[NewsTarget] The Hundred Year Lie- Myths about Synthetic Chemicals

[Guest guest]

Hi everyone,

 

Feeling we needed something with more bite than tea, I ran across

this link, and after hearing much to do about this book lately- I

thought this would round out our site today..

 

The interview- http://www.newstarget.com/019434.html

The home page- http://www.hundredyearlie.com/

 

See below for a quick glimpse over the principles of the book-

though much more detailed information is available at the links

above.

 

Misty L. Trepke

http://www..com

 

Over the past one hundred years our species has been engaged in a

vast and complicated chemistry experiment. Each and every one of us,

along with our children, our parents and our grandparents, have been

a guinea pig in this experiment that uses our bodies, our health,

our wealth and our good will to test the proposition that modern

science can improve upon the foods and medicines of Nature.

 

Despite our culture's remarkable sophistication in medical

technology that keeps the seriously ill alive and extends lifespans,

our overall health condition has degenerated alarmingly and rapidly.

Over the past 100 years our cancer mortality has gone from 3 percent

of all deaths to 20 percent of all deaths. Our incidence of diabetes

went from one-tenth of one percent of the population to almost 20

percent. Heart disease went from being almost non-existent to

killing more than 700,000 people a year. At the same time, health

care costs have risen until the U.S. now spends twice as much on

medicine and care per person per year than any other industrialized

nation in the world.

 

It's no coincidence that simultaneous with this health decline the

perils we face from our food, our medicine and our health choices

have become a drumbeat of alarming news reports. Here are a few

representative examples.

 

A study from the science journal, Public Health, described in 2004

how the incidence of death from brain diseases, such as Alzheimer's,

Parkinson's, and motor neurone disorders, was found to have tripled

in nine Western countries, including the U.S., during the period

1974 to 1997. The most likely causes researchers identified were

exposure to pesticides sprayed on crops, synthetic chemicals from

the processed foods that we consume, and industrial chemicals used

in almost every aspect of our modern lives.

 

Food seemed to be a major culprit for this toxicity because Japan,

alone among the ten countries studied, experienced no increase in

brain disease mortality, apparently a result of the Japanese diet

being healthier than Western diets. Only when Japanese citizens

relocate to Western countries and consume those processed foods do

their disease rates exceed that of Japan as a whole.

 

In California, state environmental officials discovered that 60

percent of the rivers and streams contained high levels of prozac,

ritalin, and antibiotics. How could such contamination possibly have

happened? Because people had dumped their excess prescription drugs

into those bodies of water, or had flushed them directly, or through

bodily waste, into sewer and septic systems where the chemicals then

leached into ground water.

 

Blood testing of thousands of Americans has widened the scope of

concern. Medical researchers at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine

in New York found an average of 91 industrial compounds, pollutants,

and other synthetic chemicals in the blood and urine of nine

volunteers who had no occupational or geographical connection to

these chemicals or where they are manufactured. More than half of

these chemicals are known to be responsible for birth defects, or

cancer, or brain and nervous system disorders in humans.

 

An even more extensive round of testing by the U.S. Centers for

Disease Control and Prevention, involving 2,400 adults and children,

documented more than 200 synthetic chemical toxins in their bodies,

with hundreds more chemicals suspected to be present.

 

How did we become so toxic? What thrust us as a culture and as

individuals onto this slippery slope? How can we navigate our way

back to a healthier and less toxic future? These are some of the

questions raised and answered in The Hundred Year Lie.