In the current issue of Nexus magazine is a revealing article by biochemist and toxicologist, Walter Last. He shows how iatrogenic diseases (diseases caused by medical treatment) are the leading cause of death in the West. With an annual fatality rate in the US of 783,936 in 2001, caused by fatal drug reactions, medical errors or unnecessary medical and surgical procedures, this outstripped the death rate caused from heart disease and cancer in the same year.
Ironically, when doctors went on strike in Los Angeles county in 1976, the death rate fell by 18% and in 1973 in Israel a similar strike saw the number of deaths during that period reduce by a staggering 50%!
Last discusses the pioneering work done by Dr Orian Truss in the early 50s in which he saw a direct correlation between candisiasis - a fungal over-growth in the intestines that can cause food allergies, muscle aches and many other eventually fatal complications - and antibiotics.
Antibiotics are widely prescribed among the medical profession and aren’t the only ones to cause such problems. Drugs used in chemotherapy, anti-inflammatory steroidal and other long-term drug therapies can have an equally debilitating effect on patients which can also eventually result in death.
Last explains that under normal conditions the body produces natural amounts of intestinal flora, mainly based on lactobacteria, which helps in the digestion of food and at the same time protects the body from harmful bacteria, such as salmonella. This ability is severely compromised when these drugs are continually administered and candida establishes itself as a result. This process is known as dysbiosis.
“With chronic dysbiosis, the intestinal wall becomes inflamed, causing ulcers, appendicitis, malabsorption and Crohn’s disease and as the intestinal membrane erodes, the patient develops multiple food allergies, arthritis and autoimmune diseases”, Last adds. The vicious cycle is exacerbated by the medical profession’s preference to administer more antibiotics in an erroneous attempt to treat these conditions.
The good old daysAlthough, back in the early 1900s, diets were often high in saturated fats, heart attacks were rare, contrary to present-day philosophy. The ascent of heart attacks and cardiovascular disease began with the pasteurisation of milk and the use of chlorine in water supplies to kill bacteria. It seems that these preventative measures to kill off natural bacteria in both milk and water had prevented a natural line of defence in our bodies derived from such bacteria. In countries such as Africa, China, Japan and other parts of Asia where the chlorination of water and pasteurising of milk were not introduced, heart attacks and cardiovascular diseases were unknown.
Also back in the last half of the nineteenth century, scarlet fever, diptheria, whooping cough and measles had declined by 90% following improvements in public health and
before the introduction of vaccines. These very vaccines have, however, brought with them an increase in the death rate from the targeted diseases as well as some cot deaths with immunised babies. The presence of toxic heavy metals in vaccines have also been connected to the rise in autism and Attention Deficiency Disorders. The Amish in America, who refuse vaccinations, suffer from none of these.
Until 1980, the rates of type 2 diabetes and obesity were fairly uncommon and stable. But when health authorities started to advise against eating foods containing fats and cholesterol, recommending instead, a higher intake of carbohydrates - exacerbated by a food industry peddling such badies - obesity and associated type 2 diabetes increased from just 15% among the US population in 1980 to a chronically obese rate of 31% today, and if one adds the marginally obese, that figure rises to almost 65%.
Chemical cocktailsOne of the main problems with the introduction of new drugs is that they are not tested for long enough. With continual administering the accumulative effect of many drugs can be devastating whereas their short-term use may be acceptable. Many people can find themselves prescribed a whole plethora of different drugs for different complaints and it is the mixing of such medications which is rarely, if ever, examined. Several years on a cocktail of drugs can create an entanglement of effects, almost impossible to unravel.
Natural is bestMany proven natural cancer treatments have been traditionally shunned by conventional medical science and alternative health practitioners who offer such remedies have often being brought before the courts and imprisoned.
The driving force behind this rejection of natural health remedies, not just with cancer but with many other diseases, is the drug cartel lobby that virtually runs our health services in the West. Not only do they have a strong influence in directing doctor’s to prescribe their, at best doubtful and at worst harmful wares but also direct and fund clinical research, whose reports weigh heavily in favour of their products while rubbishing the claims of alternative natural practitioners products and claims. This big pharma influence also begins in the medical schools whose students are unknowingly influenced with biased teaching.
The message one gleans from Last’s evidence is clear. Eat and live healthily, sourcing natural remedies wherever possible, rendering your GP and hospital as a last resort.
Further reading: ‘Heal Yourself and Healing Foods’ by Walter Last (Penguin Books)
