A Centennial Observation of Errors
Contents in this issue:
- A Centennial Observation of Errors
The following is a transcription of the Third Quarter 1976 issue of Dr. Royal Lee’s Applied Trophology newsletter, originally published by Standard Process Laboratories.
A Centennial Observation of Errors
‘‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.”
—The Declaration of Independence, 1776
The following is quoted in part from Reflections on the Pursuit of Freedom, by Dr. George Tideman:
Room for All
Deep in every breast is a conviction that in human affairs we are governed by a supreme law of justice, which each one is aware of in the inner voice called conscience. By our endowed moral sense, we are aware of the Law of Equity, which, if violated, brings on certain retribution. In our social environment we have reaped involuntary unemployment, poverty, and a train of evils that grow out of inequity. In public concerns we must apply economic science if we are to deserve and have full employment consistent with free enterprise. “For whatsoever a man soweth, that will he also reap” (Galatians 6:7). Bringing intelligence and morals together will harm no one. That truism is written in the Rock of Ages.
The Natural Order
Earth, Sea and Air are Man’s common inheritance. The right to use land is lost to millions by the incidence of land speculation and land monopoly. Without equal rights to use Natural Resources, how can we define Justice?… Speculation in land carried on in city, suburb and countryside, wherever progress is anticipated, is the only force in modern society with power enough to slow down production and bring on the unemployment that defeats all the make-work promises of lawmakers…While the earth under our feet is used for monopoly and speculation, we do not have Free Enterprise. This is the iniquity that has brought on the Communist revolutions in the old world. The unemployment and flood of evils resulting prove that the natural law of compensation has been violated. That our learned men and women have turned their attention away from this phenomenon is the scandal of the Century! Here is the prime violation of Law and Order in this age of material progress. This explains why, along with all progress in production and trade, poverty continues to be a social problem; the powers of a few sustained by special privilege, the rights of millions diluted by disinheritance…Stop the land speculation, which benefits very few people and serves only to block and slow down production; then any ambitious person will be free to acquire the luxuries that make life worth living, without depending on schemes that burden the conscience…
What is our moral progress if we fail to acknowledge that “all men are created equal” and that this concept is meaningless unless we see that this means equality of opportunity, not special privilege to a few?
Copies of the complete brochure may be obtained from Free Enterprise Association, 307 N. Belmont Ave., Arlington Heights, IL, 60004
Liberty
“The spirit of liberty is not
merely, as multitudes image, a jealousy of
our own particular rights, but a
respect for the rights of others,
and an unwillingness that any man,
whether high or low, should be
wronged or trampled under foot.”
—William Channing
We can be sure that our founding fathers would be astounded at the selfish attitude and suspect motives of our present technology, the participation of some bureaucratic government agencies and their apparent favoring of agribusiness, chemicals and drugs, organized medicine, dentistry and the giant conglomerate enterprises that have swallowed up small business establishments and small farms at the expense of our free enterprise system, after only two hundred years of existence. Should this selfish attitude be allowed to continue at the rate of the past fifty years, our country could be well on the way to destruction during the coming century.
Gandhi stated: “Earth provides enough for every man’s need—but not enough for every man’s greed.”
The greed angle comes in focus, to some extent, when we observe how our bicentennial celebration practically developed into a buy-centennial. However, we believe that the energy calamity, dumped into our lap after the oil industry skimmed off the profits, is only one of the present and future problems brought on by greed. Conservationists advise that our natural resources have been so exploited and wasted that in many instances we have reached the point of no return. Our immediate objective must be to arrest the backsliding and improve the quality of our environment.
Apparently, we may receive some help in this endeavor. Kent Frizell of the U.S. Department of the Interior says:
“The Interior Department has a vital role in protecting our immense natural resources. I want to make it clear that we are determined to carry out our management responsibilities to ensure that this nation remains America the Beautiful, rather than become America the Environmental Disaster.”
To this we say “Amen” and add the old cliché “Better late than never.”
Health Freedom
Health freedom seems to be an area demanding constant public concern and vigilance. A fair definition has been stated: “The right to manufacture, grow, buy, sell, distribute or consume any food, vitamin or other supplement without bureaucratic restrictions (either federal or state), as long as the product is safe and honestly labeled.”
Health freedom is the right to choose a desired lifestyle or method of health care as long as there is no imposition on others. It also includes the choice of an orthodox medical physician, preventive medical physician, chiropractor, naturopath, naprapath, osteopathic physician, or Christian Science healer. According to a recent court decision, a choice may be made in the prolongation of death. The case in point, which attracted national attention, is that of Karen Anne Quinlan, paralyzed by the combined action of alcohol with a tranquilizer, also known to cause death. Her parents chose to sever the prescribed method of treatment as inappropriate in that it did not allow her to have a natural death. Freedom of choice is too often disregarded by powerful lobbying agencies for organized medicine and dentistry, drug and chemical industries, aluminum and steel manufacturers and the sugar industry, all proponents and/or beneficiaries of drinking water fluoridation.
Fluoridation
The sugar industry has used fluoridation as a pawn, in that if it prevents caries or even makes people think so, the market for sugar, a known cause of dental caries, will continue at the highest rate in history. Carefully developed statistics, as determined in foreign countries, as a basis for discontinuing water fluoridation, also suggest that sugar not only increased dental cavities but also was one of the main factors in causing high serum triglycerides, linked with hypercholesterolemia. These statistics also show that general health in nonfluoridated areas may be better than in fluoridated areas.
Fluoridation has been a gratuity of billions of dollars for the aluminum and steel industries, as it allowed them to sell a useless, deadly poisonous waste product, for which they could find no method of disposal. Now, 5 percent of it may or may not be a deterrent of dental caries in children’s mouths, depending on the amount of sweets going through their mouth, and 95 percent ending up in our sewer systems to pollute our lakes and rivers. Apparently, this is one instance in which the public (taxpayers) have taken care of the pollution problem for industry.
The question is: How much are we polluting our body with this enzyme-inhibiting, cumulative synthetic poison? The original estimate of one part per million (ppm) was for treating drinking water only. But now that fluoridated water is used in the processing of practically all of our foods, is used in toothpastes, sprays, fertilizers, and is present in most of the air we breathe and possibly in the recycled water from our lakes and rivers, it would be very interesting to know how much over the one ppm we are individually actually taking into our systems. The overage could really be very harmful. One ppm equals one drop of the chemical fluoride in seventeen gallons of water. However, should the amount from other sources equal another drop in the seventeen gallons of water the dose would be doubled and twice as harmful. This product is used to etch glass and thus must be very corrosive. How much corrosion can the soft tissues of our body stand in comparison?
It is no wonder that the health aspects are changing rapidly in early water-fluoridated areas. Because of complaints of possible harmful effects in some cities, health officers are receiving publicity as “protectors of health” by upholding the usual fluoridation propaganda. Their proof is usually the mouthings of several others who have only repeated what they have heard—in other words, hearsay evidence. As Hitler reportedly said, “Tell a lie often enough and somebody will believe it,” or words to that effect.
One such official reportedly stated that fluoride had been proved to have an extraordinarily beneficial effect on teeth, as well as an advantageous effect on bones. Another reportedly said: “A lifetime study of fluoridation has shown that there is no cause for alarm.” This can be refuted because fluoridation with sodium fluoride has not been with us a lifetime, and biochemists tell us that cumulative chemicals in the body may not have an alarming effect for from twenty to thirty years. We are now probably going into that era of more noticeable effects.
Statisticians advise that for some time past heart and vascular conditions have increased in fluoridated areas. Only recently it has been reported that the incidence of cancer has also increased, in a comparison of like nonfluoridated areas. The so-called beneficial effect on teeth is usually promoted by nonpracticing dentists or physicians serving in some governmental capacity. Many practicing dentists advise that the effects are extraordinary in that the teeth become fluorosed with white spots changing to brown or become so brittle they will not retain fillings and so must be extracted sooner than nonfluoridated teeth. As to the lower percentage of cavities in young children of the same age in fluoridated and nonfluoridated areas, it has been observed that fluoride apparently affects the tooth germ causing a delayed dentition. Naturally, with less teeth in the mouth the fluoridated child would have less cavities.
Now we seem to have a constant repetition of the statement that drinking fluoridated water counteracts osteoporosis in elderly people. Apparently, this may be just a selling point because many of our aged people have no teeth to be treated. It has been discredited not only by rabbit tests but also by the thousands of hip joint surgical replacements now in process. The statement on the beneficial effect of bones started, we understand, as a figment of the imagination of Dr. Frederick Stare, Harvard nutritionist. It has been repeated so many times that some people do believe it. With Harvard’s vested interests and research projects endowed by prominent corporations of the food industry, it isn’t too hard to imagine that sometimes he may be on the wrong side of the facts.
Fact or Fancy?
Because of his well-publicized support, Dr. Stare has been accused of taking “outrageous positions on junk food and chemical additives.” Health experts are now panning his new book Panic in the Pantry. Attorney Anita Johnson of the Health Research Group in Washington, DC, said:
“Stare constantly belittles the dangers of food chemicals throughout his book, despite evidence to the contrary. When you know he gets a lot of money from the food industry you can put that together…His main theory on food is that we should eat it and not worry about it because eating is a great pleasure in life. That’s the kind of sap his book is filled with.”
Dr. Vernon J. Tipton, director of the Utah Center for Health and Environmental Studies, said:
“It’s very difficult to be objective when you have vested interests. You can’t represent an industry and a research effort at the same time. I wouldn’t do what Stare has done.”
Dr. Michael Jacobson of the Center for Science in the Public Interest, recently stated:
“Stare is no longer a disinterested observer in the field of nutrition. He’s compromised himself and he’s no longer objective.”
And reliable Mrs. Mary Goodwin, public health nutritionist for Montgomery County, Md., remarked:
“When Fred Stare retires, it will be an advantage to the country. I find it offensive that he’s working for the food industries. Stare is undermining, not benefitting health.”
With such a biased background, Dr. Stare presumably never has been the so-called “neutral” expert food witness employed by government agencies in court cases to malign and defame pioneer nutritionists such as Dr. Royal Lee. Under the circumstances the validity of such testimony would appear to be questionable, if not invalid in entirety.
A Chemical Environment
“Of all the factors which make for human health, the greatest single factor is perfectly constituted food.”
—Sir Robert McCarrison in Nutrition and Health (Faber and Faber)
Our government officials and industry must accept the fact that the object of producing nutritious good food is primarily that the health and welfare of our people shall be maintained. With the avaricious scramble for profits this seems to be a forgotten issue. Many of our modern foods have only become possible because of the use of artificial colors, flavors, and texturizing agents. As a result, the food industry believes that its future will benefit more if associated with the chemical industry than with the agricultural industry.
It would seem this is just wishful thinking. Yet at a recent food production meeting the industry was in effect advised to “shy away from price-oriented commodity items and look to highly manufactured products in the decades ahead. The more additive-addicted food created, the higher will be the profit margins.”
They apparently assume that profits are all that is necessary to thwart nature. But, from Horace (Epistles, Book LX, 24) we learn: “You may drive out Nature with a pitch fork but she will ever hurry back, to triumph in stealth over your foolish attempt.”
Beside the food additives there are many other chemicals contributing to our polluted environment. Scientists accept the fact that heart disease, cancer, liver conditions, brain damage and teratogenic effects may well be associated with environmental pollution. We are subjected to high levels of organochlorine and organophosphorus pesticides in the air and probably in our food and water, the polychlorinated biphenyls, radioactive fallout and other products of industrial activity such as cadmium, lead, and mercury. All contribute to our present unhealthy atmosphere.
Also contributing are the higher industrial dirt levels causing pulmonary conditions such as black lung, silicosis and asbestos fibrositis. DDT, with a half-life of twenty years, will continue to be with us as a dangerous pollutant of our soil, as will the herbicides, fungicides, and rodenticides. Soil pollutants deter and eventually kill our indispensable biological soil activity.
We note that soil scientist Dr. W.A. Albrecht stated in Food for Living Man: “Biological soil action continues to be the basis for natural growth and health. Also, human bodies with minds capable of thought and reason.”
Methods at Fault
This type of reasoning, which seems to have evaded the staffs of our land-grant colleges and county agricultural agents for the past fifty years, is believed to be a probable cause of our national health decline during this same period. Others are the continuing lowering of protein value of our crops, through mining of the soil by not returning the natural requirements and through hybridization. Sick crops may result, so nature sends out her hordes of insects to destroy this food lacking in nutrients. Spraying only makes a bad food worse. Healthy food crops did not need spraying until after the war when it became necessary to find uses for the formulas taken over from the German I.G. Farbin Industries.
Apparently, we are more or less forced to eat chemically fertilized and sprayed so-called food that nature has rejected. Perhaps if ingested one chemical at a time they could be rejected by our bodies, but our cellular mechanisms no doubt become confused and bewildered by the countless food additives that, through commercial use, enter our environment annually. A combination of any of them could possibly cause cancer. No wonder we are advised that one of every four persons in this country may be a cancer victim. It is surprising that any of us can avoid it. We are advised that congressional investigators find that no government authority requires a substantiating proof of safety of any of these chemical substances as they enter our food chain. Almost two million chemicals are said to exist today, and approximately 250,000 new ones are created yearly.
With such an array of chemicals in our food and general environment—more than any other nation—the health forecasts for our nation are said to be the gloomiest in the world, in regard to the continued increase of heart and vascular conditions, cancer, high blood pressure, and congenital abnormalities caused by degenerative disease. As Dr. Franklin Bicknell stated, our food, “though most abundant, is also the most unwholesome.”
Apparently, the probable cause, is, as stated by a former professor of nutrition at Cornell University: “Chemicals are introduced into foods to make a cheap product seem like a better one. Health is hurt either directly by the chemicals or their displacement of ingredients of proven nutritive value.”
Note the observations of Dr. Francis E. Ray, former Director of Cancer Research, University of Florida: “There are hundreds of cancer-producing chemicals (carcinogens). It might be very difficult to prove that a tumorous growth was initiated by the long-continued ingestion of a chemical in food.” He offers a common-sense suggestion for better health for the consumer and less profits for the chemical industry: “It is vital that the harmlessness of chemicals be determined before they are permitted in food.” (Emphasis ours.)
Must We Serve as Guinea Pigs?
In a recent report to Congress, the General Accounting Office stated: “The public is not, we believe, adequately protected from some of these chemicals, because federal regulations neither ban their use nor cover all means of public exposure…No uniform federal policy exists for control of cancer-causing chemicals.” It concluded: “The elaborate bureaucracy of seven major and more than ten secondary federal agencies with authority for identifying or regulating cancerous substances is not very effective.”
Apparently, responsibility will have to be more centrally controlled as the constant bickering and petty jealousies between federal agencies have been amply demonstrated in the past. This could be a prime reason that about 1,000 Americans die daily from some type of cancer, 90 percent of which, according to scientists, may be caused by chemicals and their presence in the air, added to our food and water, and as a general environmental factor.
Since 1958 over 3,000 food additives have been approved and are now incorporated in our food chain. Food manufacturers and/or processors now use 1.06 billion pounds of these additives annually. This is a substantial increase when compared to the 419 million pounds used in 1955. If, as scientists advise and as the GAO states, there is no substantiating proof of safety of these chemical substances, our problem is no longer just toxicological but also carcinogenic and teratogenic. Consumers should not be required to serve as guinea pigs, for, as Senator Abraham Ribicoff of Connecticut has stated: “The risk to human life may be too great.”
Our environment must be better regulated. As mostly urban dwellers we cannot be disassociated from our environment. Our present commercial setup makes it easy to eat an abundance of food and still deprive our system of the essential elements necessary for complete nutrition.
Health, Life and Politics
“I follow nature as the surest guide, and resign myself, with implicit obedience, to her sacred ordinances.”
—Cicero
In order to conserve our human life and energy we should proceed to take note of our own physical resources and our ability to face life’s daily problems. With more and more additives the task is not getting any easier. As to their safety, the World Health Organization (WHO) advises, “No additive can be claimed to be completely nontoxic and safe.” Then, why additives? To meet consumer demands to improve flavor, color and, last but not least, profitability.
A division manager of one of the largest food chemical companies recently stated (emphasis ours):
“Our optimism about the use of chemical additives in the food industry is based largely on the sensational growth of manufactured convenience foods. Such foods invariably require many more additives than conventionally produced food, because they are prepared under severe conditions of temperature, pressure or agitation, therefore they require the addition of special flavorings, flavor enhancers, colors, texturizing agents, etc., to make up for the loss of properties during processing.”
The loss of these food ingredients cannot be glossed over with the addition of chemicals, flavors and as he says: “etc.” It is impossible to substitute for the enzymes, vitamins, proteins, and minerals needed for proper metabolism, in the amounts and form nature has supplied them. It has been stated: “You are not only what you eat but also what you do with what you eat.”
When we look at the wide variety of additive-rich foods available, life seems to become a matter of politics. Eating to keep ourselves alive means a political decision whenever we shop or eat out. We dare not let “doctored up” foods add to our daily problems.
The things that will destroy us are:
politics without principle;
pleasure without conscience;
wealth without work;
knowledge without character;
business without morality;
science without humanity and
worship without sacrifice.
—Anon
And, we must also remember the words of William Allen White: “Liberty is the only thing you can’t have unless you give it to others.”
As the present beneficiaries of our country’s bountiful past, we pray our country will endure, so that the American populace of 2076 will still be blessed with “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”
