White Poison: The Horrors of Milk

[Guest guest]

White Poison: The Horrors of Milk

Shanti Rangwani, ColorLines

December 3, 2001

 

Got milk? If not, then thank your lucky stars. Because if

you do, medical research shows that you are likely to be plagued by anemia,

migraine, bloating, gas, indigestion, asthma, prostate cancer, and a host of

potentially fatal allergies -- especially if you are a person of color.

 

Ignoring this, the government declares that milk is

essential to good health, subsidizes the milk industry to the tune of billions

of dollars, and requires milk in its public school lunch programs. And

celebrity shills sporting milk mustaches tell us that milk is rich in

proteins, calcium, and vitamins -- and very cool to boot.

 

They forget to tell you about the dangers lurking in that

innocuous-looking glass of white. Once criticized only by naturopaths and

vegans, now the health effects of milk are being decried by many mainstream

doctors. The supposedly hip milk mustache is actually a creamy

layer of mucus, live bacteria, and pus.

 

Former Chairman of Pediatrics at Johns Hopkins University,

Frank Oski, M.D. even has a book called Don't Drink Your Milk which blames every

second health problem kids suffer on hormone-ridden commercial milk. Sixty

percent of ear infections in kids under six years of

age are milk-induced, and milk consumption is the number one cause of

iron-deficiency anemia in infants today according to the American Association of

Pediatrics.

 

But milk is also a racial issue. Almost 90 percent of

African Americans and most Latinos, Asians, and Southern Europeans lack the

genes necessary to digest lactose, the primary sugar in milk. The milk

industry's response is classic: they have launched new campaigns arguing

that non-whites can digest milk if they take in small sips during the day. There

is a burgeoning

industry worth $450 million a year churning out products designed to minimize

lactose intolerance.

 

Lactose intolerance is the most common " food allergy, " but

to call it an allergy is to take a white-centric view that trivializes the fact

that most of the world's people are not biologically designed to digest milk.

 

Milk does no body good, but for the vast majority of the

world's people -- people of color -- it is a public health disaster.

 

No other animal drinks cow's milk, not even calves once

they are weaned. The late Dr. Benjamin Spock, the U.S.'s leading authority on

child care, spoke out against feeding " cow's glue " to children, saying it can

cause anemia, allergies, and diabetes and in the long term, will set

kids up for obesity and heart disease, the number one cause of death in this

country.

 

Most of milk's much-vaunted protein is contained in casein

-- which is also a raw material for commercial glue. Undigested, it simply

sticks to the intestinal walls and blocks nutrient absorption.

 

The mainstream media and the government ignore the medical

studies showing that milk is a serious health threat, in part because people of

color are the main victims. The institutionalization of racism is highlighted by

U.S. Department of Agriculture spokesperson Eilene

Kennedy's statement on milk,that the government's recommended food pyramid is

intended for " the

majority of Americans. It doesn't communicate to all Americans. "

 

The USDA continues to require that school lunch programs

include milk with every meal, and recommend that we glug milk for calcium, even

though Harvard studies show an increase in osteoporosis and bone-breakage in

people who consume milk. It says we should drink milk to prevent heart disease

(and is echoed by Larry King) even though saturated fat constitutes 55 percent

of milk solids.

 

The dairy lobby perpetrates lies to ensure its profits. It

benefits directly from the exaggerated support prices the government shells out

for this " health food. " The government pays over a billion dollars a year for

surplus butter. A General Accounting Office (GAO) study concluded that a

reduction in the government price support system would have netted consumers

savings of $10.4 billion from 1986 to 2001. And the USDA pays inflated prices to

purchase dairy products for both the Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) and

federal school lunch programs -- milking the taxpayers and actually getting them

to pay for poisoning 26 million school kids.

 

The milk lobby has whipsawed its way into the highest

echelons of power. Staffers under Richard Nixon were indicted for accepting

$300,000 from the dairy lobby for making milk part of the school lunch program.

 

Dr. Robert Cohen of the Dairy Education Board, a nonprofit

organization dedicated to exposing the milk lobby, contends that the dramatic 52

percent rise in asthma deaths among minority kids in New York coincided with the

surplus milk, cheese, and butter pumped into them

under the USDA's free school lunch and breakfast giveaway programs. The

incidence of asthma deaths may be even higher since asthma is not a reportable

disease, and asthma deaths are sometimes certified as cardiovascular disease.

 

There is also a direct link between milk consumption and

prostate cancer among African Americans, who have the highest incidence of this

disease in the world. A study in Cancer has shown that men who reported drinking

three or more glasses of whole milk daily had a higher

risk for prostate cancer than men who reported never drinking whole milk.

 

The controversial Bovine Growth Hormone (BGH) -- banned in

most countries -- is pumped into U.S. milch cows to increase annual yield

(50,000 pounds of milk per cow today compared to 2,000 pounds in 1959). Milk

from cows treated with BGH is likely to contain pus from their udders since the

hormone leads to mastitis, or udder infection. BGH use results in a

tumor-promoting chemical (IGF-I) that has been implicated in an explosive

increase of cancer of the colon, smooth muscle, and breast.

 

The antibiotics dairy farmers use to treat BGH-caused

infections in cows appear in their milk and greatly hasten human tolerance to

most antibiotics, a potentially life-threatening state of affairs. The Center

for Science in the Public Interest reports that 38 percent of milk

samples in 10 cities were contaminated with sulfa drugs and other antibiotics.

 

A fightback is beginning. Protesters picketed New York City

Mayor Rudolph Giuliani's planned milk promotion campaign with a photo of the

mayor wearing a milk mustache over the caption, " Got Prostate Cancer? " Giuliani

(who, like his father, has prostate cancer) dropped the campaign. And doctors

from the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine

(PCRM) persuaded Washington, D.C. Mayor Anthony Williams not to declare May 11

as " Drink Chocolate Milk Day " by presenting evidence that milk is harmful,

especially to people of color.

 

The PCRM -- composed of some of the leading doctors in the

U.S. -- has campaigned extensively in the health and consumer press and led a

successful legal effort in 1999 to make dairy products optional in the federal

food guidelines. The campaign was supported by a number of prominent civil

rights organizations and leaders, including the Congressional Black Caucus, the

NAACP, Martin Luther King, III, Jesse Jackson, Jr., the National Hispanic

Medical Association, and former Surgeon General Joycelyn Elders.

 

The dairy lobby remains cozy with most medical

practitioners to perpetrate its " drink milk " propaganda. However, not one of the

1,500 papers listed in Medicine that deal with milk points to its goodness --

only to the pus, blood, antibiotics, and carcinogens in milk, and the chronic

fatigue, anemia, asthma, and autoimmune disorders milk consumption causes.

 

The time has come for the milk industry to face the kind of

scrutiny that the tobacco companies face today. Meanwhile, discard the moo

juice.

 

Shanti Rangwani is an allopathic doctor and a columnist for

the Times of India

 

 

 

 

 

 

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