrast, normal blood produced the bacilli slowly. Reich concluded “the disposition to cancer is therefore determined by the biological resistance of the blood and the tissues to putrefaction. This biological resistance, in turn, is itself determined by the orgone energy content of the blood and tissues, which is to say, by the organotic potency of the organism.”

Reich in America, the Oranur Experiment, and Orgone Energy

Reich’s early years in America were comparatively quiet compared to his turbulent years in Europe, but his biomedical activities did not go unnoticed by the authorities. In December 1941, under the guise of subversive activity, the FBI arrested Reich and detained him at Ellis Island for three weeks. The exact reasons for the arrest were never made clear, but the harrowing experience further embittered him against his real and imagined enemies.

Along with his cancer discoveries, Reich had first noticed biological energy radiating from a beach sand bion culture in his Oslo lab back in January 1939. Now, in America, Reich would follow his hunches that would lead him to discover a new energy pervading the entire planet.

Reich and his lab co-workers frequently experienced headaches, irritability, and other unpleasant psychological and physical effects when working with certain radioactive bion cultures. It was theorised the beach sand had absorbed considerable quantities of radiation from the sun. When the sand was experimentally heated to incandescence (1,500 degrees Centigrade), Reich believed the solar radiation energy contained within the sand was released. Whatever the reason, there was no doubt orgone radiation was real and bion cultures had to be handled with extreme care because of their radioactivity.

In July 1940 Reich discovered orgone energy in the atmosphere! In order to study the effects of this radiation, he designed a specially-constructed box to house and concentrate this energy. Boxes were constructed to house lab animals. Eventually larger boxes were constructed in which a person could sit comfortably. Reich was interested in determining the effect of atmospheric orgone energy on humans, particularly persons with far-advanced and incurable forms of cancer.

It was this “orgone accumulator box” and its use in human cancer experimentation that caused the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to begin an intensive investigation of Reich’s scientific activities in the late 1940s. There were all sorts of rumours that the accumulator was a “sex box” which induced uncontrollable erections and stirred up intense and immoral sexual passions. As a result, Reich was harassed and intimidated by the authorities. Condemnatory articles in the professional and lay press added fuel to the fire by alluding to Reich’s mental problems and his sex-tinged research.

In the early 1940s Reich bought a summer house and acreage in Maine. He dearly loved the clean air, the clarity of the atmosphere, and the peacefulness of the place. A research lab was eventually built on the site, and in 1950 he moved permanently to the site he named Organon. He was fifty-three years old and tired of the stress of his psychoanalytic practice. Over the years his continuing practice had helped tremendously to support Reich’s studies and family, but now he wished to devote the remaining years of his life exclusively to orgone research.

At Organon a dangerous experiment began. Reich was deeply concerned with the planetary dangers unleashed by atomic warfare at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and in the early 1950s it was feared the Korean War might provoke another nuclear holocaust. Reich believed orgone energy could be harnessed as a possible antidote for nuclear radiation. He began testing the effects of orgone energy (OR) on nuclear energy (NR), and named the experiment “Oranur.”

During the Oranur experiment, radioactive radium was brought to Reich’s lab and housed in a special room containing orgone energy. The slow mixing of the two energies produced a nuclear chain reaction with devastating consequences. As a result of this nuclear accident, Reich learned that nuclear energy drastically changes orgone energy – converting it into “deadly orgone energy” (DOR). The laboratory accident seriously affected the physical, mental, and emotional health of Reich and his co-workers and necessitated a complete shut down of the lab until the dangerous radiation levels cleared.

Reich’s daughter, Eva, almost died in the mishap. Eva had been estranged from her father for years, but after finishing medical school, she joined him at Organon to help with the Oranur experiment. The stressful changes wrought by Oranur, and the increasing harassment by the FDA, put Reich under great pressure. He was never quite the same again.

The experiment undoubtedly contributed to Reich’s worsening relationship with Ilse. The marriage become more and more stormy as he tormented Ilse with accusations of infidelity and was physically abusive. Few people understood the clinical nature of feelings and emotions better than Reich; and yet he could be cruel, unyielding, and insanely jealous in his love relationships. He preached sexual freedom for all but he practised a sexual double standard in marriage that allowed him to be unfaithful, but never his mate.

While Reich was immersed in the problems of Oranur, Ilse developed uterine cancer. She was convinced her cancer was connected with the radiation experiments at Organon. While she convalesced from surgery, Reich cruelly filed for divorce. After it was finalised in September 1951, he began another relationship. The following month he suffered a major heart attack.

According to David Boadella’s biography of Reich, “The Oranur experiment had exposed Reich and all those who worked with him to severe strains. The remainder of his life was to be devoted to working on the many problems that the atmospheric chain reaction provoked by Oranur opened up, and it was particularly unfortunate for Reich that just at the time when he was struggling to cope with the dislocation to the normal activities of the Institute, he should become victim of a sustained campaign to belittle, discredit and attack his work on many fronts.”

Reich’s Trial, Book Burning and Imprisonment

Despite constant attacks by the FDA, Reich pursued his experiments undaunted. He built a “cloud buster” in order to affect the orgone energy in the atmosphere. In the Arizona desert he induced rain by forcing clouds to form and disperse. Like a god, he began to control the forces of nature, as no one before him had ever done.

He was convinced the scientific world would recognise the value of his work and would appreciate the great benefit orgone energy could bring mankind. Long before such subjects were popular, Reich was concerned about toxic waste, nuclear energy, and planetary pollution; he knew their detrimental and damaging effects on the atmospheric orgone energy. He was sure the FDA would never destroy his research which held so much promise for the planet and its healing. Reich also had implicit faith in the fairness of the American legal system. He fully believed that American justice would never allow his important work to be discontinued.

Whether from ignorance or arrogance, or both, Reich severely underestimated the power of the FDA and the campaign against him. In February 1954 the FDA issued an injunction forbidding the interstate shipment of orgone accumulators. The injunction also denied the existence of orgone energy, and proclaimed all Reich’s books and publications were promotional materials for the worthless accumulator.

As demanded by the terms of the injunction, Reich foolishly refused to appear in court. He was adamant his scientific work could never be properly argued or evaluated in court. His legal counsel pleaded with him to reconsider, but he stood firm in his position. His unyielding decision had disastrous consequences. The FDA won the injunction by default.

The legal maneuverings culminated in a trial that took place in Portland, Maine, in May 1956. Reich was arrested in Washington, DC, on contempt of court charges, and was forcibly brought to Portland in chains. His refusal to cooperate with the court did not bode well with the judge.

Time was running out for Reich. Years earlier he had been abandoned by the psychoanalytic establishment. The communists drummed him out of the Party, and the Nazis wanted him dead. He had offended the Austrians, the Danes, the Swedes and the Norwegians. Now the Americans would have the opportunity to destroy the mad psychiatrist and his new god of orgone.

Reich was finally done in. He had played into the hands of his enemies, and now they had him where they wanted him. Reich was sentenced to two years in federal prison.

Before imprisonment, the FDA had its final vengeance. On June 5, 1956, FDA officials came to Organon. Reich and his young son Peter watched in silence as the federal officials axed the accumulators. On June 26, Reich’s many books and journals at Organon were burned by government authorities. On August 23 in New York City the final destruction of Reich’s literature took place. Six tons of books, journals and papers were burned in a scientific holocaust. And not a single major newspaper in the Land of the Free protested this unprecedented action, so reminiscent of Nazi Germany.

In early March 1957 Reich was imprisoned at Danbury Federal Prison. The psychiatrist who examined Reich recorded the diagnosis: “Paranoia manifested by delusions of grandiosity and persecution and ideas of reference.” A few weeks later, Reich was transferred to the federal penitentiary in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania.

The United States government won. Officially, orgone energy did not exist. Reich was certified as a mentally ill, quack psychiatrist who tried to foist a sex box and a cancer cure on the American public. The Reich affair was terminated.

In his prison cell towards the end of October he began to feel poorly, but he was afraid to bring the matter to the attention of the prison officials. He told friends that his jailers would try to kill him in prison, and believed he would never get out alive. On November 3, 1957, Reich was found dead in his cell, an apparent victim of a heart attack.

Reich’s Scientific Legacy

The body was taken to Organon for burial. A small band of loyal followers, including Ilse, Eva, and Peter, paid their last respects. Elsworth Baker, M.D., who had studied with Reich for eleven years, gave the eulogy. “Friends, we are here to say farewell, a last farewell to Wilhelm Reich. Once in a thousand years, nay once in two thousand years, such a man comes upon this earth to change the destiny of the human race. As with all great men, distortion, falsehood, and persecution followed him. He met them all until an organised conspiracy sent him to prison and there killed him.”

Years later, Dr. Baker also wrote: “Reich’s attitude, in fact his entire life, was unconventional and as difficult for the world to understand as were his discoveries. Many legends, probably even religions, will develop about him. Already, some people look upon him as a superman who could not err, or as a spaceman come to earth; others have rationalised and written articles attempting to prove him insane, a charlatan, or a fraud, He was very human, natural, and open, and foremost, a great and genuine scientist. He could be as soft and warm as a summer breeze or as violent and angry as a thunderstorm.”

Was he a genius or a madman? For those who consider Reich an enemy of the people, his official sins are duly recorded in the dusty archives of office buildings in Vienna, Berlin, Copenhagen, Oslo and Washington. For those willing to take the time to investigate Reich’s writings, a different sort of man emerges.

It is my feeling that Reich desperately wanted to show the world God existed in the realm of the orgone. Through the study of orgonomy, Reich believed man and science could prove, beyond doubt, that God is real. Like God, the orgone is indestructible. And like God, orgone energy exists everywhere in the universe. Man’s spirit constantly reflects the orgone, eternally imbued with new life rising from the ashes of death.

Almost a half-century after his death, his scientific legacy persists. Reichian (Orgone) therapy is practised by some psychiatrists and psychologists. The American College of Orgonomy publishes the Journal of Orgonomy devoted to his work, and maintains a web site (www.orgonomy.org). Reich’s laboratory and burial place at Organon is now a Museum with a bookstore open to the public. Cloud-busting followers like Jim DeMeo have established an Orgone Biophysical Research Laboratory in Ashland, Oregon. The lab conducts yearly seminars reproducing Reich’s bion experiments and demonstrating Reich’s blood test procedures.

Reich’s T-bacilli are obviously connected to still controversial and current bacteriologic findings of so-called nanobacteria, pleomorphic bacteria, cell-wall-deficient bacteria, and mycoplasma. In addition, newly discovered bacteria have been found in the blood of all human beings. All of these microbial life forms have been implicated as possible cancer-causing and disease-causing agents.

In some ways Reich was childlike and surprisingly naïve. His downfall was overestimating the goodness of science; and underestimating the dark forces of science. In human terms, he paid for this error with his life.

Science, as we know it, is becoming increasingly “dark.” As this new century begins, scientists continue to discover all sorts of new ways to kill mass numbers of people and other living things with chemical, biological, and nuclear warfare. Perhaps it is time to take another look at Reich’s discoveries and his dream to harness orgone energy for planetary healing. Rather than automatically placing Dr. Wilhelm Reich in the trash bin of medical science, he might eventually prove to be the most inventive and far-sighted physician-scientist of the twentieth century.

References:

Baker EF: “My eleven years with Reich”. Journal of Orgonomy 18:155-171, 1984.

Boadella D: Wilhelm Reich: The Evolution of His Work. Vision Press, Chicago, 1973.

Cantwell AR, Blasband RA: “Bionous tissue disintegration in AIDS”. Journal of Orgonomy 22:220-228, 1988.

Cantwell AR: The Cancer Microbe. Aries Rising Press, Los Angeles, 1990.

Cantwell AR: “Bionous breakdown in degenerative disease”. Journal of Orgonomy 25:191-202, 1991.

Cantwell AR: “Bacteria, cancer and the origin of life”. New Dawn, November 2003, pp 71-76.

Reich W: The Bion Experiments on the Origin of Life. Ferrar, Straus and Giroux, New York, 1979.

Reich W: The Cancer Biopathy. Ferrar, Straus and Giroux, NY, 1973.

Reich W: Passion of Youth; An Autobiography, 1897-1922. Ferrar, Straus and Giroux, New York, 1988.

Sharaf MR: Fury On Earth: A Biography of Wilhelm Reich. St. Martin’s Press/Marek, New York, 1983.

Dr. ALAN CANTWELL is the author of two books on the man-made AIDS epidemic: AIDS and the Doctors of Death and Queer Blood, both available from www.amazon.com and Book Clearing House in the US @ 1-800-431-1579. Email: alanrcan@aol.com Website: www.ariesrisingpress.com.

The above article appeared in New Dawn No. 84 (May-June 2004).

© New Dawn Magazine and the respective author.

For our reproduction notice, click here.

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In preparing America for nuclear attack during the Cold War years following World War II, thousands of US citizens became the innocent victims of over 4,000 secret and classified radiation experiments conducted by the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) and other government agencies, such as the Department of Defense, the Department of Health, Education and Welfare, the Public Health Service (now the CDC), the National Institutes of Health, the Veterans Administration (VA), the CIA, and NASA.

Millions of people were exposed to radioactive fallout from the continental testing of more than 200 atmospheric and underground nuclear weapons, and from the hundreds of secret releases of radiation into the environment. Over 200,000 “atomic vets” who worked closely with nuclear detonations at the Nevada test site during the 1950s and 1960s were especially vulnerable to radiation fallout.

Also affected were the thousands of so-called “downwinders”, who lived in nearby small towns in Nevada, Utah, Colorado and New Mexico. These downwinders (along with the animal populations) suffered the worst cumulative radioactive effects of fallout, along with a contaminated environment teeming with radioactive food and farm products. The plight of these poor country people exposed to government-induced radiation sickness has been recorded in Carole Gallagher’s remarkable photo-essay American Ground Zero: The Secret Nuclear War (The Free Press, 1993).

In reviewing declassified AEC records (now the Department of Energy) from the 1950s, Gallagher was shocked to discover one document that described the people downwind of the Nevada Test Site as “a low use segment of the population.” Her shock at such callous bigotry caused her to eventually move West to research, investigate and document those who lived closest to the Test Site, as well as workers at the site, and soldiers repeatedly exposed to nuclear bombs during the military tests.

Disinformation and Nuclear Fallout

In the nuclear arms race, government doctors and scientists brainwashed the public into believing low dose radiation was not harmful. Some officials even tried to convince people that “a little radiation is good for you.” Totally ignored was the knowledge that the radiation from nuclear fallout could lead to an increased risk of cancer, heart disease, neurological disorders, immune system disease, reproductive abnormalities, sterility, birth defects, and genetic mutations which could be passed on from generation to generation. The full extent of this radiation damage to the American public during the Cold War years will never be known.

A secret AEC document, dated 17 April 1947, reveals that physicians were aware of these radiation hazards but simply ignored them. Under the title “Medical Experiments in Humans,” the memorandum read: “It is desired that no document be released which refers to experiments with humans that might have an adverse effect on public opinion or result in legal suits. Documents covering such field work should be classified ‘Secret’.”

According to Gallagher, many downwinders testified that the Public Health Service officials told them that their ‘neurosis’ about the fallout was the only thing that would give them cancer, particularly if they were female. Women with severe radiation illness, hair loss, and badly burned skin, were clinically diagnosed in hospitals as “neurotic.” Other severely ill women were diagnosed with “housewife syndrome.” When Gallagher’s investigation led her to ask a Department of Energy spokesperson about the AEC/DOE’s practice of waiting until the wind blew towards Utah before testing nuclear bombs or venting radiation in order to avoid contaminating Las Vegas or Los Angeles, the unabashed and unconcerned official actually said on tape, “Those people in Utah don’t give a shit about radiation.”

Secret Radiation Experiments

Only recently, with the forced release of Top Secret documents, have details been revealed about the unethical and inhumane radiation studies conducted during the Cold War years from 1944 to 1974. The initial story broke in November 1993 in a series of articles in the Albuquerque Tribunewhich identified the names of 18 Americans secretly injected with plutonium, a key ingredient of the atomic bomb and one of the most toxic substances known to man. Some, but not all, of the patients were terminally ill. This horrifying story by journalist Eileen Welsome (who later won a Pulitzer Prize) unleashed a storm of nationwide protest prompting Department of Energy Secretary Hazel O’Leary to order the release of secret files and documents pertaining to these Cold War experiments.

The extremely dangerous plutonium experiment was performed under the auspices of the government’s Manhattan Project, which brought together a revered group of distinguished scientists to develop and test the atom bomb. The purpose of these secret experiments was to establish occupational standards for workers who would be producing plutonium and other radioactive ingredients for the nuclear energy industry.

Some of the classified government experiments included:

* Exposing more than 100 Alaskan villagers to radioactive iodine during the 1960s.

* Feeding 49 retarded and institutionalised teenagers radioactive iron and calcium in their cereal during the years 1946-1954.

* Exposing about 800 pregnant women in the late 1940s to radioactive iron to determine the effect on the fetus.

* Injecting 7 newborns (six were Black) with radioactive iodine.

* Exposing the testicles of more than 100 prisoners to cancer-causing doses of radiation. This experimentation continued into the early 1970s.

* Exposing almost 200 cancer patients to high levels of radiation from cesium and cobalt. The AEC finally stopped this experiment in 1974.

* Administering radioactive material to psychiatric patients in San Francisco and to prisoners in San Quentin.

* Administering massive doses of full body radiation to cancer patients hospitalised at the General Hospital in Cincinnati, Baylor College in Houston, Memorial Sloan-Kettering in New York City, and the US Naval Hospital in Bethesda, during the 1950s and 1960s. The experiment provided data to the military concerning how a nuclear attack might affect its troops.

* Exposing 29 patients, some with rheumatoid arthritis, to total body irradiation (100-300 rad dose) to obtain data for the military. This was conducted at the University of California Hospital in San Francisco.

The Atomic Energy Commission

In 1995 the Energy Department admitted to over 430 radiation experiments conducted by the Atomic Energy Commission between the years 1944 and 1974. Over 16,000 people were radiated, some of whom did not know the health risks or did not give consent.

These experiments were designed to help atomic scientists understand the human hazards of nuclear war and radiation fallout. Because the entire nuclear arms buildup was classified secret, these experiments were all stamped secret and allowed to take place under the banner of protecting “national security.”

Amazingly, these clandestine studies were conducted at the most prestigious medical institutions and colleges, including the University of Chicago, the University of Washington, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Vanderbilt University in Nashville, and the previously mentioned universities.

Uranium Mine Workers

In addition to these radiation experiments, workers who mined uranium for the AEC in the Four Corners area of Arizona, Utah, Colorado and New Mexico, were exposed to radioactive dust during the 1940s up to the 1960s. Although AEC scientists and epidemiologists knew the dust in these poorly ventilated mines was contaminated with deadly radon gas which could easily cause death from lung cancer, this lifesaving information was never passed on to the miners, many of whom were Native Americans. As a result, many miners died prematurely of cancer of the lung.

Stewart Udall, an Arizona Congressman and lawyer who also served as Secretary of the Interior during the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, represented the miners and their families in a class action lawsuit against the federal government for radiation injuries. In The Myths of August, Udall writes that some physicians who defended the decisions of the atomic establishment sought to justify these experiments by contending that little was known about the health risks associated with the various exposures. Others tried to put a positive face on tests conducted without obtaining informed consent by maintaining that these experiments nevertheless produced advances in medical knowledge. Some physicians argued that the conduct of the AEC doctors should be condoned because they were merely following the ‘prevailing ethics’ of the postwar period. When the miners’ case finally came to trial in 1983, the federal court in Arizona dismissed the case by declaring the US government was immune from lawsuit.

Medical Ethics of the Cold War

How could these physician-experimenters ignore the sworn Hippocratic Oath promising that doctors will not harm their patients? Did they violate the Nuremberg Code of justice developed in response to the Nazi war crimes trials after World War II?

The Nuremberg Code includes 10 principles to guide physicians in human experimentation. In actuality, prior to the Nazi war crime tribunals, there was no written code for doctors; and lawyers defending the Nazi doctors tried to argue that similar wartime experiments were conducted with prisoners at the Illinois State Penitentiary, who were deliberately infected with malaria.

During the Nuremberg trials the AMA came up with its own ethical standards, which included three requirements: 1) voluntary consent of the person on whom the experiment is to be performed must be obtained; 2) the danger of each experiment must be previously investigated by animal experimentation; and 3) the experiment must be performed under proper medical protection and management.

The records now show that many victims of the government’s radiation experiments did not voluntarily consent as required by the Code. As late as 1959, Harvard Medical School researcher Henry Beecher viewed the Code “as too extreme and not squaring with the realities of clinical research.” Another physician said the Code had little effect on mainstream medical morality and “doubted the ability of the sick to understand complex facts of their condition in a way to make consent meaningful.”

Writing in the Journal of the American Medical Association in 1996, Jay Katz recalls an argument at Harvard Medical School in 1961 suggesting that the Code was not necessarily pertinent to or adequate for the conduct of research in the United States. Katz writes: “The medical research community found, and still finds, the stringency of the NC’s first principle all too onerous.” But patients in medical experiments expect the experiment to help them in some way – not to harm them! Patients also are often inclined to totally trust their physicians not to harm them. In The Nazi Doctors and the Nuremberg Code, Katz concludes that many doctors view the Code as “a good code for barbarians but an unnecessary code for ordinary physicians.”

The President’s Advisory Committee

In January 1994 President Clinton convened an Advisory Committee to investigate the accusations surrounding the human radiation experiments. In their final report presented to the president on 3 October, 1995, the Committee found that up to the early 1960s it was common for physicians to conduct research on patients without their consent.

The Committee’s harshest criticism was reserved for those cases in which physicians used patients without their consent in experiments in which the patients could not possibly benefit medically. These cases included the 18 people injected with plutonium at Oak Ridge Hospital in Tennessee, the University of Rochester in New York, the University of Chicago, and the University of California at San Francisco, as well as two experiments in which seriously ill patients were injected with uranium, six at the University of Rochester and eleven at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. The plutonium and uranium experiments undoubtedly put the subjects at increased risk for cancer in ten or twenty years’ time.

The Final Report of the President’s Advisory Committee is now available in The Human Radiation Experiments, published in 1996 by Oxford Press. Although the Committee studied the experiments in depth, there was no attempt to assess the damage done to individuals. In many cases, the names and records of the patients were no longer available, nor was there any easy way to identify how many experiments had been conducted, where they took place, and which government agencies sponsored them. The Department of Health and Human Services, the primary government sponsor of research, had long since discarded files on experiments performed decades ago.

The Committee discovered “the records of much of the nation’s recent history had been irretrievably lost or simply could not be located” and “only the barest description remained” for the majority of the experiments.

The Department of Energy also claimed all the pertinent records of its predecessor, the AEC, had been destroyed during the 1970s, but in some cases as late as 1989. All CIA records are classified. When records of the top secret MKULTRA program (in which unwitting subjects were experimented upon with a variety of mind-altering drugs) were requested, the CIA explained that all pertinent records had been destroyed during the 1970s when the program became a national scandal.

Keeping Government Secrets

The Committee made clear that its story could not have been told if the government did not keep some records that were eventually retrieved and made public. However, federal records management law also provides for the routine destruction of older records. Thus, in the great majority of cases the loss or destruction of requested documents was a function of normal record-keeping practices.

The Committee was dismayed to report: “At the same time, however, the records that recorded the destruction of documents, including secret documents, have themselves been lost or destroyed.” Thus, the circumstances of destruction (and indeed, whether documents were destroyed or simply lost) is often hard to ascertain.

In the Committee’s judgment the AEC had repeatedly deceived the public by denying it had engaged in human experimentation, and by issuing cover stories to cover-up secret investigations, and by deliberately supplying incomplete information to people who participated in government-sponsored biomedical research. It was clear that once government information was “born secret” it often remained that way.

The Committee concludes: “The government has the power to create and keep secrets of immense importance to us all.” Yet, without documents how can historians and other researchers uncover the truth about the government’s clandestine activities? Where is the ‘smoking gun’ when secret records are systematically shredded or reported as ‘lost’? We now know that many people were damaged during the government’s Cold War period of secrets and lies. But how can we uncover the medical and scientific secrets that remain hidden in the still classified documents from 1974 up to the present?

In the absence of medical records and follow-up, the ultimate fate of individuals who willingly or unwillingly “volunteered” for these experiments is not known. The Committee simply did not have the time or the resources to review individual files and histories. In many instances only fragmentary information survives about these experiments; whether people were harmed in these experiments could not be ascertained.

Current Secret Biomedical Experimentation

The US has the world’s largest arsenal of chemical and biological weapons. However, few people are aware of the covert biowarfare experiments conducted by various government agencies, particularly the military and the CIA.

For example, in August 1977 the CIA admitted to no less than 149 subprojects, including experiments to determine the effects of different drugs on human behaviour; work on lie-detectors, hypnosis, and electric shock; and the surreptitious delivery of drug-related materials. Forty-four colleges and universities were involved, along with fifteen research foundations, twelve hospitals or clinics, and three penal institutions. In the infamous MKULTRA mind-altering experiments, the victims were lured to hotel rooms for sexual encounters with prostitutes and were then drugged and monitored by CIA agents.

Military biowarfare attacks against unsuspecting Americans in the 1950s and 60s are a documented reality. The most notorious was a six-day US military bioattack on San Francisco in which clouds of potentially harmful bacteria were sprayed over the city. Twelve people developed pneumonia due to these infectious microbes, and one elderly man died from the bioattack.

In other secret attacks, bacteria were sprayed into New York City subway tunnels; into crowds at a Washington, D.C. airport; and onto highways in Pennsylvania. Biowarfare testing also took place in military bases in Virginia, in Key West, Florida, and off the coasts of California and Hawaii.

For 50 years the shameful details of the government’s radiation experiments were kept secret from the public. In The Plutonium Files, Eileen Welsome notes the ethical horror that resulted from the melding of military and medical agendas during the Cold War. She credits the atomic bomb project’s public relations machine for downplaying the fallout controversy, the illnesses of the atomic veterans, and the diseases of the downwinders. The government propagandists simply placed the blame on sudden wind shifts, misinformed scientists, the overactive imagination of aging soldiers, and even Communist propagandists.

Welsome concludes: “The web of deception and denial looks in retrospect like a vast conspiracy, but in actuality it was simply a reflection of the shared attitudes and beliefs of the scientists and the bureaucrats who were inducted into the weapons program at a time of national urgency and never abandoned their belief that nuclear war was imminent.” She worries if what we have learned from the thousands of radiation experiment documents made public over the last several years will be remembered. Like the Holocaust and the Nazi crimes against humanity, the radiation experiments should never be forgotten.

In reviewing Welsome’s book for the Los Angeles Times (2 January, 2000), Thomas Powers asks: “If the government lied about the danger of nuclear testing, can we trust them to tell us the truth about acid rain, global warming or the safety of deep storage for nuclear waste?”

Does Secret Medical Experimentation Continue?

To this day there are no adequate safeguards to protect people from secret government experimentation. Since the mid-1970s we have witnessed the spectacular rise of genetic engineering and molecular biology, as well as the concomitant outbreak of new and mysterious diseases like AIDS, chronic fatigue syndrome, the peculiar “Four Corners” lung disease discovered on Navajo land, and the appearance of unprecedented “emerging” viruses never before seen on the planet.

Investigators linking the possible origin of these diseases to the dangerous engineering of new microbes are often dismissed as paranoids and crackpots. The mysterious Persian Gulf War syndrome is yet another recent illness clouded in military and biologic secrecy, with the origin and cause still debated and the medical records of sick veterans often “lost” or otherwise unavailable. Not surprisingly, the same government institutions that funded the radiation experiments now largely control the research, the funding, and the cover stories pertaining to all these new diseases and viruses.

What is clear from studying the Committee’s Final Report is that the medical and scientific professions collaborated with the government and the military to abuse and harm US citizens. In the process, the nuclear establishment literally got away with murder. And there is simply no end to the secrets that still emerge from the Cold War years that began 58 years ago with the Manhattan Project.

In January 2000, the government presented the results of a statistical study showing that atomic workers employed in the nuclear weapons industry during the Cold War were more likely to suffer a higher rate of cancer, due to their exposure to cancer-causing radiation and chemicals.

From the 1940s up to the present time, government lawyers and scientists have repeatedly rejected the claims of workers who became sick as result of nuclear radiation and exposure to deadly uranium, plutonium, and fluorine. As many as 600,000 workers in 14 nuclear weapons plants are now affected by the government’s final admission of wrongdoing in exposing these people to cancer and other chronic illnesses.

According to a Los Angeles Times report, “workers told of spending years trying to get compensation payments from the state, of having to hire attorneys to get disability pay, of going to clinics that forced them to sign away rights to a portion of any future disability payment before they could be treated.”

Kay Sutherland, a worker at the Hanford plutonium plant in central Washington State, told a hearing that “the people in this area have been forced into poverty because they’ve had to retire in their 30s, 40s, and 50s, too young to get a retirement, and too young to get Social Security. They fall through the cracks and they die.” Sutherland has lost four of her five family members to disease, and has an enlarged liver and multiple tumours. She considers herself “a Holocaust survivor for the American Cold War.”

How can we stop these nuclear and biological horrors, which have condemned thousands of innocent people to disease and death? Why must decades of government-sanctioned medical abuse be kept secret and covered-up by scientists and physicians who claim to be concerned about the health of the public?

One way to prevent abuse might be to bring the physician-scientist perpetrators of these experiments to justice in a court of law. However, unless the public is aroused, this is unlikely to happen.

Writing in the Columbia Journalism Review, Geoffrey Sea notes: “A startling fact about the experiments is that, despite the documentation of hundreds of cases of unethical conduct resulting in lasting damage to thousands of people, not a single physician or nurse, scientist or technician, policy maker or administrator has yet come forward to admit wrongdoing.”

For over twenty years the law allowed the US Department of Defense (DoD) to use Americans as “guinea pigs.” This law (the US code annotated Title 50, Chapter 32, Section 1520, dated 30 July, 1977) remained on the books until it was repealed under public pressure in 1998. The new and revised bill prohibits the DoD from conducting tests and experiments on humans, but allows “exceptions.” One of the exceptions is that a test or experiment can be carried out for “any peaceful purpose that is related to a medical, therapeutic, pharmaceutical, agricultural, industrial, or research activity.” Thus, the 1998 law has obvious loopholes which allow secret testing to continue. For details on the restrictions (and exceptions) for human testing for chemical and biological agents, consult the Gulf War Vets website at http//www.gulfwarvets.com/1520a.htm.

Unethical and dangerous experimentation undoubtedly continues in secret up to the present time, ostensibly under the guise of “national security.” Thus, it would seem prudent for patients to think twice before signing-up for government-sponsored medical studies, particularly at leading medical institutions. Enlightened patients might also view doctors (and scientists) with a healthy dose of skepticism, and a touch of paranoia.

As weird as all this sounds, it could save your life!

References:

Cantwell AR Jr: Queer Blood: The Secret AIDS Genocide Plot. Aries Rising Press. Los Angeles, 1993.

Declassified: Human Experimentation (Video, 1999). A&E Television. Distributed by New Video, 126 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10011.

Faden RR, Lederer SE, Moreno JD: “U.S. medical researchers, the Nuremberg Doctors Trial, and the Nuremberg Code: A review of findings of the Advisory Committee on human radiation experiments.” JAMA 276:1667-1671, 1996.

Faden R; “The Advisory Committee on human radiation experiments: Reflections on a presidential committee.” Hastings Center Report 26 (no.5): 5-10, 1996

Gallagher C: American Ground Zero: The Secret Nuclear War. The Free Press, New York, 1993.

Harris R and Paxman J: A Higher Form of Killing: The Secret Story of Chemical and Biological Warfare. Hill and Wang, New York, 1982.

Katz J: The Nazi Doctors and the Nuremberg Code. Oxford University Press, New York, 1993.

Katz J: “The Nuremberg Code and the Nuremberg trial.” JAMA 276: 1663-1666, 1996.

Murphy K: “Government finally hears a nuclear town’s horrors.” Los Angeles Times, February 5, 2000.

Sea G: “The radiation story no one would touch.” Columbia Journalism Review, March/April 1994.

The Human Radiation Experiments: Final Report of the Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments. Oxford University Press, New York, 1996.

Udall SL: The Myths of August: A Personal Exploration of Our

Tragic Cold War Affair with the Atom. Pantheon Books, New York, 1994.

Watts ML: “U.S. acknowledges radiation caused cancers in workers.” New York Times, January 29, 2000.

Welsome E: The Plutonium Files: America’s Secret Medical Experiments in the Cold War. The Dial Press, New York, 1999.

Dr. ALAN CANTWELL is the author of two books on the man-made AIDS epidemic: AIDS and the Doctors of Death and Queer Blood, both available from www.amazon.com and Book Clearing House in the US @ 1-800-431-1579. Email: alanrcan@aol.com Website: www.ariesrisingpress.com.

The above article appeared in New Dawn No. 68 (Sept-Oct 2001).

© New Dawn Magazine and the respective author.

For our reproduction notice, click here.