WISE TRADITIONS 2016 IN ALABAMA
What a great place for a conference! We are now seeing a major growth of sustainable farming in such states as Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Florida and Louisiana, especially with grassfed and pasture-based livestock. This is because weather and climate conditions dictate the best-use practices of all farm ground. It’s as though we just remembered that the South has plentiful and mostly gentle rainfall, a ten-to-twelve month-long growing season and lots of affordable land. New farms and ranches are popping up all over the South, and they plan to grow delicious, nutrient-dense food.
In addition, the South is beginning to experience exciting times both for lovers of great food and for the farmers and ranchers who know how to raise it! While, for a long time, Americans have been willing to import much of our food from parched areas where we could extract underground water and haul in artificial fertilizers, we realize that many of these extreme production measures are unsustainable. In addition, the South has been growing many non-food crops such as tobacco or cotton so most folks there have been getting by in man-made food deserts. In spite of a decades-long exodus of population gravitating southward, there wasn’t much local food one would want to eat.
I’m excited to see that WAPF has become aware of this tremendous geographic shift in high-quality food production! In addition to witnessing the changes first-hand, we will be able to share our knowledge and our resources with this beautiful part of the U.S.! Well, I do declare. . . the South shall raise (good food) again!
Will Winter, DVM
Minneapolis, Minnesota
ASPARTAME AND INFERTILITY
Regarding your upcoming conference, I hope whoever is speaking about infertility understands the aspartame connection (mpwhi.com). It’s in the book Aspartame Disease: An Ignored Epidemic, the thousand-page medical text by H. J. Roberts, MD.
Aspartame is an endocrine-disrupting drug that stimulates prolactin, changes the menses and causes infertility. I’ve been founding director of Mission Possible World Health International for almost twenty-five years. Every person I got off aspartame who was infertile got pregnant without exception. In the original studies, aspartame caused neural tube defects, spina bifida, cleft palate and other abnormalities. There is no pregnancy warning on products containing aspartame. Another point: before aspartame got on the market no one had heard the term ADD, ADHD.
Betty Martini, D.Hum,
Mission Possible
World Health Intl
NAXOS, GREECE
In May 2015, my wife and I went to Greece. Most of our time was spent on Naxos, a mountainous island with traditional values. Naxos is the largest of the Cyclades and has an artistic history going back five thousand years. It also supports itself by agriculture.
Naxos began to dazzle us from the start. We stayed a few nights at the Adonis Hotel in Apollonas on the northeastern side of the island. Stamatis, the hotel owner, immediately introduced us to his organic wines and liquors secured from his orchard. Stamatis also had three separate vegetable gardens and we enjoyed some fantastic home-cooked farm-to-table meals. He and almost everyone else in Apollonas have large organic terraced gardens planted with olives, grapes, fruit trees and vegetables. These terraces have been used for centuries. Most, if not all, crops were grown from heirloom seeds shared among local gardeners and villages. There was no evidence of chemical usage, and goat manure was the principal fertilizer.
All the mountainous villages had terraced gardens winding through them. The terraces throughout the island are watered from numerous mountain springs. This reminded me of the Inca terraces in Peru, except Naxos has a much more lush natural landscape. Both places are famous for potatoes. Who would have thought a Greek island would be famous for its potatoes.
Passing along the terraces and narrow serpentine roads are about fifty thousand well-managed goats. Some cows are kept in the more western, lower, hilly regions of the island. Homemade Naxian cheeses and yogurts are everywhere and taste so special.
Besides great food from the land, the seafood is equally wonderful and always fresh. All the restaurants where we ate served fresh local food and beverages. Just being on Naxos is an experience in agro-tourism.
Even though I have been growing organic vegetables for forty-five years and securing local pasture-fed livestock, eggs and raw milk, there was a definite letdown coming back to the U.S. It was likely due to not being surrounded by a larger traditional community so apparent and complete on Naxos.
The island has other attractions. There are three sixth century B.C. kouros, or partially carved marble statues lying flat in the quarry sites. There is a museum in the port, Naxos town, full of sculptures dating from 3,000 B.C. that apparently inspired Modigliani’s art. We highly recommend Naxos as a destination for those who value friendly, generous people, great food and Wise Traditions!
Warren Pierce
Eggleston, Virginia
ANTI-VAX CAMPAIGN
I really enjoyed receiving my quarterly magazine from you and support most things that WAPF says and stands for. However, my reason for not resubscribing is because of your antivax campaign.
When my son was six weeks old, whooping cough infected a lot of students at our local primary school because an unvaccinated child attended the school. My older two children still contracted whooping cough but having been vaccinated, they only received a mild dose of the disease. The six-week-old child was at the time too young for vaccination and caught full-on whooping cough. Ten days in the hospital with oxygen for the attacks twenty-four hours per day was a frightening experience.
Our son would have an attack every hour or so. A very strong cough with a terrified look on his face. Early in the attack, he could regain his breath a couple of times with a horrible sounding gasp for air, but the coughing would continue until his skin turned red and then purple. Then he would pass out and immediately turn a ghostly white. My wife and I would look on and pray that he would start breathing again. This went on for ten days!
Please spend a little time to find out what whooping cough really is. You will see why I cannot support your cause.
Name withheld
Reply from Leslie Monookian: We are sorry to hear that your son contracted whooping cough as an infant. It is always distressing when our children are ill. Unfortunately, the whooping cough vaccine is a dismal failure. In fact, most recipients of the vaccine have no immunity two to five years after the shot; worse still, millions of vaccine recipients spread the disease—including vaccinated children (http://www.thevaccinereaction.org/2016/02/recently-vaccinated-kids-are-spreading-pertussis-everywhere/)—without having any symptoms of their own or knowing they were spreading the disease; furthermore, the vaccine has caused the pertussis microbe to mutate into more virulent strains (www.nvic.org/NVICVaccine-News/March-2016/pertussis-microbe-outsmarts-the-vaccines.aspx), rendering the disease more dangerous than it was before the vaccine—as in the case of your son. While cases of whooping cough and other diseases are often blamed on the unvaccinated, the truth is that the disease is much more likely spread by vaccinated individuals who don’t know they are carrying and transmitting the disease. It is also noteworthy that Australia stopped the practice of “cocooning” (www.news.com.au/breaking-news/states-ending-free-parent-whooping-vaccine/story-e6frfku0-1226350174856) or vaccinating those around a newborn as the evidence showed it did not work. As with all issues the Weston A. Price Foundation addresses, we try to tell you the truth according to the science, not what a health official or other party with an ideological, political or financial interest might want you to know, and this holds true for vaccines. We encourage you to watch The Greater Good (greatergoodmovie.org), check out all the research on their website in their Catalogue of Science; also check out the vaccination page for WAPF (westonaprice.org/vaccinations/). All these sources are fully referenced with scientific literature you will not hear about from health authorities or your local doctor. But that does not make them any less true. Please also check out the new movie Vaxxed: From Cover Up to Catastrophe (vaxxedthemovie. com), which documents the fraud and cover up at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention regarding the vaccine-autism link. Vaxxed will be shown at the WAPF Conference in Montgomery, Alabama, November 12, 2016.
QUESTIONABLE VACCINE SAFETY
As a practitioner of Western medicine I read medical journals frequently. One recent article caught my attention. It described a case study regarding an unfortunate young woman who, despite a previous record of excellent health, suffered unexplained weakness, neurological abnormalities, myalgias and paralysis. Miraculously, she recovered most of her capabilities after many months even years of rehabilitation, although no cause was ever discovered.
In her history, the article mentioned that she received a vaccine (meningococcal) less than two weeks before her initial symptoms began. I found it odd that a potential correlation between the two was never considered. Surely the timing alone, (severe neurological deficit following a vaccine) should raise some suspicion. At the very least, this occurrence should have been reported to the federal vaccine adverse event reporting system. I wrote a letter stating such to the editor of the medical journal. Did I receive a response? You can probably guess the answer.
Rebecca Lord
Richmond, Virginia
NO SCIENTIFIC BASIS?
According to a Time Magazine article (October 12, 2015), Frank DeStefano, director of immunization safety at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, claims that the immune system can handle up to one hundred thousand vaccines at a time and that there is no scientific basis for a delayed schedule. What is the “scientific basis” for the one-hundred-thousand claim? Where is the “evidence-based medicine”? Where are the gold standard placebo controlled, double blind studies proving that number?
That number isn’t even “anecdotal.” DeStefano just pulled it out of thin air. Who is out to lunch? DeStefano or us? How does this claim get challenged?
Robert Beem
Center Harbor, New Hampshire
THIS AIN’T NORMAL FOLKS
In the industry, Gardasil, Merck’s HPV vaccine, is referred to as the “have-to-pay-for-Vioxx” vaccine. The company paid out seven billion dollars in liabilities for Vioxx, which killed somewhere between one hundred thousand and five hundred thousand people. They had to pull it off the market.
The appeal of the HPV vaccine is that it is lucrative as well as liability-free. With more than seventy-five million U.S. people between nine and twenty-six, this makes it a thirty-two billion dollar market in the U.S. alone, with a recurring annual revenue stream of about three billion dollars. To put this in perspective, Lipitor, Pfizer’s mega blockbuster statin was pulling in five billion dollars per year.
No liability for the manufacturers, means it is pure profit. Vaccines in general, and HPV vaccines in particular, are a huge untapped market for drug companies, especially as the market for other drugs is very saturated and intensely competitive.
Quality control can be disposed of as there is no liability. Vaccine manufacturers do not have to do expensive, long term, double-blind placebo studies, and they do not have to take liability reserves (to reiterate, drug companies cannot be sued for vaccines). They have huge marketing funds that drive intense campaigns. These firms will stop at nothing to meet their numbers, including gagging scientists, arresting researchers, getting publications yanked off PubMed, paying off the CDC, blocking contrary journal articles from publication, smearing reputations of doctors, and far worse things.
Parents need to understand the nature of this vaccine, the side effects and what it purports to prevent versus what it actually does; they need to review the work of scientists who have been gagged, and make decisions regarding this dangerous vaccine after they are properly informed. Also please note that under California law, school nurses are permitted to vaccinate your child with HPV without your knowledge, consent or permission.
Educate yourself, educate your child and protect your family! In clinical trials for these and other vaccines—get this—the placebo is an aluminum hydroxide solution—a deadly adjuvant! If you compare a poison against a poison, the death rate will of course be equal, thus allowing them to dismiss the side effects as normal and natural. This is shady science to put it mildly. Using the CDC’s own statistics on all-cause mortality in five to fourteen year olds, the difference is eightfold between vaccine deaths versus all-cause deaths. This ain’t normal folks!
Sushama Gokhale
Larkspur, California
THE STRAWMAN DEBATE
I am writing in response to the “Parens Patriae Response” letter, Fall 2015, and the subsequent letter, “Strawman,” in Winter 2015. As a mother who sees the benefits of avoiding vaccines both for myself and my children, I am very interested in coming to a more definite conclusion as to the legal authority Parens Patriae has over oneself and one’s children.
Al Whitney stated that a parent’s objection to vaccination must be in writing, but to whom should this writing be given?
In response to Edward Anderson, who said the answer was not to sign off on the child’s birth certificate in order for that individual not to be considered a corporation, would the solution to be a free individual legally able to make one’s own medical decisions by having no birth certificate, or simply signing a waiver with the school department? I would appreciate more insight into this all-important issue.
By the way, thank you for your top-notch work and magazine! Nothing else has been more helpful on so many issues.
Krista Hess-Mills
Oldtown, Idaho
CENTENARIANS IN COSTA RICA
In the last issue a writer commented that a centenarian of Costa Rica from the isolated peninsula of Nicoya ate about nine spoons of sugar per day. I have interviewed some of these centenarians and all those that I have interviewed said that in their childhood, youth and even recently the only sugar they ate was tapa dulce (evaporated sugar cane); they also said they could only afford to eat it once every two months when they would mix it with coconut or pumpkin to make one small dessert. The rest of the time they went completely sugarless, tapa dulce or not (except some fresh fruit).
If one looks at a map one can see that the peninsula of Nicoya is very far from San Jose, the capital of Costa Rica. About fifty or sixty years ago, a road was built to the area and now there is a ferry and a bridge; in fact the peninsula of Nicoya is now a very big tourist area.
Some years ago when a friend from the U.S. told me that the peninsula of Nicoya was part of a blue zone group of people, I went to check that website. According to the website at that time, a centenarian from the peninsula of Nicoya ate toasted (oil/fat free) tortillas, squash and beans. After reading that, I shall never trust the Internet because this is so incomplete and so misleading that whenever I make a presentation here to Costa Ricans, they just die laughing because as they all know, the main food of the old people of Nicoya is pork, lard and chicken skin. The other food items are just small extras.
Costa Ricans are mostly descendants of Spanish and Amerindian peoples. There are still some reserves of 100 percent indigenous people, and they are the only group here to have nice dental arches. Everybody else has medium or even severely collapsed arches, which is corrected (sort of) by years of wearing braces—for the less fortunate, the dental care is paid by universal healthcare.
My family and I live seven kilometers from the main town of our area, Turrialba, which was never as isolated as Nicoya. Many years ago I used to buy lard in town and it happened that on some days I could find not one drop of it. When I finally inquired of one of the butchers which day of the week the stores were likely to have it, he informed me that the day the indigenous people came to town—they came by bus from the limit of the indigenous reserve once or twice a week—they bought every single part of the pig, even the ears, and every drop of the fat the store collected in order to make chicharon (fried pieces of pork) to sell. By the way, Costa Rica produced so much lard one hundred years ago that the country exported it.
I finally went to a faraway village in Nicoya in 2012 and obtained the following information from three very old people who told me that the whole village virtually ate the same way. They had virtually no money, were mostly self-sufficient, especially in food and engaged mostly in barter. Everybody had a big piece of land (milpa) where they grew corn and tubers and where their pigs spent the day eating. They also had at least one milking cow and many chickens. (Costa Rica’s entire population at that time was less than a million people for a vast amount of land.) Their houses were made of natural material and covered by a thatched roof.
The diet of a family of seven (mother, father and five children) included milk fresh and still warm from the cow and whatever eggs the chickens had managed to lay. They would kill one pig per month on average and that pig gave five gallons of lard to cook for seven people for the whole month.
I must add that one of them (age one hundred three) told me that every two years for the last ten an institute from San Jose (Costa Rica’s capital) came to interview him about his longevity, but they never asked him once what kind of oil he used to cook his food. This particular old man said to one of the interviewers that his favorite meat was pork to which this member of the institute replied that pork was the worst meat—this in a country where people today, who have drastically changed their food habits, die like flies from cancer or heart diseases before age sixty-five. There was one old man I could not interview because at age one hundred four, he was in his corn field working the land under a scorching sun and unbearable heat (not the only one of his age doing this though).
They also went to the mountain to hunt all sorts of game but mainly delicious wild pig.
They ate lots of fish and shrimp from the seas and the river. One man told me that everybody in the village was as thin as a stick (not the situation now) and unlike his children and worse his grandchildren, people’s flesh was very hard to the touch, and now his grandchildren’s flesh is very soft. They made a lot of bone soup (chicken, pork, beef and fish—no parts wasted). One of the old men told me that bone soup was the cure for a soft body (he had begged his daughter to give bone soup to his sickly grandson to no avail).
Regarding sugar consumption, he said that at first sugar cost money so they did not have it in the village. Second, when they could get their hands on a little of it, it was always tapa dulce. Third, they only had it about every two months, sometimes less frequently. They also sometimes used coconut oil for cooking. They ate some fresh fruits from trees, but no juice.
However, their children and grandchildren eat a lot of processed food, processed vegetable oil, artificial everything sodas and unlimited white sugar and white flour. They also get vaccinated routinely. They do still eat pork and even lard a few times a year, but that does not seem enough to stop the ravages of sugar. The water they drink is from the same location as before but now treated with chlorine.
I have wished to go back and spend more time and conduct more interviews in another village full of centenarians and a bit further from the sea at some point before they completely disappear but have not found the time so far (it is also extremely hot there). Wishing a ton of blessings for the Weston A. Price Foundation.
Gina Baker, Chapter Leader
Turrialba, Costa Rica
TRADITIONAL FOOD IN UZBEKISTAN
Recently I was on an “expedition” to Uzbekistan and enjoyed the very basic food stuffs, including the fermented milk items. An article in the Uzbekistan Airway Magazine explained the four basic milk ferments we received at almost every meal. The round, small cheeses were “snacks” and quite a good food with the beer! I also loved the beautiful butter boxes for yak butter!
Keep up the sensational work you are doing!
Jorie Johnson
Kyoto, Japan
CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT
I’m a WAPF member who is enthusiastic about your nutritional principles, and am grateful for your work in fighting the bureaucracy that is working to suppress small, sustainable farmers and take away our basic freedoms of what we put into our bodies. I have something that I’d like to share.
Growing numbers of Americans are fed up with industrial food and medicine and are increasingly looking for healthier alternatives, as bureaucrats that are bought and paid for keep introducing legislation that seeks to force us into their system. I think it was from reading Joel Salatin that I first got the idea, what if freedom to make informed food choices were protected in the Constitution the same way freedom of speech, the press, religion and assembly are? What if freedom to make medical choices for oneself and one’s family were protected in the same way?
This may seem like a pipe dream, but it may not be in ten or fifteen years if people’s awareness of these issues keeps on rising. Constitutional amendments protecting our freedom to make food and medical choices could eventually be a reality, and would make it a heck of a lot harder for corporations and politicians to subject us to death by a thousand cuts. I don’t know legalese so have no clue how this would need to be worded, but I thought I’d pass on the idea to organizations such as WAPF that are on our side and see whether it can get into the collective consciousness of the food movement and medical freedom movement. Changes are happening, and what seems ‘pie in the sky’ now may become reality later.
Richard Goerwitz
Tecumseh, Missouri
GLYPHOSATE EVERYWHERE
What are we going to do about glyphosate? It is not only tainting California wines, but has been found in German beer, in blood and breast milk—and in the urine of 93 percent of those tested recently at the University of California, San Francisco. This is a health emergency, an environmental emergency—local, state, national and international, caused by Monsanto’s Roundup weed killer.
It seems we are turning the whole world into a version of Flint, Michigan, by allowing chemical companies and large corporate interests to poison us, for profit, power and payola. A provision in the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) could soon make it impossible for countries to do things like ban Roundup, without being sued for obstruction of trade. This is subordinating the sovereign rights of nations to corporations. When will it stop?
As a resident of Wine Country, California, I am deeply concerned about the spraying and the drift, the seeping into the precious watershed, salmon and us, the contamination of organic farms where we have been turning for non-toxic food—we might even be breathing glyphosate and drinking it in our water here and in other agricultural areas. I asked the local authorities a year ago whether our water might be tested but received no reply. It feels like we are being given the Flint treatment—being ignored. Glyphosate is not only called a “probable carcinogen” by WHO, but has been found to disrupt gut flora—which as we know can lead to many other health problems.
We hear that Roundup can stay in the soil for twenty years. If we banned it today, we’d still have years of negative effects, though they would presumably decrease. . . so what are we waiting for? What about the health of our children and grandchildren? If glyphosate was just found in two organic wines tested (in much smaller amounts than the commercial wines, though) it may also be invading organic vegetables, fruits and medicinal herbs, along with the other chemical adjuvants that accompany it. I’m glad to hear that food is now being tested, and eagerly await results.
There are many petitions, but clearly they haven’t done enough. This one, to Gina McCarthy and other world leaders, had well over one million signatures a few weeks back. That’s impressive, and yet what is being done? https://secure.avaaz.org/en/monsanto_dont_silence_science_loc_us/?baJlUeb&v=57276.
Please fight to ban these terrible chemicals. We are tired of marching, calling and signing petitions yet having nothing happen.
Carey Wheaton
Sonoma County, California
LOVE THOSE PODCASTS!
I just wanted to take a moment to write and tell you how much I appreciate and have been enjoying the podcasts. I have listened to them all as they have been released (I usually listen while cooking!) and just finished part one of the vaccine discussion. This information absolutely needs to get out there so that more people are aware. Thank you so much for the great work!
Marisa Tolsma
Loveland, Colorado
TRIED THEM ALL
Throughout college and over the past year since I graduated, I’ve given just about every diet a fair trial—veganism, vegetarianism, ketosis, low-carb, fasting, gluten-free, organic, raw, GAPS, juice cleanses—but now that I’ve found the wise traditional diet of WAPF, I feel like my search has ended. Never before have I found so much wisdom about nutrition in one place. And thank you so much for sponsoring the Wise Traditions podcast! The knowledge I’ve gained from the podcasts is astonishing.
I’ve been exposed to Dr. Price’s work through many different channels, but so far this podcast is my favorite. It’s so enjoyable to listen as I commute, and I come away with profound wisdom about not only nutrition, but life as well. And it has exposed me to so many new healing modalities! First it was beet kvass, then raw milk, then liver pȃté—I can’t wait to see what’s next!
Months ago I was reading a book called Cure Tooth Decay, and something about the counsel therein really resonated with me, so thought I would research more into Weston A. Price. After a quick Google search, I found the WAPF website, poked around, downloaded some PDFs, found my local chapter and realized it was led by a good family friend I grew up with! I got in touch with Hilda Gore, who is also the host of the Wise Traditions podcast, and she invited me to a chapter meeting.
There I met Jesse Straight, a farmer trained by Joel Salatin, who came to talk to us about life for his family and animals on his farm. I was impressed by his philosophy (“home should be the source of production, rather than consumption”), and eventually bought delicious eggs from him, and have been invited to spend some time working at his farm to learn more about it.
Since last November, I’ve met many interesting people through this community, shared many delicious meals, gained improved health and started my own garden!
I think that anyone who eats food can stand to gain from listening to the Wise Traditions podcast. Each of the guests on the show speaks from a place of such authority, and it’s a relief to hear their counsel, because you know it comes from a place of hard-won truth.
Timothy Gregg
Bethesda, Maryland
GUN VIOLENCE
I recently read an article about gun violence in The Washington Post. What people don’t realize is that sixty or seventy years ago some school students took guns to school, practiced at recess and had shooting clubs. In my childhood many kids had guns, but we had no violence. About the only thing I remember kids getting in trouble for was swearing. So a look at history and science is needed.
Those puzzled about gun violence should begin by reading the research of Drs. Weston A. Price and Francis Pottenger. The implication of their research for Western civilization—obsessed as it is with refined, highly sweetened convenience foods and lowfat items—is profound. If we want to stop violence and poor health in our country, we need to return to the diet of our ancestors.
In addition to a poor diet, we need to look into the effects of drugs for depression and attention deficit disorder. As investigative reporter Jon Rappaport has written, every school shooter was taking prescribed psychiatric drugs. These are known to have side effects of violence and suicide. This is well documented in the book Toxic Psychiatry by Dr. Peter Breggin. He asserts that psychiatric drugs are spreading an epidemic of long-term brain damage and mental illness.
Vaccinations contain metals and chemicals that disrupt important functions in the body and brain. In 1990 Harris L. Coulter wrote Vaccination, Social Violence and Criminality, in which he predicted that if we did not quit over-vaccinating we would have a dramatic increase in violence in our country. This book was reviewed in Wise Traditions, Spring 2013.
Janice Curtin
Alexandria, Virginia
AYURVEDIC DIET
I have been looking into Ayurvedic medicine and diet, and can report that it is very much in line with WAPF principles, and not vegetarian.
In Ayurvedic medicine, there is a procedure known as abhyanga (which I can personally attest to the benefits of) which is the “oiling of the body” (massage oil into the body). Various oils are used to different effects, depending upon one’s constitution and health condition. Interestingly, while traditional Ayurveda recommends cured sesame oil or coconut oil for this oiling, it also recommends ghee, and for people in very poor health who may be suffering from “wasting” or “dryness,” they recommend using lard or marrow fat! Also, they recommend against using all other vegetable oils (except coconut and sesame). It is claimed that when animal fat is mixed with particular herbs, the animal fats act as much better carriers than the vegetable oils, and they claim that animal fat is more nourishing to the skin.
Although Ayurveda does have a “vegetarian” lifestyle plan (which probably evolved to cater to people’s spiritual aspirations, rather than as a regime for good health), it most certainly is not vegan and advises copious amounts of ghee, milk, butter, curd, yogurt and buttermilk, which they use to make a spicy soup called khadi that is eaten on its own or with rice. (By the way, I’ve also seen in Ayurvedic literature that adding ghee to warmed milk makes it more digestible, which seems in-line with WAPF principles!)
I recently noticed a fairly decent Wikipedia entry for the Sanskrit text Charaka Samhita, which suggests a regimen of Mamsa Rasa (meat soup) during pregnancy from the sixth month onwards. Mamsa Rasa is often recommended for breaking a fast as an adjunct to the healing process. Freshly cut meat is also recommended for the treatment of poison, wherein the cut meat is pressed against the affected part or spot of insect or reptile bite to absorb away the poison. Over one hundred fifty medical substances of animal origin are described in Charaka Samhita, ranging from the meat of wild animals such as fox and crocodile, to that of freshly cut fish, fish oil, eggs of birds and bee’s wax. Additionally, the text describes hundreds of formulations it asserts to be of medicinal value from a mixture of animal products with herb or plant products, as well as with inert minerals such as various salts, soots and alkalis. The dispelling of misinformation is a never-ending task it seems.
Will Quesnel
Salisbury, United Kingdom
FIRST-HAND EXPERIENCE
An abundance of glorious book reviews reside in the Spring 2016 edition of our (sooooo valuable) Wise Traditions. From the useful, “Don’t Bother” reviews, to steer us clear of wasting precious time, to the proclaiming of great books worthy of our Freedom Libraries, most reviews are beautifully and skillfully written, highly insightful, pertinent to our lives, and stuffed (skillfully) with good advice. Collecting the knowledge needed to weather hard times in a “Freedom Library” is a good piece of wisdom, even if we aren’t planning to read these gems immediately.
Particularly high on my radar is the subject covered in the book on rampant doctor madness, Psychiatry Under the Influence. I know first-hand of the devious ways psychiatrists can make life miserable and glean great profits all the while.
After my husband’s successful hip replacement, all appeared to be going well until the third day of recovery when he went into withdrawal symptoms from the psychiatric drug Xanax (Alprazolam), originally promoted to him as non-addictive about thirty years ago. He becomes intensely psychotic (not aware of the present), irrational, vicious, manipulative and paranoid with hallucinations, agitation and other endearing qualities.
His prescription was PRN—Per Required Need. Being mostly asleep and out of it after the surgery, he didn’t have the awareness needed to ask the nurses for his regular doses. Right on time, on the third day, the withdrawal symptoms kicked in, and he was seeing helicopters and SWAT teams on rooftops and warning me of people outside our home and in the corridors, murders being investigated and then calling 911, at 6:30 a.m., to get me out of his room since I’d flipped, in his mind, to being one of the bad guys.
He was taken from the rehab facility to an emergency room. Then, without consulting me, he went to a psych “behavioral” hospital. The receptionists at that facility kept saying they “could neither confirm or deny” that he was a patient, despite his daughter, in another state, telling me she’d spoken with him and their therapist.
Frantically, I searched through international warnings/side effects of his medications, found in the search engine at CCHRint.org. I typed up what I found, which included the exact symptoms he was displaying. At the top, I noted the source. They wouldn’t take the envelope with this information so I tossed it through their security window and left.
The next day, I got a call asking about how soon I could come to take him home as he was now stable and ready. He had symmetrical bruises on the inside of both forearms (some restraints are illegal, I believe), symmetrical sores on the tops of his feet (exit wounds from electric shocks?), and was fearful, uncertain, weak and frightened—not at all “stable.” He spoke of being left for hours in a wheelchair, despite his recent surgery; lights on all day and night. One imagines that professionals in a field would improve, rather than worsen, conditions. He now has Tardive Dyskenesia (similar to Parkinson’s), as mentioned in the book review, due to the drug cocktail given throughout his journey. And, years later, he still has the nightmares along with memories of the good people he met on the inside—the other patients.
J Mc
Colorado Springs, Colorado
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