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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).

Read this article with its extensive full colour illustrations by downloading
your copy of New Dawn 123 (PDF version) for only US$5

© New Dawn Magazine and the respective author.
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—

One, two, buckle my shoe
Three, four, knock at the door
Five, six, pick up sticks …And so the nursery rhyme goes. Preschool kids learn to count in many fun ways to give them a head start in arithmetic. Once they enter the formalised school system, the subject matter eventually takes on a more serious “measure.” As the grades advance, the material progresses into more complex and diverse subjects, such as geometry, trigonometry, algebra and calculus.The focus of formalised mathematical education is all about quantity, for numeracy is as important as literacy in our Western world of clocks, commerce and computers. This type of calculation, although very pragmatic, is really only half the equation. The educational system is usually devoid of any reference to the quality of numbers. The ancient traditions of “sacred number” and “sacred geometry” have been largely snuffed out over time. The deeper spiritual aspect – studying the repeating shapes, forms, symbols and patterns in nature – is all but lost in our work-a-day world. We need to bring these esoteric traditions back into view, and what better way to begin than with vision itself.Number OneOne touch of nature makes the whole world kin.
– Shakespeare

The spiritual side of the computational equation starts at the same point – literally. The ancient Greek mathematical philosophers viewed the number one as unity, a wholeness that provides a divine order to the cosmos. The circle, which is constructed from a central point, is the sacred geometric representation of this wholeness, the One that forms the Many. There exists one unique pattern of the circle, of which all circles share the same principles. But no two circles that arise from the One are identical.

Circular shapes abound in nature. Of particular significance is the circular shape of the human eyeball, the organ of our most valuable sense of sight. Ralph Waldo Emmerson recognised the first sacred shape in the human form when he wrote, “The eye is the first circle, the horizon which it forms is the second.” Other circles immediately apparent in the eye are the iris, the coloured portion, and the pupil, the black area which dilates and contracts in response to changing light stimuli.

Deep within the eye, unbeknownst to an observer, the point and the circle play an important role in how we visually perceive the outside world. The inside back portion of the eye (the “retina”) contains numerous light receptors called “cones.” The cones are distributed in such a way that the highest concentration is packed in a very small centre area called the “fovea centralis.” The cones gradually diminish in density as the distance increases from the fovea centralis. The cones are virtually non-existent at the outer periphery, or circumference, of the retina.

Contrary to what some may believe, we do not see equally clearly within the entire circle of our visual field. The focus is different than that captured on photographic film by a camera. The distribution of cones in the eye means that we see the clearest in the central point of our sight. Objects in the periphery are less clear. Because the cone distribution in the retina follows a geometric pattern similar to the energy distribution in a concentric wave, I call it “concentric focus.”

Also within the retina are receptors called “rods.” It is believed that the rods sense movement in our peripheral field. The distribution of the rods is essentially the opposite of the cones. The rods are non-existent in the centre and gradually increase in density towards the periphery. That’s why something moving in your peripheral field of vision can abruptly grab your attention.

Another principle of the circle is the continuous rotary motion of cycles and rhythms. With eyesight, oscillating rhythms are manifest in several ways. One of the most obvious is the continuous blink reflex. Our eyes also respond in cycles by closing at night and opening in the day. During sleep, the eyes have an alternating motion called rapid eye movement (REM), and when awake, they have numerous subconscious micro-movements – some vibrating at the frequency of a strummed guitar string – to key in on objects and maintain focus. The motion is contrary to that of a still camera, for without the continuous rhythmic activity, objects would quickly fade into blur.

Dr. William Bates was a New York ophthalmologist who pioneered the concept of natural vision improvement almost a century ago. He discovered that the most common types of blurred eyesight, for which glasses are usually prescribed, are actually responses to stress in our environment. The habitual pattern of strained looking causes the eyeball’s natural circular shape to go out of round. By removing strained vision habits, a person can gradually improve one’s eyesight and return to the purity of the One.

The ancient philosophers considered a true mathematical point within the circle as symbolic. It emerges from the immaterial realm and has no dimensions. Dr. Bates related this concept when he said, “The part seen best when the sight is normal is extremely small… the nearer the point of maximum vision approaches a mathematical point, which has no area, the better the sight.” The idea of concentric focus is a fundamental fact that must be truly appreciated when improving eyesight naturally.

Number Two

Tao gives birth to one,
One gives birth to two
– Lao Tzu

If the number one represents unity and wholeness, how does a second separate number emerge? The root word for “nature” means “to be born,” and the number two emerges through a birth-like process. Symbolically speaking, this process begins as the circle divides and replicates itself – just as a living cell does. The geometric representation of this replication is two circles of the same diameter each having their centre points touching the circumference of the other. The One projects forth as a reflection of itself and a “true” mathematical line is created from point to point.

The sacred principle of number two is polarity, whereby the line forms a tensile link between opposite poles. Paradoxically, there is both a separation and an attraction that binds the two, yearning once again for wholeness. It’s the yin/yang principle of Taoist thought, the perpetual rhythmic alternation of all life and the universe. The human body has a left side and a right side, a feminine side and a masculine side, an intuitive side and intellectual side, and so on. The modern left brain/right brain theory suggests the eyes are extensions of the brain’s two hemispheres. Although each eye sees things from a slightly different angle, they must work together seamlessly.

The concept of “two” in eyesight has further spiritual significance beyond the apparent. In Plato’s Timaeus, eyesight is described as a two-way process; the eye mediates between the inner realm and the external world of objects. The fire of the soul was said to emit a gentle light from within, flow through the eye and meet the outer daylight. Like falls upon like, coalesces and forms the perception of sight. In this philosophical view, the eye acts as a portal, the proverbial “window of the soul.”

The portal is actually a symbol that arises geometrically from one circle beginning to replicate into two. The fish-shaped vesica piscis is the area of overlap between the linked circles. It has been venerated throughout history by various cultures and nations and dates back to pagan and mystical religions. The early Christians considered it the link between heaven and earth, a bridge between spirit and form. Consequently, much medieval art symbolically depicts Christ within the fish-shaped area. In ancient architecture, particularly in cathedrals and holy temples, the vesica piscis was used extensively in the design of doorways. They were portals which permitted entry from the mundane world of reality into spiritual space.

Applying the metaphor of a portal to the eyes, one is immediately drawn to the distinct vesica piscis shape which the upper and lower eyelids produce. Within the eye itself, the same pointed oval shape is found when studying the anatomy of the lens from a side view. The lens is the part of the eye where light rays emitted from an external object refract in such a way to form an image on the retina.

Dr. Bates discovered that visual perception is more than simply a biomechanical process of camera-like parts in the body. The inner and outer aspects of eyesight are linked, as the mind and emotions have a great impact on how well we see external objects. During thirty years of clinical observation, he studied various ways in which people strained to see. He concluded that imagination, memory and sight coincide, and that when one is imperfect, all are imperfect. He encouraged visualisation as a healing technique long before it became in vogue. Perhaps a good mental image is to imagine the gentle light of your soul meeting the external light in the vesica piscis of your eyes.

The Western, scientific mindset artificially separates objective reality and subjective reality. This creates a tendency to overemphasise the external world of objects, freezing them into a supposed condition of permanence. Greek philosopher Heraclitus apparently equated such an unbalanced view as being stung by a scorpion. This “scorpion vision” paralyses us from seeing the eternal rhythm.

In a related vein, Dr. Bates cautioned against the forced concentration of staring, claiming it is an attempt to imagine things as stationary. The forced attention of staring immobilises the natural, healthy movements of the eye, and this straining actually has a boomerang effect. Instead of objects coming in more clearly, the objects become more blurred. An essential habit of healthy vision, therefore, is to maintain relaxed seeing by continuously shifting.

Number Three

But every tension of opposites culminates in a release, out of which comes the “third,” In the third, the tension is resolved and lost unity is restored.
– Carl Jung

When our two eyes work together in harmony to fuse a single image, our visual perception restores the “lost unity.” An outcome of this reunion is the emergence of a new number; three dimensional (3D) vision is born. The technical term for 3D vision is “stereopsis,” which is derived from stere, New Latin for “solid,” and opsis, Greek for “vision.” A stereoscopic image is, thus, solid sight that gives us a sense of volume. 3D vision provides depth to our world view, a level of understanding that goes beyond a two dimensional (2D) flat surface.

The sacred geometrical representation of number three is the triangle, which takes shape from the vesica piscis. An object in our sight is the third point midway between the eyes, the vertex that balances the opposing views of each eye’s unique perspective. The ancient philosophers valued the triad, assigning it qualities such as piety, friendship, harmony, peace, justice, temperance and virtue. It is the symbol of wisdom, for living prudently in the present requires learning from the past and planning for the future.

In addition to the physical concept of 3D vision, there is another principle of the triad in vision, but in a metaphysical sense. Mystics throughout the ages have spoken of a “third eye” between the brows that is the seat of the spirit. Renowned spiritual scientist and philosopher Rudolf Steiner described humans as a three-fold constitution – body, soul and spirit. Seers have supposedly awakened the eye of the spirit, the highest of the three levels, resulting in clairvoyant vision. The third eye, which remains dormant for the majority of people, may also be responsible for triggering hallucinations and out-of-body experiences. The pinecone shaped pineal gland, about the size of a pea and located between the brain’s two hemispheres, is claimed by some to be the location of the mysterious third eye.

Awakening the third eye may be highly elusive, but re-awakening a diminished sense of 3D vision is more easily attainable. Lenses prescribed to compensate for blurred vision are a compromise solution. Dr. Bates noted that glasses do provide immediate artificial clarity, but they don’t restore eyesight to a normal state. The lenses, although curved to help light rays converge properly inside the eye for better acuity, act as a barrier. Colours are less intense through the glass and objects are distorted in size. For people wearing glasses for distant viewing, the lenses diminish 3D perception, flattening it almost to the point of 2D vision for those with high strength prescriptions. The condition is reversible, for people who improve their eyesight by natural means invariably notice a marked improvement in their ability to see 3D again.

Mathematics and geometry are applied with efficient precision in our technological era. A prime example is the science of optics, where good vision is reduced to purely a numerical term, 20/20. Ironically, as the vision industry has grown and prospered, we’re collectively seeing worse, not better. The incidence of vision difficulties in North America signifies the imbalance. Fewer than three percent of children are born with visual defects yet, as they reach adulthood, nearly two thirds will become dependent on prescription eyewear. Non-industrialised nations are virtually free of such widespread vision problems. To help restore a quality outcome, perhaps it’s time we return to the spiritual teachings of sacred number and sacred geometry to understand what really “counts.”

.

DOUG MARSH, a professional engineer and vision education advocate, has extensively studied natural vision improvement and the mind/body interface as it relates to eyesight. He is the author of Restoring Your Eyesight: A Taoist Approach. The natural Taoist approach has greatly reduced his nearsightedness while also relieving the symptoms of a TMJ/inner-ear disorder. Most days he experiences brief, spontaneous “flashes” of near 20/20 eyesight, an encouraging sign that his vision continues to heal. He lives in Canada and his website is www.taosight.com.

The above article appeared in New Dawn No. 111 (Nov-Dec 2008).

Read this article with its illustrations by downloading
your copy of New Dawn 111 (PDF version) for only US$5

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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).

Download your copy of New Dawn 107 (PDF version) for only US$2.95

© New Dawn Magazine and the respective author.
For our reproduction notice, click here.

Daniel Reid

Daniel Reid Discusses The Natural Way To Prevent And Treat The Toxic Assault On Our Bodies…

By HUW GRIFFITHS

—

Daniel Reid is a leading expert on Eastern philosophy and medicine and is the author of several best selling books on various aspects of Chinese health, healing and traditional practices. His unparalleled ability to explain traditional oriental healing methods to the modern reader in ways that are both practical and easily applicable has earned him an international reputation that puts him in a class of his own.

In this recent interview with naturopath Huw Griffiths, Daniel Reid discusses his latest book The Tao of Detox.

Huw Griffiths: In The Tao of Detox you combine two extremely potent areas of interest that are current in contemporary society – the gradual, but seemingly inexorable integration of oriental philosophy and practices into Western lifestyle and culture together with the growing Western fixation with ‘Detox’. Until reading your book I wasn’t aware these two concepts were all that closely associated, yet your book presents them almost as two sides of the same coin. Is this just a clever and convenient way of presenting your ideas, or have the two concepts always gone hand in hand?

Daniel Reid: They’ve always gone hand in hand, but in my book, as in all my books, I do try to present any aspect of Asian culture in ways that are not only acceptable, but understandable to the Western reader.

Detox today is considered a very modern, a very new thing, and has developed almost to the point of becoming a fixation here in the West. You see the word literally everywhere and presented almost as if it’s a new discovery. Toxicity is the basic cause of disease, but this is ancient knowledge. Even in the West they knew this two hundred years ago.

A good example of current medical practice can be seen in Russia. If you go to a hospital in Russia for anything, whether it’s an in-growing toenail or a heart attack, the first thing they will give you is a colonic. The first priority is to start to get rid of all the built up, blocked rubbish in your colon, so that the body can start to function normally again.

I think I quote a sixteenth century TCM (Traditional Chinese Medicine) practitioner in my book: “If you want to be healthy, first clean the bowels.”

There are various ways of doing it, some systems use purging herbs, some like Ayurveda have elaborate detox methods using salt water that you drink, but the whole point is that tissue toxicity is the base root cause of discomfort and disease in the world today and has been known about for thousands of years.

Conventional Western medicine denies this direct link for the simple reason that when you detoxify yourself you essentially cure yourself and this would mean that there would no longer be any business for the pharmaceutical or medical industries.

What is happening to us today is ironic because we are doing it to ourselves. We’re being poisoned! The West’s food is full of additives, preservatives, pesticides, MSG, aspartame, you name it. There a hundreds of things that are allowed into people’s food and water. It’s disgraceful!

Everything that modern people put inside their mouths these days makes us ever more toxic. We consequently develop symptoms, discomforts and then eventually disease, for which they give us drugs then more drugs until it finally all gets too much and they pack us off to the surgeon for some sort of final solution.

Another example is what they do to our babies! Whether a baby is born in Australia or the US, within a week of birth they begin to receive a series of vaccines, some of which contain mercury or aluminium adjuvants. Now anyone who injects a new born baby with anything that has got mercury, or anything with heavy metal in it, is either a mad scientist or being unethical. At least when I was a child we got the shots when we were five years old. Now they get it within a week of being born.

Not surprising then that we have now got a pandemic of autism and brain damage in the US. I’ve known people who have had their babies die in their arms only eight hours after having had a vaccine shot, and the doctors just shrug and say ‘It’s just crib disease’, and turn away. They’ve just killed them!

It’s incredible that even the doctors are doing it to us. What I’m saying is that it’s really important Westerners pick up on these things and become aware. These foods and medicines are toxic and we should be switching to a more naturopathic, more Asian way of doing things.

HG: When the word ‘detox’ gets mentioned these days most people think in more physical terms, that is we tend to think more of purifying the body and not much else. Yet the ideas put forward in The Tao of Detox go much further than that. You talk of detoxifying the body, mind and spirit as if they are one inseparable whole. For many Western readers, accepting this concept must surely be a major challenge and for that matter a potential barrier to the adoption of some of the practices that you teach. Do you see these more esoteric aspects to detoxification as absolute needs or could they be treated as optional by the average Westerner?

DR: They can be treated as optional so long as the person who does it is prepared for the inevitability of the body needing to be detoxified again and again. But a major issue is an individual’s attitude to themselves, to their consciousness and the impact that this can have on their lifestyle habits. A person who eats so much that they weigh say, 750 pounds, is clearly destroying themselves. They have a mental problem, otherwise why would you do that to yourself?

The issue of addiction is an obvious example: alcoholics, drug addicts, smoking, people who get hooked on diet coke full of aspartame until they end up in a wheelchair. People in this predicament are clearly not enlightened, they have a problem of some kind, whether it’s an unresolved issue from their childhood or whatever.

Now people in this type of situation, and we’ve had plenty of people like this on our own programs, they tend to come back again and again. We clean them up, and then they come back toxic later on. We tell them, “Hey, you’ve got to get out of this habit, this relationship, this job, you’ve got to stop eating this food,” but very often they just don’t want to. So they go over the same steps again and again.

Now, with regard to this mind/body thing there is a very definite connection, but it’s very difficult to see the borderline between a person’s energy system and their physical body. But there is a tangible link between the two and it’s ‘Breathing’!

Take, for example, what happens when you sense fear. Your breathing takes on a certain pattern, then if you are really frightened it will make you pee your pants. Now, for fear, which is most definitely a mental figment, to suddenly make you evacuate your bladder clearly shows a connection between the mind and the body.

Similarly, when you get angry you get hot (usually under the collar) because blood is rushing up to your face from your liver and makes your face go bright red. These two examples are basic demonstrations of the effects of stress. Stress (which is mental) has become the bane of modern life and everybody who is under stress, without going into heavy detail, is essentially going to experience the fight or flight response. The reality is that the first thing that happens when anyone experiences a stress response is their immune system shuts down.

Therefore, people who put themselves under stress 24 hours a day, which is easily done, are basically running on no immune system and the ease with which people can escalate from say fear, to a stress response and then on to a heart attack is a major problem.

Mind and spirit ultimately hold the root causes of all our physical problems. Sure, you can keep fixing the physical problems if you can catch them in time by detoxing or whatever, but if you don’t do something about the root source, you are going to go right back to it all the time. It’s not going to go away.

HG: Is the need for detoxification reaching some sort of crisis point in the world today? In your book you mention many sources from which toxins emanate and eventually enter our bodies and you present rapid re-toxification as some kind of inevitability. Is the situation really that much worse than it was say ten years ago or are we just becoming more aware of the issues these days?

DR: OK! As to the answer to the first question about the crisis point… Yes! It really is that serious!

The main reason is that when you get toxic you effectively destroy your immune response, yet this is exactly what you need most when you get toxic. With your immune response down you are open to all these other diseases, the super germs and all the other things that are happening around the world.

Detoxification is absolutely essential to restore normal immune response and once you have done that your body has a chance to recover. But when people remain toxic, and today people really are toxic, there is no magic that can help them. They’re shut down.

As far as today versus ten years ago is concerned, ‘Yes, it’s much worse’. We’re at saturation level and it’s a matter of the amount of chemicals that are being used in the production of food and especially in pharmaceutical drugs, which is much more than was being used ten years ago.

We also have to now face another major threatening factor: electro-magnetic fields. These artificial fields, and even worse the microwave thing, cell phones themselves, the relay towers that are everywhere (in Australia by the way they are hidden in plastic palm trees so that you can’t see them). All these are far more serious and significant than anyone actually imagines. Just because people don’t see it, they don’t worry about it. The point is, and I have studied this carefully, microwave pollution and artificial electro-magnetic fields, which are all around us in computers, appliances, high tension wires, etc, are doing far worse damage to us than the damage being done by chemicals.

The radiation from these sources is there all the time, 24 hours a day, and all during that time your body is going through a stress response. You can’t see it, but it is there and causing a stress response in your body. What happens then is that your immune system shuts down, you have cortisone coming out of your adrenal glands and your whole system is in fight or flight response. This isn’t just once in a while, it’s all the time.

So people who don’t do things like Chi-Gung, or meditation or who don’t know how to calm down and switch themselves back into healing mode, are really falling apart fast.

So ‘Yes’, the situation really is much worse than before.

HG: There is a major and looming threat to global human health in general with the imminent ratification of Codex Alimentarius in 2009. Despite the fact that most people have never heard of Codex, let alone understand the impact that it is about to have on all our lives, it occurs to me that several of the detoxing nutrients, herbs and agents that you describe in The Tao of Detox may well be harder to obtain once it has passed into law. Or am I jumping at shadows here?

DR: If Codex is permitted to go into effect as it stands, most of the nutritional and detoxification supplements that I mention in my book will be either strictly prohibited or will become as illegal as heroin. Of the eighteen that will remain out of the three or four hundred that will be banned, these will only be available by prescription and in such ridiculously low doses that they will be therapeutically useless. They will also be made from synthetic sources and will almost certainly cost about twenty times what they cost today.

You won’t be able to get the things that really work and the few things that will be allowed will be next to useless. Everything that I write about in my books, the vitamins, minerals and other supplements, you won’t be able to get them. It all means that you won’t be able to take care of yourself basically. That is the whole point of Codex. It’s a shocker!

HG: The potential grip that Codex will impose on global society has accelerated and expanded at an alarming rate over the last decade or so. However, the main area of the ‘treaty’ that is most likely to impact us from a naturopathic standpoint is the drafting of the ‘Vitamin and Mineral Guidelines’ that was introduced in draft form in July 2006. In your opinion what exactly is it that represents such a large threat to our health freedoms as far as Codex is concerned, and who is likely to be most affected?

DR: Well, let’s get down to basics. If you look at the ‘Vitamin and Mineral Guidelines’, they have reclassified vitamins. Right now vitamins and minerals are considered to be food. That is why they are there in the regulations. Codex started the whole thing by reclassifying all pure nutritional supplements, the extracted ones, the B group vitamins, A, D and C, as well as herbal extracts for example, and have now defined them as toxins. Get that? Toxins!? I mean this is incredible, just incredible!

The rationale they use as a pretext for controlling them in this way is that they take the minimum daily requirement you currently have for any given supplement (which supposedly has a therapeutic effect) and they divide that amount by one hundred. So one hundredth of the current recommended daily amount now becomes the new level that is acceptable.

Therefore, if the accepted daily recommended amount of Vitamin C is considered to be say 100 mgs, they will be cutting it down to 1 mg and justify it on the basis that they are preventing the public from getting toxic poisoning from an overdose of vitamin C. They say that they must do this!

The next thing will be (and they’ve already started to do this) is to start brainwashing the public to accept this false impression by planting all these reports in the news media. You’ve seen it yourself, the headlines a short while ago that vitamins are bad for you, that they’re dangerous, that they cause heart disease, that they interfere with medicines, that they cause this or cause that. Of course they are all based on phoney studies and use vitamins that are synthetically produced instead of the real thing.

All this so that by the time the Codex axe falls on 31 December 2009, they’ll be hoping they have the public mainstream thinking that the governments are doing the public a big favour.

Protecting the public though, this is not the real issue at all. The real issue is that so many people are now fixing themselves with vitamins, minerals and herbs that it is cutting into the profits of the pharmaceutical industry, not to mention incomes of the medical fraternity and hospitals. People are demonstrating that they are sick and tired of taking pills that kill them.

The whole intention of Codex is to eliminate public access to natural health care so that the pharmaceutical and hospital industries can survive. From a commercial point of view vitamins, minerals and herbs cannot be patented, therefore they cannot be monopolised nor therefore controlled nor sold at highly inflated prices.

If they could be patented then they’d be legal and they wouldn’t have been included in Codex.

HG: Do you actually think that Codex will be eventually allowed to pass into law?

DR: It will be passed into law unless there is a public outcry. I’m 50:50 on it. The public everywhere, they don’t lift their heads from the feeding trough and they don’t see that they’re getting screwed.

It could very simply be stopped by people simply calling or emailing the people that they vote for and saying, ‘if you don’t get rid of this I’m not going to vote for you again’. Any politician normally has one priority, which is to get re-elected. Most politicians by the way, I’ll guarantee this, at least nine out of ten, have never heard the word Codex and it’ll be the same in the US Congress. Never mind the public, the politicians don’t even know what is going on. They have to be informed, the public and the politicians.

Magazines like New Dawn are doing a big service that way. If enough people find out what is happening in the mainstream public domain then they could change things. As things are in the process of being changed things could definitely be stopped, but once it becomes law it becomes an issue of trade organisation and that means if a nation decides to ignore one of the conditions of Codex, then global trading organisations will effectively be able to impose trading sanctions.

So, if it comes in we’re really going to be screwed, but it’s very easy to stop, simply by raising public awareness and a call to action.

One thing that I do know though is that if it’s allowed to happen, then you will be walking into your favourite health food store on 1 Jan 2010 and there will be nothing of any nutritional value left on the shelves.

What food there is will be irradiated with gamma rays and genetically modified food will no longer be required to be clearly identified and labelled. It really will be hitting food in a major way. Meat, for example, will be regulated so that it will have to have the requisite dosages of antibiotics and steroids in it. This is genuinely a serious matter and once it’s in place we are not going to be able to get what we really need in order to be able to take care of ourselves.

Codex, which has been under development since 1962, has never been intended for the good of mankind!

The entire concept was developed by a German industrialist by the name of Farben (who was also the guy who developed mass fluoridation programs on the basis that if you dumped fluoride into the public water supply system you could pacify large numbers of people). Farben who had headed up one of Nazi Germany’s major chemical companies, following his acquittal at the post-war Nazi trials, got together with a bunch of other industrialists and came up with this idea that if you could control public access to food and medicine you could control the world. This is the thing about Codex: it was always meant to be for the benefit of the corporations and was never intended to protect the public. Never!

So that was the way it was started, except it wasn’t publicised that way. It’s been a bit like the way the war in Iraq was publicised as good for us, all part of the bullshit!

HG: And how would the so-called Third World be affected by Codex, because the implications of what you are saying is that the lives of millions of people living there might be about to be seriously threatened? Or am I letting my imagination run riot here?

DR: The real agenda here, apart from ensuring that the Western public is forced to use products produced by the industrial pharmaceutical and food interests, is best answered by quoting Henry Kissinger in a speech to the Bilderberger Group about ten years ago. He referred to people in the Third World as ‘useless eaters’! These words have now become quite commonly quoted, but it was Kissinger who first came up with them. You can only assume that what he meant was that they were consuming a lot of the world’s food and that they are useless. Useless to whom? To the white West, to the Anglo-Saxon empire, I have no idea, but the expression was absolutely indefensible!

In the Third World, in Africa, India and the Middle East, the people there are already on the very edge as far as immune response is concerned. They’re very toxic and they’re getting dumped on with pharmaceutical drugs that can’t be sold in the US, and for which no prescription is required.

So there are millions of people who are on the edge in the Third World. If you eliminate all sorts of nutritional supplementation, not only as stand alone supplements, but as nutritionally buffered food such as flour and rice that is fortified and then sent to famine stricken regions, then you effectively eliminate these people’s access to nutrients. So who is going to be affected the most? The people who are already on the edge.

Millions, even billions of people, will die as a result of Codex due to nutritional starvation and toxicity because there will be no more basic nutrition in what is left of the world’s food supply. So yes, it will affect the Third World a lot and when you look at who started it, the head of Farben, and you look at who has further pursued it, the likes of Kissinger, it makes you wonder what their real agenda must be!

You will still see food being sent to trouble spots around the world, but the food supplies will be as much good as plastic or sawdust after the introduction of Codex. The world’s media will still be showing pictures of food relief going to help all those people, but it will be useless and they’re going to die anyway. Enough on that!

HG: Daniel, I’ve really enjoyed our chat and I didn’t mean to distract our discussion away from your book, which I found to be not only an excellent read, but a highly practical manual for survival in today’s toxic world, but I know that you have a strong and dedicated interest in what is going on with Codex and didn’t want to miss the opportunity to get your views on it.

Daniel Reid’s website is www.danreid.org.

.

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. He lives in Sydney’s Northern Beaches and can be contacted via New Dawn magazine.

The above article appeared in New Dawn No. 102 (May-June 2007).

Read this article with its illustrations by downloading
your copy of New Dawn 102 (PDF version) for only US$2.95

© New Dawn Magazine and the respective author.
For our reproduction notice, click here.

—

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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